MAMEWAH review by SirPoonga, Overall rank 7.0 out of 10

[SirPoonga]

Over the next couple of weeks when I get chances I will be installing diffferent frontends and reviewing them.  I will probably make a webpage with my reviews sometime in the future.

Since this is my first review I will tell you the criteria I look for in an FE designed to be in cabinets:
Looks, must not look like windows.  I.E. be full screen without windows style buttons or toolbars.
Easy to navigate.  It must only utilize a 1 player JAMMA setup to navigate.  More than that is fine for setup.
Must support mame entirely.  At least be able to run mame with otpions and support multiple rom paths.
Since a cabinet is great to play with friends, party features are nice and will help the FE rank higher.  Like random play, easily create custom lists, easy to navigate, keeping stats on what you play, etc.
Another option that would be a bonus but isn't important is mouse navigation.  Using a lightgun to navigate the FE would be cool and therefore giving the FE a higher ranking.
Setup can be complicated, as long as I can get it work without referring to the readme too much.
Support for catver.ini is a bonus.

Basically, as long as the FE doesn't feel like you are on a computer but instead on an arcade machine it will rank average.
And with the weight I give some criteria it will be tough for any FE to rank a perfect 10, except my custom one  FYI, I will not be releasing it.  Unfortunately production has stopped on it.  My friend I was working on it with has become very busy and my arcade cabinet has been converted to linux for the controls.dat project.  I do plan on making another FE in the future using SDL so it is cross platform.  I really need a nice FE for my linux box.



Today's frontend is MAMEWAH.

Installation:
Not too bad.  I downloaded the "MAMEWAH v0.954b! (Complete 2.33MB)".  Well, it wasn't complete.  I found out I needed the Classic Layout or any layout in order to see what I was doing in the FE.

Setup:
Mamewah can be setup with the menu system in the front end.  Cool feature.
After reading the readme to find out the keys needed to navigate around setting up mamewah is pretty easy.
It didn't seem llike there was a default mame setting or a default off any other emulator settings that you can use to make the FE usuable "right out of the door".  So configuring is needed.
One thing to note, the readme says:

'Emulator Name' - this defaults to 'M.A.M.E.' for M.A.M.E. or the .exe name of any other emulator

[iwillfearnoevil]

nice review. screenshots might be cool if you end up archiving these on your website. even just general shots found on the FE's website if you can't get screenshots of your setup.

[SpamMe]

I like mamerola's feature of keeping track of popluar games.  In my custom FE I implemented this as a list which also listed them in order of last played.  Great party feature.

You can set up custom popularity lists (frequency of play or time played) in one of the new versions, not sure which one offhand.

[SirPoonga]

I like mamerola's feature of keeping track of popluar games.  In my custom FE I implemented this as a list which also listed them in order of last played.  Great party feature.

You can set up custom popularity lists (frequency of play or time played) in one of the new versions, not sure which one offhand.

Cool.  Like I said, I haven't played around with the custom list stuff yet.  I will probably modify the review after using it more.  Unfortunately I won't have much time for awhile.

[Minwah]

A fair review I think.  I would like to point out a couple of things about the installation tho...the 'update' is offered for existing users so they do not have to download a new installer.  I (seemingly wrongly) assumed that new users would all download the v0.962 update, which does NOT require layouts.zip (hence I removed the instruction to download this from the site).

The fact that you only had the 'old' version meant that the readme was also old (although it does state 'NOTE: THIS DOCUMENTATION IS INTENDED FOR MAMEWAH v0.90!  SOME PARTS MAY STILL APPLY TO v0.953b, BUT PLEASE SEE 'WHATSNEW.TXT' FOR DETAILS OF CHANGES - MUCH OF THIS README WILL NOW BE OBSOLETE!').  The latest version is included with the v0.962 update.

That said, it could do with being easier.

SirP's suggestions:

Multiple ROM Paths: I will add
Windows flash-up: I don't think I get this, but I will check it out
History.dat: probably not (yet anyway), IMO this is more suited to a desktop machine than cabinet
Controls.dat: definately, including similar filters to the current 'Input Type' ones
Keycodes: agreed, but it is not difficult to just remap the key if in any doubt

I don't agree with 'However since it is just an FE in windows all it really needs to support for arcadevga is 640x480'.  Many AVGA users are not happy running at 640x480 because of the interlace flicker.  If you saw it running at say 368x240, you wouldn't go back to high-res

Glad you liked the running and look of the FE anyway - these are most important to me too

[SirPoonga]

MinWah.  Yeah, I might have misread or misinterpretted the downloads page.  I thought the update was to update old version to the current and that complete download was the current version.
Still, that's alot of downloading

Again, it is an above average FE.  I'd use it with the addition of a couple of features.

BTW, what libraries are you using for graphics?  You are doing this in c++, right?

[Odonadon]

Hey,

As a mamewah lover, I just thought I'd add my 2

[Bill_S]

As a fellow cult follower of MAMEWAH I too would have liked to see it get a higher score.
If those are the things SirPoonga wants to evaluate a piece of software on that's his choice and I think it was fairly done.  I think MAMEWAH would have gotten a better score if there was a complete installer for the latest version at the web site.
To many of us, MAMEWAH provides exactly what we are looking for in a FE and we would score it better for that reason.
No piece of software is going to be everything to everybody, though.

I look forward to seeing reviews of some other front ends.  I'm lazy and the reviews would help me decide what s/w I want to dedicate time to checking out.

[SirPoonga]

I mentioned why I use multiple rom folders.
First, whena  new mame comes out I put updated roms in a seperate folder until I think the roms are worthy enough to overwrite past roms.
Second they are sorta for CD burning/backup.
Third I have games that I have to manually add to mame.  Those are in a seperate folder.
Fourth I said my CHD files are on a different drive so I need multiple rom directories for those games.

On my cabinet I just map the folders over the network.  No use storing that much info in two locations.  A local network is fast enough for me to load games over the network except for the chd files.

Plus you've seen the posts where people sort their roms by drivers.  There are many reasons a person will use more than one rom folder.

Each person manages their roms differently.

[Minwah]

BTW, what libraries are you using for graphics?  You are doing this in c++, right?

VB6 actually - I use PaintX.dll for PNG decoding.

As for the rom folders thing - I personally don't use multiple rom folders, so I guess if I reviewed a FE then it wouldn't be such a priority for me (I probably wouldn't even think about it).  I agree that it is certainly a good feature to include tho.

[eightbit]

I like the idea of reviews but I think you are being overly harsh on this one. Maybe I'm biased because I fell in love with this front end.  You should really try out all the features. If you haven't tried lists yet than you are missing out on a very powerfull and easy to use feature. Also if your going to rate front ends and provide reviews perhaps you shouldn't place so much emphasis on a feature that few people would use such as multiple rom directorys. Though since mamewah supports multiple emulators you can configure it to point at multiple rom directorys that way.

Heres a screenshot of how I have my front end configured using Mrsaltys Classic layout.



On a related note you can get mamewah setup here http://uk.geocities.com/david.butler4@btinternet.com/. Its a program written by DBut to make mamewah configuration even easier.

Edit: cut and past the above link this message board ignores everything after the @.

Edit - link fixed by saint.

[SirPoonga]

I like the idea of reviews but I think you are being overly harsh on this one. Maybe I'm biased because I fell in love with this front end.  You should really try out all the features. If you haven't tried lists yet than you are missing out on a very powerfull and easy to use feature. Also if your going to rate front ends and provide reviews perhaps you shouldn't place so much emphasis on a feature that few people would use such as multiple rom directorys. Though since mamewah supports multiple emulators you can configure it to point at multiple rom directorys that way.

Actually, I wasn't harsh at all.  I said it will be tough to score high because, personally, I don't think there is a perfect FE out there.
And no, there isn't a big emphasis on multiple rom directories.  there are many people that do that.  You ever see how many replies a rom sorting thread gets!
yeah, you could configure multiple rom directories by defining the emulator more than once.  That, however, is not user friendly and means i will not have one list of games or can sort games in hte FE the way I want.

I said I will redo this review once I get the chance to play with more feature.  this is just the initial reaction to the FE.  most of the time you will have to play around with the FE for weeks.  Unfortunately fixing my car from this weekends accident is going to take up all my time this week.  So it will be awhile before I can use all the features.

again, it got above a 5 which means it is a good FE to use.  A 5 will be average, so it will probably satify many people.  4 and below will mean the FE dev better think harder and improve the product.
6 is a very good score with my rating.

These numbers are not official, just predicitons from what I know about the FE now.
Right now Dragon King will probably come in at a 7.  Game Launcher will probably be a 5.  Not sure about JFront, I haven't used it that much.  Going to try and see if in theory it works on my linux machine:)  hmm, what other FEs are out there.  I can give a review of LemonLauncher as I use that on my cabinet.  I've been asked by PFM to not review Emutron as he is coming out with something much better.  I'd give EmuTron a 4, he knows that  Cool frontend, tough to use.  Advmenu, this might get a 5 or a 6, maybe a 7.  mamerola (sp?) will get a 4 or a 5.  i liked it the bit I tried it but I didn't like some of the cofiguration crap.  And I don't like the developer, he wouldn't answer some of my programming questions.  Didn't want to give away his programming secrets I guess.  PartyOn will probably get a 4.  Very nice FE, just alot of futzing.

BTW, Mame32 is a 2.  That is an official number!  If you want something to start basing the results from.  It's a windows GUI, not a cabinet FE.  EmuLoader would probably get a 3 as it has more features than mame32.
arcadeOs will get a 4.  It's old, doesn't live up to todays standards.

so you see, a 6 is pretty good to get right now.  It will improve once I get more time.    I will be reformatting my computer this weekend, i didn't want to lose the review or burn it to a CD hence it being released now.

[papaschtroumpf]

yep doing reviews is hard, especially when everyone is looking for something slightly different in a frontend.
So far I'm very happy with mamewah and I feel I keep discovering new features all the time. I've recently discovered all the list building stuff and it addressed one of my biggest gripes.
I think that the Layout editor is really what got me interested in mamewah in the first place.
To be fair though, I haven't given many other FEs a chance. I tried advanceMenu and din't like it and I'm still not sure what is different between Lazarus and Dragon King and if my video card (ATI Rage Pro) can handle them so I've never tried them, although I may sometime...

[SirPoonga]

yep doing reviews is hard, especially when everyone is looking for something slightly different in a frontend.
So far I'm very happy with mamewah and I feel I keep discovering new features all the time.

Yep.  I editted the first thread with my scale.
6 is not a low number.
5 is the FE is what you will need for your cabinet.  Basic fullscreen FE that lists the games.  The essentials.  6 and above means it is a good FE because it goes above and beyond what you need.

Also I was a software tester at IBM.  This is the type of scale I am use to.  Anything above average is pretty damn good.  Most things end up near average.

I tried advanceMenu and din't like it and I'm still not sure what is different between Lazarus and Dragon King and if my video card (ATI Rage Pro) can handle them so I've never tried them, although I may sometime...

That's actually why i haven't installed DK yet.  I run lazarus on my computer right now and it is setup perfectly.  I have a ATI 128 also.  HC uses his ATI 128 and me to beta test 128 support.

BTW, i will not be reviewing Lazarus.  It's obsolete.  I'd give it a 7.  it's not an 8 because it's  a pain to setup and take the average user a learning curve to understand virtual directories.  I did make a virdirs manager for HC.  It's a little out of date now.  That should be updated and released for DK.  It helps out alot.

[eightbit]

Hmmm, I guess I don't see the point of a scale of 1-10 if there is no 10? At least there should be a 9 representing the best thats currently available with 10 being even better. So I can't really debate Sirp's scoring untill he scores a front end higher.

I think one of the critical review factors should be whether or not it actually works. I have tried many front ends and many never worked either or weren't stable. Thats why I kept going back to mame32 because you can say as many bad things about it as you want but doggone it, it simpy works!

Sirp keep the reviews coming. Don't take my disagreements as critizism. I applaud you taking the time to hang this out there. It would be really cool if we could come up with a list of standard criteria then more people could do reviews and come up with average scores. Hey it could happen, look at controls.dat many people never thought that would get past being a really cool idea.

Another review criteria that mamewah should get extra points for should be support. I know everybody developing fe's is doing it for free so you can't blame them if some are more interested in developing it than helping people use it. Minwah has followed up on questions that I've asked and if you look at the many recent mamewah threads you'll see he is very active at problem resolution. He is also very open to suggestions.

Oh yeah, have I mentioned yet how biased I am because I simply fell in love with this front end and if it could do joystick input without joytokey it would be a perfect 10 in my imaginary review. It would be my measuring stick to compare other front ends to. Though I guess that would be a feature that would be cool to me because one of my cabs has a hacked gamepad and other people might think it totally irrelevant to them.

[SirPoonga]

I understand that 8bit.  it's all opinions anyway.  but an Fe will never be perfect.  There's always ways to improve it.  Like adding a feature that allows friends to have pin number and they get their custom layout.
There's alot of things we haven't thought of yet I'm sure.

Also, I am comparing these to what I expect to see which is different than others.

As PMF requested  I not review his FE as it actually didn't come out the way he expected.  PFM, don't be embarrased about it, it was a cool idea that no one has done before.  Have a scripting language is cool, just limited amount of people will have patience (sp?) to learn it.  Even die hard Emutron users that think it is the best FE ever.

So, just take these reviews as guides on what FEs are worth trying.

8bit, yeah, being able to run and configure is a big variable I look at.  Lazarus doesn't get lower because of that because my lazarus ran upon first config and it took me 5 minutes to config.  I guess I understand it.
That's also why my prediction is advmenu will start at 5.  Last year when I tried it configuring it was a pain.

I start most FEs at 5.  5 is the FE must be a cabinet FE, meaning it goes fullscreen, lists games, simple enough navigation to use 1 player JAMMA.  That's my base starting point.  If it does that I think the FE is worth a try.  I start that as average because average is what is expected from most people with cabinets, even cocktail cab owners.

So you can see why right now mamewah has a 6.5.  it does much more than that.  However it does have some drawbacks.  No multiple rom paths, a couple of areas no user friendly, no default mame or other emulator setup.  (did the update do that?)  I still need to try the update too.  so expect this review to change.  There will be a part two in the future.  The reviews will constantly change as new versions come out.

If I get aroundto it maybe I will make a review system where users can rate an FE and give their thoughts.  Like amazon does with books.  that would be more meaning ful to people than a single person's thoughts.

[PacManFan]

/---smurfette---
A  4 !??!
I'd say EmuTron's better than a 4, and I thought you weren't going to review it! EmuTron has got lots of good features like advanced list generation and rom filtering. Full screen rotation, movie playback into any bitmap, Scriptable language support, fully customization and skin-ability.

/---smurfette---

disclaimer:
I do know now that the script can be difficult to use.

I suppose I should save face and plug my FE in the works.
Kymaera is going to be the replacement for EmuTron. Kymaera uses the same video core code as ET. I've completely dropped the scripting language for a WYSIWYG editor.
Look for a demo and screen shots soon.

-PMF

[SirPoonga]

Hehe, just wait until more reviews come out.  you will see how each FE compares to other FEs from my point of view.

[Minwah]

So you can see why right now mamewah has a 6.5.  it does much more than that.  However it does have some drawbacks.  No multiple rom paths, a couple of areas no user friendly, no default mame or other emulator setup.  (did the update do that?)  I still need to try the update too.

I just thought I'd mention, that although there is no default config (no this doesn't change with the update), when you enter your exe (eg C:\MAME\MAME.EXE), rom path, artwork #1 (snap) path and catver.ini etc. locations are automatically set if possible.  ie if C:\MAME\ROMS exists then it will be set for your rom path.

I have done another few supposedly user-friendly things too; namely the FE will not let you enter an invalid path.  Not as helpful as a browse box or whatever, but at least gives an indication when something is wrong.

One thing you didn't mention, is that updating MAMEWAH can sometimes mean re-configuring (you may find this out yourself), since the CFG files are not backward compatible.  You may want to mark it down because of this!  Hopefully this is another thing I can address at some point.

FWIW I was just wondering what score I'd give my FE...I think atm I would give it a 9-9.5 for my personal use (it does just about everything I every wanted  ).  Overall, I would give it ~7, bearing in mind bugs and missing features (multiple rom paths, PC joystick support etc.).

Looking forward to some more reviews, I'm sure there are still some FE's I haven't tried...

[Dariusz]

I mentioned why I use multiple rom folders.
First, whena  new mame comes out I put updated roms in a seperate folder until I think the roms are worthy enough to overwrite past roms.
Second they are sorta for CD burning/backup.
Third I have games that I have to manually add to mame.  Those are in a seperate folder.
Fourth I said my CHD files are on a different drive so I need multiple rom directories for those games.

On my cabinet I just map the folders over the network.  No use storing that much info in two locations.  A local network is fast enough for me to load games over the network except for the chd files.

Plus you've seen the posts where people sort their roms by drivers.  There are many reasons a person will use more than one rom folder.

Each person manages their roms differently.

Sirpoonga,

Out of curiosity, what additional games do you add manually into MAME?

Dariusz

[Spaced Invader]

Just thought I'd mention a new FE I saw on Zophars Domain. It's called UltraMAME--released 10/31/03--and the code has already been updated 12 times. UltraMAME looks decent and, as I pointed out, it's under very fast development. Worth a look!

[SirPoonga]

Upgraged to 7.0 because I forgot to check for catver.ini support which it has


Yes, HC and I laugh at UltraMAME,  He says it is an UltraCade knock off.  Maybe in mechanics, maybe.  But not in looks  has anyone tried it yet?  Does it animate?  It looks more like it scrolls than in a wheel configuration.

[)p(]

Upgraged to 7.0 because I forgot to check for catver.ini support which it has


Yes, HC and I laugh at UltraMAME,  He says it is an UltraCade knock off.  Maybe in mechanics, maybe.  But not in looks  has anyone tried it yet?  Does it animate?  It looks more like it scrolls than in a wheel configuration.

Actually it is a good fe. It is based on mike billings cocktail fe which I realay like and is very good for people who just want a simple good looking mame fe. You just put it in your mame folder. And if you keep your roms and artwork in the regular mame folders...it works right away...

It states on it website that the inspiration is not the ultracade's wheel interface but an earlier interface they used before that.

peter

[JackTucky]

One thing you didn't mention, is that updating MAMEWAH can sometimes mean re-configuring (you may find this out yourself), since the CFG files are not backward compatible.

Shakes fist even more and even harder at Minwah!  What are we paying you for?  Give us backward compatibilty!

Art

[Minwah]

One thing you didn't mention, is that updating MAMEWAH can sometimes mean re-configuring (you may find this out yourself), since the CFG files are not backward compatible.

Shakes fist even more and even harder at Minwah!  What are we paying you for?  Give us backward compatibilty!

LOL  I forgot to mention that the 'MAMEWAH Setup' program can deal with old CFG versions - so if you are that bothered give that a try, it's cool

I do intend so sort it out in future...