need FE programmer

[ericball]

I've been looking at FEs for my Tempest CP cabinet but none meet my desire for something which is:
1. usable with only a spinner & 4 buttons (using the spinner to select the game)
2. usable by my 4 year-old (which eliminates anything with a text list)
3. simple & straight-forward to configure

I've given it some thought and have an idea of what I would like to do if I only had a little more experience with Win32 programming.

The basic idea starts with the configuration file, which is simply a list of bitmap filenames and command lines.  As you turn the spinner it cycles through the bitmaps.  Press one of the buttons and it executes the command line associated with the bitmap.

Yes, not the quickest thing to configure to play a complete ROMset collection, but fine when you only have a finite number of games to play.

So any FE programmers out there interested in helping me out?

[screaming]

Almost every front end will meet requirements one and two, but unfortunately most of them are a little on the difficult side to configure.  Have you tried Ultrastyle yet?

-Steve

[youki]

Hi,

I think my FrontEnd already does what you want. Did you try it? (http://www.atomicfe.com)

Not sure for the spinner. How is it view by windows  keyboard , Joy or mouse?

If it is keyboard or Joy , Atomic support it.  If it is mouse, let me know, i will support the spinner in the next version.

Thanks

[ericball]

I think my FrontEnd already does what you want. Did you try it? (http://www.atomicfe.com)
If it is keyboard or Joy , Atomic support it.

[ericball]

Almost every front end will meet requirements one and two, but unfortunately most of them are a little on the difficult side to configure.

[screaming]

Actually, the big killer of most FEs is the spinner to select.  The list to select also seems very popular and isn't what I'm looking for.

Ultrastyle looks possible, I'll see if I can get it set up.  Any hints?

  I know you can use the spinner in MAMEWAH and I'm pretty sure you can with Dragon King and Kymae(ea)ra. I've read that you can with Ultrastyle, though I've yet to try it out.  I just suggested Ultrastyle because it comes with a useful configuration GUI and it shows the artwork for games instead of a text game list.

ALL (as far as I know) front ends will show you artwork for games though as you're scrolling through a game list, text or not, so as long as your 4 year old son can pick out Pac Man by looking at the marquee, screenshot or title screen you should be all set with any front end.

  Personally I use MAMEWAH and with my MAMEWAH Config utility, setup is a snap!  Actually, a good test would be to try and scroll through a list of games without having the game list object in your layout. That would make MAMEWAH work something similar to Ultrastyle and Dragon King, just without the fancy effects.  Has anyone tried that?

-Steve

[screaming]

Actually, a good test would be to try and scroll through a list of games without having the game list object in your layout. That would make MAMEWAH work something similar to Ultrastyle and Dragon King, just without the fancy effects.  Has anyone tried that?

  Hey, I just tried it and it works! You won't be able to get more than one game to show up on the screen at the same time (a la Ultrastyle/DK), but you can get it to look like any of these Ultrastyle skins..

*shrug* Just FYI.

-Steve

[youki]

I did look at AtomicFE, but it seems to use a list to select the game, which doesn't work for a pre-reader.

You have the choice in Atomic , to display text list or a "Marquee" list. The marquee list is in fact a picutre list, you can use it to display the picture you want.