new version of Chipi Chipi (my front-end)

[zobook]

The comeback nobody spect...
The return nobody wants...

Chipi-Chipi new version is released!!!

For those who don't know (99.76% of you out there), Chipi-Chipi is a small generic (as in "is for arcade and console games") front end that i made just for the fun of it. I did several improvements since the last release, so many that's dificult to count or tell (but most are layout-related). I recommend that if you already have a older version don't overwrite it with the new one, since a lot of changes happend in the configuration files and directory structure (because of my crappy-almost-non-existent-planning) and that may screw-up your old version.

Some of the new stuff

*) Available in Spanish and English (and is REALLY easy to add more languajes)
*) The images of the layouts can be BMP or JPG.
*) There are "extra" images you can add to the layout, they can be BMP, JPG or PNG (with alpha channel transparency)
*) You can have as many layout as you want and select the one you want to use (from the configuration software only, sorry, not from the front-end)
*) There is a help file, only in Spanish, because i TRY to be funny, and is very hard for me to doit in my original languaje, imagine in english.

A note about extra images on layouts. There are 3 "layers" in layout. The background layer is the bottom-most, is draw first and everything else is drawn over it. The second layer is the text and screenshot layer. The third one is the "ExtraPictures" layer. This one is not required, but is useful for certain effects if you want a part of the background apperears "covering" some of the text or the screenshot. If you ExtraPicture is not meant to cover anything else, i recommend that is drawn as part of the background.
You can see examples of this in the "Robotech" layout, where the laser shot of the robot and the plane parcially cover the screenshot (with a nice blend, no choppy edges) and in the "Ryu & Ken" layout, where the arcade control panel is not cover anything but is an extra picture to make it easier to change the background without have to "paste" the control everty time you doit.

http://rapidshare.de/files/39594913/Chipi-Chipi__without_screenshots_.zip.html

Once downloaded, extract the files to a folder and rename the ones with .xex extension to .exe (is for those pages like GMail that don't allow exe files in their attachments).

If you are gringo and don't know jack about spanish, select Opciones -> Lenguaje -> English (USA, no spell check)

Thanks for reading this, comments welcomed!!

[gonzo90017]

Looks interesting. Does it support videos? How do you add additional emulators?

[zobook]

Looks interesting.

Mmmmm, i don't think so

Does it support videos?

No, it don't support videos and i don't think i will add support for now, becuse i'm lazy  .

How do you add additional emulators?

If you run ccc.exe, select the platform, then click on the emulators list and press the [Insert] key to add emulator, [Delete] to.....delete, and [F2] to edit the properties of an already existing one. The same keys are available for Games and Categories

When adding games you can select multiple files. The program will ask for the default emulator for those games. You can then use F2 to change individual settings of each game. To change the emulator used for each game, select one or more and click on the desired emulator in the list. The same for categories. Note that categories list is multiselect, so a game can be in more than one category.

I recently rewrite the program using lots of OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) and temporarily remove the use of the [F2] key from within the front-end. But i will restore that functionality soon so you can fine-tunning the game settings without quitting

[gonzo90017]

Cool. 

[zobook]

I feel like Microsoft, the new update of Chipi Chipi is not finished so i dumped it and I'm almost ready to launch the 2.0 version!!!

The same crappy program, with a brand new set of cheap special effects, yeah!!!

I star to rewrite it from scratch, re-utilizing some code from the current version. The layouts will be more configurable, the pop-up windows (history, category and platform) can have any shape now, and can use color-key transparency for BMP or PNG or alpha channel transparency for PNG. They also can fade in and out.  And there is a crappy effect for quitting / launching a game.

The front-end is almost ready to release but the config program needs some work (you can edit the list but can't add/delete items) and there is no layout selection or configuration.