I dislike Frontends

[NightScreams]

Very much disliking them. The only one i do like is the MameUI. i have mame plus specifically, is there anyway i can force the UI to show shortcuts to roms to launch other emulators?
For example if i batch file or set a NES rom to open Nestopia...can i somehow link it into Mame's UI?

I like it cause it's stupidly simple, i have a lot of trouble setting up other frontends like Gameex how i like it, plus i can't see the history info plus i have my favorites folder in it setup already. If only i could add shortcuts to other emulators roms, i'd be happy.

[Le Chuck]

Not really I don't think.  The problem is that even if you created a rom that was really an executable to call another emu it wouldn't work when parsed through mame.  Like if you had nestopia.zip all done up when called through mame it wouldn't launch.  That's pretty much why folks created frontends to integrate all that stuff.  There might be a way out there, I'm by no means the end all be all, but I haven't seen one. 

[bearzilla333]

I like GameEx a lot, I don't think its very hard to set up.

[NightScreams]

i don't like how it's setup. i just want a list and pane showing snap and history info below it. I might try Steam big screen mode as launcher and xpadder and see how it goes

[Howard_Casto]

Nearly all front ends are skinnable. 

You make a skin to suit your needs. 


Anything you do right requires hard work. 

[drventure]

Howard's right. There's a lot of different front ends, and just as many ways to set each of them up.

As you've discovered, some frontends offer easy setup, but can't get you where you want to go. Others will be more complex to setup, but will allow you to get to what you're after.

It's a journey. Enjoy the trip. Don't fixate on your destination. After all, once you've learned a few interesting bits, your destination is likely to change anyway.

There's tons of info on many of the frontends out there on the wiki (see the link at the top of this page). Grab a few and play around a bit.


Oh and...

cough cough Mala cough cough

 

[NightScreams]

At this point i think i have tried them all as far as arcade front ends go...except Mala cause the website is always down.  I don't have time to learn creating skins, i got like 2 hours a day to do what i want, if that half the time, i just want to see a list of every rom without all the clicking on categories. So far i have never seen one that showed the mameinfo file. Most of the skins from all of them look either cheezy as heck or tend to be as unproductive as possible. Not really a fan of all the videos, fan art..etc cluttering up the screen either.

Is there at least a way to force GameEx to just display a list of all roms at least without putting them in categories to their respective emulator? Or, Is there a specific skin out there for any Frontend that does that and shows the mameinfo stuff, that's the one i failed to come across.

[Howard_Casto]

I mean this in the nicest possible way.  If you don't have time to make a skin (which should take 20 min, tops) or can't be bothered to make one, then you don't have time for this hobby.

Also, you don't WANT all of the different emulators to be in one big list, I can guarantee you that.  Let's just take street fighter II as an example.  It was released in mame, nearly all mame-like arcade emulators (final burn, ect), the snes, the genesis, ect.......  So that's at least 5 versions of street fighter II in your list, making it extremely confusing as to which one you want to launch.  The same goes for purely arcade emulators.  MAME runs (to some degree anyway) everything.  So if you run antoehr arcade emulator, it is running mame's games, so without special list filtering you are going to get doubles  in your list.  Mame already is a list of 8000+ games, you really don't want to make that list any longer, you want to make it shorter, thus categories. 

What "mame info" stuff?  Are you referring to the reports generated by list xml?  That data is rather worthless in regards to just printing it out.  Several fes make use of it for sorting and you can usually pick and choose what you want printed out, but just displaying it all would be a big mess. 


I would recommend my old fe, it does everything you asked about, but it requires setup and is horribly out of date.

[Gray_Area]

If you want multi-emu support with a MAMEUI-like interface, try Emuloader.

[DaveMMR]

Most of the skins from all of them look either cheezy as heck or tend to be as unproductive as possible. Not really a fan of all the videos, fan art..etc cluttering up the screen either.

Sounds like you looked at Hyperspin or GameEx and automatically thought that ALL frontends must do this, which is not true.

Try MaLa (the website seems to be working fine for me) or what Howard or Gray_Area suggested. As for MaLa (I haven't used the others), it's fairly vanilla unless and until you add layouts and plugins and options.