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Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code

Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 1:22 am
by caliskier
Hi so thanks to all that have helped me learn about media center theamer. very cool.

What I am trying to do is add a program to play games. Using the code from the Media Center Theamer instructions to pull up the calculator as a test, I can get it to display my menu strip and the launch icon in WMC. but when clicked all it does is go to the windows behind WMC for a second and then back into WMC. When I minimize WMC i can see the calculator app running on the screen, when I close the calculator app it does not bring back in WMC.

It is supposed to bring up the calculator and when you close the calculator it is supposed to restore WMC. It does not do either of these things. When I put my game program in the code, it does the same thing as with the calculator app. Any thoughts?

The code from Theamer

Code: Select all

<StartMenu>
	<Builtin></Builtin>

	<Custom Title="My Theme Menu">
		<MenuItem Name="Launch calculator">
			<Image>Logged Resources\ehres.dll\rcdata\STARTMENU.QUICKLINK.PICTURES.PLAYFAVS.FOCUS.PNG</Image>
			<Program>%windir%\system32\calc.exe</Program>
			<PlayingDirective>pause</PlayingDirective>
		</MenuItem>
	</Custom>
</StartMenu>


Re: Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code, works, but not quite.

Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 2:01 am
by caliskier
Actually this works fine if I use internet explorer... still testing

Re: Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code, works, but not quite.

Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 2:23 am
by caliskier
Ok this part of the code does not work:

Code: Select all

<Program>C:\Users\John & Jane Doe\\AppData\Roaming\RetroArch\retroarch.exe</Program>
if i put %26 in for & i will get the new menu item to come up like I need it to but cant run the program. With "Name & Name Name" I don't get the menu item

Windows will not let you change the user folder name

Re: Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code, works, but not quite.

Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 4:38 am
by caliskier

Code: Select all

<Program>C:\Users\John &amp; Jane Doe\AppData\Roaming\Game\Game.exe</Program>
Solves the problem, hope this helps someone else

Re: Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code, works, but not quite.

Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 1:21 pm
by DavidinCT
caliskier wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 4:38 am

Code: Select all

<Program>C:\Users\John &amp; Jane Doe\AppData\Roaming\Game\Game.exe</Program>
Solves the problem, hope this helps someone else
Ah... retroarch.exe Classic game emulation. May I suggest RetroCake ?

https://github.com/Flerp/RetroCake

It's RetroPie on Windows PC ( Emulation Station but, updated). So It gives that nice feel for retro gaming and all your classic game systems.

And ReLaunch is still around here, that can do the same thing your looking for, even with an option to hit the Green button, and it will close the app and bring you back to Windows...

I do pretty much the same thing but I use USB Extenders when I want to use the actual controlers, and I always keep a Wireless Xbox 360 controler just for it, so I can play any game with it..

Re: Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code, works, but not quite.

Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 3:28 am
by caliskier
DavidinCT wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 1:21 pm
caliskier wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 4:38 am

Code: Select all

<Program>C:\Users\John &amp; Jane Doe\AppData\Roaming\Game\Game.exe</Program>
Solves the problem, hope this helps someone else
Ah... retroarch.exe Classic game emulation. May I suggest RetroCake ?

https://github.com/Flerp/RetroCake

It's RetroPie on Windows PC ( Emulation Station but, updated). So It gives that nice feel for retro gaming and all your classic game systems.

And ReLaunch is still around here, that can do the same thing your looking for, even with an option to hit the Green button, and it will close the app and bring you back to Windows...

I do pretty much the same thing but I use USB Extenders when I want to use the actual controlers, and I always keep a Wireless Xbox 360 controler just for it, so I can play any game with it..
Yeah, you kinda sniffed that out. RetroPie looks pretty cool, I youtubed it. What do you mean by hit the green button?

Re: Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code, works, but not quite.

Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 2:49 pm
by DavidinCT
caliskier wrote: Thu May 14, 2020 3:28 am
DavidinCT wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 1:21 pm
caliskier wrote: Mon May 11, 2020 4:38 am

Code: Select all

<Program>C:\Users\John &amp; Jane Doe\AppData\Roaming\Game\Game.exe</Program>
Solves the problem, hope this helps someone else
Ah... retroarch.exe Classic game emulation. May I suggest RetroCake ?

https://github.com/Flerp/RetroCake

It's RetroPie on Windows PC ( Emulation Station but, updated). So It gives that nice feel for retro gaming and all your classic game systems.

And ReLaunch is still around here, that can do the same thing your looking for, even with an option to hit the Green button, and it will close the app and bring you back to Windows...

I do pretty much the same thing but I use USB Extenders when I want to use the actual controllers, and I always keep a Wireless Xbox 360 controller just for it, so I can play any game with it..
Yeah, you kinda sniffed that out. RetroPie looks pretty cool, I youtubed it. What do you mean by hit the green button?
I didn't sniff it out, I was using Emulation station for a long time now but updated emulators as I went...I started this in 2015/2016 time frame...

I tried the EMUcenter for WMC, as a native app and hated it, I wanted something better and this is what I found, I got it working really well..

This is where I got my original setup but, Everything is needed to be set up manually (emulators in XML code, fairly easy once you understand it) and it's very dated code, so using a powerful Windows PC, you can run higher end emulators than the PI could ever dream of.

This is the old site with a old version

https://emulationstation.org/

RetroCake is based off the newest version of RetroPI, it pulls the NEWEST updates and makes it into a WINDOWS version with the newest emulators. So you get the newest code and on Windows :)

If you use ReLaunch to set up the shortcut, it gives an option to KILL the app when you hit the WMC Green button on the remote. After it kills it, it goes right back to WMC.

When I used this setup on Windows 7 (I now moved on to 8.1) it made it feel like a native app, Click on it with your remote, pick up a controller, and play away, when I was done and back in the RetroPie/Emulationstation menu, hit the green button on the remote and your back in WMC with the application closed..

If you see all those systems it can do... It will not show ANY other system, till you have a rom available for it, so you can expand to new systems very easy...

Re: Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code

Posted: Fri May 15, 2020 1:51 pm
by caliskier
Cool, I was wondering if you were talking about emulation station. Retroarch seems to pull in everything pretty simply but doesn’t have a very pretty GUI like ES does. I use a Harmony Remote, I can probably program the green button into that. I will need to check this out! Thanks for the post brother. By the way my “sniffed that out” comment was about me being impressed that you figured out that this was about Retroarch By looking at the path.

Re: Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code

Posted: Mon May 18, 2020 7:55 pm
by DavidinCT
caliskier wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 1:51 pm Cool, I was wondering if you were talking about emulation station. Retroarch seems to pull in everything pretty simply but doesn’t have a very pretty GUI like ES does. I use a Harmony Remote, I can probably program the green button into that. I will need to check this out! Thanks for the post brother. By the way my “sniffed that out” comment was about me being impressed that you figured out that this was about Retroarch By looking at the path.
In case you didn't know..... Emulation station uses RetroArch for it's emulators. Actually you can change any systems setup in ES to use any emulator you want as long as you can run it via a command line. RetroCake does all the configuration for you and makes it very easy... (ES on Windows can be a PIA to setup)...

As far of sniffing that out....I have worked in IT for a long time, when I see XML it's almost 2nd nature to look over to see what it does, and retroarch.exe is another program that I know very well. :lol:

Re: Need Help with Media Center Theamer XML Code

Posted: Tue May 26, 2020 3:07 am
by caliskier
Retrocake...there isn’t a file at that link to download. I read the README file, it’s not really clear what I’m supposed to do with the other three files.