Main > Software Forum

POLL: What FrontEnd do you use? (most)

<< < (5/5)

brophog:

--- Quote ---It seems pretty clear that except for developers using their own "homebrew" frontends everyone is using Mamewah.
--- End quote ---

While I, myself, use Mamewah, your statement couldn't be more wrong. It seems that way because Minwah is so kind as to provide support on this board. Look around the net at large, especially on some of the cabinet examples, and I think you'll find that your statement is dead wrong.

There are well over a dozen frontends for Mame, each of which seems to have a loyal following.

Howard_Casto:
Agreed.... I don't have exact tracking figures, but hundreds to thousands of people download dk, and it's one of the least popular ones. 

I hate to say this statment because it will be taken the wrong way but....


In the past my other two front ends (raging dragon and lazarus) got a TON of press on this site.  Even though they were very popular, a big reason they were mentioned so much was because they were buggy and people were confused as to how to set them up. 

Dk is quite stable and easier to setup, so I get far less email and posting about it. 

Minwah adds a butt-load of features to his fe every release, it may just be that all these new features are confusing and thus people ask questions about it.  In turn it is seen on the boards more often and noobs see it and think "man this thing must be great if everyone is using it"  and try it.   Since mamewah is a very good fe, many people are satisfied with it and never even bother looking into other fes. 

I think this may be part of it's popularity, I know because it's a case of "been there done that" for me. 


Necro:
The main reason I started using mamewah was because of the above mentioned reasons tied to everyone saying 'use mamewah for your cab/htpc'.  That and I have a slower (Celeron 1.2ghz) PC running the show so...need something as light as possible. 

DragonKing I havent tried.  I was kind of intimidated by the website (I couldnt find the information I wanted and just said screw it).  That being said, I've come to realize it's not what I originally thought.  My personal opinion is add more screenshots of various possible setups (I first thought it was hard coded with the dragon...it's not right?) and make the website sections easier to find - i.e. put screenshots for the FE's in the same section as the FE's :).  Just my unwanted 2c's :) hehe.

GameEx is great - and I would be using it except I have the old computer guy (and I'm only 27...god I'm getting old) mentality in that 'if it has extra crap I don't need, it's bloated'.  With the slow PC I have to think about that.  Even with that however, I'd use it but the inability to skin to even a MameWah level kind of kills it.  (Need to be able to move around art, add art, etc.).  I may change my mind on this, though :).  Once Mamewah's totally setup, I'm going to start messing more with GameEx and DK.

The others?  For a cabinet/htpc anything that looks like a Win32 app is out immediately (which I dont think any are listed).  ArcadeOS is DOS based and not worth it over MameWAH, IMHO.  MaLa looks cool, ArcadEpic just looks a bit 'older' which scares me off, and Game Launcher kind of has the same older/unskinnable feel that I'm not sure about.

I think...it boils down to needing a ton of customizability because my setup is an HTPC, on a slower PC, etc.  If I was using a cabinet, some of the others (particularly the 'simpler' ones) may actually be better choices.

Ok, now I have no idea why I wrote all that... ;D

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page

Go to full version