prettiest front end?

[headkaze]

3D Arcade is very impressive, but I'm not sure it's where every FE is heading. If everyone wanted a complete 3d environment for thier FE everyone would be using 3D Arcade. The thing is, I think the majority of people want a text list and graphics but done in Direct 3D/Open GL environment taking advantage of 3D acceleration and hardware effects. Like the original post asks about a FE like the XBox dashboards available.

For "skinning" in 3D Arcade I would expect you would need a 3D software like Studio Max or Lightwave rather than a custom written Theme Editor.

Yes, you 're right.  And if you want make a good editor it consume more time than making the FE itself.

Which is why I took on writing the Theme Editor for GameEx myself, to take the pressure off Tom. There is alot of work involved in writing a Theme Editor, as you say, and to do it right it takes valuable time away from the coding of the FE. The GameEx Theme Editor is still lacking in many areas but I've only just finished version 1.2. Shame we don't have more coders offering to help with things like this for FE developers. But then again, I'm suprised there are not more artists making skins for FE's. Perhaps people are too busy playing their cabs?

Anyway, check out a video of the XBox 360 Dashboard. Some of these effects are quite basic but are effective. I would like to see a FE with this sort of quality in terms of graphics and effects. And to be honest, it's not difficult to do, I just think alot of current FE's are written using older technologies (excluding 3D Arcade which is probably written in C++ with Open GL) like VB6 (MameWah), GDI (Atomic FE) and even Direct Draw (GameEx) which means writing using these new technologies like DirectX 9/10 will mean a complete re-write of the display code. Which really means a complete re-write of the entire FE. But I do expect the next gen of scratch written FE's to be in this vein.

[)p(]

I think it might be useful to explain how cylarcade actually works as shown in the c64 avi. ( ) I still think it was one of my best ideas in 3darcade and maybe it can inspire someone.

In the cylarcade interface models are placed in a circle with the camera facing towards them. When the camera rotates a new model is added in the direction the camera is rotated and removed from the other side. This way the user can rotate indefinitely through any size gamelist.

I got the idea from the 19th century 360 degree panorama's where you stand in the middle inside a building in the shape of cylinder and look towards the wall.

See http://www.panorama-mesdag.nl

This resulted in:
http://www.i-modernist.com/temp/cylarcadeupdate.jpg
(The fixed model in the center is optional )

As you can see the translation in 3darcade is fairly exact with the painting replaced with an animated texture and the cabinets placed in front of it. By dynamically replacing the models as described above the panorama becomes in essence endless.

But this is just the start! From the start I envisioned it to be a multipurpose interface that could replace the normal text listbox type interface. The key is to be able to change the diameter of the circle, the position of the camera in relation to the circle, the spacing and orientation of the models on the circle. With this in place you can make skins that range from a complete 3d effect like the one shown above, the semi 3d effect of the diskettes in the c64 skin, the price wheels, the completely flat skins like a ultracade wheel like look (the cylarcade interface actually predates it!) to the 100% flat scrolling marquees which I use to select gamelists in the default skin of 3darcade. The latter could even mimic a standard listbox by using the on the fly texture creation feature from a text string.
See for example pics:
http://3darcade.mameworld.net/frontend/defaultskin.html
http://3darcade.mameworld.net/skins/skins.htm

The problem becomes when designing a userfriendly gui for something like this. You will need to be able to interactively change; the camera position, spacing of the models on the circle, orientate the models, etc. etc. and get a visual cue how the end result will look like...as you might understand by now...I have not even attempted to come up with a solution for that...

I am not sure if there is a future for an interface like this. With this amount of flexibility,  probably not! But at least it was a very interesting experiment and a lot of fun doing


peter

[youki]

GDI (Atomic FE)

I don't use GDI for Atomic  ,  AtomicFE (the engine) is written in Visual C++  using DirectX/DirectDraw version 7.  That's a choice i did , because i wanted AtomicFE works on the huge amount of configuration as well modern that oldest.

And i wanted that it works with standard component provided with the os , no need to install additional thing.
The main target was XP.  On XP directx 7 is installed on all version.

writing using these new technologies like DirectX 9/10 will mean a complete re-write of the display code. Which really means a complete re-write of the entire FE.

Wrong, in the case of AtomicFe ,  I will just have to rewrite few primitive of my graphic engine. And nothing to change in Atomic specific code. That 's the power of object oriented programming!  

With AtomicFE , you will have still lot of  (good i hope) suprise in the future...  

[headkaze]

Sorry youki, don't know what gave me the impression it was using GDI. Anyway, my point with GameEx is the same, Direct Draw is an old technology. Direct 3D is the way to go, I'm sure you will agree. It's basically a matter of replacing your surfaces with sprites. Not difficult by any means. I really like your scripted themes, but they can be awful slow. If you optimize that feature, it could definately be a more useful feature. Although, again creating themes could be difficult for a non-programmer unless there is a whole editor with scripting - which is very hard to write IMHO. I guess the way around that is to write some default scripts yourself and allow user's to adjust them.

As for 3D Arcade, I love these ideas that 3D Arcade is using, in fact some of the concepts you describe are what I'm tackling on a project of my own, so it's nice to see them in visual terms. I think 3D Arcade is really great, including the Ultracade wheel and other effects. But as for creating an editor for a program like this, the only way to do it is like Doom 3 - the game *is* the editor, or in this case, the FE is the editor. So you would be within the FE, select "Edit Theme" then have options to select the type of view - cyclic wheel using images, animated textures, 3d models, marquee's etc. then select the view type - infinite cylinder, vertical, sideways etc, then perhaps a background effect eg. radial blur like the XBox 360 dashboard background effect or a wavy mesh effect like MCE background. Then you have the various options of spacing between objects, orientation etc. and as you adjust these options (using keys, joystick or buttons - whatever) the effect can be seen live on your list. This is the only practical way I could see an editor being made for such a FE. But either way, 3D Arcade is still very impressive work.

[tspeirs]

I have to agree with Youki a little, in that a rewrite of the display code does not mean a complete rewrite of the entire front end. In the case of GameEx, since its written in .net the support for Vista graphics is availalable to me now if I wanted to start now, and at the least I am going to take a look now.
I personally cant wait for Vista, WinFX, Avalon and DirectX10, when I can start pimping the graphics in the beast! From what I can tell its going to make the whole process much easier as the whole OS runs on Direct3D, and .net developers get the biggest and best support from MS. I think yourll see a lot more from GameEx too, in terms of visuals, while maintaining a host of features, and ease of use, and allowing me to code and deliver things in rapid time due to .net. The thing to remember for FE developers though, is that I forsee with Vista a whole bunch of new front ends. The display coding, is going to be as fast as it is now in the leading front ends, but going to more slick, and will be done with the ease of writing a vb6 windows form application. I think as well as visuals, UI is important, and I really like the way GameEx does this now, I believe usability should always come over more important than visuals, skinning, theming etc, and maybe thats why more people tend to use GameEx, Mamewaht, Atomic etc than 3D Arcade, which pisses over us in terms of graphics. Because I like the UI in GameEx, I may even decide to code a new front end for DirectX10, perhaps the XBox stuff is the way to go.

I do agree with you Headkaze on where you see the development and future going as you can see from above, an I am wanting it like woody alan after five red bulls, and Im deffinitly not put off by the work involved.

[)p(]

As for 3D Arcade, I love these ideas that 3D Arcade is using, in fact some of the concepts you describe are what I'm tackling on a project of my own, so it's nice to see them in visual terms. I think 3D Arcade is really great, including the Ultracade wheel and other effects. But as for creating an editor for a program like this, the only way to do it is like Doom 3 - the game *is* the editor, or in this case, the FE is the editor. So you would be within the FE, select "Edit Theme" then have options to select the type of view - cyclic wheel using images, animated textures, 3d models, marquee's etc. then select the view type - infinite cylinder, vertical, sideways etc, then perhaps a background effect eg. radial blur like the XBox 360 dashboard background effect or a wavy mesh effect like MCE background. Then you have the various options of spacing between objects, orientation etc. and as you adjust these options (using keys, joystick or buttons - whatever) the effect can be seen live on your list. This is the only practical way I could see an editor being made for such a FE. But either way, 3D Arcade is still very impressive work.

Yeah I agree. For the old 2d part of the fe skinning in 3darcade actually works like that. But its actually more suited for the 3d stuff. And if I would have developed it further I would have done it like you said for everything that happens in the 3d sprite too. For the fpsarcade mode there is already an interactive building mode. Not perfect but a good start. But I have never got around to start one for cylarcade. Knowing that its even more startling how Deniro made that c64 skin isnt

peter

[sWampy]

I personally cant wait for Vista, WinFX, Avalon and DirectX10, when I can start pimping the graphics in the beast! From what I can tell its going to make the whole process much easier as the whole OS runs on Direct3D, and .net developers get the biggest and best support from MS. I think yourll see a lot more from GameEx too, in terms of visuals, while maintaining a host of features, and ease of use, and allowing me to code and deliver things in rapid time due to .net.

There are a ton of us that will never, ever put vista on a machine, way to much drm crap, and even more restrive bs with activation, and monthy fees to Microsoft for updates.

[)p(]

and maybe thats why more people tend to use GameEx, Mamewaht, Atomic etc than 3D Arcade, which pisses over us in terms of graphics.

That and the fact its really old and never designed to be used by anyone else but me 

Times have definately changed a lot since I build my emulaxian cab. And started to make a fe to fit with the theme of the cabinet. It was fun and great  to see that youki made some sort of shooting script to show what his script engine can do as that was one of the features I started with all these years ago...shooting at galaxians to select gamelists. Hehe a nostalgic feeling about a hobby that started with a nostalgic feeling about a longing to play those old great games again as they were meant to be played! ( you can still see how it looked and worked in the frontend section here www.i-modernist.com/emulaxian I actually still use the fe exactly like that...I never changed it on my cab!)

I agree its now time for more userfriendly frontends designed with users in mind from scratch. Its just not my kind of thing...I like doing weird experimental stuff

peter

[Minwah]

The thing is, I think the majority of people want a text list and graphics but done in Direct 3D/Open GL environment taking advantage of 3D acceleration and hardware effects. Like the original post asks about a FE like the XBox dashboards available.

I think you're probably right here, although I don't think like this personally.  I built an arcade machine to play classic (or at least old school) games on...so I want the FE to look old school also (low-res 2d).  So for me personally, my FE is good enough (even graphically, which isn't it's strongpoint).  However I do plan to one day update it using DirectDraw, which will allow for a few extra graphical features.  Unless I have some other reason to learn it, 3D is something I don't think I'll ever incorporate tho.

[youki]

Sorry youki, don't know what gave me the impression it was using GDI.

Surely because i use the GDIPlus.dll to load my images.  But i don't use GDI to display.  

I really like your scripted themes, but they can be awful slow. If you optimize that feature, it could definately be a more useful feature. Although, again creating themes could be difficult for a non-programmer unless there is a whole editor with scripting

I working on that.  I just introduced the feature in this version , it should go better and better in future version. And the layout editor should help to build script too.  And i plan to make a library of simple script that the user can modify easly.

[)p(]

.  I built an arcade machine to play classic (or at least old school) games on...so I want the FE to look old school also (low-res 2d).

Yeah it may be weird coming from the guy who made 3darcade. But I feel that too. Thats why I never changed the skin I made specifically for the cab. It fits it like a glove. So all the 3d stuff has never made it to my cabinet either
(The 3d stuff was actually added for a whole different project about the history of video games.)

peter

[Howard_Casto]

I will completely agree with you about it being the users fault though.  You can't be expected to make a buttload of skins and write the dang thing as well.  I suggest your users get busy and quit doing the whole "mamewah skinning" thing (namely take the default skin, change it ever so slightly and try to sell it off as a brand new skin.)  I've had a similar problem with dk over the past few years, that's why you only see my skins on the download page. 

Problem is with more complex skinning it really becomes very difficult to make a nice gui for the average user. A good example is the c64 skin for 3darcade that uses cylarcade mode to animate a row of diskettes etc. Just look at this video how it works...
It will be really difficult to design good gui's for this kind of skins. This will be a big challenge for the next generation fe's...not me anymore

peter

What he said headkaze. 

Dk and 3da have a lot of features that you don't set in the skinner.  If anything I designed dk so that you DON"T use the skinner to set most things because it's simpler to the user. Want to make a layer animated?  Drop the frames in the folder with the correct name.  Want to put on a stencil?  Again just name it correctly. 

Dk final will also have these 3d skins that peter is talking about, the problem is that as he said, it's nearly impossible to write a gui for.  So my solution is to just make material "keys" in max and the fe automatically plugs in the appropriate textures.  Still the user isn't going to just drag pre-created 3d objects onto the skin, quite frankly I don't have that kind of time on my hands.  I'll just create a model format and the user can stick to it.  Seeing as how virtually NOBDOY will ever use the 3d skins but me, much less, go to the trouble of modeling thier own, I don't see how this is a problem.

So to finish up, I don't know how skinning features and the actual skinner became the same thing to you but they aren't.  With respect, as I said gameex still has a ways to go.  that doesn't make it any less of a good fe, it's just all of the flexibility and features aren't supported yet.  Has nothing to do with your skinner. 


Following the rest of the thread I'll have to jump the trend and DISAGREE with everyone about the ease of use thing. 

If front-ends were commercial and you had to pay for them then I would say they should always be user-friendly, but since they aren't you have two choices, a simple fe that is either ugly and/or is very inflexible but very easy to setup or one that is very pretty and/or has a ton of features but is difficult to setup. 

This isn't the exception this is the rule.  The final factor comes down to time.  The author can only work on so much... personally I'd rather him concentrate on making the thing presentable, felxible enough for evryone's needs and generic enough with game/emu configurations so that it'll still be useable for ages rather than make soemthing really flashy or really easy to setup that won't work 3 months down the road when mame changes it's source or some new emu comes out and the author has long since abandoned it. 

3da, dk and mamewah will always be around because they stick to these principals, with the first two leaning towards graphics a tad more and thus losing a bit of ease in the setup dept.  Some of these newer ones I worry about though. 

Ultrasyle was brilliant.. pretty and very easy to setup but now it's a paper-wieght.  Arcadefx also comes to mind.  I've been around long enough to see dozens of these "one trick ponys" come and go.  The problem is the author always thinks he'll be around to update his fe forever and unfortuantely that is never the case.  I tell the rest of you this not to be-little other fe's that are the next hot thing, but to urge the authors to go back and fix them the "right way" before they decide to leave us.  It will be impossible to make them both easy to setup and "future proof" but you've gotta ask yourself something.... would you rather have a fe that's easy to setup or a fe that'll actually work in 3 years. 

[mccoy178]

Howard, that may be the best writing I've seen from you in a long time.  Great post!

[youki]

I partially agree with howard.

I agree that the FE should not be to emulator specific.  It is why , Atomic does not depend at all on Mame Features or options  for instance . In Atomic itself, you can not set specific option for MAME or other emulators.  You have to configure emulators a side. Atomic just run the config you set for your emulator what ever it is. Atomic will work for ages.

I disagree on other parts and i will prove that with Atomic soon. (just few version to wait... )

[tspeirs]

The good thing is folks have a fair choice of front ends. I'm just hoping we can help make it easier to decide on the one that suites them best. You mentioned Howard about FE's not being updated, I agree on that point entirely. Thats why I am hoping the Wiki can be improved and be made to make the whole process factual based and not biased rather than so opinionated like these threads about best front end etc seem to be. I think we'd all be better contributing our time to the Wiki rather than offering our own experience (which is often huge, I dont disagree) in threads such as this, but when we are all playing nice, I don't mind 

[Howard_Casto]

Funny you should mention that.... I looked at it and noticed that some of the data for dk and a few others is inaccurate.  I wanted to go in and correct, but my login won't work over on the wiki.  I'm waiting for someone to look into it. 

[)p(]

I think we'd all be better contributing our time to the Wiki rather than offering our own experience (which is often huge, I dont disagree) in threads such as this, but when we are all playing nice, I don't mind 

Has it not be like that anymore these days? I dont follow the byoac boards as closely as I used too. But one of the great things while working on my fe has always bene the feedback of fellow developers. For example Howard and I go a long way back. I am probably the one besides himself that knows his fe's the best from long hours of testing them And vice versa..I remember when I got the multi user arcades working...i msn'ed Howard and we met for the first time in the virtual arcade...I had made a pacman avatar...then hc made a ghost...and we started chasing each other around...it ended up dressing up with cabinets as avatars instead...i still can see me chasing that donkey kong cabinet...great fun! 

peter

[headkaze]

I will completely agree with you about it being the users fault though.  You can't be expected to make a buttload of skins and write the dang thing as well.  I suggest your users get busy and quit doing the whole "mamewah skinning" thing (namely take the default skin, change it ever so slightly and try to sell it off as a brand new skin.)  I've had a similar problem with dk over the past few years, that's why you only see my skins on the download page. 

Problem is with more complex skinning it really becomes very difficult to make a nice gui for the average user. A good example is the c64 skin for 3darcade that uses cylarcade mode to animate a row of diskettes etc. Just look at this video how it works...
It will be really difficult to design good gui's for this kind of skins. This will be a big challenge for the next generation fe's...not me anymore

peter

Looks like Microsoft has stolen your C64 GUI and put it into Vista!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aTdTdTELZj4

[TOK]

Looks like Microsoft has stolen your C64 GUI and put it into Vista!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aTdTdTELZj4

Isn't it kind of ironic to be using that to play 15 to 25 year old games?
I got a chance to try the Vista beta, and I can tell you why it got pushed back... It's a huge kludge at the moment. It'll take about 4 minutes to boot on the typical cab spec here (1.5 to 2ghz machine with 512meg of RAM), and those fancy 3D features won't work on the majority of video cards guys are running right now.

I feel XP with a bunch of Services disabled is going to be the primary cab OS for the next 4 years or so. One of the cool things about this hobby is that you can spend a lot of money on other hardware, yet still use a spare/cheap PC to run it all.

All I want in a front end is something that I can shell right into, disguises Windows as much as possible (I used a separate app to skin XP), and has selectable text size. Ideally, it would have an external setup tool that gave you MAME32 style checkboxes and simple text areas to setup directories and not be shown when the front end itself is run. MameWah with the setup program is kind of in that ballpark, but just not as polished.

Love the discussion and appreciate all the work you guys are doing. Perhaps I'm just a simpleton and not the norm here, but a fast boot time and quick, easily read menus so that getting to the games doesn't take more skill than playing them is pretty to me. 

[)p(]

I will completely agree with you about it being the users fault though.  You can't be expected to make a buttload of skins and write the dang thing as well.  I suggest your users get busy and quit doing the whole "mamewah skinning" thing (namely take the default skin, change it ever so slightly and try to sell it off as a brand new skin.)  I've had a similar problem with dk over the past few years, that's why you only see my skins on the download page. 

Problem is with more complex skinning it really becomes very difficult to make a nice gui for the average user. A good example is the c64 skin for 3darcade that uses cylarcade mode to animate a row of diskettes etc. Just look at this video how it works...
It will be really difficult to design good gui's for this kind of skins. This will be a big challenge for the next generation fe's...not me anymore

peter

Looks like Microsoft has stolen your C64 GUI and put it into Vista!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aTdTdTELZj4

Hehe 

I still have no clue why anybody will want to upgrade to vista. There isnt really anything you can do with it you cant already do with xp. And it will have drm protections etc. everywhere which most likely will cause compatibility havoc all over the place...eeks...

peter

[tspeirs]

I'm only interested in Vista from a development standpoint. I'll certainly only use Vista for doing my work and on my cab when and if I am forced to. I could not give a monkeys ass  about the 3D GUI, in fact I even dont like the windows XP Gui, start menu, and all the stuff it does to cater for people who are not skilled. I configure it to the hilt to look and play like Windows 2000 every time I install it. I dont' even want to upgrade from Office 2000.

It's looking like I cant' do that with Vista. So its likely Ill be making apps for Vista, but I doubt Ill be using it at all, until I'm forced. That's a little ironic too

[youki]

Agree with tspeirs. Same thing for me.

Personnaly, i 'd prefer UI like... DOS!  It is why i do lot of thing using Console under XP.
For instance it is faster for me to type a command line to enter in folder and copy files than browsing my folder with explorers ,select files ,  right click "copy"  go to the other folder  rigth click "paste"..etc..

But i think i too old school... 

[JoyMonkey]

Anybody seen the previews of the MC360 skin for XBMC 2.0? Apparently it's set to be released on Friday. There's a video preview here:
http://actioncorp.libsyn.com/
and here:
http://blackbolt.xbox-scene.com/?p=skins&cat=mc360

It's based on the Xbox360 dashboard, but with the extra functionalities of XBMC.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm drooling.

[Howard_Casto]

I'm only interested in Vista from a development standpoint. I'll certainly only use Vista for doing my work and on my cab when and if I am forced to. I could not give a monkeys ass  about the 3D GUI, in fact I even dont like the windows XP Gui, start menu, and all the stuff it does to cater for people who are not skilled. I configure it to the hilt to look and play like Windows 2000 every time I install it. I dont' even want to upgrade from Office 2000.

It's looking like I cant' do that with Vista. So its likely Ill be making apps for Vista, but I doubt Ill be using it at all, until I'm forced. That's a little ironic too

Something that vista is doing that I think might prove to be useful is the fact that EVERYTHING is a poly and there are no more sprites, even at the desktop level.  This means we can stretch, distort and "3d effectify" everything.  With this kind of graphics power at the core level, it might be possible to use really simple tools like visual studio to make impressive 3d front-ends. 


But considering vista is so carzy half of the emus won't get ported for at least a year, I'm not in any hurry.