Frontends & Lots Of Emus - It IS Possible!

[Brad]

Hey all,

I just wanted to share with you a very reassuring status report on what's possible with the amazing software developments in the emulator frontend field these days.

As far as I'm concerned, the best 2 frontends for a cabinet with multiple emulators in mind right now, for a Windows system, are Emuwizard and Game Launcher.  

I'm currently using Emuwizard, since it has skin support built in, though I'm not sure it's going to have a lot of development done in the future, and there is some work it needs.  Game Launcher for Windows is getting a lot of attention and updates these days.  Once skin support is added I may switch over.

The most recent exciting development is Howard Casto's tools that I am helpiing him test.  These stand alone tools are allowing me to, with my frontend of choice, launch emulators that don't support command line, and exit them with my key of choice (for those emulators that don't have a remappable shortcut key to exit).

Here's a list of all the emulators/systems my cabinet currently supports through EmuWizard.  All of these emulators can be launched and exited completely through the use of my control panel, No keyboard is needed at all.  I'm using Windows 2000.

MAMEW
ZSNESW (Super Nintendo)
VirtuaNES (NES)
Gens (Sega Genesis)
Project 64 (N64)
Magic Engine (Turbo Graphics 16/PCE)
Daphne (Laserdisc Games)

I'm planning to add Nebula, a sega master system emu, and more this weekend.  Unfortunately there's not an acceptable Atari 2600 emu or Intellivision emu so far that can be integrated, hopefully the authors will add command line support to the leading emus in the future.  In the end, I'm hoping my cabinet might support more games than any single machine in the world (from one interface).  I guess that's not the most legal thing in the world, but I wonder if it's possible.

I imagine that as I work with my cabinet, I will soon be able to add even more to this list.  All I'm limited by now is time.

I just want to that all of the frontend developers out there for all their hard work, it's truly amazing that they are willing to spend so much time making these great products, AND give them to us for free no less.  My cabinet's in a state now where I can have a party and folks can walk up and use it completely transparent to Windows.  It's awesome.

Thanks everyone.  If anyone's interested, I'll post up some shots of the cabinet in action and my custom EmuWizard frontend interface.

Brad

[Keith O.]

Here's a short write-up on how to add Daphne support to Game Launcher.

http://www.rsad.edu/~kosborn/gldaphne.htm

[Todd_H]

I've even managed to load PC games using GLaunch.  When all is said and done, my cabinet will be able to play THOUSANDS of games, including arcade, console, and PC games using only GLaunch.  Pretty impressive if you ask me.

[Howard_Casto]

Well yes, you can start several emus, but exiting is a different story.  

Also something that brad didn't mention is I have wrappers that will launch emus that completely lack command line support using simulated keypresses to navigate the menus.  Once again you can exit with any key too.  One of the main things that all front-ends (except the old rd) lack is the ability to launch a game directly from an emulator that isn't even designed to be ran any other way than using it's own built in gui.  This includes pc games that require complicated navigation sequences and anything else you can think of.  Daphne and zsnes are easy, but what about impact and the newer psx and n64 emus that don't have command line options?  Wait......... it's coming.