RC4 b1 first impressions

Romcenter 4 support discussion. Please do not post roms requests or illegal links, posts will be deleted. After discussion in this forum, please report any new bugs here.

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RC4 b1 first impressions

Post by Wanderer »

Hi Eric. Thanks for all the work for the new version. It seems nice so far, with a modern look.

Some comments i have (not anything serious so far) from a quick first look with an old version of mame (0.142!)...

1. The first thing to notice is that upon startup, the ribbon bar is completely blank!
RC_01_Blank.png
RC_01_Blank.png (13.9 KiB) Viewed 31541 times
2. Adding a new folder in a mame db, after loading all files, a "transferring" message appears in the log. I wonder, transferring what, and from where to where? :) Nor really important but it would be nice to have more descriptive messages. It may help in future bug descriptions.

3. In a mame database, in the left tab where all the game zips are shown, all lines and letters appear normally. In the right tab where the selected rom contents are shown, it seems that for some reason the actual height of each line is smaller than the left tab and that causes the letter "g" to appear cut-of at its bottom.
RC_02_Proper_g.png
RC_02_Proper_g.png (2.44 KiB) Viewed 31546 times
RC_02_Partial_g.png
RC_02_Partial_g.png (1.93 KiB) Viewed 31546 times
4. The tooltips of the four filter buttons in the right tab (file contents) are the same with the tooltips on the left tab (i.e. "click to hide complete games" while it should perhaps be "click to hide complete roms").

5. When a rom folder has been selected in the tree, rightclicking on a line in the left tab (roms tab - really, some labels for these tabs would be nice in order to the users to properly describe them), a menu appears. This menu has two entries, "Fix operations" and "open folder in file explorer" which when selecting them the color of the selection is different than the color of other entries (i.e. "rename files"). Also the "fix operations" item's selection does not extend to the full width of the menu. Finally perhaps the "fix operations" should be changed to something more clear, like "fix all roms".

6. Selected a file in the roms (left) tab and then one of its items in the right (contents) tab, then rightclicked on it. When selecting "fix operations" from the rightclick menu, it (i think) started trying to repair all roms in the left tab and not only the selected rom contents as one would expect. At some point, the message "Source and destination path must have identical roots. Move will not work across volumes." Pressed OK but after going to the next rom, the same message appeared again. It may have something to do with the fact that the rom folder was not on drive C:? In any case, this message should not appear in all roms. This has forced me to kill RC from the task manager after seeing the message about 20 times.

7. In step (6), when i tried to stop RC4 from the "Applications" tab in task manager, the confirmation message "Operations running. Cancel and exit?" appeared. When i selected "Yes", it did nothing (because a "Source and destination path..." message dialog was also open). When i pressed OK in the "Source and destination path..." dialog, RC canceled the process but after that, it did not exit as expected. It continued to work normally though, without any obvious issues.

8. Open folder in file explorer: Personally i use another file manager (Total commander) so i would appreciate if there was a way to select the file manager EXE in the options and the menu item was named "open folder in file manager". If nothing has been selected as file manager, the windows file explorer should be used.

That's all so far. Looking forward for the TOSEC xml version support, so i can try my Amstrad collection.

Extra findings...

9. I have a rom that returns a strange message: There was an error on it, so i unpacked it and re-created a new zip (i used 7zip 9.20). This one however, when i put it in the roms folder and refresh it, it returns this error: "Compression level out of range. Parameter name: level0 to 5". Even if i compress one of the roms inside it to a new file and put it in the rom folder, it produces the same error. I also compressed them with my file manager (Total Commander) which uses a different set of DLLs for zipping but the result was the same.

UPDATE: This started since i went to file/options and changed the zip compression level to "max". After that (and the rezipping), the issue occurred. Returning the slider to its default value eliminated the problem.

10. Typo's: "Create a new database from an emulator": the destination file's description is wrong. It should be the same as in "Create a new database from a datafile". Also, in mame filtering: "You can filters roms..."

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Re: RC4 b1 first impressions

Post by RomCenter »

Thank you for this report.
1 - I sometimes have this problem since I upgraded a component this week. The complete ribbon should appear after a short time, no? I will investigate this pb.
2 - Messages will be reworked later, I'm taking improvments ideas of course.
3 - I also had this problem, and I lowered font size to solve it. It seems the lines heigh also adjusted accordingly... I will fix that.
4 - Ok
5 - Right
6 - 'Source and destination path must have identical roots': I had this problem once in one pc. It should be related to the disk where romcenter is installed...
7 - Pause and cancel does not always work yet.
8 - Ok. I keep this for later.

Thank you. Didn't try tosec yet. So it doesn't work...
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Re: RC4 b1 first impressions

Post by Wanderer »

RomCenter wrote:Thank you for this report.
1 - I sometimes have this problem since I upgraded a component this week. The complete ribbon should appear after a short time, no? I will investigate this pb.
6 - 'Source and destination path must have identical roots': I had this problem once in one pc. It should be related to the disk where romcenter is installed...
1. Yes, it appears as soon as i click on something or if i mouseover the ribbon.
6. Is there something i can do/check for this message to disappear?

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Re: RC4 b1 first impressions

Post by RomCenter »

I don't know why it happens. I have it on my pc at home, but not on my dev pc, so I can't trace the pb.
I suspect a problem when removing empty folders and copy them in C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\romcenter\archive. Maybe if the folder is on disk D, it raises this error.
I will try so simulate the behaviour with a usb key, as I don't have a second hd on my dev pc.

So, for now, you can repair roms and report if some of them are not fixed (they stay yellow), or if an exception is raised. But I still have a lot of things to fix, so there's no hurry.
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Re: RC4 b1 first impressions

Post by Wanderer »

OK, here's another one:

I have a rom that returns a strange message: There was an error on it, so i unpacked it and re-created a new zip (i used 7zip 9.20). This one however, when i put it in the roms folder and refresh it, it returns this error: "Compression level out of range. Parameter name: level0 to 5".

Even if i compress one of the roms inside it to a new file and put it in the rom folder, it produces the same error. I also compressed them with my file manager (Total Commander) which uses a different set of DLLs for zipping but the result was the same.

Anyway, i imagine you can try it yourself. It seems that if external compression DLLs are used, other than RC's, this error occurs.

P.S. 1: I'm adding this and everything else i may find in my OP.

P.S. 2: Ha!. Now i know why this happened. I went to file/options and changed the zip compression level to "max". After that (and the re-zipping), the issue occurred. Returning the slider to its default value eliminated the problem.

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Re: RC4 b1 first impressions

Post by Wanderer »

RomCenter wrote:I don't know why it happens. I have it on my pc at home, but not on my dev pc, so I can't trace the pb.
I suspect a problem when removing empty folders and copy them in C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\romcenter\archive. Maybe if the folder is on disk D, it raises this error.
I will try so simulate the behaviour with a usb key, as I don't have a second hd on my dev pc.
if this does not work, try "subst" from a dos prompt. I find it still works in newer Windows versions (i'm using 7 but i hope it still works in 8 and 8.1)

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Re: RC4 b1 first impressions

Post by RomCenter »

It seems the latest tosec pack is working with rc 4 beta1. :P
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Re: RC4 b1 first impressions

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RomCenter wrote:It seems the latest tosec pack is working with rc 4 beta1. :P
:) Nice!!!

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Re: RC4 b1 first impressions

Post by Wanderer »

OK, i'm splitting all these issues into separate threads with 1 issue per thread so they can be tracked more easily.

I also have a couple more minor issues / comments i've spotted.

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