I been getting bombarded recently with problems regarding how to exit an emulator and return to the game selection window of Maximus Arcade. Here's a troubleshooting guide to assist with all of the questions.
Q: The screen is black and MA appears to have crashed. How do I return to the game selection window?
A: MA didn't really crash. Most crashes of MA would show an alert box stating a "director error". If you've launched an emulator and you can't return to the selection window its because you aren't using the MA 'quit executable' button to exit your emulator. This key is assigned in the preferences window of MA. With MA you will only need one quit button to exit out of all emulators. MA closes the emulators for you so that you don't have to remember every emulator’s quit button. The MA default 'quit executable' button is END or HOME. I find that using a key that most emulators don't usually recognize works best. This is because the emulator doesn't respond to the key. If you mapped your 'quit executable' button to ESC for example, some emulators would show a quit dialog, change window modes, or show a menu bar. At this point you are reminded of the windows environment running underneath
Q: Why do I have to double punch the 'quit executable' button to exit?
A: Sometimes you will need to double punch the 'quit executable' button. This may be necessary because an emulator is using an usually high amount of the cpu processor and MA can't see the keypress right away. Generally holding the key down for 1 second or more is enough.
Q: The 'quit executable' button works fine when I have the quit delay set to zero. Why when I set the delay to 2 seconds or more it never works?
A: Are you using a key combination to initiate the 'quit executable' key? If yes, are you using an IPAC board? If yes, does it have a PS2 or USB cable?
I've recently found that IPAC boards using a PS2 cable tend to only send a single keystroke when a key combination is held down. So if you hold down the SHIFT+CONTROL keys for instance, to send the ESC key as your 'quit executable' button, it only gets sent once and no keydown state is recognized, but if the IPAC is using a USB cable, then key combo does initiate a continuous keydown state for ESC. Which means that the quit delay option won't work for a PS2 cable IPAC because the key-combo isn't recognized as a continuous keydown state. To see whether a continuous keydown state can be maintained, hold down your key-combo in a program like notepad.
Q: I'm using a gamepad/joystick as a controller. When I assign the 'quit executable' button for my gamepad it works within MA but when I launch a game, only the keyboard assigned 'quit executable' works when exiting an emulator. Why is that?
A: Some users are experiencing problems when exiting an emulator with their gamepad/joysticks. The problem has not been isolated and it is still being investigated. In the meantime, a resourceful group of users have used the program JoyToKey to map the gamepad/joystick button to the 'quit executable' keyboard input.
*** UPDATE *** - If you assign a single joystick button to 'quit executable' it will not register with MA while your emulator is running. If you assign 2 or more joystick buttons to 'quit executable' MA will register the joystick input. Example: JOY_BUTTON11+JOY_BUTTON12
cheers,
mameseer
