just some small software reviews from my first build experience

[mmalficia]

with all the new  FE development  going on i thought it might be of some use to hear some opinions from someone not so deeply rooted in the community about the best aspects  off the FE's Ive tried  over the course of a first time build.

please bear in mind these are just my opinions and observations, i don't mean it as a best FE or  to step on any ones toes.
Just in my line of work Ive come to appreciate opinions  from people not so emotionally attached, or with vested interest  in projects  helps keep things in perspective and give new insights ..  And I'm only going to comment on  the FE's ,Jukes Ive tried. If  its of use it be  cool for others to  share their experiences to ..

FE"S

Mala :

  while lacking in the "bling" department its hands down the easiest to get up and running in no time flat . i love the  tracking  of how many times a game is played and  having a top 20 list  :>    as well as user fav lists. all the plugin support  .. just wish it was a bit more accessible to develop for (least for me  I'm in IT and  hobby/sideline  in raytraceing  (the math part not the ART part :>  not really  well versed in C or Delphi  but i use  auto-hotkey scripting allot). All the support for  emu based  pre/post command  cues they are  intuitive and very easy to work with  .. my  only  fault here is their  emu based and not rom based (tall order i know but that would be perfection for non Mame  setups)



AtomicFE :

 while it has a rather steep learning curve if you want to use your own layouts /setups   there is a  virtual army  of presupplied configs/layouts  waiting to be tweaked  at your disposal.  not to mention  after playing with the  layout editor  you can pull off some really  impressive effects  with minimal performance hits if  you  think it threw and take your time.. and now a feature Ive only seen in Atomic that i wish every FE type app had :

for every rom/emu/what haveyou  you can define a  txt file  %ROM%+var.txt   and tie it to a window  this window can display that text  in static , scroll, loop ,wrap to window,  Fonts,  hand done bitmap fonts  its so damn easy and useful to work with for non Mame setups  were you want to show game info  history  control high scores, smacktalk  what have you  its down right sinful :> 
Not to mention  i think Youki is probably the most enthusiastic  FE developer Ive seen on the boards  (even if he  catches flack for it sometimes ).

Khameleon:

Ive only played with the public beta some, so i don't have a wealth of exp with this one  .. But
    i can really  appreciate  what hes trying to do here  ..  in the hobby as a whole  when i first started looking at front ends i was torn by  well this one can do this, but that one has  purdy pics ,  oh the bling on that one  but  it doesn't run  this or  do that ..   come on admit it  it be damn cool to have a  FE that could load any layout from any FE   as long as the backend  is somewhat robust .. (with compatibility issues ide guess some functionality is  going to need to be abstracted  but  THATS MY GUESS  NOT A FACT   or anything )   

Mamewah:

While the layouts are simplistic  and its not very idiot friendly   after  working with its  insides if you want to  spend time with all the cfg's ini's and misc files (bat, etc)   you can pretty much pull of anything   from simple to complex  :>


Jukes :
I'm going to clarify this a bit   I'm still working on getting a juke setup i like  in my cab   Ive played with  3 so far and waiting on 1 to get outa beta /feature lock before i invest in it. and I'm rather limited in scope since  the juke needs to support both custom skin and hopefully credits  (using modded coin mechs to accept anythin  as a keypress )


Freebox :

OK pure config heaven  and a DB powerhouse' not to mention  its the most orientated to full re skins  moving buttons etc etc.  but alas i was having serious focus issues with it  (mind you  NOT THEIR fault ) i was using it in a way  that isn't officially supported, and getting the credit feature is a tad pricey for a non professional use setup.


pcjuke touchtrax:

OK I'm still waiting on this and  hopeing like all hell it will support minimising by key, and full app transparency  when its done.    but pc juke was  really  easy to set up, but it was a pain to try n  use any form of custom graphic.

Virtuosa:

OK i relented here and actually bought this one  .. I'm going to say this up front if you  were  going to use this in a dedicated touchscreen juke its beautiful  but in a multi config enviorment  i had serious  issues with this  one  crashing or just not doing what i needed out of it. (also gives you an idea what I'm trying to do with  my  juke set up  )



last but not least  :

MultiFE:
 i have NOT used it in its new  rebirth but  i did try it as a juke   its clean simple and easy to use  .. but isn't for my set up (no complete reskin its a theme based cab/media center)  as a FE  i really can see this one becoming the defacto standard for those folks using a multi monitor touch screen setup if  its handled right (FE on the smaller touchscreen  all playing and juke on the main screen)

once again  these are just my opinions and experiences since embarking on my first build  but  figured it my  be  at least informative  on what features  a first time builder found most useful /wanted and  where i had to make hard decisions about things ...  I Truly  admire and appreciate everyones  hard work and helpfulness in this community/hobby and am very glad a decided to take the plunge    over the last year  to build my ultimate  toy :>   (no worries   you ll see pics when its complete. but  back when i started  i didn't know  all the woodworking aspect   was a "must  photo " element   lol  so ill be chastised for that :<   

Mmal 

[headkaze]

You didn't review GameEx! 

[mmalficia]

Sorry Headkaze.. 

Ive never actually used GameEX  so i didn't  want to make any  statements without  having some first hand experience with   anyones  apps.  I figure  if this winds up being of some intrest   some other  semilurker  might  pop out and post some experiences  with  everyones software.  Just wanted to  error on the side of caution and not start any fires 

[Space Fractal]

He he, I do not actually planning for multi touchscreen support, since it really designed for single touchscreen and all these classic controllers.

I havent ever think about dual touchscreen, and I not even have a touchscreen myself, but I do allready created a touchscreen GUI for juke, and I just "ported" that over to use with the FE part as well. It's a really cool idea, but the code is not designed to that yet.

I do might add a new GUI with skinning support (pretty much same way and style like Mamewah and Arcade Music Box), I do rather fix and add the missing features first that is on the todo list. But I wanted let MultiFE run in all possible resoulutions and rotations.

But thanks for the nice little review  .

[headkaze]

I think you should rename your topic to something a bit more descriptive. How about "Some of my reviews of software" or something.

[youki]

for every rom/emu/what haveyou  you can define a  txt file  %ROM%+var.txt   and tie it to a window  this window can display that text  in static , scroll, loop ,wrap to window,  Fonts,  hand done bitmap fonts  its so damn easy and useful to work with for non Mame setups  were you want to show game info  history  control high scores, smacktalk  what have you  its down right sinful :> 

wow!!...i'm impressed how deep you explored the layout editor.  I had never talk or documented (in fact i have never documented the entire layout editor yet ) this feature!
I thought nobody would use that!!!

I hope you will have time to review Atomic 0.20 when it will be released! 

[Space Fractal]

I also think a better typic would been much better (just rename that), and also moving this thread to reviews forum? But nice reviews anyway.

[loadman]

Mala :
 just wish it was a bit more accessible to develop for (least for me  I'm in IT and  hobby/sideline  in raytraceing  (the math part not the ART part :>  not really  well versed in C or Delphi  but i use  auto-hotkey scripting allot). All the support for  emu based  pre/post command  cues they are  intuitive and very easy to work with

Please elaborate what you would like in the plug-in interface in future

.. my  only  fault here is their  emu based and not rom based (tall order i know but that would be perfection for non Mame  setups)

Am looking at ways to mix and match, there are some 'hack' workarounds if you are keen for now.

[headkaze]

Please elaborate what you would like in the plug-in interface in future

I think he means having scripting support and not so much plugins which need C/Delphi programming skill to compile into a dll.

It's quite easy to implement scripting, like Lua for example, is a popular scripting language.

I code in C# and you can actually execute C# script at runtime and even allow it access to internal objects as well as access to the huge library of .NET namespaces all from a script. This can add heaps of flexibility to an application like my new engine which has C# scripting capabilities So for C# this is pretty much built in but for a Delphi app like MaLa there would be libraries that would allow you to do this. Do a search on Google for "lua script delphi".

I believe AtomicFE has some sort of scripting available but the thing is, very few people will actually take the time to learn it unless it's a familiar or easy to learn language like C/VB/Lua rather than some propietry language. I don't know what scripting language Atomic uses but apart from Youki I doubt there would be alot of people using it; correct me if I'm wrong here Youki. And I don't really expect many people to be using scripting in my engine either, but having the capability there is always nice. If it's alot of work to implement in Delphi it might not be worth the effort, but I don't know how popular it would be. Sometimes the biggest problem is writing the documentation on how it works which is what I think was Youki's main problem with scripting in Atomic. People can't script when they have no idea how it works or how to implement it (ie. No documentation).

And now we can expect Khameleon to have this feature soon after Cake reads this I have to remember to release my engine before I give away too many of it's cool features

[mmalficia]

well to be honest i didn't title the post with reviews  cause i felt a bit shameful  doing that  if  i was going to give a full tilt review of everyone  it would of  only been fair  to hit the  WIKI one by one n spend a few days  with each  FE. I Really dint want to influence any end users one way or another  each FE has  its  use and high points  really  ..  this was more aimed at  the authors for what features a newbie found  most helpful /cool   and were  i had issues.  BUT given the suggestion for topic change and  everything ide agree this should be moved but  i dint think that's  something  i can do  here  is it ?   :> 

loadman:  i was in no way dissing Mala's plugin language more  my lack of  devotion  to learning  C or Delphi   .. most of  the stuff i needed  to do i could  write  auto-hotkey scripts for  but  that's just a cheap hack to myself personally.  But Headkaze is right  i was  just personally noteing that  some form of  scripting language is  way more accessible to allot of people including myself. but that was  just a personal wish not  a  judgment or anything  i can perfectly  understand  using a plugin language  the app is written in.

But i think Headkaze  is also right in the fact  that very few people would  use it anyways   i have some background in that kind of stuff  so i feel a bit more comfortable  with it  ..ie in my setup  theres allot  of actual PC software   running  most of the time there needs to be special keys  or keystrokes (media remote) way more  than the ipac  without  shift  could handle in one set  so i wrote  some  tools  that would  work  to  load  cfgs  based on ROM passed from mala  to the ipac  ) i actually looked at  writing  a  plugin  but after spending a week trying to wrap my head around Delphi  i realised i just could of scripted the damn thing already ... 

wow!!...i'm impressed how deep you explored the layout editor.  I had never talk or documented (in fact i have never documented the entire layout editor yet ) this feature!
I thought nobody would use that!!!

I hope you will have time to review Atomic 0.20 when it will be released! 

well its a really  elegant and simple solution that I'm surprised more people haven't found yet ,  i Realize 99% of the folks i read about  are primarily  interested in running  Mame and leave it at that. But in a scenario were  Mame isn't the priority  that is  pure heaven since  there is no set standard info  to use  ..

Ive  committed myself to finishing  this build and  Mala was  what i stuck with    BUT  i have to admit   folks went lying  about  the fact  its like some twisted disease  I'm not even done yet  and I'm already thinking about  "if i only  done this  different" or  man wouldn't it be cool to do that...      eesh   

so odds are  ill  be looking around again  in the near future  long as  i can talk the  Lass into maybe  "cough" converting the sun room :>   

Mmal

[youki]

I believe AtomicFE has some sort of scripting available but the thing is, very few people will actually take the time to learn it unless it's a familiar or easy to learn language like C/VB/Lua rather than some propietry language. I don't know what scripting language Atomic uses but apart from Youki I doubt there would be alot of people using it; correct me if I'm wrong here Youki. And I don't really expect many people to be using scripting in my engine either, but having the capability there is always nice. If it's alot of work to implement in Delphi it might not be worth the effort, but I don't know how popular it would be. Sometimes the biggest problem is writing the documentation on how it works which is what I think was Youki's main problem with scripting in Atomic. People can't script when they have no idea how it works or how to implement it (ie. No documentation).

My Script Engine don't use a proprietary language. It is based VBScript , it is very well documented by Microsoft.    I have just added a bunch of  functions to VBScript to interract with Atomic.
But you're right  the main problem with my scripting is the documentation , i didn't wrote documentation on my "added" API yey.   But i wrote lof of samples. And as my plugins are "open source" you just need the notepad to read the code and modify it. They are very easy to customise.

But where you are wrong is when you say :

but apart from Youki I doubt there would be alot of people using it

I know at least 15 persons that have developped they own plug'ins.  Ok it is not a lot, if you consider the number of Atomic users , but that's  no so bad ,more that i expected. I don't know how much people is developping Mala Plug'ins?.   I have already a bunch of about 40 plug'ins available for Atomic. 
the big advantage i found in a script based plug'ins it is you don't need a development tool to make it , and  mainly , the biggest advantages is that a user can freely modify it!.

The problem i saw with plugin in general , is that most of user are not developper , and don't want to be!      There is few exception of course. 

[headkaze]

I know at least 15 persons that have developped they own plug'ins.  Ok it is not a lot, if you consider the number of Atomic users , but that's  no so bad ,more that i expected. I don't know how much people is developping Mala Plug'ins?.   I have already a bunch of about 40 plug'ins available for Atomic. 
the big advantage i found in a script based plug'ins it is you don't need a development tool to make it , and  mainly , the biggest advantages is that a user can freely modify it!.

The problem i saw with plugin in general , is that most of user are not developper , and don't want to be!      There is few exception of course. 

I didn't realise your scripting engine was part of your plugin system. For some reason I thought of it being somewhat different to plugins (like having random events in a layout for example). I will probably be supporting dll plugins as well scripting though as I think they both have their own benefits. Personally, and this is probably because I'm a developer, I would prefer to write a C#/C++ dll than to write VB script.

[youki]

In fact, my first scripting engine was dedicated to layout.  But later  i enhanced it and  used it for the plug'in system.

[headkaze]

In fact, my first scripting engine was dedicated to layout.  But later  i enhanced it and  used it for the plug'in system.

What sort of plugins have people written in VB script for Atomic? I'd be interested to know what would be possible by a scripting language for a plugin system.

[youki]

I have plug'ins :

To control volume
To list clone and run it
To display control of the game on screen
To display all info of mame game on screen in shape of icones
To shuffle Mp3
To filter list
To speech game name
To display control panel  , marquee, docs etc , on demande
To scroll history of the game on screen.
To switch Mame Artwork.
There is also Arzoo's plugins for LEDWIZ.
Few others are very specific to users. Like recently a user is doing a Gauge to indicate how much freespace left on his SD Card where roms are located.

In addition as with my plug'ins system you can interract with the layout. You can do what you want graphically.

[headkaze]

Some impressive things that VB script can do then. More than I expected, like I didn't think it could control global volume. That is even relatively complex in C++. But I think it has access to the COM interface so it can probably do quite alot. Probably can access Win32 API too.

I don't think the LEDWiz plugin would be possible with just VB script though as it needs to communicate to a dll or ocx. So in that respect I think that is where scripting is limited. When it comes to interopping with dll's or accessing hardware through USB it probably not possible. Arzoo's plugin runs as an executable in the taskbar (I know this because it uses several dll's I've written) so I don't think it is categorised as a VB script type plugin.

Seems strange you haven't added support for dll plugins via LoadLibrary() as it's very easy to write a plugin system in C++. Much easier than adding scripting support, so I don't understand why you didn't do that as well as scripting?

[headkaze]

double post

[youki]

You can not do all this thing with standard VBScript , i have enhanced it with a bunch of function (written in c++)  , to control things in Atomic.  
Like displays sprite for instance ,   ScrollText ,  Fill Atomic Game Lists ..etc..

Look that video, if a WIP of a plugin done by a Atomic user who already made lot of plug'ins.



It is not yet nice, but you can see,  what is possible.

I didn't added DLL support nativly yet , just because i wanted to do something different , and something where you don't need a development tool.  (except the notepad!).
That's also a way for me to better support user. When they ask for something not in standard, i can quickly do a plugin  or at least the base , and give it to him, then he can customise as he want , without the need of development tool or being a "hardcore" developper.

I thought , at one moment, to support Mala plug'in nativly. But, i have more a "moral" problem, is it fair play?   Create my own dll based plug'ins system not compatible with mala, what is really the interrest?  If a guy is able to make a dll plugin he is able to make vbscript plug'ins.
I don't know.   Sure, if i had lot of time, it will be already here i think, but i have not really lot of free time , so i prefer be concentrate on other parts.

[loadman]

loadman:  i was in no way dissing Mala's plugin language more  my lack of  devotion  to learning  C or Delphi   .. most of  the stuff i needed  to do i could  write  auto-hotkey scripts for  but  that's just a cheap hack to myself personally.  But Headkaze is right  i was  just personally noteing that  some form of  scripting language is  way more accessible to allot of people including myself. but that was  just a personal wish not  a  judgment or anything  i can perfectly  understand  using a plugin language  the app is written in.

That's cool.

My view at the moment if the plug-in needs to do a simple task I am happy to start the code for them as a 'proof of concept' then leave it with them to expand if they want. I have done this for a couple of users so far.