Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: Sshado on February 04, 2013, 02:04:13 pm

Title: Creating custom front end (where to start?)
Post by: Sshado on February 04, 2013, 02:04:13 pm

I am trying to get back into programming and what works best is having a project.  I decided I wanted to create my own Front End for my arcade.  Problem is that I do not want to "Reinvent the wheel", so is there any open source software out there for Front Ends?  I work best when I have a starting point that I can either add to or re-write).

Anyone have any ideas where to start looking for this?

Thanks!

Title: Re: Creating custom front end (where to start?)
Post by: Gray_Area on February 05, 2013, 01:08:55 pm

Look up the front ends and see whether they are open source. I think at least some are.

Title: Re: Creating custom front end (where to start?)
Post by: shanghaiguide on February 05, 2013, 01:44:39 pm

If you do make something, please make it SDL based. 
Pretty please :)

There are a bunch of open source frontends out there.

Wah!cade, LemonLauncher, GameLauncher, etc.

If you did it SDL based, it would work nicely in a lot of different systems, without being system specific.
PM me if you are interested in collaborating on something i'm currently doing, as I need a decent open source front end too :)

Title: Re: Creating custom front end (where to start?)
Post by: nipsmg on February 05, 2013, 02:09:09 pm

Here's another done in .NET: http://arcadefrontend.codeplex.com/ (http://arcadefrontend.codeplex.com/)

This will likely be windows specific, but you can do cross-platform development in .NET using Mono and SDLDOTNET/Tao and other cross-platform graphics libraries for .NET.

Title: Re: Creating custom front end (where to start?)
Post by: Howard_Casto on February 06, 2013, 08:10:53 am

Quote from: shanghaiguide on February 05, 2013, 01:44:39 pm

If you do make something, please make it SDL based. 
Pretty please :)

There are a bunch of open source frontends out there.

Wah!cade, LemonLauncher, GameLauncher, etc.

If you did it SDL based, it would work nicely in a lot of different systems, without being system specific.
PM me if you are interested in collaborating on something i'm currently doing, as I need a decent open source front end too :)

Way to mention FE's that are almost as old as the hobby.  Seriously, don't start with any of those.  ;)

You are welcome to the source code to any of my old fes, but you'll hate me because they are all written in vb6.  I did one that I never released a couple of years ago called pacFE.  I built a pacman cabinet, so I wanted a really simple fe similar to those xx in 1 boards.

Title: Re: Creating custom front end (where to start?)
Post by: nipsmg on February 07, 2013, 09:39:12 am

Also, if you're a .NET developer (or want to learn .NET) you might want to look at MonoGame: http://monogame.codeplex.com/ (http://monogame.codeplex.com/)

It's an open source implementation of XNA (which is a game dev library for windows / xbox 360). 

From the site:

Quote

What is MonoGame?

MonoGame is an Open Source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4 Framework. Our goal is to allow XNA developers on Xbox 360, Windows & Windows Phone to port their games to the iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux and Windows 8 Metro. Windows Phone 8, OUYA and PlayStation Mobile development is currently in progress.

There's some tutorials on their site. 

Title: Re: Creating custom front end (where to start?)
Post by: mathew_123456 on February 09, 2013, 06:24:24 am

You are more than welcome to go to town on my old project..

http://mercuryfe.codeplex.com/ (http://mercuryfe.codeplex.com/)

Never quite got back around to finishing it. I had thought of rewriting it making it completely web based and O/S independent. I even started - still a fair ways off though. The only reason I thought of going down this path was that both firefox/chrome got joystick support with their latest builds - as well as real full screen. Which O/S doesn't have apache, PHP, mysql and firefox.
Still sticking to DB - nothing quite like querying wads of data with a nice bit of SQL!
Ahh life. Why do you always get in the way of living  :)