An idea for Gamelauncher...

[Todd H]

I had an idea the other day while I was scrolling through my game list and checking out the screenshots.  What if I made custom screenshots that not only displayed a screen capture but also displayed gameplay instructions as well as a map of what controls to use.  I know some control panels can look daunting with its multitude of buttons and sticks.  Good idea?  I'm going to make a mockup and post it here to give everyone an idea of what I mean.

[Todd H]

Here's a VERY rough idea of what I'm talking about.  In Gamelauncher, you can view the snapshot by pressing space.  Instead, why not set it up so that you can view the attached image instead?  

[Paul Olson]

I don't know anything about gamelauncher specifically, I have only tried Dragon King.  DK has Alt Elements, not sure if the other front ends use it, but they probably can.  You could set up an element to use pictures of your CP to show which controls to use.  Another element can be for game instructions.  

I think this may be easier in the long run, a lot of the games might overlap, so you wouldn't need as many unique images to accomplish what your looking for.

I hope this makes some since, I just woke up, and I'm talking on the phone, so this might not make sense at all.
 

Paul

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah no offense, but if you want to display more than one thing at a time then you need to use a fe capable of displaying more than one thing at a time.   Any fe developed post gamelauncher should be able to do this for you.  Dk's alt elements are currently broken, but they will be fixed next build.  

[Todd H]

I've never used Dragon King, so I'm not familiar with its capabilities.  I've been using Gamelauncher for a while now because of its simple interface.  It looks like I may need to try Dragon King and see what the fuss is about.

[Jakobud]

Yes this idea has been discussed in the past.  The problem is creating custom images for every single game that show how to play each game on your particular set of controls.  Now this one reason that a few guys here tackled the control.dat project so that stuff like this could be automatically displayed.  I'm not sure what happened to that whole controls.dat thing though.  It was a brilliant idea.

[Howard_Casto]

Nothing happened to it.  We are still working on it off and on.  We are tweaking the format a little and once we do I will release some sort of viewer that can optionally generate images based on the layouts.  

[Jakobud]

Cool Howard, nice to know that that whole idea didnt die.  I'm looking forward to it.

[Hoagie_one]

pacmanfan siad something like that is doable in Emutron.  He's currently working on a script builder to automate the process to incorporate such things

[Thenasty]

I had this idea but its in a form like MAMEINFO.DAT or HISTORY.DAT. This 2 can be access using the TAB then scroll down but my Idea about GAMEINFO.DAT is to just press a "BUTTON" and it pops up. So you don't need to use TAB first (this gives acess to alot of things for the user). When that "BUTTON" is pressed, a display like MAMEINFO.DAT or HISTORY.DAT will be displayed. Of course this are Text based like those other 2 dat file. And you don't have to type this info, get it from KLOV. And of course include the CHEAT for the game.

[Howard_Casto]

I had this idea but its in a form like MAMEINFO.DAT or HISTORY.DAT. This 2 can be access using the TAB then scroll down but my Idea about GAMEINFO.DAT is to just press a "BUTTON" and it pops up. So you don't need to use TAB first (this gives acess to alot of things for the user). When that "BUTTON" is pressed, a display like MAMEINFO.DAT or HISTORY.DAT will be displayed. Of course this are Text based like those other 2 dat file. And you don't have to type this info, get it from KLOV. And of course include the CHEAT for the game.

Umm why do you think it's called the controls.dat project.    That's what we are doing, the viewer is simply a nice side-effect.  

[ErikRuud]

Do you mean something like this?



I have already done some on my machine.
It's not automated like the controls.dat project will allow, but it does work in GL

[Nailz]

Wow, that is very cool Erik, I especially like the CP layout there.  NICE!

[Lilwolf]

btw, the history file already has a bunch of that information... and more...

But adding it to the screenshot doesn't make any sense.  It should probably be in text format, so that FE's can place it where its useful.

But for a hack to get it to work with FE's tht don't know what to do with the information, images that replace the cabinet view would probably work well.  Many frontends can do that already.

[Howard_Casto]

btw, the history file already has a bunch of that information... and more...

But adding it to the screenshot doesn't make any sense.  It should probably be in text format, so that FE's can place it where its useful.

But for a hack to get it to work with FE's tht don't know what to do with the information, images that replace the cabinet view would probably work well.  Many frontends can do that already.

Agreed.. in lazarus and dk the mameinfo and history.dats are brought up full-screen if you press the info button.  You see this way the text is actually big enough that you can read it.    Stuff it in the corner like that and there's no way you can make it out on a tv or arcade monitor.