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stupid question / grand idea
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
--- Quote ---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!)
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote from: headkaze on August 31, 2006, 11:56:18 pm ---Anyways, this thread is getting hijacked and becoming a FE debate again. Anyone would think we got nothing better to talk about.
--- End quote ---
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. :D
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. :angel:
youki:
--- Quote ---On the other hand it is absolutely not the responsibility of the fe author to make custom skins for the user.
--- End quote ---
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 :
--- Quote ---Q. WTF is that?
A. GO AWAY!!! If you don
--- End quote ---
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.
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