Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum

Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: steveh on March 12, 2007, 03:10:12 pm

Title: Help With Game Lists
Post by: steveh on March 12, 2007, 03:10:12 pm

I am trying to determine the best Front End to use for my Arcade machine.  I want to have a little bit of every thing on it. 

I breifly messed with GameEx.  Setup a basic mala interface, and now i am playing with mamewah.  The problem that i am having is lists.

what i want to do is have this thing very organized.  so it will be easy to drill down to what you are looking to play.

Right now all i have is a giant list (6000+) mame games in a list,  and a convaluded way to get to a genesis list with another rediculouse list of games (not to mention i still need to setup snes, nes n64... ect)

what i want to be able to do is something like this

The front end comes up. gives you a menu to start
EX:

Mame
Genesis,
SNES
ECT.

From that list you can select any thing you want. for this example we will use MAME

MAME
---   Fighting
       Racing
       Shooting
       USA
       JAP
       ECT

I dont mind if some of the list have dupes, but my goal is for people to be able to find games as easy as possible

What would be the best FE to do this, how can i make and manage the lists easly (i know using catver.ini (i think)  it can do some sorting.  but ill be dammed if i can figure it out)

I at this point i dont really have a preference of one fe over another. 

For Emulators, what i would like to do is make a list of games in a specific folder IE
In my Genesis roms folder.  there is a folder labled USA, JAP, World.  Ect 

Title: Re: Help With Game Lists
Post by: Dustin Mustangs on March 12, 2007, 04:18:15 pm

You can do that with pretty much any of them.  I am personally pretty fond of MaLa's built in gamelist editor.  Here is a brief rundown on it:

http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/malagamelist.html 

Title: Re: Help With Game Lists
Post by: Dustin Mustangs on March 12, 2007, 04:20:40 pm

Oh, and check out the MaLa 'tree' function too.  With how you described things it sounds like you might want to make use of that also.

http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/malatree.html

Title: Re: Help With Game Lists
Post by: loadman on March 12, 2007, 07:17:39 pm

Quote from: Dustin Mustangs on March 12, 2007, 04:20:40 pm

Oh, and check out the MaLa 'tree' function too.  With how you described things it sounds like you might want to make use of that also.

http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/malatree.html

Yes I 2nd that.  The MaLa Tree is the way to go that sort of structure.

(http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/screenshots/menu01.jpg)
(http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/screenshots/malatree01.gif)

Title: Re: Help With Game Lists
Post by: steveh on March 12, 2007, 08:18:27 pm

Ok i am going to try you suggestion. 

The first thing about mala that i am not liking is scrolling in the list.

in mamewah if you hit left or right it would jump up or down a bunch of games.  this one does not do that.  is there any way to make mala do that?

Title: Re: Help With Game Lists
Post by: loadman on March 12, 2007, 08:52:25 pm

Quote from: steveh on March 12, 2007, 08:18:27 pm

Ok i am going to try you suggestion. 

The first thing about mala that i am not liking is scrolling in the list.

in mamewah if you hit left or right it would jump up or down a bunch of games.  this one does not do that.  is there any way to make mala do that?

Yes you can...  ;)

You can jump by Page/ Number of items/ Letters etc

Have a look here:
(http://www.members.optushome.com.au/backwash/s1.JPG)
(http://www.members.optushome.com.au/backwash/s2.JPG)