There seems to be a lot of confusion on how to setup custom layouts in MameWAH. This is my attempt (with MinWAH's approval of course. We all know he is GOD.) to explain how it is done. 

1. MameWAH Installation 
Download MameWAH. Also download the System Files from the MameWAH downloads page. Install the system files then install MameWAH. We are going to assume you installed MameWAH to the default folder which is c:\mamewah. 

Lets look at what we have. If you look in the c:\mamewah\ini folder you will notice that MameWAH has some default INI files that it is distributed with. 

Also, If you look in the c:\mamewah\layouts folder you will notice that there are some default layouts included. 

2. Naming you layouts and putting them where they belong. 
They entire naming convention in MameWAH is driven by the name of the emulator specific INI file. Let's use Daphne as an example. When you look inside of your c:\mamewah\layouts folder. You will see some other folders. These are the layouts that are included with MameWAH. You won't be using these. You can delete these folders if your a clean freak like myself. Now, in the layouts folder create a folder called Custom. You should now have the following folder, 

c:\mamewah\layouts\custom. This is where all of your custom layouts will be placed. The files that you should have for each layout are (using Daphne as an example again): 

daphne.lay (this file holds the setting for the layout, fonts, visible items and screen locations) 

daphne-main.jpg (this is your main background image) 

daphne-message.jpg (this is your background image for the message dialog box) 

daphne-options.jpg (this is your background image for the options (menu) dialog box) 

daphne-art1.jpg, daphne-art2.jpg...and so forth 

These are the artwork images that will be displayed it there is no image available for the particular box in your layout that matches the selected roms name. 

For instance, lets say in your Daphne layout you have made the Artwork #1 box visible and are going to display your screenshots in it. When you are running MameWAH and you have a game (Donkey Kong) highlighted, the rom name is dkong.zip and if their is a screenshot named dkong.jpg or dkong.png it will be displayed it the Artwork #1 box. If the jpg or png don't exist it will display emu-art1.jpg (daphne-art1.jpg). The paths to what gets diplayed in the image boxes are set up in the emulator.ini (daphne.ini) file. More on that next. 

Place these files in your c:\mamewah\layouts\custom folder. 

Note: If you do NOT want emulator specific layouts simple remove the prefix "daphne-" leaving your files with names such as layout.lay, main.jpg, message.jpg, art1.jpg and options.jpg. 

3. Creating the emulator specific INI file(s). 
Now you need to do is setup an INI file for the emulator you wish to configure. For this example we are going to use Daphne, again. If you look in the folder c:\mamewah\ini there are a couple of included INI files. Open up the mame.ini file in a text editor such as Notepad. Do a File/Save AS and call it Daphne.ini and make sure it is in the INI folder. You will need to do this (create your own INI file) for each emulator you wish to set up. 

Note: If you are setting up a lot of emulators and want to be able to cycle through them in a certain order (it's alphabetical by default) add a prefix such as 01, 02, 03 and so forth to the beginning of the INI file name. If we wanted Daphne to be out first emulator we would name the file 01daphne.ini. 

You will need to go into the newly created daphne.ini file and setup the specific patchs and parameters for your emulator (Daphne). You can find all of the settings I use for all my emulators on my downloads page at http:\\home.comcast.net\~cpviewer 

4. Now we have our daphne.ini file created but how does it know where to find the layout to use? Well open the file c:\mamewah\mamewah.ini and look for the section entitled Misc Options. The first line points to the folder within the Layouts folder that you have your layouts in. Change the parameter to Custom. 

The line should now look like this: 

### Misc Options ### 
layout custom 

Now MameWAH reads the daphne.ini file and will automatically look in the C:\mamewah\layouts\custom folder for the daphne.lay, daphne-main.jpg, daphne-message.jpg...and so forth files. 

If you look in the file you created earlier, c:\mamewah\ini\daphne.ini you will see a section that looks like this: 

### Artwork Locations ### 
artwork_1_image_path c:\daphne\images 
artwork_2_image_path c:\daphne\titles 
artwork_3_image_path c:\daphne\marquees 

Notice the paths point to a location. If this location contains an image that matches the highlighted rom name the image will be displayed in the corresponding box. 

5. Custom Lists 

Inside the folder c:\mamewah\ini you will also notice files such as mame0-ini, mame-1.ini and so forth. You will need at the minimum a -0.ini file. These files contain the parameters for your custom lists. You will need a seperate file for each list you want to create. If you want the following lists for Daphne: Main, Favorites, Whatever1 and Whatever2 you would need a daphne-0.ini, daphne-1.ini, daphne-2.ini and daphne-3.ini file in the c:\mamewah\ini folder. 

All you need to do is create the empty files in the c:\mamewah\ini folder. MameWAH will automatically populate them with the proper information. I believe by default the daphne-0.ini file will be referenced by "Main List" inside the folder and the subsequent files (daphne-1.ini, daphne-2.ini and so forth) will be referenced inside the file as Custom1, custom2 and so forth. After MameWAH automatically puts the text in the file you can then open it in your text editor and change the list name. It will be the line that looks like the last line in the following example: 

### daphne-0.ini ### 

list_title Custom1 

Simply change the text Custom1 to whatever you want to be displayed in your layout. 

6. Sounds 

The last option is setting up sounds. You can really have two different types of sounds, emulator specific or global. Actually you can have both at the same time and if it doesn't find an emulator specific sound it will default to the global sound for that event. If neither exists, guess what? Right, no sound for that event. For an emulator specific event, I'll use the navigate event as an example, place the properly named sound file in the c:\mamewah\layouts folder. 

For example, placing a file named daphne-navigate.wav in this folder will cause that sound clip to play when moving through the game list in your Daphne layout but not in your other layouts. If you want the sound clip to be played for the navigate event for EVERY emulator simply name it navigate.wav and place it in the c:\mamewah\layouts folder. The documentation that comes with MameWAH lists the available sound events. 

Well, that's about it. Let's summerize before we have a beer to celebrate. 

MameWAH needs to know where your custom layouts are: Set this in the mamewah.ini file. 
Put all your custom layouts in the folder you just pointed to in the mamewah.ini file. 
Create an emulator.ini file for each emulator (daphne.ini) and place them in the c:\mamewah\ini folder. Just modify one of the existing files. 
For each custom list you need to place an empty emulator-#.ini file in the c:\mamewah\ini folder and MameWAH will fill in the proper text. 

Good Luck, 
John