Flack
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Posts posted by Flack
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On the two MAME cabinets I built, I simply made wooden "shelves" to hold the monitor. Once I figured out where I wanted my monitor to sit, I built a wooden shelf underneath it. Then I used 4 or 5 2x4's behind, on top, and next to the monitor to ensure it wouldn't ever move or shift.
Here's the picture of the shelf in place.
Here's a shot of it with the monitor sitting on it and 2x4's blocking it in.
If you're interested, here's a link to the entire build.
http://www.robohara.com/videogames/article...php?file=tsmame
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Funny how Karma works. Congrats!
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Hey guys ... just wanted to let you know, I haven't stopped working on this yet. I added an MP3 player to the main menu for background music but I don't know how practical or useful that is. I also added some sound effects when cruising through the game list but again, I don't know if one would file that under cool or annoying. The "skip 10 games forward" thing is now working, thanks again for the code. It's been a busy week or so at work, but hopefully within the next few days I can get everything back together and working and post another release.
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http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...AMESE%3AIT&rd=1
It's big, it's dead, it's been (for the most part) gutted. I bought it thinking it would be cool to stick a computer in and make it an mp3/mpeg jukebox, but ... blah blah blah, too many projects, not enough time.
Thought someone semi-local might be interested in this one.
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Could game name be cart lable? sound effects? actual game name? could screenies fade out? just some dreams!! Great Work!!Actual game names are supported. In the INI file under config-roms, you would have to add all your games and then add a friendly=name name under each one. I'll probably create another simple utility to help generate those lists eventually.
Supporting sound effects would be simple, just finding them or making them would be the hard part. Same thing with game labels.
I doubt it'll ever support fading graphics.
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Works great. I really don't wanna criticize it, it looks very promising. Good job man!Thanks! I know it's a long way off from being a finished, polished program but it's on its way!
* Pressing ESC causes to go to previous menu.Simple, consider it done!
* Pressing right or left causes listbox to jump a bunch of games.Oops, that was supposed to be working. I'll have to see what's wrong in the code. This one will be working soon.
* Do a slide show between pics on the same picture box. (eg, alternate between a game's screeshot ang title screen.Hm, tell me more about this one. Do you think people will have more than one picture per game? I thought about adding another picture window for marquees ...
* After launching an emulator, have your program detect when a user presses the ESC key and terminate the emu.Explain this one to me further. Do you mean terminating the front end when you launch an emulator? You wouldn't want to do that in a mame cabinet, but might want to if just using it on your PC. I'm sure I could set a toggle within the INI file to make the program react either way.
Thanks for the good ideas, keep 'em coming!
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I will try and update the readme tonight to mention all the new features and explain how the background/skins work. If you want to use the solar one (I think it looks a lot better) just rename the ffe.ini (solar) to ffe.ini and that should change everything.
If you want to start preparing for the real thing, start downloading or making screenshots, and naming them the same thing as your roms. Then you can put them in the screenshots directory, and your daughter will be able to pick the games by screenshot!
I have a huge collection of Atari 2600 screenshots and I think I have all the MAME ones as well.
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Try alpha 6 and see if it works for you.
http://www.robohara.com/software/ffe-alpha06.zip
Remember that this is still an alpha ... I've got a few more things to implement before I can really call it a beta.
If there's any other features you would like to see added, now's the time to let me know!
This weekend I plan on implementing an mp3 player. -
Just to give you an idea of how configurable it now is, here's a theme I created in the last 10 minutes. NO coding changes were done to change this theme -- I simply replaced the background picture with a simple space one and changed the text colors to show how quick and simple it is to configure.
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Made a lot of changes over the past day or so.
The background graphic can now be easily changed. It simply needs to be an 800x600 JPG file. The name of the file can be specified in the new ffe.ini file (under config-ffe). Also in that file are RGB color codes for most of the text that appears on screen. You can now change the black text to any color you want to match your background themes. You can also change the background color of the list, and of the text in the list (haven't figured out how to change the highlight color yet).
I've also included a background template in both JPG and PSD formats for people to be able to make their own backgrounds. I removed most of the extra text from the program (like the instructions) and moved that to the background graphic -- people can change it however they like.
I'm still at a little bit of a loss about resizing stuff ... I plan on doing some reading over the weekend about what you were talking about and see how much work is involved. I asked a general question over at BYOAC about popular resolutions for MAME cabinets, and there was a low one for arcade monitors, 640x480 for people running televisions, and then high end for people running PC monitors. Depending on how difficult it is to alter the sizes, it might be easiest to just create three different forms and make three different downloads available. Corny, but simple.
Here's a screenshot of the front end running my new "solar" template. I'll try and get a build online tonight before I go home from work.
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Just came up with these. Enjoy.
River Raid
Shoot all enemies.
Slow down to get all the fuel.
Avoid hitting walls.
Football
Three on three Action
Pretty much like the real thing
Except more flicker.
Barnstorming
Fly through the red barns
Then over all the windmills.
Don't touch either one.
Basketball
A one on one game.
Purple and green guy shoot hoops.
It's 3D, sort of.
Berzerk
Arcade Translation
Kill robots by shooting them
No diagonals.
Bowling
Ten frames of bowling
It's got dozens of options
None of them are fun.
Burgertime
Just like the arcade.
Make burgers, avoid white blob
It's an egg, I think.
Chopper Command
Fly and save people,
This game seems so familiar.
Oh yeah. Choplifter
Zaxxon
Remember this game?
One of the first 3D games.
Well now it's 2D
Frogger
Hop. Hop hop. Hop hop.
Hop hop hop hop hop hop hop.
Hop hop hop hop splat.
Journey Escape
Other than the name
Nothing like the arcade game.
Don't stop believin'.
Keystone Kapers
Chase the criminal
Avoid the toys, catch your man
then do it again.
Pac-Man
Eat all the pellets.
Avoid the ghosts and repeat.
Get used to blinking.
Pitfall
Simple game to learn.
Run, jump, swing. Played it for years
Still haven't beat it.
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So if a person were running 800x600 on their MAME cabinet, this would work perfectly. Different resolutions create problems. I know how to resize the form (sorta), but I don't know to keep the graphics lined up. I assume there's a better way to do this than to maintain a separate version for every possible resolution.
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BTW, I'll be interested to see how bad the GUI looks on your side. It worked fine on 2 of my machines and was totally screwed on my laptop (which uses custom font sizes, that may be the culprit).
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The MAME list could probably be generated on the fly, although it would probably make more sense to make it a stand alone app that only ran when MAME was updated instead of running every time the program runs. The poor man's way to do it would be to have users download MAME.exe, put it in the folder, then make a small VB app which runs that command line, reformats the data and writes it out as an FFE friendly file. It ain't pretty but it would work.
I added all the changes we've talked about and my first (bad) attempt at a GUI.
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How did you go about it? (making the MAME list, i mean). I have noticed Front Ends discourage the use of MAME32 when making their romlists. I think it must have something to do with it not always giving the desired output. Have you tried the non-gui win version of mame? It will still be a large list, but I think you will get better results.I used mame.exe, then did mame.exe -listfull and exported that to a text file. Once there it was simply a matter of caressing the text into the right format (ie: about 10 search and replaces in Word).
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Got the double mouse click and the enter key working. I originally left them out just because I had MAME cabinet on the brain. I suppose I should add a clickable button for returning to the main menu as well.
I guess now the biggest thing left is the GUI itself (I am so bad at designing them). I've been imagining a living room setting with the screen shots appearing on a television, or maybe an arcade cabinet with the games showing up on the monitor. I'll probably include a graphic template so people can design their own backdrops, and put the color choices in an INI file so they can be easily edited as well.
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I also discovered that nnnesterj is a pretty bad choice for a command line based NES emulator. For starters, ALT brings up the pull down screen, and I haven't figured out a way to get it to launch full screen.It's all personal taste of course, but my personal favorites are FCEU for Windows and VirtuaNES.
I tried the updated version and it works. Nice work man. How about navigation and launch from a mouse double-click and keyboard return?
Thanks, at least it's working now! I tried the code you provided and it worked as well (I was doing essentially the same thing but under list1_keypress and it wasn't working ... works under keydown or keyup, go figure). Including the mouse double-click and keyboard return are super simple.
I also used MAME to create an entire ROM list and included all the friendly names. I forgot how slow MAME32 is when launched from a command line. I also added a "loading" note just so it doesn't look like the program is locked up!
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The only thing I can't figure out how to do at the moment is intercept the arrow keys while within a listbox. What I want to do is make the right arrow key jump through the list more quickly.
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Using the INI files has opened up several new possibilities. In one INI file (per system), I have now included friendly names, game specific switches, comments and more. Cool! I still can't come up with an easy way to automate the creating of those files, but the good news is everything in them is completely optional. I'll probably have 0.4 online before I go home this evening.
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http://www.robohara.com/software/ffe-alpha03.zip
Two changes.
One, I removed the ActiveX control and went with the .BAS INI read/write modules.
Two, the INI modules I used don't allow for a space around the "=" in the INI file so I removed those from the INI files.
I tried it on my laptop (which I didn't compile it on!) and it works.
I also discovered that nnnesterj is a pretty bad choice for a command line based NES emulator. For starters, ALT brings up the pull down screen, and I haven't figured out a way to get it to launch full screen.
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I've never believed in platform loyalty -- I've said many times, my Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube and Xbox live together happily on my gaming shelf.
Complaining about PC controls is kind of silly when for $10 they sell PS2 to USB adapters (problem solved).
The "my PC isn't fast enough" is a valid argument. That's one of the things I agreed with so far -- at least you don't have to upgrade your computer constantly (then again, that's only if you are playing the cutting edge games).
There are thousands upon thousands of PC games out there, many of them abandonware, freeware, or shareware. Probably tens of thousands. If you rule them out because you don't like playing on a keyboard, you're really missing out.
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Awesome, I will try it out tomorrow morning. I reloaded my laptop about a month ago and haven't reloaded VB on it yet.
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Flack' date=' I am getting the following error message when selecting a game from any of the lists:Run-time error '429': Active X component can't create object.
[/quote']
Yikes. Well I just tried it here on my home computer and got the same thing. D'oh. Looks like that activex control for reading from INI files didn't get included when compiling. Looks like more work is needed tomorrow! Sorry about that.
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Right now everything is simply form picture/image objects, so having the form load an external jpg or whatever would be really simple. I probably won't end up adding stuff like custom buttons and whatnot, there are already a ton of frontends that offer that already, and the point of this one is to be simple to use.
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Atari 2600 for pets?
in Atari 2600
Posted
When I was a kid, my cat used to love to watch us play Video Pinball. It purred, it stared at the screen, it tried to follow the ball and it pawed at the screen whenever the ball came near her ... but then again, so did my sister.