Flash Front Ends

[arcadeattic]

I am kinda new here and havent read all 300 million threads on this board yet, but was wondering if anyone had tried to create or has coded a Flash frontend to play games like the ones below. Or if there is any active work being done on a Flash Front end? I have found quite a few of these flash versions of Original Arcade ROMs and thought it would be cool to have a frontend to load them from. Here is just a few examples.. They are set to fee play so no quarters needed... Enjoy!

http://www.80smusiclyrics.com/games/asteroids/asteroids.swf

http://www.80smusiclyrics.com/games/pacman/pacman.swf

http://www.80smusiclyrics.com/games/donkeykong/donkeykong.swf

[screaming]

I'm pretty sure Howard Casto has a web launcher that will work for you if you use Dragon King as a front end.  I don't know if it works in any other front end though... I've never used it.

-sab

[vibez]

that would be cool. Alot of flash games support act-labs light guns. having a frontend for flash would be a dream

[arcadeattic]

My nephew is pretty handy with Flash he says he could easily code a frontend that would enable the user to select a game from a menu and launch the .swf file. The only problem he see is in the .swf files. These .swfs are already hard coded and can not be changed. If you wanted High scores and such to work on your own PC then links need to be changed within the code, so you would have to decompile the .swf, or have access to the original .fla files. He is unsure how they are able to create the games, whether they are actual ROM code dumped into a Flash file or if its a complete simulation? He says that he would need an .fla from one of these games to see what kind of action scripts are being used. I have only seen a few of these games and I dont know if there is work being done to covert all of MAME over or if there is just a handful of them floating around? Kind of a new twist on MAME for sure...

[vibez]

i'm 99% sure they or not based on the orginal roms. Although they may borrow ideas from the source code if any exists

[jelwell]

i'm 99% sure they or not based on the orginal roms. Although they may borrow ideas from the source code if any exists

Yeah, donkey kong don't play right. There are some quirks in it.

Anyways, it seems like it would be trivial to create a bat file to launch flash files in MAMEWAH. something like "iexplore -k %1". And set your rom extension to .swf
Joseph Elwell.

[jelwell]

My nephew is pretty handy with Flash he says he could easily code a frontend that would enable the user to select a game from a menu and launch the .swf file. The only problem he see is in the .swf files. These .swfs are already hard coded and can not be changed. If you wanted High scores and such to work on your own PC then links need to be changed within the code, so you would have to decompile the .swf, or have access to the original .fla files.

He's not that handy. There are similar windows utilities.
Joseph Elwell.

[SirPoonga]

http://free.hostdepartment.com//S/SirPoonga/yapfe.html

Due to limitations in Flash MX my friend and I stopped.

[mahuti]

Many .swf games may use root calls which will be screwed if they're loaded into another swf... it would have to be on a case by case basis.

[oldsage]

I don't know 'bout your friend, but I'm just starting out with actionscript, and the first thing i learned (well... almost first...) was a method that creates an encrypted file, that can contain any variables you want... It is flash MX though, don't know if that matters...
I was planning on making a flash frontend for my cab, but then remembered I'm lazy, and decided to go with MAMEWAH...

Wait a second! Are you talking about a frontend made with flash, or a frontend for flash???
Now I'm confused! Anyway, a frontend for flash, is no problem... Most frontends should easily open up a flash file... Wether it's .swf (in which case it'll open the default "handler" for that on your OS), or .exe (which you can make with a program that comes with flash...), you can easily configure most frontends to work with flash...

Hope my post ain't stupid!
IANASG! (I Am Not A Smart Guy  )

[psik0tik]

Flash would make a good frontend. It would make some nice gui's. Plus it would be easily skinnable.

[D5A1AC]

Actually, I had been thinking that I might make a front end type program that is designed to be used for when you quit out of your emulator frontend (MAMEWAH, arcadeos or whatever) Which is of course fullscreen, and is operated with a joystick and a button or two and you simply have a screen full of large icons that link to other programs or commands that don't require a keyboard (eg. power off, copy roms from usb drive, or anything else similar to those).

I thought it would mostly be useful for updating your rom collection - you plug in your usb drive / cd / whatever medium you use, and then get out of your emulator frontend at which point this flash based frontend loads. You then select the "update roms" icon, which launches a batch file which copies say *.gba into a gbaroms folder, *.zip into a mameroms folder etc?

I made a simple one which relies on the mouse (it would be easy to modify this for the joystick) which launches a program through a batch file. It works fine and would be easy to navigate with a joystick.

I know that's a little off topic but is anyone interested? I've been playing with flash since 2003 and I am familiar with programming in actionscript and whatnot.