stupid question / grand idea

[toe.]

my knowledge of computers is limited.
my knowledge of coding is downright pathetic....

and yet. i have a dream. i dream of a visually appealing front end that is ever changing.
but i am otherwise to stupid to know how to accomplish this goal.

so i come to you, total strangers,  with a description of what i would like to do in the hopes that it is possible.... and that someone... some where might tell me about the process, show me the process, hold my hand through the process, walk me through the process, ...
do it for me. :-)

anyway the problem.

i have an image that i would like to use as part of my front end.
in the background of my picture there are several tv screens.
i would like a main screen to play a short video of the currently selected file from my games list, and all of the others to play videos of randomly selected games from my list ( but not the current game).

someone said to me that this is dynamic video... i dont know what that means. is this even feasible?
am i just dreaming a beautiful beautiful dream?

much/ any help would be appreciated. ridiculing laughter... eh... i could do without it.

[Howard_Casto]

It's possible.. if you happen to have a 5000mhz pc or a team of highly skilled direct-x programmers lying around. 

The fe would have to be 3d... as of now only 3darcade is 3d. 

The fe would have to load several videos at once.  That in of itself takes a lot of ram and processing power. 

The fe would have to grab the frames out of each video and turn them into 3d textures.  Doing just one can take it's toll on a pc, doing 3 will cripple it, doing more is next to impossible. 

On top of all of this the fe has to actually function, and update all of these videos every time you change your selection. 


So the short of it is unless you want to hire a team of professional game programmers that deal with both 3d and video streaming, no, it can't be done. 

[toe.]

poop.

okay. i cant do videos.

can i have it pull screenshots from random games and just have the foreground move?
making it random stationary pictures in the background and say a 5 second looping image in the foreground?

[Howard_Casto]

Why would you do looping images?  You can do video, even 3d video, it's just you can only do one at a time.  That means your foreground video can be a video, just not the others.


While it's possible to do random images in the background no fe has this capability.  Mostly because it's a rather odd thing to do.  Why not just show pics of the other games on the list section being displayed?

[gamecreature]

I know one of the FE's will let you use an animated GIF, but it might have just been wishful thinking. That would let you set up your loop.

[toe.]

well. i thought foregoround loop at the moment because the foreground picture right now ... it doesnt move.
so... maybe making a gif or some such short thingy could be the way to go.

for the background i thought just screenshots of other games on the playlist.

[gamecreature]

Either way should work. I've not messed with them, but I think MameWah and I know Atomic allows you to work animations into you background. Experiment a little. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with a solution.

[toe.]

i will give it a try a bit later in the day.
im trying to get out of the house to get my system and monitior( tv) today. figure ill spend the afternoon loading software and play with the FEs you reccomended.

will keep you updated. thanks

[Howard_Casto]

My own fe has the most extensive animation support that I know of.  In theory you can have up to 5 animated layers per skin.  There is a difference between animation and video preview though, I don't think you are explaining yourself well enough. 

[toe.]

im sorry. if i havent been clear. my coding/ software/ computer ability is rather limited.

the image below is what i want to putz with as my FE.

 i had hoped to put some moving gamey stype things on the screens in the background.
in the foreground i had hoped to make the fire move and maybe the cigarette smoke.
i had wanted the movement of the picture to be reelated to random games from my playlist. with a primary screen showing some images of a currently selected game.

i accept that the random video wont work. so maybe stills or screen shots might be a good thing. but maybe the fire and the smoke as seperate layers might be possible.

i know that i dont like the windows based  FE and wanted something unique that no one else would do. i overshot.

still a nice dream. anyway. take a look at the pic and enjoy its horror

[Howard_Casto]

Well the smoke is doable as is the rest.  The fire, not so much.  That'd take either several dozen layers of small flame groupings or one overly large texture with a TON of frames of animation to look halfway fluid and not repetative. 

My fe was originally going to be called Phoenix, but I could never get a realistic flame that covered everything and didn't eat up the resources.

[krick]

This sounds like a job for Macromedia Flash.

Maybe this guy can help...

http://mame.danzbb.com/

[Howard_Casto]

That's a good idea, flash could probably compress it in some way.  The only problem is then you'd have to have custom videos. 

I'm not an expert on flash, but with windowz recent security updates you might have trouble running it.  Right now any flash app I run (even as a stand alone) requires me to click it first to enable it.  There are ways around it though.

[krick]

I'm not an expert on flash, but with windowz recent security updates you might have trouble running it.  Right now any flash app I run (even as a stand alone) requires me to click it first to enable it.

That's not a security thing.  Microsoft lost a patent battle and had to change it....

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20031103-3061.html

[Howard_Casto]

That sucks. People should stop picking on m$, don't they know Bill Gates is trying to cure poverty and disease? 

[youki]

AtomicFE can do what you want.(including random stuff)

To be more correct, I (and 2 or 3 people i know) can do what you want with AtomicFE.  Because ,all is not documented yet. And some stuff require to use the scripting feature of Atomic that requires minimum programming skill.

My own fe has the most extensive animation support that I know of.

I won't bet on that... 

[toe.]

i have no coding skill at all.
i suck.

[Howard_Casto]

My own fe has the most extensive animation support that I know of.

I won't bet on that... 

Oh I would..... your aren't the only person that has undocmented features. 

[youki]

Oh I would..... your aren't the only person that has undocmented features. 

So, how you can say that your Fe is "has the most extensive animation support" .   You don't know what AtomicFe can do . (as i don't have any idea of what your FE can do (and i'm not interrested in at all))  . So how can you affirm that kind of things.

[Howard_Casto]

I've got all the bases covered, so at the most any other fe could only have animation just as good.

[toe.]

 
i suggest a duel.
the one that builds me the interface using the
previously supplied graphic we be declarced
creator/ user/ designer of the most awesomest
FE in the land.
 

[youki]

If you provide me all graphics/ video  , i need to do exactly what you want. (and let me some time (i'm extremly busy right now )) i can do it for you.


But if i succeed , i want :
be declared
creator/ user/ designer of the most awesomest
FE in the UNIVERSE.

PM Me 

[gonzobrian]

If you provide me all graphics/ video  , i need to do exactly what you want. (and let me some time (i'm extremly busy right now )) i can do it for you.


But if i succeed , i want :
be declared
creator/ user/ designer of the most awesomest
FE in the UNIVERSE.

PM Me 

You've got my vote

[Havok]

But if i succeed , i want :
be declared
creator/ user/ designer of the most awesomest
FE in the UNIVERSE.

 

Put me down for another vote...

Hey Youki - if you do create this layout, I think you should post it in the downloads area. I'd love to check it out...

[Howard_Casto]

Eh I don't have that kind of time on my hands. 

The deal breaker with this skin (if you want to do it properly) is creating the actual frames of animation for the flames and smoke and have them processed quickly, randomly, and with a proper loop so they don't look jerky. 

That's a lot of artwork to do and alot of optimizations to take care of.  There is a difference between technically being able to do something and actually being able to do it. 

[pcates]

poop.

okay. i cant do videos.

can i have it pull screenshots from random games and just have the foreground move?
making it random stationary pictures in the background and say a 5 second looping image in the foreground?

Check out 3d Arcade..... You can have screen shots on every visible game, and a video playing on the the selected game. I think you might enjoy the look.

Patrick

[headkaze]

I don't know why some people can't see the forest for the trees. GameEx can have a theme exactly how this guy wants, and I bet you other FE developers wouldn't think so. You don't need any kind of special front-end to do things like this. First of all, using scripting is slow as hell. Supporting animation and layers of animation is complicated and dosn't always render good results. The algorithms for generating fire are complicated and hard to achieve realisticly. The best way to do this would be to create a video loop to play in the background using video editing software.

Using Adobe After Effects, for example, you can generate flames that will animate in a loop curling and flickering like real fire. There are also video loops of explosions and real fire footage that you could use and overlay on that picture. You can animate the smoke by removing it using Photoshop and placing it on a separate layer then, again using After Effects and some sort of sine wave distortion filter, you make the smoke appear to drift upwards. Then just loop the video over, GameEx supports fullscreen video in the background with video snap playback at the same time. Using the GameEx Theme Editor you can design the layout for the list and video snaps however you like. Then you can find some nice audio effects with the sound of fire crackling or whatever and place that in the video using After Effects.

First of all by using video software to create the animated background you reduce processor overhead because all you are doing is decoding the video frames. Generating a fire effect in realtime using fancy scripting or some other way would not only require a decent PC, but alot of patience and custom work by the FE developer. By all means take up youki's offer, but I don't think you will get the best outcome using the scripted method.

For me I did alot of video and animation at Uni, so I think it would be an easy effect to achieve. But video is definately the way I would approach this.

Ok, that was just my 2c.

[Howard_Casto]

I don't know why some people can't see the forest for the trees. GameEx can have a theme exactly how this guy wants, and I bet you other FE developers wouldn't think so. You don't need any kind of special front-end to do things like this. First of all, using scripting is slow as hell. Supporting animation and layers of animation is complicated and dosn't always render good results. The algorithms for generating fire are complicated and hard to achieve realisticly. The best way to do this would be to create a video loop to play in the background using video editing software.

Using Adobe After Effects, for example, you can generate flames that will animate in a loop curling and flickering like real fire. There are also video loops of explosions and real fire footage that you could use and overlay on that picture. You can animate the smoke by removing it using Photoshop and placing it on a separate layer then, again using After Effects and some sort of sine wave distortion filter, you make the smoke appear to drift upwards. Then just loop the video over, GameEx supports fullscreen video in the background with video snap playback at the same time. Using the GameEx Theme Editor you can design the layout for the list and video snaps however you like. Then you can find some nice audio effects with the sound of fire crackling or whatever and place that in the video using After Effects.

First of all by using video software to create the animated background you reduce processor overhead because all you are doing is decoding the video frames. Generating a fire effect in realtime using fancy scripting or some other way would not only require a decent PC, but alot of patience and custom work by the FE developer. By all means take up youki's offer, but I don't think you will get the best outcome using the scripted method.

For me I did alot of video and animation at Uni, so I think it would be an easy effect to achieve. But video is definately the way I would approach this.

Ok, that was just my 2c.

I agree with you completely, but that isn't what he wanted.  He wanted the background to be interactive.  And I can understand that, nothing says "canned animation" more than a looping video in the background that doesn't react to the stuff going on in the foreground, even if it's the coolest video in the history of videos.  Now if the video is only used a ambient movement then it doesn't matter but I gather that the stuff in the background woudl pretty much be the whole skin except for the list. 

With that being said, here's the thing......  You can't do flames in a video  loop, nor can you do smoke in a loop.  I don't mean it can't be done, as you explained it's pretty easy to do with the right tools.  What I mean is it looks....well like a canned loop.  If you want to have it look fairly organic then you have to use a butt-load of frames (or some wiggling 3d sprites) and use some sort of an random algorithim.

I agree about the scripting thing btw.... dk is scripting free (or at least as far as users know it is ).  Most animation effects/layers are performed by a series of uncompressed images dropped in the appropriate folder or by streaming a video file.  Imho scripting is only useful for transitional effects (like the skin startup and closing, or when launching a game). 


The processor overhead thing.... I can't agree with that one though.  it depends on how the video is being used.  I think gameex uses a very simple overlay, in which it's no processing overhead (just enough to play a vid in windows).  If you are doing something more complicated however (like me, I put all vids on polys so I can do all kinds of crazy blending effects) then depending upon the platform you are using it can be quite taxing on the processor.  On top of that, windows just doesn't like to play a lot of vids at one time, even on really good end-user pcs.  That's why I nixed the idea of using real videos for each of the vid screens right off the bat.  It can be done, but can it be done at an acceptable framerate while scrolling through a list and dynamically updating game artwork... I doubt it. 

I think the skin is a nice idea, but like yourself I think it's more a user responsibility to get it made.  If someone want's to throw me the finished animation(s) I'd be glad to make sure it works with dk, but I'm not willing to do the other end of it. 

[Havok]

I don't know why some people can't see the forest for the trees. GameEx can have a theme exactly how this guy wants, and I bet you other FE developers wouldn't think so. You don't need any kind of special front-end to do things like this. First of all, using scripting is slow as hell. Supporting animation and layers of animation is complicated and dosn't always render good results. The algorithms for generating fire are complicated and hard to achieve realisticly. The best way to do this would be to create a video loop to play in the background using video editing software.

Using Adobe After Effects, for example, you can generate flames that will animate in a loop curling and flickering like real fire. There are also video loops of explosions and real fire footage that you could use and overlay on that picture. You can animate the smoke by removing it using Photoshop and placing it on a separate layer then, again using After Effects and some sort of sine wave distortion filter, you make the smoke appear to drift upwards. Then just loop the video over, GameEx supports fullscreen video in the background with video snap playback at the same time. Using the GameEx Theme Editor you can design the layout for the list and video snaps however you like. Then you can find some nice audio effects with the sound of fire crackling or whatever and place that in the video using After Effects.

First of all by using video software to create the animated background you reduce processor overhead because all you are doing is decoding the video frames. Generating a fire effect in realtime using fancy scripting or some other way would not only require a decent PC, but alot of patience and custom work by the FE developer. By all means take up youki's offer, but I don't think you will get the best outcome using the scripted method.

For me I did alot of video and animation at Uni, so I think it would be an easy effect to achieve. But video is definately the way I would approach this.

Ok, that was just my 2c.

So quit yer yapping and prove it...

I believe the expression is "put your money where your mouth is?"

Wait... I can hear it coming...

"I don't have time for that - much too busy..."

What's the point of you guys saying my FE can do this and this and this, and it's simple, and it's great, etc etc etc...

But, when a user goes to install the front end and choose a skin - plain vanilla options...   

I know, I know... "It's up to the user to do that part..." Well, give us an idea of your FE's capabilities - make a few skins that make our jaws drop and then I'll believe all you say.

[headkaze]

Well, I don't really agree with you on the video looking too much like a loop thing. A video plays at about 25 to 30 fps and is enough to give the illusion of fluid motion. Think of those DVD menu's at the start of movies that loop over, but instead of having it loop in 30 seconds, why not have it loop after 5 minutes. It won't look that much like a loop after that. I have an animation that loops in the background of my Soul Calibur theme and I don't notice it looping, it just looks like a cartoon playing in the background to me. And it's really just a background, the main concentration is on selecting a game to play, or if you leave the controls alone after a while it starts the attract screensaver which will launch random Mame games and let them play for a while before changing to the next one.

Also, I know exactly what your talking about with Direct3D. In fact I went through a faze when I was playing with MDX9 + C#. I used DirectShowLib which is a wrapper for DirectShow use in .NET, and decode the frames of video onto a texture. Incidently I found if you make the size of video the same size as a default texture eg. 256x256 you can get a very nice FPS boost when writing out the video frame as a stream into the texture.

I had alot of fun with Direct3D and C#, in fact I managed to get the XBox 360 ripples in a circle effect going using a Vertex Shader. I agree the future of FE's is to go this way.

And where is this mystical FE of yours Howard?

[Howard_Casto]

hk:

Dk has been out for years and 90% of the stuff we are talking about was included in dk as early as the initial release.  Now the final release is still a ways off.  I'm just optimizing it and working on a new main skin.


Maybe I'm just sensitive to such things, but even dvd loop animations annoy me as they are very canned. In a fe it's especially noticable, even with a really long loop, because you are in the menu for a long time.


Havok:

http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/skins2.html

I wouldn't consider any of them jaw-dropping, but they all do make use of layering and blending effects and the few that do use animations use proper looped animations so that they look half-way fluid.  

It is the responsibility of the fe author to make a few "proof of concept" skins to give users an idea of what is possible.  On the other hand it is absolutely not the responsibility of the fe author to make custom skins for the user. If we did we'd never get anything else done.  I have a lot of skins in the works for the upcoming release, but they will all have to be fairly generic or else nobody will want em.  

Just to give you an example, I get a lot of grief about the dragon theme of my fe.  I usually put the most work into the main skin, which is dragon-themed.  Some people don't like dragons.  Well that's fine, but I'm not going to change the main theme, nor am I going to work on themes that I really don't care for.  

There is also the issue of size.  I have a few very nice animated skins on my cabinet.  They aren't available for download though.  There's a real simple reason, due to the animation some are VERY large and I'm afraid to host something that big seeing as how I'm oscar's guest.  Of course there are these free upload sites, but whenever I try to use those I always get  handful of people that keep asking me why the download doesn't work.  I dunno, I'm not hosting it. I'd rather just skip the whole deal and keep the skins I personally host lean and mean so I can host em locally.  


So I sort of agree with you.  Nothing is lamer than someone saying a fe is the next best thing since sliced bread and then only make a skin that consists of a background image, the mame logo and a text list with a snapshot. Or even worse an overly simple/ugly skin.   Taste is subjective of course, but you can tell when a lot of work is put into a skin and when it was slapped together in 5 minutes. You don't have to be an artist to make a nice skin, you just have to have patience. On the other hand, just give me an example and a toolset.. I'll do the work as I probably wouldn't like someone elses theme anyway.

[headkaze]

There is a quote on the GameEx site that always makes me chuckle when I read it

I use The Dragon King by Howard Castro (mainly coz' it looks feckin' awsome and it's easy to skin! Also, it supports automated shutdown of Windows, YOU REALLY WANT THIS TO HIDE WINDOWS COMPLETELY!)

Obviously the guide to hiding windows wasn't written by the author Tom, or was he an ex Dragon King user?

I'm not a big fan of the Dragon theme, but like you say as the author there is more time needed in coding than to make themes. You make a few default ones and then hope some clever user starts making some cool themes. Amos is our resident "Themer" over on the GameEx forums and I think his work it top quality. I notice that AtomicFE has quite a following also, and there are always themes being made for it even if they are often just of the new font/colour/image variety. Some of those skins you linked to look very nice too, and they have some unique flavours in the way the snaps are presented which is a good thing. You can't really have more than 2 videos running at decent speed either, so I agree when you say it's not practical to do that.

The main thing that bugs me about MameWah and Dragon King is believe it or not VB6. And I know I shouldn't be like that especially when your still using Direct3D, but VB6 just makes me feel icky. I like the idea that AtomicFE is written in C++, but it does use DirectDraw like GameEx. I'm hoping Tom will consider working with me to rewrite the display routines for MDX 9 using Direct3D and polys/textures for everything.

Anyways, this thread is getting hijacked and becoming a FE debate again. Anyone would think we got nothing better to talk about.

Seriously though, it will be interesting to see what your new project will be, even just for the interest sake of it. I like seeing new ideas being presented, which is probably why I still think 3D Arcade was way ahead of it's time, and I think you have some great ideas - and you obviously have 3D skills with all your arcade cabinet renditions. Are you going through a coding drought at the moment, I just went through a huge one and didn't feel like writing a single line of code for ages. I'm back into it again, after a break it's nice, and I forget how zen it can be.

[Howard_Casto]

Anyways, this thread is getting hijacked and becoming a FE debate again. Anyone would think we got nothing better to talk about.

Eh don't worry about it.  I've had so many of my threads hijaked in the past few weeks that I've already exploded and stopped trying to keep others (and myself) on topic.  Besides, this stuff should be useful for anyone wanting to build such a skin or a fe that cudl display such a skin. 

That quote cracks me up as well, I have no clue who wrote that writeup. 

I can't stand c++ for rapid development.  It's more robust, but it is very slow when it comes time to set things up (api calls, fuctions, callbacks ect).  All those headers and pre-declerations just slow me down.  Mind you I like c++ and understand that in most cases it is the proper choice, it just isn't a good choice for this kind of thing.  It allows me more time to work on the artwork/design.  And I would like to think that my theory is correct. It seems to me that fes written in "real" langauges seem to have, for lack of a better word, a more "programmerly" look to them.  Mind you they aren't poorly built or or ugly, they just look like an engineer made the default skins.  Sometimes third partys step up and make em' look "purdy" with new skins, but unfortunately sometimes they don't. 

Now when vista becomes the os of choice for cabs, I'll probably be making a totally new fe, using c# and XNA.  How cool would that be?  A fe that works on windows AND your 360.



Heh funny thing about 3darcade is that peter and I talked regularly when both or fes were brand new and "invented" a lot of the ideas you see as common place today.  Peter in particular came up with a lot of cool ideas, and you can thank/blame me for the idea of full skinnability with different types of lists. Not that any of our ideas wouldn't have naturally progressed without us mind you, but in a time when your fe choices were AOS and GL we definately got things moving at a faster pace by showing that it can be done.  But like you said, we were ahead of our time.  We were running 1+ gig pcs with modern video cards when the average mamer was running a 533 mhz with 128 megs of ram with pos dx 5 card.  They got over-looked because, quite simply they didn't run well on the average pc when they were new.  Now that they are more established they still get overlooked alot because they are old, and thus don't get a lot of "check out this new release with all the cool features" hype news blurbs. 

On a side note, even 3darcade doesn't support more than one video at a time, which is why I could respond to toe's question with a "not really" so quickly.  If the most optimized fe out there can't handle it then it can't be handled.  At least not exactly like he wants it. 

3da can already do a lot of the stuff I am trying to achieve in the "2 1/2 d" skins department.  The thing is peter's fe does graphics primarily and list building/filtering as an after-thought.  I like to do the opposite, making sure you can build any kind of list you want, without having to resort to manual additions.  Because the final step is for me is to put in some true 3d functionality it's been heavy on the coding and light on the design for a while now.  So yeah, for a time there it got a lot harder to plug away at dk's code for a few hours every single day like I used to.  Now I work on it about once a month.  Things are picking up though.  I did piddly stuff like j5 and wrappers for the longest time because it's what I like to call "no thought code" and it gives instant gratification.  I knew I was "back" though when last week I stayed up for 8 hours working on dk optimizations and got the list generation routine to  build over 150 virtual lists and search for the roms in under 30 seconds.  I seldom optimize, but when I do it is very rewarding. 


I think that dk's release will pretty much go unnoticed to anyone but other developers.  I've got a lot of interesting addtions that nobody has thought of yet, but dk has never been very popular, mostly because people tried it back when they had a crappy machine, couldn't get the performance they wanted, and never looked at it again.  I just want to make sure it gets out there though, so that we can get some new ideas in this hobby.  Honestly if it weren't for a few shining gems like UltraStyle and GameEx (as much as I complain about it, I do like the design, even though I don't care for the interface and layouts) I would say that the fe building community has grown stagnent since )p( and I went into hiding. 

And no that isn't a knock on other fes released since then.  You can make a fantastic fe without bringing in any new ideas.  I just haven't seen a lot of fe's with new ideas. 

Oh and p.s. 3d is the way to go.... if you could get tom to make GameEx fully 3d it has decent enough list managment that I might be able to "retire".


Ugh... I think I ruined this thread.  If any moderators out there want to split this out then feel free. 

Sorry.   

[youki]

On the other hand it is absolutely not the responsibility of the fe author to make custom skins for the user.

My point of view is : it is the responsability to Fe author to help as good he can the user. If that help consist in doing a custom skin , it is the responsability of Fe Author too.


Please, don't be offend about that is following. It is just a feeling i have and and i think it is shared by others.


It is not enough to have a good product ,  you have to have a good service and support.
Your DK is surely not so popular mainly due to your behavior.

Sorry, but when i read your FAQ on your website :

http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/files/Faq.doc

Already from the second question we can read :

Q.  WTF is that?

A.  GO AWAY!!! If you don

[Howard_Casto]

Youki I'm not going to hold back.  That's the biggest load I've ever heard. 


#1.  I never said anything about not helping people to make a skin, but I"m not doing the work.  If you'll read right in my response I said that if someone did the animation I'd be glad to make sure it works with dk. 

#2.  I'm not making a "product" my stuff is free.  Therefore I don't have to give ANY service or support.  That doesn't mean that I don't though.  You probably wouldn't know about the hours upon hours I've spent helping users individually troubleshoot their issues.  You woudln't know because I was literally doing that years before you ever arrived on the scene.  The hype on my stuff has long since faded, so when I do get questions, it's by a nice email rather than posts on this board.

#3.  Perhaps it's a langauge barrier problem or you just don't get it, but humor is involved in the faq.  Besides if you are at a fe site and don't know what a fe is then you probably don't need one.


#4.  It's hard to call something vaporware when it's been out for ages.  Mind you it was out more than full year before yours... your are very much the new kid on the black there skippy and have no room to talk.  And even the current public build does pretty much everything atomic does and more if that is what you are eluding to.  I used to do monthly releases killing myself in the hopes that people would enjoy the fe.  I learned real quick though that I really don't care and it isn't worth it to keep up that pace.  It'll be done when it's done.

#5.  If you in particular are the "dragon killer" then I'm not really worried.  I'm more worried about living up to the example that 3darcade has set or something interesting like gameex picking up it's game and adding enough backend support to make it crazy useful. 


Remember, I never would have said any of this publically if you hadn't butted in by explaining to me why you think my fe will suck, but you did, so there ya go.  Very low-brow indeed on your part.  Me thinks you got offended when I didn't mention your fe in that last reply.  You'll notice I didn't mention another very popular one either.  Well like I said, you can make an fantastic fe without adding any new ideas.  As nice as yours is, it's a case of "been there, done that" for me. 

Besides, I think I mentioned that I really don't care if it is a success or not.  This is my third fe there buddy, the first two were very popular.  The only difference I notice is now I don't have as many user questions to deal with and thus have time to actually improve the fe. 

[headkaze]

On the other hand it is absolutely not the responsibility of the fe author to make custom skins for the user.

My point of view is : it is the responsability to Fe author to help as good he can the user. If that help consist in doing a custom skin , it is the responsability of Fe Author too.


Please, don't be offend about that is following. It is just a feeling i have and and i think it is shared by others.


It is not enough to have a good product ,  you have to have a good service and support.
Your DK is surely not so popular mainly due to your behavior.

Sorry, but when i read your FAQ on your website :

http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus/files/Faq.doc

Already from the second question we can read :

Q.  WTF is that?

A.  GO AWAY!!! If you don

[loadman]

#3.  Perhaps it's a langauge barrier problem or you just don't get it, but humor is involved in the faq.  Besides if you are at a fe site and don't know what a fe is then you probably don't need one.

I think that is mainly it   

[headkaze]

Hmm this XNA you speak of Howard looks very interesting indeed. I'm trying to get some of my old C# MDX code compiling & running again, but getting the right dependencies is a nightmare. There were alot of changes to Microsoft.DirectX.Direct3DX.dll over 2006 that made me have to change code almost every new release!

[youki]

Quote
#3.  Perhaps it's a langauge barrier problem or you just don't get it, but humor is involved in the faq.  Besides if you are at a fe site and don't know what a fe is then you probably don't need one.


I think that is mainly it   

My Apologize ,  i didn't understand it was humor.  So Howard,  i'm really sorry about that.

#1.  I never said anything about not helping people to make a skin, but I"m not doing the work.  If you'll read right in my response I said that if someone did the animation I'd be glad to make sure it works with dk. 

#2.  I'm not making a "product" my stuff is free.  Therefore I don't have to give ANY service or support.  That doesn't mean that I don't though.  You probably wouldn't know about the hours upon hours I've spent helping users individually troubleshoot their issues.  You woudln't know because I was literally doing that years before you ever arrived on the scene.  The hype on my stuff has long since faded, so when I do get questions, it's by a nice email rather than posts on this board.

I never said you don't support.  And i was talking about a feeling i have. No said, it was.
I have the feeling your are rude against newbie asking "stupid" question. But here too, i agree, it could be a problem of language and i don't understand your humor.

#4.  It's hard to call something vaporware when it's been out for ages.  Mind you it was out more than full year before yours... your are very much the new kid on the black there skippy and have no room to talk.  And even the current public build does pretty much everything atomic does and more if that is what you are eluding to.  I used to do monthly releases killing myself in the hopes that people would enjoy the fe.  I learned real quick though that I really don't care and it isn't worth it to keep up that pace.  It'll be done when it's done.

I think, there is problem with my English.  I spoke about a "Feeling" , i have reading your posts , i didn"t say it was the case. I know DK is here.  But you talked a lot since month in many post about the new coming version. so i wait.

#5.  If you in particular are the "dragon killer" then I'm not really worried.  I'm more worried about living up to the example that 3darcade has set or something interesting like gameex picking up it's game and adding enough backend support to make it crazy useful. 

In that case, its your turn to not understand my humor.  "Dragon killer" was just a play on word with "Dragon King".  I don't feel Atomic a compitor of DK we don't have the same target (i think). And in general i'm more than happy to see new Inovative FE (or version).

Remember, I never would have said any of this publically if you hadn't butted in by explaining to me why you think my fe will suck, but you did,

Where i say your FE will Suck ?...  I never bang on your FE.  I was just speaking about your Attitude.  But i seems it is just because i don't understand your Humor. So , again, i apologize sincerely to you  for that.

You woudln't know because I was literally doing that years before you ever arrived on the scene.

I made my first FE for MAME in 1998.  But yes, i came on the international scene only with the 10th version of Atomic in december 2004.

Anyway sorry about all that story,  there is a misunderstood between us.     

But now, i suggest, we could , if you wish, fix that misuderstood between us in Private. To not polute threads.

My Apologise to Howard and all others .

Youki

[headkaze]

I think both of you take things a bit too serious sometimes. But in the context of things I didn't even realise youki was joking when he was talking about the "Dragon Killer" and the Knight, which when you think about it is obviously a joke. So there has been a misunderstanding on both sides here. And I would bet that if youki could write here in his native language none of this would have happened. So I apologise too for taking your post too seriously youki, I should have known you were being jovial as I've read many of your posts and they have never been mean or in bad spirit.

[youki]

So I apologise too for taking your post too seriously youki

No problem.

if youki could write here in his native language none of this would have happened

Not sure about that, i'm able to do very bad joke that nobody can understand even in my native language!!