Help writing my own jukebox software

[demliag]

Hello, I am new to this board, and only found out about MAME and virtual jukebox cabs recently but have been hooked.  I want to build a small jukebox for myself, and am starting with the software.  I want to build my own virtual jukebox software for fun, and to learn more, but I am barely an intermediate programmer.  I have done stuff with C and C++, but since I am an engineer it is all numerical based with only keyboard inputs.  Can anyone suggest a good book that will help me learn the things I will need to know for this project?  I am willing to learn new languages if one is better than others for this application.  I also looked at a lot of the other software available in hopes of finding source code to look at but didn't find much.  Any help and advice is appreciated.

Allen

[unclet]

I used Microsoft Visual Basic to code my own jukebox software.   When I got stuck (or simply learn more), I wewnt to www.vbcity.com and always got answers.   Very nice people there to help you out.   I would recommend the site highly.

[Chris]

There are no books specific to programming jukeboxes.  At its heart, a jukebox is a simple affair: you index a folder to find songs, you put up a list of songs on the screen, accept keyboard input to select those songs, and play the songs.  The trickiest part is knowing when a song ends so you can start the next one in the queue.

If you're just writing it for yourself, lots of this is really easy, since you don't need to worrk about multiple resolutions, remappable controls, skins, etc.  I wrote the initial version of DOSCab Jukebox in about four hours because I could hardcode everything since it was just for me.  Of course, if you have even the slightest inkling that you might release it, plan on making at least the control configuration read from a configuration file.

So, I guess the question is, which part are you having problems with?  Indexing?  Input? User interface? Playing songs? Song queue management?  All of the above?  How far have you gotten?

--Chris

[demliag]

I guess I should give you a little background of my developing experience.

[Chris]

What lanquage did you code DOScab in?

[demliag]

Thank you, that is the kind of information I was looking for.