Well, I've done some experimenting with the idea of supporting true alpha channel images in Mala.
Here's a screenshot
In this case, I've turned off Definable1,which normally shows cabinet pics, but it's still sited in the yellow rectangle.
But now, my plugin is drawing the image (the TEST with the faded circles).
So, bottom line. It IS doable, and it's not terribly difficult,
with one exception.Mala support a fairly large number of options as to how it creates the filename that it will be looking for.
As far as I can tell, the default is pretty obvious, ROM
Mala takes the Definable1 path, appends the selected games ROM name, then checks for a few image filetypes (JPG, GIF, BMP, etc). As soon as it finds one, that's what it displays.
No problems there.
Ahhh. Just had an epiphany. Looks like the GameSelected structure has +most+ of the required info. I as really concerned that the plugin would have to try and resolve all those variations like "Num Players", Year, Genre, etc, but it looks like all of that is already resolved and passed in the GameSelected structure. Awesome.
I'm still not exactly sure what ROM + 1, ROM + 2, ROM - 1, ROM-2 are for, though.
And I'm unsure of how the Zorder will get worked out if my Plugin is drawing some things and Mala is drawing others, but this is a good step in that direction.
Loadman, if you happen to see this and could comment on the API question, that'd certainly be a more stable and consistent (and easier) solution.