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Stupid Newbie Mala questions

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jasonbar:
GG-

Thanks--I just learned of MaLa tree yesterday & can't find much info on it, in the wiki or elsewhere.  Using ROMlister looks to be a bit over my head, as far as set-up goes.

Right now, I'm plowing through all 6520 ROMs & ditching the clones, bootlegs, non-working, working-too-slow-on-my-PC, mahjong, adult, etc.  I'm also often not choosing to use the designated "parent" ROM & am instead using a "clone" ROM, because I prefer the US versions or maybe based on my memory of a game having a certain name (I prefer Life Force over Salamander, Alcon over Slap Fight, Majestic 12 over Super Space Invaders, etc...based on my own arcade experience).

Yes, it's tedious.  I'm about halfway through & have about 1200 titles, so I figure I'll have about 2500 in my list when I'm done.

I'll use a spinner to navigate the list, & I'll have fast-scroll & next-letter functionality mapped to buttons, so I hope that navigation won't be too cumbersome.  I think I'd fret & obsess over this even more unhealthily if I went 1 step further & tried to categorize all the games & put them in a tree...  :]


Thanks,
-J

shock_:

--- Quote from: jasonbar on June 26, 2007, 11:46:03 am ---I've set up the information window to show everything else (history, controls, control panel, title screen, cabinet picture).  The images for title screen & cabinet picture are all low-res & look awful, stretched to the full size of the information window (roughly 500x500 on my 800x600 screen), but most of the control panel pics are high-res & look great.

Is there a way to control the size of that window or the size of the images inside it? 

--- End quote ---

In MaLa itself, right-click » Options » GUI » Info Window » Info Window size: change down to 50% or lower. You may want to go back to your layout and drop the font sizes to suit, but the images won't have to scale as much.

Also - Get Mr Do's cabinet photos and overwrite those other ones, backing up as necessary first of course.  They're generally higher resolution cabinet shots and should look fine for you at 400x300 (50% of 800x600).  Mr Do doesn't have as many as the other set but they'll still make heaps of games better. (hence my suggestion to overwrite, so you get the biggest best set)

jasonbar:
Argh, thanks for pointing out the obvious, Shock!  (no really, I'm not being sarcastic--thanks--it was right under my nose...duh on me).  I have to do lots of scrolling to read the text in the history page of the info window, but no biggie.


I just finished downloading & installing Mr. Do's cabinet pics.  They look very nice.  I had a hair under 1GB left on my MAME hard drive on my PC, so I ditched all those BeatMania CHDs & cleared up a few GB first.  :]



I've got 2 semi-related follow-up questions:

1 - In my MAME (and Daphne) layout, I show control panel, screen shot, & marquee as I'm scrolling thru the game list.  I have the info window pull up the other goodies (cabinet, title screen, controls, history, flyer, etc.).  But, for the GUI/Info Window/Other Emus Pages, I can't add definable extra items beyond controls, snap, & marquee.  :[  I have a set of cabinet pictures that I'd like to display in the info window as well, but I don't see a way to do this...

2 - In my layout, I have a text field that shows Manufacturer :: Year by using the text string "~g_manufacturer  ::  ~g_year" (minus the quotes) in the Text 1 field.  This works great in MAME but comes up blank when scrolling thru my Daphne games (except for the  ::  text).  Can this be set up to display w/ my Daphne games?

That's it for tonight--I'm pooped!

Thanks,
-Jason

shock_:
Yeah thought you had probably been in that location, since you've set up the rest of the info window stuff.  It's easy to miss because it's outside a big tabbed fieldset that dominates the rest of the window, and the dropdown selector is miles away from its label.  Sorry - I do interface design for a living so things start lighting up in my head when I see this stuff :)

Re 1: the "other emu" info pages meagre selection - I'd not noticed that yet since I haven't got all mine set up but you're right; I think we're out of luck there.  Pity that there aren't definables for non-MAME emus. You probably know you can point the "marquee" slot against your cabinet pics folder, but I'm guessing you actually want snap, marquee, cpanel AND other stuff so sacrificing one isn't much chop.

Re 2: the information on manufacturer and year is drawn from mame's XML - viz:

--- Quote ---<game name="galaga" sourcefile="galaga.c">
      <description>Galaga (Namco rev. B)</description>
      <year>1981</year>
      <manufacturer>Namco</manufacturer>
      ...
   </game>

--- End quote ---
Since no such XML exists for Daphne, I think you (we) are out of luck there, too.  You could, again, "spend" one of your image folders, and manually render out a bunch of PNGs with nothing but text of manufacturer and year, made up to look identical to the way MaLa renders text - and run it as a snap/marquee/cpanel in the same location in the layout.  You'd probably want two versions of your layout though - one with and one without that image in place, and use MaLa's auto-swap-layout-depending-on-emulator feature.  That would save you from having layout conflicts with other emulators. 

It's a truly dodgy hack, to be sure.  And not something you're going to want to do for a few hundred Visual Pinball tables or anything else you might plan on running.  MaLa's certainly a MAME-centric app, at least at version1 release candidate 9.  But I still love it like a naughty puppy anyway.

loadman:

--- Quote ---But I still love it like a naughty puppy anyway.
--- End quote ---

 :laugh2:

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