Author Topic: My first frontend attempt! (Read 12490 times)

johnws · « **on:** July 09, 2003, 01:47:54 am »

I've been pretty busy the last few days teaching myself C++ and OpenGL. Although I can barely do anything I am very motivated to make my own frontend. I don't *why*, but I wanted something very similar to UltraCade.

With my *very* limited knowledge, I've successfully made a very very beta of my frontend which I'll call "mamewik" until I find a good name for it. So far I've got the following features:

Any fullscreen resolution that your graphics card is capable of (usually 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, etc...)
Any windowed resolution (as long as your background is the same resolution, everything else will resize)

Display Marquees in a wheel which you can:
-scroll up by 1 by pressing up
-scroll down by 1 by pressing down
-scroll up by 10 by pressing right
-scrool down by 10 by pressing left

OpenGL provides smooooth turning for the wheel

Displays preview (still for now) of game
-automatically resizes to window

Displays background. Will stretch/shrink based on resolution

By pressing 1, it loads the selected rom. It:
a) lowers the CPU resources for the frontend
b) loads the rom (which will run at full speed now)
c) waits for rom to finish
d) once done, it then resumes the frontent and gives it normal CPU resources

all which is done very smooth, and you never see windows

I'm brand spankin' new to C++, and I'm surprised everything runs so well.

Oh, and here are some previews of the frontend:

1024x768 - fullscreen
800x600 - fullscreen
640x480 - windowed

Things I will implement soon:
-user mappable keys
-custom sounds: background + for scrolling
-if i find out how, maybe animated previews
-clean up marquee graphics a bit. i don't like the white around the edges and the resolution is kind of low

Ya, ya, ya.. I know it's a waste of time, but I needed something to keep me going until I start my own mame cabinet. I'm very lazy so this will probably never make a public release. Only for personal use

johnws · « **Reply #1 on:** July 09, 2003, 01:50:39 am »

I'd just like to add that I intend to change the theme (and espiecally the name). I only made one that looked like UltraCades because I needed to make a rough layout while I was coding.

Minwah · « **Reply #2 on:** July 09, 2003, 04:33:54 am »

Very cool!...I bet you'll have people hassling you to release that now!

F|end · « **Reply #3 on:** July 09, 2003, 04:55:14 am »

Don't forget to post i'ts release!

)

cdbrown · « **Reply #4 on:** July 09, 2003, 05:44:34 am »

Looks good, sounds like a fairly simple setup which will please many users.

Quote from: johnws on July 09, 2003, 01:47:54 am

Ya, ya, ya.. I know it's a waste of time, but I needed something to keep me going until I start my own mame cabinet. I'm very lazy so this will probably never make a public release. Only for personal use

New FE's are never a waste of time as there's always going to be people out there that aren't completely happy with all the other FE's - yours might be the one that answers their prayers.

Keep up the good work

)p( · « **Reply #5 on:** July 09, 2003, 06:01:55 am »

Quote from: cdbrown on July 09, 2003, 05:44:34 am

Looks good, sounds like a fairly simple setup which will please many users.

Quote from: johnws on July 09, 2003, 01:47:54 am
Ya, ya, ya.. I know it's a waste of time, but I needed something to keep me going until I start my own mame cabinet. I'm very lazy so this will probably never make a public release. Only for personal use

New FE's are never a waste of time as there's always going to be people out there that aren't completely happy with all the other FE's - yours might be the one that answers their prayers.

Keep up the good work

yeah, and especially new fe's that do something different like this one are very welcome...that turning wheel is certainly different

I think you are not the only one that liked de ultracade interface...it has come up here several times so i am sure some people would love to try it on their cabs...you could allways release it with a note that it is unsupported or something like that

peter

stuzza · « **Reply #6 on:** July 09, 2003, 06:31:27 am »

Looks great! Could work well as a kid friendly front end too!

Here is some ideas for names for the frontend:
RetroRotation, WheelMarq, Mamespin ?? just some suggestions

arcadecab · « **Reply #7 on:** July 09, 2003, 11:02:23 am »

Looks great!! I was just going to post a thread asking if anyone was going to try to emulate the Ultracade setup as it would be very cool to have such a setup for MAME. The idea of having animated sets to go along with the games is also awesome, as that is how Ultracade displays the games as well. I really hope this gets finished soon or a beta is available for testing. Ultimately, I think it would be great for MAME fans to have an "ultracade" type frontend to use in between some of the great other frontends that are already out there.
Keep up the work--hope a working version is available soon.

jakejake28 · « **Reply #8 on:** July 09, 2003, 12:00:14 pm »

this wouldn't work for most people, y'know, as snes, nes, atari, genesis, etc.. games did not have marquees, but as a mame fe, this is amazingly cool

radiator · « **Reply #9 on:** July 09, 2003, 03:17:21 pm »

mmm, nice

bet the marquee wheel/game selection thing looks great in real-life

SirPoonga · « **Reply #10 on:** July 09, 2003, 05:03:42 pm »

Simular to what I am currently doing. Instead of working from scratch I am grabbing the opengl graphics engine from stepmania and using the stepmania wheel menu system. (which is c++ and opengl using their custom rage graphics engine) Check it out, www.stepmania.com.

It's a cool interface. I'm hoping to use a double wheel system for generating custom lists. On the right wheel is your normal wheel, the left is the list you want to edit.

Where did you get the graphics from?

SirPoonga · « **Reply #11 on:** July 09, 2003, 05:13:37 pm »

Quote from: jakejake28 on July 09, 2003, 12:00:14 pm

this wouldn't work for most people, y'know, as snes, nes, atari, genesis, etc.. games did not have marquees, but as a mame fe, this is amazingly cool

Actually, it could work. If the game has a marque insert it. Though many marquees aren't long and wide, some are just letter sized (like neogeo inserts). So, I plan on having if there is no marquee just to put the game name in there, but I also will have the game name below the screenshot. (Giving ideas to john). Since I am borrowing stepmania's source I've been calling it stepMAMEia.

Hehe, maybe john and I should calibrate

Actually, that is a good idea, john let me know. I have ansi c++ and opengl experience, but only from college. I don't have much m$ c++ experience but I can figure it out. I'd help ya learn. I think it would be easier to grab an open source graphics engine that does the dirty work rather than working with raw opengl directly.

AlanS17 · « **Reply #12 on:** July 09, 2003, 05:52:33 pm »

I'm certainly interested! Now THIS would be an awesome frontend...

Can yall have it ready by next week?

j/k

I loaded up a picture of UltraCade and they look almost identical. I mean you gotta look hard to see a difference. This thing is already coming along really well...

SirPoonga · « **Reply #13 on:** July 09, 2003, 06:28:42 pm »

hehe. I've paused working on that project for now. I;m working on finding a job, classes (went back to school for abit), and reviving the controls.dat project.

AlanS17 · « **Reply #14 on:** July 09, 2003, 06:57:31 pm »

Anything I can do to help? (I have very limited programming experience...)

SirPoonga · « **Reply #15 on:** July 09, 2003, 07:01:01 pm »

Help with what? the frontend idea?

johnws · « **Reply #16 on:** July 09, 2003, 07:05:16 pm »

This thread sure got a lot of replies

Thanks for the support everyone.
SirPoonga: I'd love to team up with you, but the problem is that I have almost no experience with C++ $:-\$ I would most likely be learning along the way (kind of like I already am

). Anyway, that would be cool, and maybe we could even make a public release!
I'm getting a little head of myself here

I'm going to be really busy this week because I have guests staying at my house for the rest of the week, but I'll try to get a little more work done, and work things out with you

AlanS17 · « **Reply #17 on:** July 09, 2003, 07:10:32 pm »

Quote from: SirPoonga on July 09, 2003, 07:01:01 pm

Help with what? the frontend idea?

The frontend, controls.dat, or whatever...

Howard_Casto · « **Reply #18 on:** July 09, 2003, 09:25:53 pm »

Looks great man, I guess now when I get that part of my fe working it'll look like I ripped you off.

Seriously though, I've always been envious of ultracades menu system and I'm super impressed that someone is taking the hard road and actually making a unique fe. Please let me know if you need any help code wise and keep me informed of your progress.

Shieldwolf · « **Reply #19 on:** July 09, 2003, 09:40:54 pm »

Quote from: jakejake28 on July 09, 2003, 12:00:14 pm

this wouldn't work for most people, y'know, as snes, nes, atari, genesis, etc.. games did not have marquees, but as a mame fe, this is amazingly cool

No they didn't but they do have flyers, box art and others that could be made to fit the front end
count me in for beta testing.

Frostillicus · « **Reply #20 on:** July 09, 2003, 10:09:31 pm »

Wow that looks very cool. Very colorful. Looks a little like the DDR stuff.

SirPoonga · « **Reply #21 on:** July 10, 2003, 12:41:38 am »

Quote from: johnws on July 09, 2003, 07:05:16 pm

This thread sure got a lot of replies

Thanks for the support everyone.
SirPoonga: I'd love to team up with you, but the problem is that I have almost no experience with C++ $:-\$ I would most likely be learning along the way (kind of like I already am ). Anyway, that would be cool, and maybe we could even make a public release!
I'm getting a little head of myself here

I'm going to be really busy this week because I have guests staying at my house for the rest of the week, but I'll try to get a little more work done, and work things out with you

Yeah, it will get alot of replies. I think people have been looking into an ultracade replica. I have been ever since I have seen one.

Like I said, I don;t know much aobut microsoft c++, though stepmania is sorta cross platform. I know the main source uses windows specific stuff, but there is a mac os x and a linux port in progress, and screenshots of that progress.

I think this would be perfect for learning if someone else (like me) works with you to answer questions. This is something I've been wanting to do but it is low on my project priority list. If you want to see a cool wheel menu grab stepmania (www.stepmania.com) and some music/dwi files from ddrmaniax.net. It's open source in c++. Somewher on the online docs or the readme says how to download the source. The source is rather large though. But once you get that far I can help you disect the source to need what you need.

AlanS: Do the same

I'm pretty much the bottle neck of the controls.dat right now (sorry). I just need to get a database setup and at least for now some primative forms to add data to the database.

My current priority list in projects is homework of course now that I am going back to school, then controls.dat. Because I will want to include that into my next FE. now, I don;t want to say we need to use the stepmania source. Bu as I always say, don't invent the wheel twice. The code is already there and it is open source. If we use stepmania source we would have to keep the FE open source too as stepmania is GPL'd.

john, I'd actually like to see how far you are on your FE right now. If you get mirc pop onto the chat room and dcc meanything you want. I am usually in the room lurking at nights central time zone.

johnws · « **Reply #22 on:** July 10, 2003, 01:22:09 am »

Will do, AlanS, but as soon as I clean up my code a bit. Because I'm just learning it's a bit of a mess, but shouldn't take too long to clean up. I had a few minutes free today so I cleaned up the marquees. Here's some updated screenshots/clips:

Cleaned up still shot

I'll work on cleaning up the code in a bit

SirPoonga · « **Reply #23 on:** July 10, 2003, 01:25:19 am »

Oh man, that's sweet.

Minwah · « **Reply #24 on:** July 10, 2003, 04:54:29 am »

Quote from: johnws on July 10, 2003, 01:22:09 am

Will do, AlanS, but as soon as I clean up my code a bit. Because I'm just learning it's a bit of a mess, but shouldn't take too long to clean up. I had a few minutes free today so I cleaned up the marquees. Here's some updated screenshots/clips:

Cleaned up still shot

I'll work on cleaning up the code in a bit

That looks really nice

Magnet_Eye · « **Reply #25 on:** July 10, 2003, 07:46:50 am »

OMG! Man, you are amazing! How the hell? Where the hell?

you just jump out of nowhere with this "attempt?"

Good start, for damn sure. I too have played several different UltraCade machines, though I don't really like the design you chose. They have better ones.

Anyway, killer! This kind of layout makes it so brainless for users I think. No need to bother them with all the stupid MAME stuff. Just look through the games and go!

But, if you have 2,000 games to jump through that can be a hassle. Wonder what can be done about that? Cuz in UltraCade, they usally only have like 20 or so games on one machine, which is easy to go through. But for us with Cabs at home and 2k games...problems arise.

Maybe a shift function with a list of categories (& favorites) at the bottom of the screen or something, then that cat. loads up in the wheel? who knows.

Good work. I don't think anyone here is gonna let you NOT work on it and make a public beta.

AlanS17 · « **Reply #26 on:** July 10, 2003, 12:38:29 pm »

I can't see it! It said it wasn't available or something. $:-\$

Aceldamor · « **Reply #27 on:** July 10, 2003, 04:42:19 pm »

Cannot find page.....bummer, I really wanted to see it.

johnws · « **Reply #28 on:** July 10, 2003, 04:43:03 pm »

Sorry. Server went down (

). For now, here's a mirror:

http://www.cykotix.com/~john/mame/

johnws · « **Reply #29 on:** July 10, 2003, 04:47:47 pm »

Categories is a good idea. It was also brought up in the chat room last night. I'm thinking a single wheel, with categories, and then once you choose the category from the wheel, it displays each rom in that category, and then you can push a certain button to go back to the category wheel. That sound good? The 2 wheel design is also good, but, maybe a bit CPU hungry?

Aceldamor · « **Reply #30 on:** July 10, 2003, 04:56:34 pm »

I want I want I want I want I want....

Sweet stuff...I've been looking for something like Ultricade sine...well Ultracade!

I'm a big fan of the Catagory wheel option above. Is it possible to have the background mirror what catagory you selected?

Example, you select fighters, and a "fighterish" background comes up. something to that effect.

johnws · « **Reply #31 on:** July 10, 2003, 05:07:06 pm »

Quote from: Aceldamor on July 10, 2003, 04:56:34 pm

I want I want I want I want I want....

Sweet stuff...I've been looking for something like Ultricade sine...well Ultracade!

I'm a big fan of the Catagory wheel option above. Is it possible to have the background mirror what catagory you selected?

Example, you select fighters, and a "fighterish" background comes up. something to that effect.

A good idea, and very doable!

edit:
I just noticed now that there's audio in that clip. My brother was watching television in the background; just ignore that! (no audio *yet* in the fe)

AlanS17 · « **Reply #32 on:** July 10, 2003, 05:20:06 pm »

Would it be too CPU-intensive to have like an inner wheel and outer wheel for categories and games? I'm about to load the movie file up as I post this message.

AlanS17 · « **Reply #33 on:** July 10, 2003, 05:28:32 pm »

Oh yeah... I want that...

crashdmj · « **Reply #34 on:** July 10, 2003, 06:39:29 pm »

Oh man this is going to be sweet! You should team up with someone who already has an existing frontend and make it better!! Actually I say that cause I want this released soon, lol pay no attention to me. Great Job!

SirPoonga · « **Reply #35 on:** July 11, 2003, 12:45:21 am »

Quote from: crashdmj on July 10, 2003, 06:39:29 pm

Oh man this is going to be sweet! You should team up with someone who already has an existing frontend and make it better!! Actually I say that cause I want this released soon, lol pay no attention to me. Great Job!

Hehe, that's why I suggest disecting stepmania's source. The graphics engine is very impressive. It does all the dirty work like timing and stuff for you. I'm going to continue working on my FE idea with the stepmania source regardless of what happens here, just an option though.

AlanS17 · « **Reply #36 on:** July 11, 2003, 12:57:06 am »

Both of yall keep up the good work. Maybe we should make this a race.

(Just as long as one of you is done by the end of the summer so I can finish my cabinet before the fall smester starts!)

Spaced Invader · « **Reply #37 on:** July 11, 2003, 07:31:20 am »

Oh man that's Sweet!

Just started my first cab (CP Done) and I found my FE. That is amazing and I eagerly await its release. You rock!

Oh yeah, first post--Yay me!!

purplemonkey · « **Reply #38 on:** July 11, 2003, 02:45:30 pm »

Wow!!!

I really want this!! Hurry up and release a beta!!

king88mob · « **Reply #39 on:** July 11, 2003, 03:26:41 pm »

I don't know how you feel about this, but you could always make it OpenSource. That would be an easy way to get collaboration from those of us that can program, and it would make life easier w.r.t. releases and what not.

In case you don't know about it, check out sourceforge.net they offer free hosting, CVS, mailing lists etc... basically everything you need to run a project.

Of course, if you are planning on charging for it eventually, then that won't work, but otherwise, it'd be an interesting option


Main	Restorations	Software	Audio/Jukebox/MP3	Everything Else	Buy/Sell/Trade
Project Announcements	Monitor/Video	GroovyMAME	Merit/JVL Touchscreen	Meet Up	Retail Vendors
Driving & Racing	Woodworking	Software Support Forums	Consoles	Project Arcade	Reviews
Automated Projects	Artwork	Frontend Support Forums	Pinball	Forum Discussion	Old Boards
Raspberry Pi & Dev Board	controls.dat	Linux	Miscellaneous Arcade	Wiki Discussion	Old Archives
Lightguns	Arcade1Up	Try the site in https mode		Site News


Unread posts \| New Replies \| Recent posts \| Rules \| Chatroom \| Wiki \| File Repository \| RSS \| Submit news