Front End Shoot Out

[snekse]

Has anyone ever done a head-to-head front end shoot out?  I'd love to see an article reviewing say the top 5 front ends and reporting the pros and cons of each.

[Jakobud]

Haven't seen this done but I'd like to see it.

[Howard_Casto]

I don't think an impartial list is possible:  

Here's why:

1.  Users only quickly try each fe until they find one they like.  Most fe's don't work the way you want to until you've invested a good amount of time, so obviously whichever one they decided to put the most time into will get the best review.  

2.  Developers generally do take the time to try each one and set it up properly.  But which one do you think is honestly their favorite?

3.  Most of the fe's are not comparable with each other.  It's apples and oranges guys.  Vertiwah is for vertical monitors, Mamewah is for low end pcs, kymera and dk are for high end and 3darcade is for an immersive experience that entails much more than simply launching a game quickly.  So which one gets the better review depends on which niche the reviewer likes the best.  

[GGKoul]

Sounds like a job for Kevin Steel at www.retroblast.com....  

[Jakobud]

I think that the point of the review would not be to compare them saying this one is better than this one because blah blah blah... but rather just show all the available features of each of the FE's and show how easy or difficult it is to setup, and just put them up against eachother to compare their features.

[Howard_Casto]

That's already done on the front-ends link of this very page.  

But you'll notice many of the fes are blank or missing.  

Why?

Because of the following reasons:

A.  The author still considers their fe incomplete and beta (This is the case of Dragon King)  

B. The author forgot to tell saint to add it.  (Doh!)

C.  The fe is progressing so quickly that the only way to keep the feature list up-to-date would be constant posts. (This is pretty much the case of any active fe.)

So as you can see, again, easier said than done.

If one person(s) was willing to dedicate most of their spare time to making such a comparison and regularly updating it.  (In some cases this would mean weekly updates or more.)  Us developers would probably be more than willing to help them out with constant news/feature updates.    

Unfortunately, I don't see this happening.  

[PacManFan]

I think this is a great idea. HC's right however, any FE that's still an active project is adding new features every release.

I think a good place to start would be to create a spread sheet document with a few major catagories of features like this :

FE Name:
OS's supported:
Skinnable:
Can play background music:
Supports multiple Emu's:
Language written in:
3d support:
Minimum system specs:
Vertical support:
    Cocktail support:
Method of configuration:
Supported by author(s)
Documentation:
Web Site:
etc.....

That way, people can easily cross-reference features that they are looking for.
A document like this would have to be updated for accuracy/ new features every new release.

If developers had a method to update a spread-sheet / grid through an online web submission, this might work.

-PacManFan

[Minwah]

I think this is a great idea. HC's right however, any FE that's still an active project is adding new features every release.

I think a good place to start would be to create a spread sheet document with a few major catagories of features like this :

FE Name:
OS's supported:
Skinnable:
Can play background music:
Supports multiple Emu's:
Language written in:
3d support:
Minimum system specs:
Vertical support:
    Cocktail support:
Method of configuration:
Supported by author(s)
Documentation:
Web Site:
etc.....

That way, people can easily cross-reference features that they are looking for.
A document like this would have to be updated for accuracy/ new features every new release.

If developers had a method to update a spread-sheet / grid through an online web submission, this might work.

This is a good idea, would be nice to be able to see straight away the differences between FE's.  Perhaps a notes section aswell, to put any really specific things which only FE x can do.

[PacManFan]

Another few things I forgot is:

-list of supported file formats
-Supports video playback (avi,mpg,asx,flc,etc...)
-Image Preview methods (vertical / horizontal strip, rotating wheel, etc.. )

-PMF

[Chris]

Also important are whether it can run as a shell and whether it will respond to shutdown requests.  GameLauncher, for example, will not respond to a shutdown request where Lazarus will, so I can power down my cabinet gracefully by hitting the power button and letting Windows handle the shutdown.  On the other hand, Lazarus's screen saver does not respond to shutdown requests, so I need to make sure I get out of the screensaver first.

--Chris

[hulkster]

how bout this.....ill just give Mamewah the best review because thats the only one ive ever used!  contest over!....oh wait....im retarded, nevermind.

[snekse]

how bout this.....ill just give Mamewah the best review because thats the only one ive ever used!  contest over!....oh wait....im retarded, nevermind.

My point exactly.  I think a lot of people have only tried one or two FE's, so a good comparison of some of the best/most popular might spark some interest to try something else that fits your needs better.  So far the two I like the most are MameWAH and 3dArcade, but I really don't know that much about the rest of them, so I've never really considered them.

[Chris]

I think part of the problem here is this idea of "best".  There is no one best FE, or there would only be one FE.  Different FE's lend themselves to different applications, different configuration approaches.  Take GameLauncher and Lazarus (sorry, I haven't used DK yet) as examples. GameLauncher allows you to customize the display and command line of every individual file in the list and is cross-platform, but has no way of organizing files beyond the list you provide it.  It cannot be configured from the interface (this is a feature to some, a problem for others).  Lazarus lets you configure some things from the interface and has a powerful filter function, flexible skins and multimedia support, but it's dependent on external players like MediaPlayer and RealPlayer, runs only on Windows, and can be tricky to deal with if you're not a big user of the assorment of ROM utilities.  Neither of these is necessarily better than the other, but they represent widely differing approaches to configuring and presentation.

So a roundup that summarizes features and points out strengths and weaknesses is a good thing, but trying to decide which is "best" is impossible.

--Chris

[Minwah]

I think part of the problem here is this idea of "best".  There is no one best FE, or there would only be one FE.  Different FE's lend themselves to different applications, different configuration approaches.  Take GameLauncher and Lazarus (sorry, I haven't used DK yet) as examples. GameLauncher allows you to customize the display and command line of every individual file in the list and is cross-platform, but has no way of organizing files beyond the list you provide it.  It cannot be configured from the interface (this is a feature to some, a problem for others).  Lazarus lets you configure some things from the interface and has a powerful filter function, flexible skins and multimedia support, but it's dependent on external players like MediaPlayer and RealPlayer, runs only on Windows, and can be tricky to deal with if you're not a big user of the assorment of ROM utilities.  Neither of these is necessarily better than the other, but they represent widely differing approaches to configuring and presentation.

So a roundup that summarizes features and points out strengths and weaknesses is a good thing, but trying to decide which is "best" is impossible.

I think this is the point Howard was making, and a good one.

Still, rather than seeing which is 'best' I would still like to see the comparisons, as personally I haven't had much time to spend on the newer FE's.

[snekse]

Still, rather than seeing which is 'best' I would still like to see the comparisons, as personally I haven't had much time to spend on the newer FE's.

I think we're all in agreement that we're not in search of the best, just a good detailed review of each so we can make our own decision on which works best for ourselves.

For instance, I had no idea about the details Chris pointed out for GameLauncher and Lazarus.  It would be nice to have someplace to really learn these things.  For me, something more then a spreadsheet would be nice.  There are just some things that a spreadsheet cannot convey.  Like GGKoul said, sounds like a job for Kevin Steel.