Mala. Can we open source the code?

[chucklepie]

Hello,
Firstly, does anyone know if Mala is being actively developed, there are no contacts on the website (but it must be doing something for someone to pay the bills) and no updates for ages, if not I'd love the code so I can update it. Second, can anyone help with this problem, I've invested hours upon hours on my front-end and I find a bug of sorts in mala has completely ruined my arcade.

I'm using the tree view of navigating emulators but half the time I use it (i.e. random apparently) when I switch from an emulator menu back to the main menu it forgets to draw the backdrop and instead draws the background colour. I suspect there's a null pointer issue with the image, but it doesn't always happen.

1. The first  picture is my main emulator menu. The way this works is you have a standard main image for the page and a sub-image for each emulator (in this case the sub-image is metal slug). Thus every emulator looks the same except for the image you see on the right (in this case the image for MAME).

2. When I go into an emulator I get sub-menu as shown in the second image, in this case MAME. This is a full screen image.

3. Randomly when I exit the menu and go back to the main menu it goes wrong as shown in the third picture. From point 1, what is happening is it is refreshing the sub-image but forgetting to redraw the main image. Standard view is fine as it always redraws emulator windows.

Anyone got any ideas or whereabouts of the mala author/code?

I appreciate there is a mala sub-forum but it doesn't look particularly busy and not many replies are going on there.

[chucklepie]

I think I've found the problem. Mala is completely and utterly ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- at both transparency which I knew (hence why I used solid sub-images) and also with displaying png images (which I knew about also).

There was one png straggler causing all the problems. Hope this helps anyone (i.e. use jpeg and turn off transparency option in layout editor).

The question on mala code and future remains though...

[BadMouth]

The question on mala code and future remains though...

From the front page of the Mala Website:

About Author: MaLa was conceived and written by the talented Stefan 'swindus' Windus.

 Swindus is still a member of the BYOAC and Arcade Zentrum forum.

 In early 2008 he focused his coding talents on other projects and kindly passed all the source code onto Simon 'Loadman' Loader.

Loadman now manages the Website and further development.

Loadman is a member here and posts in the Mala forum, but not very often anymore.
He used to be very active here.  He's stated that he just doesn't have time for it and has paying jobs that take priority.
I imagine he would need permission from Swindus to pass the source along.
I think it's about time, but it's not up to us.

[chucklepie]

I think the best thing would be to open-source it and put it on a public source code repository (open or closed for edits)  then it can be actively updated, bugs can be fixed and it can be made to work in the long-term on new O/S. It also means it'll be available should the malafe website goes down.

If the new owner is reading this, pass it over to me and I'll sort all this out, assuming they're happy with this....

btw, a link to my front-end template is here if anyone is interested:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,131593.0.html

[Gray_Area]

Message Loadman about it, he might answer given you want to take over the reigns. Message Swindus, too.