The NEW Build Your Own Arcade Controls
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: raph on April 27, 2017, 03:39:05 pm
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I could use opinions on organization of front-end menus, and info on how others have done it.
I'm a professional game designer, so my interest in my cab is split between nostalgia, desire to have something fun in the house, and research purposes. Because of this, my cab is actually titled "Press Start: Emulating Videogame History." It also means that I have crammed quite a lot of platforms into the cab -- it's not at all an "arcade purist" cabinet -- and also run fairly uncurated lists.
But this leaves me with interesting dilemmas as far as how to organize the menus. Until now, I have run like this:
Favorites
- lots of fave lists under each platform
Arcade
- genre lists
- DICE for integrated circuit
- a classics list for key 70s-80s games
- LaserDisc
Atari
- 2600
- 5200
- 7800
- 8 bit
- Lynx
- Jaguar
Apple
- II
- IIgs
- B&W Mac
ColecoVision
Nintendo
etc
So, sort of a manufacturer organizing principle, except for arcade, which uses genre.
Now that I am finally fleshing out stuff like the early console generations with things like Odyssey 1, Odyssey 2, Telstar, Channel F, Astrocade, etc, if I stick with this my top list will be huge and not that friendly.
So: I'm contemplating things like
- embrace the historical thing and do it by year or generation. But then casual cab users can't find anything; my kids don't know what was a fifth versus sixth gen console. Not sure *I* do, if I am looking for something specific.
- do it by company for home games, and keep arcade the same, but collapse lesser known platforms like Channel F and Astrocade under a catch-all "Other early consoles." Arcade really doesn't lend itself to this, of course.
- do it by platform type. Like: Arcade, Home Computer, Handheld, Console... and then split below that into one of the other methods.
- going insane and doing ALL of them... by having the top menu show "Chronological" "By Manfacturer" "By Market Type" -- and then building out all the trees under all of them (I'm crazy, right? :dizzy:)
- some other organizing principle I can't think of
Lastly... I know some of this can be done using front-end filters. But only "sort of," and filters in MaLa, which is what I am using, aren't the greatest UX either.
Opinions? I've attached a few examples of snaps and art bits I have assembled for the layouts to date.
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Keep it simple stupid "kiss" is a good method you need here. Why would you have non arcade games on an arcade? Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should. Grab a raspberry pi and a composite cam border cable for console games. You will be glad you made the split. Stick with a particular console, genre, favorites. Having everything will overwhelm you. I have a 142 game neo geo library emulated on my mvs, and it's a lot.