Help me find and configure an HD frontend!

[Chris BEANS]

** LONG POST, BEAR WITH IT!! **

Hey all, I'm looking for some help and advise on setting up a frontend for use with my HD TV.

Just a little background for context.... I'm not a complete noob, to emulation and frontends, but I am very out of the loop.

The plan has always been, since I first learned of emulation, to build a MAME cab. I've built a stick before, and always knobbed about with emulators but there's no chance I'll be building a cab anytime soon. Life's gotten in the way and I've had to improvise.
I've got no room for a stand alone cab, and no longer have access to the tools to build it anyway.

So instead I've decided to run emulators on the TV.

I think running emulators on HD TV's/monitors is going to become more and more common and if I can get everything sorted it's my intention to create a step by step guide from everything gained in this thread so other idiots like me can do it easily from scratch.


What I want *subject to change as the thread evolves!*

• I intend to play emulated games on the TV from the sofa with a wireless game pad.
• My intention is to run the frontend from the same PC I use every day for general use.
• To launch the frontend from the sofa via wireless keyboard and once the frontend is loaded I'd like it entirely controlled by a gamepad.
• The frontend will only run NES, SNES, Megadrive and MAME.
• The 'theme' or 'layout' has to be quite minimalist.
• I'd like a brief game video to show for each game, not too fussed about integrating things like history.dat unless it can be done neatly and looks good on the big TV
• If possible, to show high scores from the frontend
• Custom game lists within emulators (Eg. Rather than simply having 200 odd MAME roms in alphabetical order, I'd like a separate list for genres and in some cases franchises too. So maybe a screen that lists all SHMUPS, then a screen that lists all Metal Slug games in chronological order, and a screen that lists all legit SF games in chronological order, then another screen again for all SF bootlegs and hacks.
• The frontend MUST be optimised to look good at 1920 x 1080.
• High score support
• To be able to exit the game back to the frontend via the game pad (This might be tricky, as with MAME all the buttons on the pad do something. Is it possible to have exit set to multiple button presses that you simply wouldn't do in game, like both shoulder buttons and the start button at the same time for example)
• Games to look as authentic as possible. I KNOW that the only way to get games looking authentic is to run them on a CRT, but we've already established that's not an option right now

What I have

The PC the frontend will run on is an i5-3570k @ 3.40GHz, 8 gig of RAM with a GTX 670 2 gig.

The pad is a madcatz wireless fightpad (This is the only wireless pad I could find that is perfect for playing Megadrive games, six button arcade titles and SNES games, other wireless pads don't have the six face buttons needed to play SF properly)
This is also the reason I won't be using other emulators like ePSXe or PJ64, as they can't be played properly with the Madcatz pad and I want the wole thing to be tidy and seamless. I may well setup another instance of the same frontend  up to cater for these emu's and controlled by a wireless 360 pad.

As well as the wired keyboard on the PC, I also have a smaller wireless keyboard that lives on the table next to the sofa to easily control the PC from there too.

The graphics card is hooked up to the PC monitor on the desk via DVI and also to the 40 inch TV via HDMI. It's set up as a duplicate screen NOT a second screen so there is no loss in performance when running current games.

The sound from the PC can be changed from PC speakers to TV speakers with a single click via a batch file mounted on the task bar. (Very easily done and I'll include instructions in the step by step guide, but I'll happily post them here if anyone's interested)


The emu's I'll be using are MAME 0.141 that I compiled myself to have no nag screens and high score support (no idea how anymore, but I'm pretty sure it was from a thread here somewhere and I'll post how in the step by step guide), Nestopia 1.40, Fusion 3.64 and Zsnes 1.51.
All are set up to run at 1920 x 1080, at correct aspect ratio with scanlines and vsync. It took a fair bit of tinkering to get all of them to look and play exactly as I'd like at 1080, and if anyone's interested I'll obviously post all the config options.
They're all also set up to work authentically with the pad.

What I can put in, what I can't do, and other relevant information...

This is a hobby so I'm willing to put in all the time and effort needed. There's no rush here but obviously the sooner it's all done the better

I'm more than happy to spend a few quid or as much as needed, whether it be for the frontend, or emumovies or whatever but I'm currently pretty flexible and realistic, the more I spend the more I'll want it to be perfect!

I have ZERO artistic abilities nor access to graphics programs so any 'themes' or 'layouts' will have to be pre-existing but hopefully flexible enough to meet my vision.

I really like the RetroGUI layout on Mala, something similar or an HD version might be a good starting place, but is this flexible enough to meet the above intentions?

I've looked at a few frontends, and although I'm willing to try them all, I think hyperspin is too camp and showy. I'm after something simple, minimalist, even classy looking if possible.

When I first learned of emulations (a surprisingly long time ago now!!) I was obsessed with having full sets and every version of every game.
Since I've grown up I realised that all that means is you have a huge and cumbersome library of crap games that you never play.
As such I've trimmed my library down to simply the games I know and love and a few I've discovered via MAME, so it's not a vast library we're dealing with here.

I will absolutely certainly ask stupid obvious questions that I could probably google. I know it's annoying, but my intention with this thread is to have all the information in one place and at the end I'll type up a decent step by step guide guide with pics and videos by way of giving a contribution back to the community here. Please bear with me but of course if I'm being a dumbass feel free to say "Stop being a dumbass! Dumbass"

All help and advise gratefully received and thanks in advance