Le Chuck, any chance you could post the HTML files and MAME setting.ini file you are using? I've installed the HTMLFE, but am only having limited success with it. Thanks!
With all the develompent I forgot to write a simple tutorial. To be fair I had written one but a lot things have changed since then
The general idea is this:Each entry of the carousel is a directory inside emulators directory of default640x480. Inside you place a png image with excactly the same name with the directory
(be carefull with lowercase and uppercase at least for Linux). Also place picture with the name marquee.png. This will be the title displayed when you rotate the carousel. Last but not least place a settings.ini file. In this file you write all the settings of whta the FE must do when selecting an item
(emulator) of the carousel
An example:Suppose we installed mame to the directory
C:/mame. We copied all the roms to
C:/mame/roms, all the image previews to
C:/mame/snaps and all the video previews to
c:/mame/videosStep 1Go to emulatros directory of default640x480 theme. Create a directory with the name, lets say MAME. Inside this directory place a png image with the name MAME.png. This image will be displayed on the carousel. Also place an image with the name marquee.png. This will be the title displayed when we rotate the carousel to our new emulator
Now go to the main settings.ini file
(this is the file which came along with the main executable, HTMLFrontEnd.exe). Go to the [ALLOWED PROGRAMS] section and add an entry with exactly the same name with the directory you just created. For our example we add an entry with the name MAME. Then write the full path of the main executable of the emulator, like the following
MAME = C:/mame/mame.exe
If you use mame64 you must write
MAME = C:/mame/mame64.exe
and so on
Step 2Go to the directory of the emulator you created and create a settings.ini file. Open the file and write the following
[SETTINGS]
ROM = {FILE}
ROMPATH = C:/mame/roms/
ROMEXT = *.zip
COMMAND = \"{rom}\"
WAIT = yes
ROMSNAPS = C:/mame/snaps/
ROMINTROS = C:/mame/videos/
Explanation:The first command
ROM = {FILE}
tells to the FE that we like to list all the files with the ROMEXT extention, inside ROMPATH directory
With the command
ROMPATH = C:/mame/roms/
you provide the full path of roms directory. Meaning where the roms are located.
Attention: Don't forget the last /
The command
ROMEXT = *.zip
tells the FE to search and list only the files with the extention zip
(don't forget the *)Now, The command
COMMAND = \"{rom}\"
tells the FE what parameters to provide to the emulator. In this case the FE will replace the {rom} prefix with the actual selected game from the list. So, if for example we select 1942, then FE will run the emulator with the following parameters
mame.exe "1042.zip"
(Note: it will include the rompath too)Nottice the double quotes. If we had written COMMAND = {rom} the double quotes would have not be included. Sometimes double quotes are importand especially in Windows
If we want to provide more parameters we separate them with a comma
For example to tell to dosbox to run in fullscreen mode we must provide the -fullscreen parameter and to exit when close the game we must provide the -exit parameter. In this case we must write in our settings.ini file
COMMAND = {rom},-exit,-fullscreen
(for DOSBox)The next command
WAIT = yes
tells to the FE to wait until we close the emulator
(finish playing the game)The last two commands are providing the full paths of the image previews
(ROMSNAPS) and the video previews
(ROMINTROS)Notiice that image previews must have the extention .png and video previews the extention .mp4
(this is due to the fact we use html5 to play video in the Linux version, but in the feature I will add an option to select between avi and mp4)That's it!
We are done with our firt emulator setup.
When you download the default640x480 theme you will nottice that there are some emulators already fixed. This is to help you out. You need to change only the paths
Now there are more things to tell about the settings as there are more options
But I will discuss those in a new post or edit this one