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New MAME Front End for cabinet!
loadman:
--- Quote from: shock_ on February 08, 2007, 05:49:51 am --- I am not a programmer (well, not since I was about 12 anyway) but I know/think it's possible.
--- End quote ---
Never too late to start..
I started learning Delphi and a bit of VB6 mid last year in my spare time. The people here are most helpfull.
Prior to that is was a C64 back in the late 80's (batch files don't count)
youki:
Atomic has already the transparency working trought software since his first version.
Of course performance depends on how much objects on the layout you use transparency and the size of these objects. But for said a "normal" use for a layout in 640x480 starting from a 700Mhz computer it is good enough.
But that's clear with Direct3d it is lot easier , and if you have a good 3D card lot faster.
But what i did i think it is enough to have nice effects on layouts .
squirrellydw:
Oh, I hope this can be done in Mala. This would make the Applesque layout so cool. I mean it's cool now so it would be just that much cooler.
Howard_Casto:
It's fairly trivial in direct 3d....
You've already got the frame in one texture, so you simply copy the texture to a rotated poly. The fading can be a simple alpha mask. All in all it should add up to zero performance loss. That isn't the difficult part of the coding though. On a skinable fe the trick becomes the reflection itself and how to manage it. This fe just has a nice, simple image that reflects straight down with a little bit of vertical distortion. There really aren't any other objects around the snap to reflect as well. Reflections can be distorted vertically and horizontally as well as being skewed at an angle or even distorted around an object. On top of that, on more complex skins, multiple objects would have to be mirrored. When you do a complex mirror like this you basically have to calculate screen positions twice, once for the real elements and again for their reflections. Either that or manipulate the render buffer directly, which could cause slowdowns.
I guess what I'm saying is, yes for a simple effect like this we could all implement it. For more complex stuff, however, a person could spend a lifetime getting it to look "just right".
Space Fractal:
This is plain nice looking simple frontend, that would work like a dream on smaller cabinets.
The translucent effect (if we talking about the screenshot) can also very easy done in lanuage like BlitzMax or such (very much as howard said). BlitzMax is one of the language that support alpha and rotations very easy, and I think he took the advance of it.
If it was done with blitzmax, he could change the color very easy with a simple alpha trick, so we could use any colors and not just blue. This would been a nice side effect.
Maybe we should ask wich language he used.
Again.. A nice little frontend. The only problem it can only use with few mame releases.
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