Kymaera FE, Version 1.23 now Available!

[PacManFan]

To all who have pm'd me and volunteered to test and generate skins, The inital ALPHA release of Kymaera is now available at the Emutron download page on my web site. The direct link is:

http://www.pacmanfan.com/download/kymaera.zip

[disclaimer]
As stated , this is an Alpha release of Kymaera, this means that if you are looking for a 100% working and bug-free front end, this is not it. I have decided to make this release of Kymaera available for bug testing and for skin creation.
[/disclaimer]

I would like to thank everyone who pm'd and emailed me volunteering to test Kymaera. With your help, I know we can make this a great front end. Now is your chance to provide some feedback on features and bugs you may(and will) encounter.

If you decide to create a skin for Kymaera, or port a skin from another FE to the Kymaera skn format, please email it to me so I can post it to my web site for all to download.

A few notes about the skinner:Save all resources(images) for the skins in a sub-directory under the skins directory. Kymaera uses relative paths wherever possible, so if you stay under the Kymaera directory, all the resource should be fine when you zip up the skin.

Bug Reporting

If you encounter a bug, please post it to this message thread, and I will attempt to resolve it immediately.

Feature list

If you would like to see a feature incorporated in Kymaera, speak up, and I'll probably put it on my to-do list.

Questions
Currently, there is NO documentation provided with Kymaera. Hopefully, a few of you can take some screen shots and write down what does what and save it to a html doc, this would help me immensely. I can fill in any blanks if you don't know what a button does or how a feature works.
Feel free to ask any questions, and I'll try to answer them.

Thank you to everyone in advance.

-PMF

[Jakobud]

Bug post:

Immediate ran into a couple bugs.  First of all I just fired it up.  Immediately I got crazy flickering on the screen. But I could see the FE.  I exited, changed the resolution to 800x600 in the config program and tried again.  That got rid of the flickering.

Another bug is when I scroll through the list, the names and words don't seem to refresh properly and sort of stay on the screen making things eventually unreadable. This bug happens whether i'm in 800x600 OR the flickery 640x480 res.  Below are some pics:

ATI Radeon All In Wonder 9700 Pro (Catalyst 3.8 drivers)
Windows XP Pro
1280x1024 LCD screen

[Jakobud]

Kymaera_bug_01_before.jpg  -  What i see when I start up the FE
after.jpg - What i see when I start up the FE and then press down or up or something to scroll thru the list.

[Jakobud]

Kymaera_bug_01_after.jpg - What i see when I start up the FE and then press down or up or something to scroll thru the list.

[Howard_Casto]

I have the same bugs these guys are describing.  

It's usually caused by an improper geometry/texture setup that causes your render loop to skip over the clear screen call.  If you are resizing the window then you need to wait until the window is maximized before you start the render.  If that's not possible then you need to reload every single texture after things are ready to go.  

Of course I'm just guessing here.  

Hope that helps.  

[cdbrown]

Can confirm tha flickering also - i exited and changed to my desktop settings of 1024x768 32bit.  The list on the screen does blur at that display setting as well when trying to move up and down the list.

[PacManFan]

Kymaera_bug_01_after.jpg - What i see when I start up the FE and then press down or up or something to scroll thru the list.

It's looks like the background image in the skin is not set to a vaild picture. When Kymaera starts up, it clears the Screen with white, Then every time it draws the skins, it first blits the background image defined in the skin, It looks like there is no background image set.

1)Run KymaeraConfig,
2) select emulators\mame.emu and click configure
3) select create/edit skin
4) click on "background" at the top of the list
5)click the edit button to bring up the properties for that image
6) use the browse button to select a valid image
7) click OK, then click the preview button to see if it works.
click file->save skin , and save it out

[Fandenivoldsk]

Looks nice so far! Great with the avi support! I'll try to make some cool graphics for it this weekend...!

Got a few questions for the next/upcoming version:

1). Any chance that the gamelist could run more smooth when scrolling up and down?

2). The pictures look very blurry to me. Any chance to have a more pixel sharp video mode?

3). In the skinner mode: would it be possible to place the objects more precisely? In a pixel by pixel grid, and also be able to give the objects a type in pixel size?

4). Would it be possible to place avi movie clips behind the gamelist? Now it is alway on top...

Anyway, I know this is early beta... I'm looking forward to whatever you plan to do next!

[PacManFan]

1). Any chance that the gamelist could run more smooth when scrolling up and down?

I hope so, right now, I've got a lot of debug code in place, so it's not quite running full speed, Also there is a glitch with the gamelist, on the last frame of animation, it jumps a little.

2). The pictures look very blurry to me. Any chance to have a more pixel sharp video mode?

The blurriness occurs when you are running a skin that is a differant resolution from the screen mode. Kymaera will stretch or scale the image to fit onto the screen, This makes it look blurry. There is also a speed degradation when doing this. For best visual quality, and best speed performance, use a skin that is designed at the same screen resolution that you plan to run it at.

3). In the skinner mode: would it be possible to place the objects more precisely? In a pixel by pixel grid, and also be able to give the objects a type in pixel size?

It's on my to-do list right now, I plan to put in a snap-to-grid function, along with a display of the x-y position and width and height of the currently selected rectangle.

4). Would it be possible to place avi movie clips behind the gamelist? Now it is alway on top...

Currently, the draw order is defined by the order of items in the list on the right. I plan to put an up and down arrow buttons next to the list so you can select an item and change it's z-draw order.
 
Thanks for the feedback!

-PMF

[JoyMonkey]

Looking good so far!
Any chance of adding a couple of controls images to the skinner? An image of the game's main control and an image of buttons would be great-
So if the selected game uses an 8-way joystick and 3 buttons an image of an 8-way joystick with an image of 3 buttons beside it could be displayed. You could have a collection of images for all the different controls and images of button layouts with different amounts of buttons.

[PacManFan]

Sure,

Inside the XML game list, I've got a control type field with that info, Do you have any art for Controls, The buttons may have to wait until I get detailed info from controls.dat, but I could put in a picture of a spinner, trackball, 4way or 8way stick, and lightguns based on the control type in the XML gamelist.

If you have art of any of these items, send it to me or post it, that should be easy to put in.

-PMF

[JoyMonkey]

I'll have a look for some control artwork when I get home from work. Shouldn't be too hard to knock out.

[PacManFan]

Here's a skin that JoyMonkey sent me. Looks great!

A note to everyone about getting images from the art directories to appear:


Kymaera looks for GAME_IMAGE1 , and if it finds it, it uses the 1st art
path, appends the game name onto the end, and then looks for that file using a list of art extensions, the art extensions are mpg, avi, png, tga, and bmp. If an image file is found, it is loaded into GAME_IMAGE1.

Then Kymaera moves onto GAME_IMAGE2 and uses the 2nd art path, this process continues through art path / image 16.

Basically, don't rename any of the text / images , or else they won't work. You can rename the text/images that you create using the add button

[Fandenivoldsk]

2). The pictures look very blurry to me. Any chance to have a more pixel sharp video mode?

The blurriness occurs when you are running a skin that is a differant resolution from the screen mode. Kymaera will stretch or scale the image to fit onto the screen, This makes it look blurry. There is also a speed degradation when doing this. For best visual quality, and best speed performance, use a skin that is designed at the same screen resolution that you plan to run it at.

Well, I made an image in Photoshop (1024x768, 16 bit) and saved it as a .jpg and a .png, but both look a bit blurry in Kymaera when run in 1024x768, 16 bit mode. I'm sure I saved it in the correct size, so it should show up exactly the same way as in Photoshop, but it dosen't... I wonder why?

[JoyMonkey]

Here's an updated grab of that skin. Having a little trouble positioning the GAME_PREVIEW area correctly and the year is displayed incorrectly, but other than that it's not looking too shabby.
This skin is 800x600 but it works well at 1024x768. At 640x480 the GAME_PREVIEW at the bottom of the screen disappears.

[PacManFan]

2). The pictures look very blurry to me. Any chance to have a more pixel sharp video mode?

The blurriness occurs when you are running a skin that is a differant resolution from the screen mode. Kymaera will stretch or scale the image to fit onto the screen, This makes it look blurry. There is also a speed degradation when doing this. For best visual quality, and best speed performance, use a skin that is designed at the same screen resolution that you plan to run it at.

Well, I made an image in Photoshop (1024x768, 16 bit) and saved it as a .jpg and a .png, but both look a bit blurry in Kymaera when run in 1024x768, 16 bit mode. I'm sure I saved it in the correct size, so it should show up exactly the same way as in Photoshop, but it dosen't... I wonder why?

Well, you may have made a 1024x768 background and run Kymaera in 1024x768, but did you use a create a new skin that was 1024 x 768, or did you use the 640x480 that I set as the default?

You can create a new skin by clicking on file->new skin on the skin editor screen.

-PMF

[Howard_Casto]

I haven't gotten a chance to really go over it yet, but so far it's working pretty well.  I have more of a comment than a bug.  

I think the emu-spefic skins are a good idea, BUT only if they are just an option.  I personally think they are annoying, but even more annoying is the fact that if I had 30 emus runing I'd have to make sure each one has a skin and bg image defined.  

I also don't like the game_image1  game_image2 stuff.  I think some generic slots are necessary for flexibility, but for stuff that everybody should use (snaps, titles, flyers, cabinets videos) it's much less confusing to call the slot what it'll be used for than to make sure you've put them in the proper order.  Right now it'll be fine, but if skinners get creative then it might become a nusance as different skinners will use different directories in different orders.  

[PacManFan]

I think the emu-spefic skins are a good idea, BUT only if they are just an option.  I personally think they are annoying, but even more annoying is the fact that if I had 30 emus runing I'd have to make sure each one has a skin and bg image defined.  

If there is interest, I can make it a global option, instead of a emu-specific option. I think currently, it's not too difficult to set a skin when you define a new emu to use. Multiple emu's can share the same skin.

I also don't like the game_image1  game_image2 stuff.  I think some generic slots are necessary for flexibility, but for stuff that everybody should use (snaps, titles, flyers, cabinets videos) it's much less confusing to call the slot what it'll be used for than to make sure you've put them in the proper order.  Right now it'll be fine, but if skinners get creative then it might become a nusance as different skinners will use different directories in different orders.  

I debated about that for a bit, I was going to name the images SNAP, MARQUEE, etc.., then I realized that that was kind of specific to MAME and arcade machines. You're right about the directories being defined in a different order on peoples machines though, I still need to resolve that.

-PMF

[cdbrown]

I seem to have a problem when trying to use the config program.  I was originally able to configure the mame.emu file using the program but now I try to go into it again by selecting "emulators\mame.emu" from the list and clicking "configure" button, but there isn't any of the saved information on the configuration page.  The mame.emu file does contain all the info, but the config program doesn't seem to be calling it up.

I also input all the info in it again through the config screen, pressed ok and then went back in to check to see if anything changed, but it came up again with blank fields.

[PacManFan]

That's really weird, I'll definately have to check on that. Did you change the location of the mame.emu file? the main kymaera.kfg file may have been pointing to a file that didn't exist, or the emulators\mame.emu file may have become corrupted somehow, try first deleting the mame.emu file and try again. If that doesn't work, try deleting the kymaera.kfg file.

-PMF

[PacManFan]

I'm going to be posting a new download hopefully tonight. This includes several new features, a couple fixes, and a 40% speed increase. I've removed the debug code from several portions in the display routines, and switched to a release build instead of a debug build. I'm going to include a new skin from JoyMonkey that really shows off what Kymaera can do.

A few new features:
-A new Image "CONTROL_IMAGE1" shows the type of controller used in the game, joy4way,joy8way,spinner,trackball, etc..
-Ability to change the z-order of images /text in the skin
-speed improvements.
-A few things I've forgotten about..

-PMF

[RetroBorg]

I seem to have a problem when trying to use the config program.  I was originally able to configure the mame.emu file using the program but now I try to go into it again by selecting "emulators\mame.emu" from the list and clicking "configure" button, but there isn't any of the saved information on the configuration page.  The mame.emu file does contain all the info, but the config program doesn't seem to be calling it up.

I also input all the info in it again through the config screen, pressed ok and then went back in to check to see if anything changed, but it came up again with blank fields.

I've also had the exact same problem as cdbrown, other than that, the front end looks really promising and is really user friendly, which is especially good for people like myself who have had trouble getting other frontends up and running.

[PacManFan]

Has anyone tried to make thier own gamelists yet? I feel this is one of the weakest points in KymaeraConfig. I know the grid controls have some issues with selecting rows/columns.
I'd like to make this a strong point, and cut down on the confusion on how to do it.

-PMF

[Jakobud]

I had the same problem with the Emulator config window coming up with all blank entries.  I will figure out how to reproduce the bug.

[Jakobud]

I had the same problem with the Emulator config window coming up with all blank entries.  I will figure out how to reproduce the bug.

Okay for that config bug, just open the config program, choose Mame or Z26 emu's and hit CONFIG then it brings up the window with the config info.  Then press Okay or Cancel then hit config again and it will come up blank even if you have an emu selected.

[PacManFan]

Thanks Jakobud,
I found and fixed that bug last night, I'll be releaseing a new Beta exe very soon.

-PMF

[slycrel]

  I've downloaded this but not yet tried it out.  No time for this stuff right now.  :/  Looks good so far though.

  A suggestion though -- I really like the idea of skins for individual emulators, but if you do this make it optional.  Set a "main" skin as the default and then if other emus are set for their own that's fine, but if not they will just use the default.  That would save a lot of people time and help to have your machine's software sort of improve over time as you polish your individual setup more and more.

[PacManFan]

OK, that sound like a reasonable compromise, Whenever the user creates a new emulator config, I'll have it automatically default to the skins\kymaera1.skn. That way, every emulator will be automatically set up with a skin, and the user still has an option to change it.

[JoyMonkey]

I like the way the Gamelist Creator takes info from different sources and merges them together (listinfo, catver.ini and gameplay.ini). Although at first I was using a bad catver.ini and my Category,  MNOP, NOSP and Gameplay columns all contained no data. I was using a catver.ini from http://www.mameworld.net/catlist , because no download links on catver.com were working. Eventually I got catver.com's catver.ini for .078 and used it with mame .078 and now they're all in there. I've no idea why my Gameplay column wasn't working, seems it didn't like the other catver.ini either.

But now it's not listing all the games. None of the Beatmania are listed, whereas before they were listed but wouldn't sort alphabetically with the rest of the game (see the screengrab below). They just stayed at the end on the list. And now they're gone.

Also, a lot of the time the scrollbars don't work on the 'Game Category List Creation' list creation window. Re-sizing the window gets them going again.

Is there anyway you could get it to take the <control name> fields from the Controls.Dat's xml file and use it for your Creator's  'Control Type' column? It would give the 1236 games that Controls.Dat already supports more accurate listings.

What do MNOP and NOSP stand for?


Update: Now the Category, MNOP, NOSP and Gameplay columns have gone blank again when I tried to load the same Master List that worked fine before. I tried create another one just as I did before, but it's not working again. And the Beatmania games have gone to the bottom of the list again too.  

[PacManFan]

Yeah, I've had some bad problems with that pesky grid control not responding to events. I'll see what I can do to make it more responsive. I'll check out that beatmania not appearing.

definitions:

MNOP - Max number of players
NOSP - Number of Simultaneous players

That was the important information that I pulled out of the Klov site with my Klov Parser.

Now that HC just release Controls.dat, I'll put in support right away to display the control panel definiton better than just the joy8way,joy4way,etc... commands out of mame.


JoyMonkey, I really can't thank you enough for helping me test out all these features. The next release will be the Beta, I haven't encountered any serious bugs yet (Crash Bugs), so I think Kymaera is fairly stable to move ahead.

How many emulators have you configured this for? Have you had any trouble launching / returning from games?

-PMF

[SirPoonga]

Now that HC just release Controls.dat, I'll put in support right away to display the control panel definiton better than just the joy8way,joy4way,etc... commands out of mame.

I hope you mean the controls.dat viewer  controls.dat has been available for months.

[JoyMonkey]

No problem PMF! I look forward to the day Kymaera blows my proverbial socks off.  
I hadn't tried any other emulators, so I thought I'd try out making a SNES gamelist.
I set the exe, rom path etc  and clicked Create/Edit Game List File.  Clicked Create Master List, then Other. Clicking 'Import Delimited Text File' does nothing; the button highlights but thats it.

Clicking 'Create From Rom Directories' crashes the program. A DOS box pops up for a second with an error message (see the top half of the image below) followed by the usual WindowsXP program crash.
My SNES roms directory is G:\emulators\SNES Roms
It looks like Kymaera Config is having a hard time with it.

[PacManFan]

Whoops, sorry about the crash, that "import delimited file" thing isn't working yet, but that should definatley not crash your system when you read your rom directory. I'm fixing it now, and I'll send you a set of new exe's with a ton of new features.

I'm starting to focus more on fixing up the game list imports and creating a flexible way to cross-reference imported lists or directory- generated lists with information from dat files.

Also coming very soon is the much-anticipated rotating wheel preview.

-PMF

[JoyMonkey]

After replacing the old exe's with the new ones nothing will work. I deleted all the old stuff, re-installed Kymaera and unzipped the newer exe's over the old ones. Then deleted the old emu files and made some new ones (I was unable to edit the old ones, the Art Paths drop-down wasn't working and I thought they might be the cause of Kymaera.exe's problems). Config seems to run okay after doing this, buy when I try to execute Kymaera.exe it it gives me the 'Arcade Front End has encountered a problem and needs to close' error. And if I try to run Config after Kymaera does this I get the same error and have to delete the emu files again to get Config to run at all. So Config works if there's no emu files in the emulators folder, and Kymaera is doing nothing now.

Reading the rom director works fine now, though it includes '.' and '..' at the top of the masterlist, just like a DOS directory listing. Thanks for changing the game_image names, it makes it much easier for people to correctly set up skins now, though I think maybe these changes to the emu files may be causing the problems above ?

CreateMasterList still isn't taking any info from catver.ini and gameplay.ini.

It would be nice if when saving a new file (a gamelist.xml, emulator.emu or skin.skn), if KymaeraConfig would automatically add the appropriate extension to the file, at first it was creating files with no extension and when I went to load a file nothing would show up because nothing had the correct extension.

[cdbrown]

I've found a little problem with the config editor.  I go and change the location of the Emulator Executable File to where my mame.exe file is which works fine.  Now when I go and remove the original rom path it reverts back to the old location of the executable file.  I change it back to my location and a new rom path - all fine.  Remove an art path and the executable reverts to the default path again.

[PacManFan]

Howdy all,
The latest and greatest release of Kymaera is now available for download at www.pacmanfan.com

Kymaera now has tons of new features, including the rotating preview wheel.

Included with Kymaera is a wonderful 800x600 skin made by JoyMonkey. If you downloaded a previous version of Kymaera, overwrite it with this one, there may be some incompatibilites with the skin file format and the emu file formats.

Please post all bugs / comments in this thread.
Thanks!
-PMF

[)p(]

Works great and was a breeze to setup for mame...the smooth scrolling is a nice touch and even with all the bitmpas being updated in the default skin it was still going strong :-)

I think if you keep it simple this may become the new mamewah.

I encountered one small problem. I can't seem to run it with both of my monitors on. I have to switch off the second monitor to get the frontend to run.

I am runnin xp with a geforce 4.

peter

[PacManFan]

Great to hear,
     I just put in a Texture Manager and a Movie Manager class so that images and movies can be shared resource between multiple bitmaps, and they don't have to be re-loaded if they have already been loaded once and are still visible.

I think I know what was going on with your multiple monitors. I had started to put support in for multiple monitors, then I decided to take it out, but there are still a few remnents of the code that initializes the multi-monitor system.

[Buddabing]

How do you pronounce "Kymaera".

1) ky - MERE - uh
2) ky - MARE - uh
3) KIM - er - uh
4) KY - mare - uh
5) Whatever the user decides

[PacManFan]

#2  is about the closest , But you can call it anything you'd like.

Do you know how hard it is to find a new name for a piece of software?
 I came up with a whole document of mythical creatures to pick from, and all the spellings of "chimera" were taken already.  I liked the whole "ae" thing, so it stuck, A Kymaera is a 2-headed dragon. I picked the name because I like I thought it sounded "kewl", and it's sort of an in-your-face to a certain "Burger King"(no name's mentioned) cheesy and difficult front end.

I try never to miss a chance to pi$$ off a certain member of this board because of his rude attitude.

If You do a search for "Kymaera", you'll find:

1) a mythical land
2) a female superhero
3) a 2-headed dragon, or 2 headed goat-lion
4) a few other bizzare references.

-PacManFan