Any 100% customizable front ends? change font, use jpegs etc?

[marioxb]

What I want to do is create a custom launcher that can re-create PlayChoice 10 games on MAME and or an NES emu EXACTLY as they were in the arcade, since MAME only emulates one game at a time. I already created game selection pngs that look kinda like this:



for all 52 known games. I even made ten different images for each "set of 10" that has a different game selected (white text). I was hoping to use the channel select button on the cab to flip between each png and when the chosen game is highlighted, the enter button would fire it up on my 2nd monitor, maybe running an NES emu on a different PC or XBOX.

If that's not possible, can I somehow have that "blank" PlayChoice background and have a custom font that is exactly like the playchoice font and behaves the same way as the arcade machine?

I will also look into an external coin operated timer that adds 5 minutes for each coin inserted, and then pauses the NES emu and disables the start and select buttons after time runs out, until another coin is deposited.

[DrChek]

This could be done in MaLa by setting up each "page" of ten as a different game list, and using your images with each game selected as the "snap" image associated with each game.

[marioxb]

Thank you so much! I will give that a try!

[DrChek]

Thank you so much! I will give that a try!

Let me know if you need any help.

[drventure]

There's also some great bitmap style fonts over on dafont.com

You might be able to use them with Mala and not have to rely on hand created images of all the lettering.

[marioxb]

Hmm, ok. Do you know if there is any way to remove all of Mala's text and just use my images? Transparent menu text maybe?

[DrChek]

Hmm, ok. Do you know if there is any way to remove all of Mala's text and just use my images? Transparent menu text maybe?

You need to build a custom layout using the malalayout.exe. In there you can turn on/off and resize/position all the elements. There is a wiki that has the basics of layout creation.

Edit: http://wiki.arcadecontrols.com/wiki/Mala_Wiki

[marioxb]

I tried it out, worked exactly as I had hoped. Thanks! Is there any way to change the UI buttons in Mala, such as pressing something other than 1 to start a game? Also, can you run more than one emulator together on the same page, like Duck Hunt via mame, press down to play Actraiser via SNES9x, etc? I haven't had a chance to check the wiki yet.