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hulkster:

how bout this.....ill just give Mamewah the best review because thats the only one ive ever used!  contest over!....oh wait....im retarded, nevermind. :-X

snekse:


--- Quote from: hulkster on July 20, 2004, 12:06:07 pm ---how bout this.....ill just give Mamewah the best review because thats the only one ive ever used!  contest over!....oh wait....im retarded, nevermind. :-X

--- End quote ---

My point exactly.  I think a lot of people have only tried one or two FE's, so a good comparison of some of the best/most popular might spark some interest to try something else that fits your needs better.  So far the two I like the most are MameWAH and 3dArcade, but I really don't know that much about the rest of them, so I've never really considered them.

Chris:

I think part of the problem here is this idea of "best".  There is no one best FE, or there would only be one FE.  Different FE's lend themselves to different applications, different configuration approaches.  Take GameLauncher and Lazarus (sorry, I haven't used DK yet) as examples. GameLauncher allows you to customize the display and command line of every individual file in the list and is cross-platform, but has no way of organizing files beyond the list you provide it.  It cannot be configured from the interface (this is a feature to some, a problem for others).  Lazarus lets you configure some things from the interface and has a powerful filter function, flexible skins and multimedia support, but it's dependent on external players like MediaPlayer and RealPlayer, runs only on Windows, and can be tricky to deal with if you're not a big user of the assorment of ROM utilities.  Neither of these is necessarily better than the other, but they represent widely differing approaches to configuring and presentation.

So a roundup that summarizes features and points out strengths and weaknesses is a good thing, but trying to decide which is "best" is impossible.

--Chris

Minwah:


--- Quote from: Chris on July 20, 2004, 02:21:45 pm ---I think part of the problem here is this idea of "best".  There is no one best FE, or there would only be one FE.  Different FE's lend themselves to different applications, different configuration approaches.  Take GameLauncher and Lazarus (sorry, I haven't used DK yet) as examples. GameLauncher allows you to customize the display and command line of every individual file in the list and is cross-platform, but has no way of organizing files beyond the list you provide it.  It cannot be configured from the interface (this is a feature to some, a problem for others).  Lazarus lets you configure some things from the interface and has a powerful filter function, flexible skins and multimedia support, but it's dependent on external players like MediaPlayer and RealPlayer, runs only on Windows, and can be tricky to deal with if you're not a big user of the assorment of ROM utilities.  Neither of these is necessarily better than the other, but they represent widely differing approaches to configuring and presentation.

So a roundup that summarizes features and points out strengths and weaknesses is a good thing, but trying to decide which is "best" is impossible.

--- End quote ---

I think this is the point Howard was making, and a good one.

Still, rather than seeing which is 'best' I would still like to see the comparisons, as personally I haven't had much time to spend on the newer FE's.

snekse:


--- Quote from: Minwah on July 20, 2004, 04:24:57 pm ---Still, rather than seeing which is 'best' I would still like to see the comparisons, as personally I haven't had much time to spend on the newer FE's.

--- End quote ---

I think we're all in agreement that we're not in search of the best, just a good detailed review of each so we can make our own decision on which works best for ourselves.

For instance, I had no idea about the details Chris pointed out for GameLauncher and Lazarus.  It would be nice to have someplace to really learn these things.  For me, something more then a spreadsheet would be nice.  There are just some things that a spreadsheet cannot convey.  Like GGKoul said, sounds like a job for Kevin Steel.

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