ArcadeFE.com Live - New FE Coming Soon!

[Regor]

Well I finaly decided to throw my hat into the ring and start on my own M.A.M.E. front end. I am almost finished working on the FE template that will allow me to pay attention to only the graphical part ofthe FE and all the mechanis will be coded already. This will allow any of my front ends to work with the data it compiles.



Features:
* Gathers information from MAME.EXE about every game.
* Can import Controls.ini for button layout info.
* Can import Genre.ini for automatic sorting.
* ROM info can be altered (ex: Title, Manufacturer, # Players...)
* Each ROM can contain its own command line switches.
* A global command line switch can be set.
* Button layout can be set and with the press of a button the layout will be show display what each button does.
* All shortcut keys can be customized.
* ROM management application written as a seperate exe but can be called from the FE. This allows all my FE to work with the same data and allows others to create their own FE without worrying about data management.

I've been working on this project for a week and it is 90% functional. I hope to release the first BETA this week. The site will get a big update tomorrow (10/25/2005).

Until then you can go to http://ArcadeFE.com to view more screenshots.

Cya,
Regor

[Buddabing]

So far, very promising. I think this thread should be in the software forum.

A few questions:

Will this FE support movie snapshots?
Will the FE support other emulators than MAME?
Is the genre.ini you mention actually the catver.ini file?
Does the FE support multiple named game lists?
Is there a separate configuration program?
What do you mean by "control layout can be set" Does this program use the controls.dat to do this?

Regards,
Buddabing

[Regor]

So far, very promising. I think this thread should be in the software forum.

A few questions:

Will this FE support movie snapshots?
Current suports only *.PNG and *.JPG. During rewrite will include support for *.WMV, *.AVI* .MPG. When this feature does become available there will be an option in settings that you can specifcy to show screenshot or video if both are found.

Will the FE support other emulators than MAME?
Current version only supports MAME. Next version will include all emulators support. I have already started to work on this type of settings layout.

Is the genre.ini you mention actually the catver.ini file?
Catlist - http://www.mameworld.net/catlist/

Does the FE support multiple named game lists?
Not sure if I understand this question.

Is there a separate configuration program?
What do you mean by "control layout can be set" Does this program use the controls.dat to do this?
CONTROLS.DAT project. http://fe.donkeyfly.com/controls/controls.php
This will aloow you to show the user the button functions for each game.

Regards,
Buddabing

I answered to the best of my abilities above except the one question I was hoping you could give more details on.

v0.01 is now available at http://ArcadeFE.com

[markrvp]

I'm pretty sure he is asking if you can create game lists like:

Favorites
4-way games
8-way games
Trackball Games
Shooters

That way you don't have to scroll through all 3000+ rom names, you can select a smaller list.

[Regor]

In the next re-write I will make it where you can specify your own genre's. If you use genre.ini though many of the genre's will be populated for you, but it will not allow duplicate genres to be entered. This will allow you to have all the current Genre's + Your favorites or even favorites for everyone who plays on your arcade.  Great feedback, keep it coming.