Startup and Wallpapers...

[vidmouse]

Just curious... what do you all use for your desktop wallpapers (if you start up in Windows) for your cabs?

Or, if you don't, do you just launch straight to a front end?
(and which one)

[enchntr]

I currently have a plain black background and launch automatically into MaLa.  I know some people are replacing the Windows shell from explorer.exe to whatever front end they have, so your Windows GUI would technically be the front end.  However, you'd have to launch explorer.exe to do any maintenance on the system itself.

[Dexter]

For startup I use stardocks Bootskin (free) with the mame skin

http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?libid=32&search=mame

I've a mame wallpaper on the desktop but the cab boots to Gamelauncher. Couldn't get mamewah to work properly for some reason  

[More Cowbell]

I use this as my wallpaper although I boot directly into Mala as well. I also use the bootskins which is a nice little touch.

[Jouster]

On mine, I will be using bootskins, but haven't decided if I will go straight to Mala or not...probably will.  Right now I have a black background with the start bar on auto hide.

Jouster

[pmc]

For startup I use stardocks Bootskin (free) with the mame skin

Ditto. I like the animated progress bar.

-pmc

[severdhed]

i created an image in photoshop that i use as:

bios splash screen (not all motherboards support this)
windows boot screen (using bootskin)
wallpaper

then it boots directly to mala as my shell.  if i need to work on the cabinet, i exit mala and manually start explorer.  that way nobody knows it is running windows at all.  the front end is configured to match the boot images, so everything is consistent during the entire boot process.

the only thing that gave it away that is was running windows was the mouse pointer that shows up right before MALA starts.  to fix this, i created custom mouse cursors that look like ghosts from pacman.  it just has a little animated ghost visible instead of an arrow... the few people who have seen it were very suprised that it is a normal PC running windows xp.

the byoac wiki has alot of great info for setting this up.

[vidmouse]

Cool, thanks.
Right now I'm using a wallpaper I made from my first mockup of my marquee,
stretched to my 640x480 tv screen res.  Plus a couple of Tron-themed
startup screens and wav's.  Using Mamewah and Visual Pinball predominantly.

Good to know other options.  This was as much of an artwork question
as a technical question  (i.e. I know one guy who wouldn't put anything but
Chun Li wallpapers, side art, etc. on his cab, if he had one)