Viewing other emu controls

[Clavius]

I don't really want to go through the trouble of setting up a control panel viewer, I'm okay with just looking at the control panel pictures that are available for MAME games.  However, I have multiple emulators on my system (snes, turbografx, commodore64, etc) and I have custom button configs for each system.  I've made pictures in photoshop so I can remember what the buttons are mapped to, which was really easy to do because there is only 1 picture for each system.

I'm wondering if there's a way in MaLa to tell it to display a the same specific control panel picture for all the games of a single emulator?  For instance, if I'm in my snes emulator MaLa will always display "snes_controls.jpg" regardless of which game I have selected. I can't seem to find a way to do it and am wondering if it's possible?

[CpCaveman]

I`m only using my cab for mame, but i played around with the tree thing for a bit so i`m guessing you have a different layout for each emulator, if the controls are the same for each game in its emulator couldnt you make a control panel diagram as part of the layout for each emulator as they dont change they`ll be on screen continuously.

or if you dont want it on screen continuously, you can use the layout editor to make game starting picture appear when you select a game that would be the same for every game in that layout.

[BadMouth]

Mala can't switch a pic based on emulator.  It would be a great feature.

It can switch layouts based on emulator though.  My layouts are all the same with the exception of the console logo and button mappings on the background image.  Once you have the background images made up, it goes pretty quick.  Just keep changing the background image in mala layout editor and saving it under each console name.

[Clavius]

Thanks for the input guys.  I thought of a way to accomplish what I'm trying to do, but it's a horrible workaround and I'm not sure I want to do it.  I can make copies of the jpg and name each one the name of a rom for a system, much like the cabinet, marquee, and control panels work for mame.  But the reason that sucks is because if I have 500 roms for a system, I have to have 500 copies of the image and name each one the name of a rom.  Ugh.  Not really doable.  Especially because if I tweak my control panel buttons I have to update every single image.

You're right, it would be great if the feature I'm asking for could be requested somehow although I have no idea how do that.  Maybe I'll get lucky and the person in charge of MaLa will see this. 

[CpCaveman]

would be a LOT less work doing separate layouts/skins for each emulator and just adding a single splash starting pic and/or a background change, youre talking at most an hour (depends how many different emulators and how long to draw the pic) compared to days renaming 500 files and going mental