HTMLFrontEnd (tips&tricks)

[arximidis]

With the new version already released,  I think it's time to talk about some tips and tricks you can do with HTMLFrontEnd

Note: From now on the browser will not be updated so frequently (current version 2.4,  when this article was written)
The version of the html theme will be in the form 2.4.x for browser versions 2.4 or higher (current version is 2.4.1).

So, for example, if in the future a version 2.5.3 of the html code is released, it will mean that it's for browser version 2.5 or higher and so on

In version 2.4.1  I did a lot of work to make the code more generic, in order to be able to make changes/settings without interferring with the code.
It's not quite done yet, but I am in the right path. For now it's not possible to add new emulators without changing the code (By the way... Feel free to ask me about anything regarding the code. I can explain how this works)


However it's very easy to modify an existing emulator to become a completely different one... and this is the trick I am going to present to you


Modifying an existing emulator

Lets suppose we don't have the Nestopia emulator and we want to change it, lets say with JPCSP (I pick this emulator on purpose, because it's "hard" case )

Step 1:  Ok, the first thing is the artwork. Change the existing Nestopia artwork with the new for JPCSP emulator
Go to the directory HTMLthemes\default640x480\emulators\Nestopia
Replace the Nestopia.gif and the marquee.gif with the new pictures (with the same name)

Restart your application and you should see something like this (for example)






Step 2: Go to settings and select the Nestopia emulator from the dropdown list.
a) Change Roms/Games path to point to the directory where your games are. Form my case C:/emulators/jpcsp-windows-x86/umdimages/ (Note: don't forget the / at the end)
b) Change the Files inside rom path to *.iso (or *.cso)
c) Change the Emulator command line to
(for Windows XP) -Xmx768m,-Xss2m,-XX:MaxPermSize=128m,-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=64m,-Djava.library.path=C:/emulators/jpcsp-windows-x86/lib/windows-x86,-jar,C:/emulators/jpcsp-windows-x86/bin/jpcsp.jar,-u,{rom},-r                       

(for the newer versions of Windows) -Xmx1024m,-Xss2m,-XX:MaxPermSize=128m,-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=64m,-Djava.library.path=C:/emulators/jpcsp-windows-x86/lib/windows-x86,-jar,C:/emulators/jpcsp-windows-x86/bin/jpcsp.jar,-u,{rom},-r

Note: Change the paths according were you installed JPCSP. I beleive these settings are good for intel processors

                       


Click Save to save the new settings


At this point we will be able to see the contents of our game path, but we wil not be able to start a game. One more step to go!



Step 3:
On more setting to go.
With version 2.4 it's not possible to change the settings.ini file (especially the [ALLOWED PROGRAMS] section) from the html code, for security reasons (I have already think an alternative for the next version)

So we must edit the file manually. Open settings.ini and find the NESTOPIA entry in [ALLOWED PROGRAMS] section. Normally we write the full path of the main executable of the emulator, but JPCSP is a java program. So we must provide the path of java.
Change the entry NESTOPIA to point to the directory were java.exe is located. In my case NESTOPIA = c:/program files/java/jre7/bin/java.exe



Save the file


Thats it! Now we can run our games