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VertiWAH - vertical MAME frontend - Need Testers!

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EndTwist:
Hello,

This used to be MYFE, but since I have done major updates, I decided to rename it VertiWAH (hope that's OK, Minwah)

It now is more bug free, has a new layout system, better layout creator, and overall better!

Downloads and screenshots here: http://vertiwah.jbeffects.com

Please post new bugs, problems, questions, and suggestions here!

-- EndTwist

PacManFan:
Cool, I'm checking it out right now. I see you're using gdiplus, how are you doing the rotation?

Welcome to the FE developer club, I'll have to teach you the secret handshake now... ;)

-PMF

Howard_Casto:
I have a ton of bugs/suggestions.......


First off the ocx's you are using don't self-register.... I get an error and can't even start the fe.  Your going to have ot use a proper install program or make a bat that uses regsvr(which i can tell you from experince can be a pain to support)  


Secondly your fe appears to be extremely simple, but you are asking the user for far too much data.... all you need from them is the path to mame and the mame exe name.  

I'll give examples in vb, but there are similar functions for c++ and all the visual studio languages:


In your cl.exe you ask for the path for mame.... you've aleady asked for that in your ini file so simply read that path.  


You don't need to give the user the option as to what to save the gamelist text as..... make a special copy that only your fe uses and you've solved many user errors. (they are dumb, they'll delete it out of the mame directory and then complain to you that yoru fe doesn't work)

Also save it in the front end's working directory.  You can get this with app.path in vb.

Which brings me to your third issue. You are asking for the path to the myfe.ini.  Why?  It's in app.path & "\myfe.ini"

Lastly, you are asking for the windows version so you can figure out which command.exe to call.  This sends up a big red flag to me as you shouldn't be calling the command line.

Lets say your path to mame is c:\mame, the code you should run is:

chdrive "c:\mame\"
chdir "c:\mame\"

shellandwait "mame.exe -listfull >" & app.path &"\games.txt"

and poof a gamelist is generated in the myfe folder


(btw the shellandwait command is a function that utilizes the regular old shell command with a waitforprocess call.  There are about a million examples of shell and wait on the net.)  

Ok I think that covers everything, but keep in mind I can't even get the fe to run yet.  ;)  

I'm not ragging on ya, I just want to drill in the concept of only asking smart questions.  Don't ask the user when their birthday is and then ask them how old they are... you can calculate that yourself with the birthday :)

Btw I hope you get this thing working... a vertical fe for windows is severely needed.  

 

PacManFan:
I got the FE to run, after a little tweaking. Inside your skin file, you're making reference to a gif file that's local to your hard drive. (Don't worry, I accidently did just the same thing w/ Kymaera). You might want to save the image to under your skin directory, and have the application look for it using a relative path.
In your glgen program, you ask for several paths, but what you are really asking for are pathnames and filenames. You might want to reword that.

I still did not see the gamelist appear.

Does your program rotate the artwork, or are you requiring the user to pre-rotate it. (not a bad solution...)?

-PMF

Howard_Casto:
Ok the ocx's are registered.... Now its' asking for a file called allgames_tab.gif in my administrator's my pictures folder.  

You are linking to stuff we don't have :)

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