Emulator logo in layout

[mr_doles]

I am working on making a MaLa layout and I am stuck on one picture.  I want to have one layout that handles all of the emulators.  Everything works great except one thing.  I want to have the logo of the emulator displayed.  I played around with the custom and definable objects but they are ROM based and [I think] only work on MAME and not other emulators.

Basically when you moved to Atari screen the Atari logo (either stella.png, Atari.png, logo.png, whatever it needs to be named) will show up on the layout.  The reason I want to do this is to save having to do the same layout over and over again just with different logos.

Is this possible?   

[shock_]

I don't think you can.  I just made one layout and rendered a swag of different background images, then changed them one at a time in MaLa Layout, saving a copy of the layout each time with the emulator's name.  It shouldn't take more than a few minutes, and then it's done.

Definables for non-MAME emulators I think is coming in a later release of MaLa though, not sure?

[mr_doles]

Well it is good to know I am not crazy.
One of the reasons I liked one layout was switching between emulators was smooth, ie it did not have to fade out and back in with a new background.
I think that a ROM based variable and an emulator based variable would be a good addition in the future.  Till then, back to photoshop to crank out more layouts.

[shock_]

... just turn off the fades, and it's instant!

Options » GUI » Display » Fades...

At least that is my experience on my cab with the most recent stable build of MaLa (1.05) running on an Athlon XP 2500+

[mr_doles]

I did that but it is not quite instant.  When I move left or right to switch emulators it takes ~4 seconds before switching, at least fade let me know it was doing something.  Now this machine is not blazing fast (it is my test machine) but I do not have my main machine built yet.  When I get a faster machine setup I will leave fade off and see how it goes.

Do you think the resolution makes it slower.  In one of the tutorials on the wiki it said to build it at a high resolution as you can scale down cleanly.  My png file is 1600x1200

[Macarro]

Subscribing.

It would be great if we could use emulator based images in our layouts.

Regards.

[thatgammon]

I encountered the same problem. What I did to get around it was to create a definable that referenced the rom name on the layout.
Then made a folder and copied the relevant logo and copied it for the amount of games I had for that particular emulator. Then renamed each copy to each rom name. Then repeated the process for other emulators     (I know I know, laborious    ...     but it works!)

Also I have a select few games on each emulator so didnt take that long.

Play around with the fades and its instantaneous. Works a treat!! One layout with changing emulator logos.

Hope that made sense and helps some1, easy

[Macarro]

Thanks, thatgammon, this workaround seems to be very acceptable.

The renaming process shouldn't be too difficult to automate since I've build some small scripts to deal with emulator rom databases.

Regards.

[drventure]

You might also use a BAT file and grep to copy your main Layout file, and just Grep/replace the image name keys in the file as you copy them.

If I'm understanding things right, you're just looking for an image to swap out based on the active emulator?

Would it be ok if the image swapped out was positions via, say, user definable 1-4 or something like that?

That should be a pretty easy little plugin for Engine18. And I like easy ones 

[Macarro]

Yes, you are right, drventure, it can also be done this way and you save some MB compared with the ROM related image.

I don't have much experience with MALA and I'm not sure about what options do we have when creating a layout, user definable image seems to be perfect for this issue. If you can do it through a plugin you'll avoid the need for multiple layouts.

Regards