Should more Front End's support icons?

[Fuzzguitar]

Minwah, is there any chance you would consider icon support? I think Mamu's icons look absolutely fantastic and would love to see them in a future Mamewah very much indeed.

[Wizard of DelRay]

It would almost seem redundant to have icons in MAMEWAH.  You already have the title in text, then a screenshot of the game and possibly a marquee and cabinet artwork.  I only use the list and screenshot and that looks great.  The way it is right now, it just feels like something that belongs on every MAME cab.

[Fuzzguitar]

Actually I have a simple, large font list and one screenshot also, I still dig the simplicity of that though after looking at Arcade Epic I'm starting to like icons. Well, starting to like having the choice to use them more so I suppose.

Could they be positioned anywhere in a layout editor like snaps etc? This could be very cool indeed if so.

I know nothing about programming but how hard is it to integrate support for icons? Wouldn't it be simple to do it and then have an on/off option so the folk who don't like them can stay happy?

I don't think they look any more "windows-like" than some of the complicated layouts people design for their cabs. To me, anything with many artwork images, lots of game information and small fonts appears much more like a computer inside a cab. Besides, Mamu's icons are gold! Great retro flavour.

[Howard_Casto]

I have the utmost respect for mamu, but his icons look like windows icons, he openly admits they look like windows icons, and they are designed for mame32, which is a windows guied application.   They don't even look like, fresh, xp-like icons either, they look like ghetto 95 icons.  (No shadow, no pre-rendered 3d, ect)

And as nice as mamewah is, I'm extremely suprised at how horrible the user skins are.  I'm sure the average mamewah user would love icon support, afterall, look how tacky some of the skins they made are.  

[Fuzzguitar]

Ouch!

[Minwah]

And as nice as mamewah is, I'm extremely suprised at how horrible the user skins are.  I'm sure the average mamewah user would love icon support, afterall, look how tacky some of the skins they made are.  

Charming as always  While I don't use any of the user-made skins (aside from for testing purposes), I must say that some of them are actually superb.  I prefer to use my own simple skin themed for my cab...

Back on-topic: I really like MAMU's icons - they look great.  However, I also think they reek 'Windows'.  I don't think they would neccessarily be a bad thing to support in a cabinet FE, but the way MAMEWAH works (ie only the selected games info available at one time) I don't think they would be much use in practice.

[liquid8]

Damn.. what an @$$... umm, you should check out screenshot archives collection of mamewah skins... Theres quite a few nice skins on there, and they kick the sh!t out of Dragon King skins.... Minwah, perhaps you need to update the skins on the Mamewah website.. they are kind of outdated

Anywho, I agree that they reek of windows. If some nice images were made (which would be a great undertaking) then that would be good, otherwise, it's not worth it. The whole idea of a frontend is to take out the windows look.

LiQuiD8

[Howard_Casto]

Using foul language just makes you look ignorant.  I was poking a little bit of fun but since you really want to know, that honestly is my opinion.  

And mamewah skins are technically incapable of surpassing dk skins because they have animations, alpha blending and a few other tricks that mamewah can't do (yet).  

But as that's not fair I judge mamewah skins based on the potential the skinning system has  (which is still quite unlimited)  and considering 95% of the mamewah skins are the default skin with a different color scheme and a new jpg border around the elements I'll stand by the original statment.  I didn't say they were all bad, I just said the ratio of good to bad skins is pretty lop-sided.    

Taking sprites and game artwork and surrounding the list with it like a kid would put stickers on his lunchbox isn't exactly my personal definition of a creative, artistic, work.  

You may not like dk's skins but no one can deny that the skins available are completely original, not "collages" of game artwork, and required artistic ability and a sense of art and design to produce.  While there are some nice mamewah skins, the majority don't show any of the attributes I mentioned above.  

I brought this up because as I'm leaving this part of the community this was the one thing I needed to get off my chest.  There is only one element about front ends that worries me as I leave you all, namely art and design.  

)p( has a wonderful artistic sense as does his users, his fe was always looked slick as does it's environments/skins so no problem there.  

The others... well.... they aren't bad by any means, they just aren't very stylish.  I don't blame the programmers at all, as the community is just as responsible for making good skins.  And considering us developers get stuck with the hard part, we don't always have time to do good skins ourselves.  I know personally, I have to halt production for weeks when I want to do a batch of skins, and even then I rarely have the time to give some of them the level of polish I would like.  

And it's really a hard thing to comment about too as people get offended and they really don't even realize my perspective.  

You put 100 people in a room and maybe 5-10 will have any artistic ability.  And the poor guys who don't have any think they do, because like all people they have things they like and things they don't.  Having an opinon doesn't give you artistic ability, nor does it make you capable of truely having a sense for what things are done well and what things are done badly.  

And then again, out of those 10 people that do have any ability, they each have 10 different opinions on what is good and what isn't.

So I'm not saying my opinionis always the gospel, it's just I have had a lot of art and design training over my life and even if I don't like something I can appreciate it if I feel it was well crafted and general talent and artistic ability were used to produce it.  Some of these skins I really see that in and they look great, but many I don't.  

Don't get upset because I politely spoke my mind.  I was just driving the point home that a vote on if it's a good feature would be useless as in the fe population, as with ANY population, only a handful have what an individual would consider "good taste" anyway.  And on that note seems like the no's have it, which somewhat restores my faith in everyone.  

At least we can all mostly agree on what we don't like.  

[liquid8]

Well I usually ignore your comments as I am sure most do, but since I put HOURS into my skin set, I think you hit a sore point.

I think your comments have some merit, but you sure do word it wrong (per usual). The main frontends out there have most of the actual features needed. I agree that the next level would be to come out with a more clean, original, user friendly gui. A completely customizable fe skinning system with animations, effects, etc. would be a great idea (and something that I have been working on for quite some time, just think Media Center) but making one that is user friendly and looks damn good will take a lot of time (and does not exist yet).

A lot of people use Mamewah over Dragon King, and I am sure their are some that do it the other way around, but just because your frontend has X feature and another doesn't, does not mean it is better (looks or otherwise).

I think what really needs to be done to create something like what you are talking about, there would need to be some serious cooperation between existing frontend designers. Instead of single programmers out there working their @$$ off on their own app, we/they need to get together. This could cut down on release time dramatically, and the program would be much more stable as well. There needs to be an extremely simple yet advanced skinning application. You would need a few people with good 'artistic perspective' to create the skins.

Maybe I do understand what you are saying, but there is a way to make suggestions to the community without putting down other peoples work. That is what makes you look ignorant.

As I said, I have been doing my own programming for a while, and have put quite a bit of thought into the future of frontends/features needed, but I think/know that I won't be able to pull it off on my own, as I don't have enough experience, nor the time to complete it. If anyone is interested in discussing the future/features of frontends, feel free to private msg me, or we could even start a new thread specifically for the topic. That would be the most informative way to make suggestions.

LiQuiD8

[Fuzzguitar]

On that note I've locked the voting. It's clear what people here want - hell, you guys even made me come around to the idea of not using icons (was probably a passing phase anyway).

Though maybe FE dev's could keep the interests of the few in mind and think about slotting icon support somewhere along the line, if you really want to please everyone that is.

Hmmm, maybe I'll head off to check the new video feature of Mamewah out now instead