Author Topic: Which DOS front end is best? (Read 5906 times)

RetroBorg · « **on:** December 15, 2003, 09:10:39 pm »

What DOS front end do the dos users like best?

I am currently using MameMenu which I like the look of, but it has a few bugs and is very slow moving through the games in the menu.

I have tried ArcadeOS but don't like the way it looks.

I also have tried AdvanceMame but have no idea how to get that one running. (Probably due to a lack of brains on my part.)

Are there any other out there that people are using with DOS which they can recommend?

Jakobud · « **Reply #1 on:** December 15, 2003, 11:29:17 pm »

The only other one I can think of besides the ones you mentioned is Game Launcher. I think you will like it.

Buddabing · « **Reply #2 on:** December 15, 2003, 11:30:19 pm »

Try GameLauncher. I'm still playing with front ends but so far I prefer GameLauncher to ArcadeOS. It's cross-platform, runs under DOS/Windows/*nix, and is open source.

Buddabing

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #3 on:** December 16, 2003, 12:03:36 am »

If you can handle windows well then don't downgrade back to dos just because you don't like one front end. As you can see your choices are severly limited when you go back to dos and graphically speaking you have next to no skinning options. What I'm trying to say is if you are used to mamewah you might not like the rather limited and never updated dos fes.

paigeoliver · « **Reply #4 on:** December 16, 2003, 06:55:52 am »

I recently started setting up a DOS cab for a customer and I could not for the life of me get advancemenu working, well I got it working blind, but I could not get the darn thing to send a normal VGA signal to the monitor. I got the windows version working fine on another cabinet though.

So I installed Gamelauncher, and MAN is it slow reloading the menu after you exit a game.

And arcadeos is just out of the question because it wants screenshots in some weird format or something, Easy to setup, but I never could figure out how to get it some screenshots that it could actually display.

ErikRuud · « **Reply #5 on:** December 16, 2003, 10:29:29 am »

PaigeOliver,

If GL is slow loading the menu, it is most likley because your screenshot files are very large.

Minwah · « **Reply #6 on:** December 16, 2003, 10:37:49 am »

Quote from: paigeoliver on December 16, 2003, 06:55:52 am

And arcadeos is just out of the question because it wants screenshots in some weird format or something, Easy to setup, but I never could figure out how to get it some screenshots that it could actually display.

I never had a problem with this. The only thing you have to do is convert 16-bit PNG's to 256 color for them to display (actually I think that is all of them now since MAME ditched 8-bit color). Not a big problem tho if you use a batch process to all your images...just takes a while...

RetroBorg · « **Reply #7 on:** December 16, 2003, 10:43:11 am »

Quote from: Howard_Casto on December 16, 2003, 12:03:36 am

If you can handle windows well then don't downgrade back to dos just because you don't like one front end. As you can see your choices are severly limited when you go back to dos and graphically speaking you have next to no skinning options. What I'm trying to say is if you are used to mamewah you might not like the rather limited and never updated dos fes.

I'm not downgrading to DOS because I don't like just one front end, MameMenu is a DOS front end, it is very basic looking but that is one of the things I like about it. For this cabinet I'm not after a front end with great looking skins, I'm just after something really simple as I'm going to sell this cabinet to build my dream cabinet.

When I build my dream cabinet I'll be running Windows XP and use either Emulaxian, Dragon King or Mamewah, I'm yet to decide but at this stage probably leaning towards Emulaxian.

RetroBorg · « **Reply #8 on:** December 17, 2003, 05:38:56 am »

Quote from: Jakobud on December 15, 2003, 11:29:17 pm

The only other one I can think of besides the ones you mentioned is Game Launcher. I think you will like it.

Jakobud,

I've downloaded Game Launcher and it's not bad, I'll think I'll end up using this front end. I still prefer the look of MameMenu but with it's few bugs and slow moving through the menu I think Game Launcher is slightly superior.

paigeoliver · « **Reply #9 on:** December 17, 2003, 07:49:31 am »

Quote from: Minwah on December 16, 2003, 10:37:49 am

Quote from: paigeoliver on December 16, 2003, 06:55:52 am
And arcadeos is just out of the question because it wants screenshots in some weird format or something, Easy to setup, but I never could figure out how to get it some screenshots that it could actually display.

I never had a problem with this. The only thing you have to do is convert 16-bit PNG's to 256 color for them to display (actually I think that is all of them now since MAME ditched 8-bit color). Not a big problem tho if you use a batch process to all your images...just takes a while...

How do you actually do this, I have photoshop, but I have never figured out how to batch convert anything. And, it actually isn't THAT many screenshots, it only has 100 games installed (and only has screenshots for those).

Minwah · « **Reply #10 on:** December 17, 2003, 02:02:23 pm »

Quote from: paigeoliver on December 17, 2003, 07:49:31 am

How do you actually do this, I have photoshop, but I have never figured out how to batch convert anything. And, it actually isn't THAT many screenshots, it only has 100 games installed (and only has screenshots for those).

Um, I just had a look and I can't figure it (it has been a few years...)

Take a look in Help for 'batch processing' . Tho I didn't fully understand it when I read it...

Wade · « **Reply #11 on:** December 17, 2003, 04:21:45 pm »

Retroborg,

I use GameLauncher and think it works and looks great. It uses the standard .png files created from Mame screenshots so if you have a pretty small game list you can just hit F12 or the equivalent and GL will pick it up next time you exit the game and go back to the menu. I haven't had the problem paige had with speed, but I have never had a huge game list on any of my Mame machines. About 100 tops.

As seen in another thread, I would like a couple of features added to GL though. One nice one would be a screensaver mode that would run a batch file instead of displaying screensaver text. Then you could run a mame rom in attract mode as a screensaver. Another thing I'd really like is a hotkey to add a rom to the GL exclude list. This way I could just hit the hotkey when a dupe/bootleg/foreign etc. game is highlighted and never have to worry about it again.

I may get to these if someone else doesn't beat me to it, but it all depends on when I get the drive to do it and have nothing else better to do. My rom list hardly ever changes any more so the hotkey thing would rarely get used anyway.

Wade

paigeoliver · « **Reply #12 on:** December 18, 2003, 01:45:48 am »

Well, I am just going to stick with Gamelauncher with that install. It does take 10 seconds to get back to the menu upon exiting a game, but I guess that is acceptable, and anyway, this machine is sold and should be picked up tommorrow anyway, not enough time to even consider any changes (not when I still need to bolt down the control panel, and secure the computer inside!!!!!!!)

RetroBorg · « **Reply #13 on:** December 18, 2003, 03:53:51 am »

Wade,

I like your idea about the screensaver that would be cool, what I don't like about the screensaver is that when I was playing my 13 year old step daughter last night at Circus Charlie and was actually beating her half way through one particular game, tea was ready and I paused the game to eat, we finished tea and the screensaver was on, but when it left screensaver mode it was back at the menu not the game that was paused, I never beat her all night (spewing).

paigeoliver,

I haven't had the problem you have had with how long it takes to get back to the menu, for me it's about 3 seconds.

Jakobud · « **Reply #14 on:** December 18, 2003, 06:30:46 am »

Quote from: Minwah on December 17, 2003, 02:02:23 pm

Quote from: paigeoliver on December 17, 2003, 07:49:31 am
How do you actually do this, I have photoshop, but I have never figured out how to batch convert anything. And, it actually isn't THAT many screenshots, it only has 100 games installed (and only has screenshots for those).

Um, I just had a look and I can't figure it (it has been a few years...)

Take a look in Help for 'batch processing' . Tho I didn't fully understand it when I read it...

To do batch processing in Photoshop you have to use an "Action." First setup a custom action to do whatever you want (convert a file, change resolution or color depth or whatever). Then same the Action under a name like "My Action" and then goto Batch processing. Choose your Action you want to run on the batch. Choose the input files and output location and then run it.

paigeoliver · « **Reply #15 on:** December 18, 2003, 06:50:13 am »

thanks for the batch info.

One thing I did notice, is when running DOS gamelauncher under windows it reloads the menu instantly (on the same computer). It is only when I am actually in MSDOS that it takes a while.

Anyway, it only seemed really annoying to me when I was loading each game to make sure it worked (and to generate the vertical screenshots I needed). I will likely never even play this cabinet again, I just need to secure the computer inside, wire the power switch, bolt down the panel, and cut a back door before the buyer picks it up tonight.

Wade · « **Reply #16 on:** December 18, 2003, 03:48:14 pm »

Quote from: RetroBorg on December 18, 2003, 03:53:51 am

Wade,

I like your idea about the screensaver that would be cool, what I don't like about the screensaver is that when I was playing my 13 year old step daughter last night at Circus Charlie and was actually beating her half way through one particular game, tea was ready and I paused the game to eat, we finished tea and the screensaver was on, but when it left screensaver mode it was back at the menu not the game that was paused, I never beat her all night (spewing).

...

This shouldn't happen if we make the GL mod, that screensaver only kicks in when back at the GL menu (not while in a game).

paige,

I don't know why yours is taking so long to return to the menu. How many games are installed? You might try throwing on a disk cache, that might explain why it was running faster while in Windows. I don't remember if I have a cache running on my system or not but I usually run one on any dos box.

Regardless, it sounds like you better get to work finishing up that game and forget about that little pause for now!

Wade

paigeoliver · « **Reply #17 on:** December 19, 2003, 03:18:24 am »

Whoo, just got it finished in time, I was bolting down the panel about a half hour before the guy showed up to check it out (he will be picking it up tommorrow, couldn't get the truck today).

During playtesting I discovered "Loco-Motion", I think I like that one.

Evil · « **Reply #18 on:** December 21, 2003, 07:10:27 pm »

My personal favorite is AdvanceMenu. I'm not sure why people here seem to have problems getting it working... it was pretty smooth with my setup.

It has a nice idle screensaver that can go through screenshots. I've set it up to go through my Titles directory, where I put snapshots of every games title screens. It looks like one huge attract mode that way.

It also plays MP3's nicely in the background. Very respectable performance, considering I'm running it on a junker 400Mhz system.

You can use your own image file and the ui spacing ini options to create your own 'skin' of sorts.

I also have the menu in an interlace mode that looks consistent with other arcade games (even on a monitor)

I haven't tried MAMEwah yet. It looks nice, but all the screenshots show realllll small text, which I would imagine would be hard to read on an arcade monitor or TV - with which I hope to eventually replace my monitor.

RetroBorg · « **Reply #19 on:** December 21, 2003, 08:14:26 pm »

Quote from: Evil on December 21, 2003, 07:10:27 pm

My personal favorite is AdvanceMenu. I'm not sure why people here seem to have problems getting it working... it was pretty smooth with my setup.

It has a nice idle screensaver that can go through screenshots. I've set it up to go through my Titles directory, where I put snapshots of every games title screens. It looks like one huge attract mode that way.

It also plays MP3's nicely in the background. Very respectable performance, considering I'm running it on a junker 400Mhz system.

You can use your own image file and the ui spacing ini options to create your own 'skin' of sorts.

I also have the menu in an interlace mode that looks consistent with other arcade games (even on a monitor)

I haven't tried MAMEwah yet. It looks nice, but all the screenshots show realllll small text, which I would imagine would be hard to read on an arcade monitor or TV - with which I hope to eventually replace my monitor.

That looks real nice, maybe I'll try getting AdvanceMenu to work, just a quick question are you using pure DOS or DOS under windows? I'm pretty sure MAMEwah needs windows, if it doesn't I'll try MAMEwah.

Evil · « **Reply #20 on:** December 21, 2003, 08:45:40 pm »

Quote from: RetroBorg on December 21, 2003, 08:14:26 pm

That looks real nice, maybe I'll try getting AdvanceMenu to work, just a quick question are you using pure DOS or DOS under windows? I'm pretty sure MAMEwah needs windows, if it doesn't I'll try MAMEwah.

At the moment, I am booting it up inside of Windows 98. But, the way it's configured I can either change my windows desktop shell to AdvanceMenu, or modify it to load DOS sound card drivers (+mem manager) and bypass Windows completely.

Minwah · « **Reply #21 on:** December 22, 2003, 03:27:03 pm »

Quote from: RetroBorg on December 21, 2003, 08:14:26 pm

Quote from: Evil on December 21, 2003, 07:10:27 pm
I haven't tried MAMEwah yet. It looks nice, but all the screenshots show realllll small text, which I would imagine would be hard to read on an arcade monitor or TV - with which I hope to eventually replace my monitor.

That looks real nice, maybe I'll try getting AdvanceMenu to work, just a quick question are you using pure DOS or DOS under windows? I'm pretty sure MAMEwah needs windows, if it doesn't I'll try MAMEwah.

MAMEWAH does need Windows...

Evil: The text looks small but it can be altered to whatever size you want. Also note that most shots show MW running at 640x480 or above. If using an arcade monitor you would probably run 368x240 (or similar) or at most 640x288 - these resolutions make the font size look bigger anyway

Chris · « **Reply #22 on:** December 22, 2003, 04:19:54 pm »

Paige,

You probably don't have a disk cache loaded. With SmardDrv installed, returning from GL should be fast.

Check your AUTOEXEC.BAT, and if it's not there, add:

SMARTDRV 16384

(This presumes that SMARTDRV.EXE is somewhere in your PATH)

--Chris

RetroBorg · « **Reply #23 on:** December 22, 2003, 08:40:13 pm »

Quote from: Chris on December 22, 2003, 04:19:54 pm

Paige,

You probably don't have a disk cache loaded. With SmardDrv installed, returning from GL should be fast.

Check your AUTOEXEC.BAT, and if it's not there, add:

SMARTDRV 16384

(This presumes that SMARTDRV.EXE is somewhere in your PATH)

--Chris

Chris,

You seem to know a bit about DOS, any chance of you posting an example of a typical autoexec.bat file and perhaps a typical config.sys file, with running MAME in mind of course. I never had that "SMARTDRV 16384" line in mine and don't know much about the memory side of things in DOS either.

Many thanks.

Retro

Chris · « **Reply #24 on:** December 22, 2003, 09:05:41 pm »

There really isn't a "typical" DOS config; it's all completely dependent on your hardware. MAME uses DPMI memory through CWSDPMI.EXE, so memory management really isn't an issue. The only thing many DOS configs for MAME are missing is SMARTDRV, which dramatically speeds up hard disk operations. SMARTDRV 16384 sets aside 16 MB of RAM for a disk cache.

One other thing you may want to look into is Scitech Display Doctor, which is free now. If you use an older version of MAME that supports -tweak, you can get some great low-res video modes to run games full-screen, which is a real benefit since DOS MAME doesn't support -hwstretch. If you don't want to use an older version that supports tweaked modes, you'll want to force the resolution to multiples of the original game's vertical resolution to get closest to full-screen. For example, Aero Fighters ran at 224x320 , so you'd want to force the resolution to 640x480 for that game. APB, on the other hand, ran at 384x512 , so if your video card doesn't support a vertical resolution of 512, you'll want to force the game to run at 1280x1024 to get it full-screen.

There's a lot of info on running MAME in DOS at http://www.mameworld.net/dosmame/ .

RetroBorg · « **Reply #25 on:** December 22, 2003, 09:23:04 pm »

Thanks for your help Chris.

RetroBorg · « **Reply #26 on:** December 27, 2003, 04:02:02 am »

Okay I finally worked out how to get AdvanceMenu working, there are a few things I haven't worked out though:

How do you change the font size?

I've chosen marquees in the preview section, but they don't display, same goes for flyers, titles etc (I do have them in the folders) what am I doing wrong?

If anyone can help it would be appreciated.

Many thanks.

Retro.

Evil · « **Reply #27 on:** December 27, 2003, 01:55:24 pm »

You can set the font to whatever you want via the config line:

video_font "contrib\fonts\xm5x10.fnt"

The marquee and icon views are special in that the preview command does not control what's displayed in the main list. You need to use:

emulator_marquees "advmame" "d:\emulat~1\Marquees"
mode tile_marquee


Main	Restorations	Software	Audio/Jukebox/MP3	Everything Else	Buy/Sell/Trade
Project Announcements	Monitor/Video	GroovyMAME	Merit/JVL Touchscreen	Meet Up	Retail Vendors
Driving & Racing	Woodworking	Software Support Forums	Consoles	Project Arcade	Reviews
Automated Projects	Artwork	Frontend Support Forums	Pinball	Forum Discussion	Old Boards
Raspberry Pi & Dev Board	controls.dat	Linux	Miscellaneous Arcade	Wiki Discussion	Old Archives
Lightguns	Arcade1Up	Try the site in https mode		Site News


Unread posts \| New Replies \| Recent posts \| Rules \| Chatroom \| Wiki \| File Repository \| RSS \| Submit news