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| sysrpl:
--- Quote from: SirPoonga --- You should add in controls.dat support. Here's a good reason why http://arcade.codebot.org/arcade/game/?rom=dotron Here's why controls.dat exists http://fe.donkeyfly.com/controls/faq.php#1 --- End quote --- Thanks. I will definitely have a look into it, both for the website and the front end. Regarding 720, yes I know the game well. Back in the '80s I was arcade king of that game. Take the half pipe park to level 4, then the jump park to level 8, then finish to level star, all gold stickers. Favorite park: I'd have to say the jump park. I used to spin the stick so fast that on the star levels, even with the best helment, when I got air in jump parks I could easily overspin the revolutions by about 10. Of course that would make the skater wreck, but it meant I could get perfect stars for any trick. In discs of tron, I could never get much further than the up/down discs that disappear when hit. Also, the sit down arcade version used a mirror illusion to superimpose the gameplay over "tron-city". I don't know about the upright version of that game, I've never seen one. Both of those games are great examples of titles that you need the original design to experience. Finally, are there any front end ideas you people would like to see implemented? Do any front ends make use of animated eye candy? I don't know if it's a big deal, but our front end does video effect transitions, like when you select items the text fades and screen shot zoom in/out, when you change menus it does a horizontal wipe, and when you start a piece of media (video, game, music) there is a transition effect that animates elements into to this: We are currently implementing UI skinning. |
| mahuti:
1. A built in control panel viewer (like johnny5) that displays YOUR controls with data from controls.dat project so you know what is what., a way to switch between control panel views (i.e. I have 3 swappable control panels each of which can play some games... i'd like to see how the key config could work on any of the 3.) this would require some user setup on how their CPO works. Johnny 5 is good, but not integrated into a frontend. 2. A good layout editor for the control panels (above) 3. A good layout editor for skins 4. Support for vertical monitors 5. Support for passing info to Gpwiz49 (like the set49way app) 6. "out of the box" configuration for emulators, with the abiliity to change configuration later. Current front ends assume users want files / folders all over the place. I would gladly move all of my files / folders around if somebody made it simple. Preconfigured folders... Frontend folder>emulators>mame>snap Frontend folder>emulators>mame>roms Frontend folder>emulators>daphne>snap Etc. it's not going to work for everyone, but for newbies, would be a huge asset. Just drag / drop files instead of learning a new ini routine or something. A little research into the most common emulators that can be used with a front end (those that can use the "esc" key to escape) would give you appropriate folder names to start with. (there are some problems... but a little thought on this subject could iron them out. I'll probably remember a few more. |
| mahuti:
oh and just as one note. I LOATHE losing time to eyecandy. any TRANSITION is a waste of time. Nice swirly things going on in the background is fine whatever. Taking my time to make it look all fancy is bad GUI design. Basically the GUI should look nice without being a hindrance to its use. The use here is to scroll through games and enter a game. I want that to be absolutely instantaneous. Nice transitions for a screensaver is cool, or animated transitions between certain image areas (like it could be cool to animate between dfferent folders of screenshots... I have screens for titles, ingame, etc) 1 section that contains multiple bits of info that is fairly unimportant (or a USER defined unimportant) could fade between multiple bits of info. Those kind of effects are cool, but anythign that hinders the scrolling through the list is not good. As long as effects don't have to be implimented by a user then they are fine to include (imho) As an interface designer I am constantly besieged by people to make stuff that has fancy transitions, and in the end, the users hate it. I've watched 'em behind glass.. it drives em nuts. |
| sysrpl:
Those are some good ideas. We have an XML file for the front end that stores all of the configuration data such as the keyboard assignments, program locations, resource locations, and the name/number of the different screens inside the front end UI. When the front end installs it comes with a bunch of pre populated defaults which you can change. Also, there is a scan function that will search you hard drives form games, videos, and music, and only displays the content you have. Selecting to scan again rebuilds the list. Eventually we will have a friendly windowed utility that lets you configure the settings without editing the XML file by hand. But this utility will as a separate program from the front end --- Quote from: mahuti --- 1. A built in control panel viewer (like johnny5) that displays YOUR controls with data from controls.dat project so you know what is what., a way to switch between control panel views (i.e. I have 3 swappable control panels each of which can play some games... I'd like to see how the key config could work on any of the 3.) this would require some user setup on how their CPO works. Johnny 5 is good, but not integrated into a frontend. 2. A good layout editor for the control panels (above) --- End quote --- How would you like it if you had a folder where you could place an image of your control panel layouts, and in the front end you could cycle through them as they appeared on screen? The control mappings would be stored in the configuration file, editable through the friendly windowed configuration utility, and then passed to your emulator's settings when you launch a game. --- Quote from: mahuti --- 3. A good layout editor for skins --- End quote --- This is the most difficult feature to implement. We are working on an XML format for the customized skins currently, but designing a format that maps image resources, texture coordinates, colors, sounds, fonts for each front end screen is not too easy, add to that a nice windowed designer application, that's a lot of work. Sure we want our front end to be the best possible, but we need to prioritize our feature requests. This might make it into our front end, but probably in some release after version 1.0. --- Quote from: mahuti --- 4. Support for vertical monitors --- End quote --- Check. You can already do this in our front end. It allows you to rotate the front end in 90 degree increments, and stores them settings in the XML configuration file. This value is passed to the emulators when launched. See the vertical layout screen shot 3 posts up. --- Quote from: mahuti --- 6. "out of the box" configuration for emulators, with the ability to change configuration later. Current front ends assume users want files / folders all over the place. I would gladly move all of my files / folders around if somebody made it simple. Preconfigured folders... Frontend folder>emulators>mame>snap Frontend folder>emulators>mame>roms Frontend folder>emulators>daphne>snap --- End quote --- Check, we already have preconfigured folders for emulator programs, roms, screen shots, music, videos. You can change the folder locations in the XML configuration file. When you have resources in the folders and launch the front end, it automatically scans those folders for new content. --- Quote from: mahuti --- oh and just as one note. I LOATHE losing time to eyecandy. any TRANSITION is a waste of time. Nice swirly things going on in the background is fine whatever. Taking my time to make it look all fancy is bad GUI design. Basically the GUI should look nice without being a hindrance to its use. --- End quote --- Point taken. Most of the tranistions we use are very quick, but what you said makes a lot of sense. We will probably remove the game launch transition effect, and just go with a quick 0.5 second fade to black when an emulator is launched. Also, we run a fullscreen borderless black window in the background from startup, so that when programs switch, you never see the OS. Thanks again for your ideas, and remember you can visit our web site to post your thoughts or get involved in the community. http://www.codebot.org |
| mahuti:
One thing that I have been thinking of lately. For skin configuration and other configuration issues, FLASH would make an ideal configurator. 1. Very good support for layout 2. Supports XML... requires very little work to import xml files. 3. Can easily output XML based on user input. Flash could be used to write the XML files... the actual SWF / FLA files wouldn't be needed by the FE... flash could be used just to output the XML. Anyway, there might be nothing that YOU would have to do differently than what you are doing. Someone like me just needs to take your XML and make an example file. The only thing that would be an issue is the way you handle XY coordinates and layering. Your app would have to be able to handle images / text that overlay each other.. it would also need to be able to handle subpixel spacing. Support for SWFs would be pretty sweet though (not the interactive kind... just animation would be a good start) |
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