My newbie layout with MALA & video previews

[retrometro]

Hey guys,

Here's a newbie layout I've just tried out with MALA.  Suggestions would be appreciated!



I've also been looking for more video previews / snaps but it seems like emumovies (sp?) look great but they're not complete.  Does anyone have any suggestions for a n00b?



danka,
retrometro

[shock_]

Well, 100 thread views and no responses for you, so I'll bite. 

You seem to have figured out how to bolt things together   A few things I'd do from here to tidy it up a bit:

• Ditch the default Space Invaders image.  In MaLa Layout, double-click the background and choose "disable image".  While you're in there, set the background colour.
• Take care of the borders around your images. As you can probably tell, the black backgrounds surrounding most cabinets, control panel and snap images look a little ordinary just poking out there. Two things you can do...
  
  • set background to black (or replace with an image that is basically all black like a starfield or something)
  • turn on image transparency. Transparency is covered in the MaLa layout Wiki.
• Improve the readability of the gamelist. It's hard to place text over changing images and still make it readable no matter what colours you use - but that green is particularly difficult.  I see you've put a contrasting colour bar under the selected game which is a good start, but if the rest of them aren't readable something should still be done IMHO.
• Rename the emulator. You can change "MAME 0.116 Jun07" to read as "MAME" or "Arcade" or "Englebert" or whatever you like.  In MaLa, it's the very first field you see when you open the Options dialog.
• Arrange your images logically. Control panels usually belong below the screen.  It just makes better subconscious sense and will make the layout feel a bit more resolved.  You don't have to stick every image to the wall of the screen as well if you don't want to.

 
Regards more videos - here's the thread.  Circo and cdbrown did a set up to mame .106 which is pretty much what everyone uses I think. Hats off to those guys. 

Good luck with it.

[retrometro]

Regards more videos - here's the thread.  Circo and cdbrown did a set up to mame .106 which is pretty much what everyone uses I think. Hats off to those guys. 

Good luck with it.

Thanks tons for the ideas!  It made so much sense after you mentioned the placement of the controllers.  The only one I'm going to keep is the naming of the games.  I kinda like to see what version of MAME i'm running and the release date so I'll know how long it's been since an upgrade.

Also, I made my donations to Circo the video preview king and caught up to some of the missing video files via his torrents.  BTW, here is a new video of how everything works as well as a screenshot.  I moved the controllers down and added the marquees to the top so for many games it looks like a cab.

New youtube video of the layout in action: