I couldn't find a front end I liked, so I build one I liked.

[sandheaver]

As the subject says, I couldn't find a front-end I liked, so this afternoon I wrote my own.

I really doubt I'll release this; it's hard-coded for my family's favorite games, but I wanted to show this to folks who know arcades and are willing to share their thoughts.

To that end, please assume that the front-end is finished when coming up with critiques, suggestions, and whatever else you'd like to say.  It's not finished, but I'm not about to list all the things I already know about, so just assume I don't know about them and let me know what you think.

If you are going to be mean, please do not post.  I am uninterested in being on the receiving end of needless anger.

[keilmillerjr]

It's simple and not ugly. 

[mike boss]

I think that  thumbnail style layout is pretty awesome.
Has a Netflix like look to it.
I'd love to see where you take that, or what can be done to it.
A cool background would be awesome.

Not sure if you've seen the custom MaLa stuff I do.
Anyway..........keep up the awesome work.

[TopJimmyCooks]

Simple and to the point.  good work.  I like it. 

[ccmathome]

Looks a bit like the 60in1 PCB frontend

Sent from my SCH-M828C using Tapatalk 2

[edekoning]

Looks exactly like the 'top 10 favorites' window from mGalaxy, although I believe that one only shows images:

http://www.mgalaxy.com/features.html (lower right corner)

[Ignorance]

I was going to ask if it was WPF - it looks very much like a Windows 8 Metro application.

Most frontends are built for very large collections across multiple platforms (ie Arcade, SNES, Master System etc.) so you don't get many that are flat like yours is. It's simple, clean and functional, which really is the all that matters.

[Ignorance]

And I'm in the same boat, but Maximus Arcade was close to the sort of thing I was looking for. I made my own based on that design -

[mike boss]

I'd love to see if you do anything with this, I like it.
I'd like to see just some detail in the background, branding if you will.

[yotsuya]

Honest feedback: Too plain for my tastes. I like something that's stylistic and jumps off the screen. It DOES seem very functional, however. If it works for you and your family, that's all that matters. 

[mike boss]

I'd contribute an image to punch up the background should you be interested.
Do you think you will release this ?

[sandheaver]

I'd contribute an image to punch up the background should you be interested.
Do you think you will release this ?

Not sure.  Maybe.  If I think someone else could make use of it, then I would definitely consider releasing it.

Currently, everything is hard-coded.  I need to generate the controls dynamically from a list in an external file, rather than compiling all that into a binary.  Additionally, I need to implement categories and paging, to support more games.  Playing movies at that scale won't really work, though, unless I find a way to automate the generation of the movie files by the end user.

I was going to ask if it was WPF - it looks very much like a Windows 8 Metro application.

Most frontends are built for very large collections across multiple platforms (ie Arcade, SNES, Master System etc.) so you don't get many that are flat like yours is. It's simple, clean and functional, which really is the all that matters.

It's WPF, but yeah, it looks like Win8.  It's a full-screen borderless non-resizeable WPF window.  This app will run on Win7, as-is.  Implementing systems, categories and games is easily done with this framework.  Not as easy as "Metro"/"Modern"/"Windows Store" style UI, but pretty simple.

I might experiment with a Win8 "Metro" style version; it's easy to bind controls to lists in there.  It would remove a lot of code I have planned for the Win7 version.

Looks a bit like the 60in1 PCB frontend

How DARE you!!  Now I have to change everything!    I hate that interface quite completely.

I'd love to see if you do anything with this, I like it.
I'd like to see just some detail in the background, branding if you will.

I agree, I just haven't come up with anything for that, yet.  I'm a programmer, not so much of a designer.  Accordingly, all of my apps have a very utilitarian feel, sometimes with some UI touches that were easy to implement.  If anything, I'll just make that background configurable via external config file, if I release.  The copy I run will probably always have a gray background.

[Gray_Area]

Looks a bit like the 60in1 PCB frontend

How DARE you!!  Now I have to change everything!    I hate that interface quite completely.

I like it. Yours is basically the same with a different color background and movies instead of snaps. The latter bit of which is cooler of course.

  If anything, I'll just make that background configurable via external config file, if I release.

Yeah, gray (in this sort of case) is kind of late 90s-ish. I would at least do purple. But yeah configurable is required. Some will then ask for video background like in GameEx, just to let you know.

[sandheaver]

Yeah, gray (in this sort of case) is kind of late 90s-ish. I would at least do purple. But yeah configurable is required. Some will then ask for video background like in GameEx, just to let you know.

Well, I might release it, but I'm not going to support it.  If someone wants [insert feature] then they're going to have to implement it.  C# is not hard to learn and WPF is easier still, at least for the stuff I'm doing.  Anyone sufficiently motivated will be able to do with it as they please.

[Gray_Area]

wrong thread

[rtkiii]

If I had not spent $20 on Game Ex I would love this one.  So simple and easy to use.  I think most of the front ends are cool but they are just far too complicated to setup IMHO.  I learned it fine but to me this FEs should be way easier to use for the common person.  To me yours looks to be easy enough to configure but who knows    Nice work nonetheless!

[sandheaver]

If I had not spent $20 on Game Ex I would love this one.  So simple and easy to use.  I think most of the front ends are cool but they are just far too complicated to setup IMHO.  I learned it fine but to me this FEs should be way easier to use for the common person.  To me yours looks to be easy enough to configure but who knows    Nice work nonetheless!

Thank you.  Most recently, I was working on a settings panel where you can chop out great swaths of supported ROMs and just show what you want to see.  Check boxes & Radio Buttons for just about everything.  Vertical/Horizontal, joystick/trackball/spinner, or buttons only, genre(s), resolution, framerate, emulation status, number of players/buttons, directions on joystick if joystick is chosen, etc.

That way, if you use my FE for a cabinet, you can just change the settings to match the controls for your cabinet and never worry about seeing anything you can't play.  Street Fighter just won't show up, ever, on a vertical cabinet.  this is not an uncommon feature, but I wanted to take it further and give the ability to restrict to 4-way joysticks, for example, or only show games where the screen flips for player 2, as would be done in a cocktail cabinet.

[Aceisback]

Is this FE just for Mame, or do you have it setup to work with other emulators?

I know that you are working on the other No FE FE project, but could this FE somehow be tied in with your other project? Might be kinda nice to have a simple FE like this one available for those who want it, and then have the option to hide or disable it and use the other method at will ?

Kind of the best of both worlds if my above statement makes sense?

I really like the simplicity of the one in your video.

[sandheaver]

Is this FE just for Mame, or do you have it setup to work with other emulators?

I know that you are working on the other No FE FE project, but could this FE somehow be tied in with your other project? Might be kinda nice to have a simple FE like this one available for those who want it, and then have the option to hide or disable it and use the other method at will ?

Kind of the best of both worlds if my above statement makes sense?

I really like the simplicity of the one in your video.

I still have this one, but I need to learn more about data binding in WPF before I can make it into what I want it to be.  So, in the nofefe project I have this routine which you can use to weed out games which won't work on your cabinet, and it works great.  I need to put that into a DLL that I can use for both projects.  Then, I'll create a settings page for this FE and use a very similar mechanism to filter out games you don't want listed within this FE.  That will create a list at runtime which can then be used to populate the selection screens. 

The advantage of doing it this way is that you can have a bit of intelligence in the way you display the games; it can be fully dynamic, in whatever way you want.  That's not a hard thing to do once you've got your hands on the list of games, but so few front-ends that I've played with actually do this.  I want the games I play most to be listed first.  I want favorites to show on a separate page or list.  I want to be able to check a checkbox and have the FE launch right into a random game of the day from whatever pool of games (favorites, 10 most played, random) I want.

Other FEs have done very good jobs at making themselves look attractive, but really, this doesn't even scratch the surface of what a front-end should be doing. 

A front-end should at least partially customize itself to the user, rather than the user customizing the front-end to themselves.  I need to learn more about WPF and databinding to make that happen, so this front-end is on hold.

Edit: oh, right now this is MAME & MESS only.

[Malenko]

wow, all my replies got purged? for shame. I found it hilarious the forum tells me I have new replies to a post, go to the thread and not have any posts 

If you can make this thing spit out mlg files for MaLa it'd be great.

[sandheaver]

wow, all my replies got purged? for shame. I found it hilarious the forum tells me I have new replies to a post, go to the thread and not have any posts 

If you can make this thing spit out mlg files for MaLa it'd be great.

This would not be difficult if I could find something that describes the .mlg format.  MaLa is freeware, but not open source, so I can't peek inside legally and see how that's working.

[BadMouth]

wow, all my replies got purged? for shame. I found it hilarious the forum tells me I have new replies to a post, go to the thread and not have any posts 

If you can make this thing spit out mlg files for MaLa it'd be great.

This would not be difficult if I could find something that describes the .mlg format.  MaLa is freeware, but not open source, so I can't peek inside legally and see how that's working.

If it's something you are interested in, there is an application that converts the .mlg format to plain text and back again.
(mlgconverter.exe)
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,101104.0.html

In that post, the author also mentions that he learned about the .mlg format through looking at the source code of NOP's Romlister program
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

[sandheaver]

wow, all my replies got purged? for shame. I found it hilarious the forum tells me I have new replies to a post, go to the thread and not have any posts 

If you can make this thing spit out mlg files for MaLa it'd be great.

This would not be difficult if I could find something that describes the .mlg format.  MaLa is freeware, but not open source, so I can't peek inside legally and see how that's working.

If it's something you are interested in, there is an application that converts the .mlg format to plain text and back again.
(mlgconverter.exe)
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,101104.0.html

In that post, the author also mentions that he learned about the .mlg format through looking at the source code of NOP's Romlister program
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

This helps.  I thought for a second that he had a .net mala list library, but it looks like that's just the Delphi.exe again.  Which, in a pinch, will work.

It would be pretty trivial to just export the .ini and let the end user generate the .mlg file from that (they could edit it in between.)

I'm at work now, but when I get home I'll see about making this happen.