340 replies to this topic

[Aimless_E]

Not to rush you tiptup300 but do you have a mockup of the screen we discussed a couple of weeks ago?

[Tiptup300]

Aimless_E, the video has me slightly "disturbed." The buttons on the sidebar are scaled very poorly. I intended for them to not be scaled at all. Also when it pops up make it about .25 of a second to popin/out. A slow slideout kind of looks sloppy.

I really like the idea of the infobar being slid in. Nice work there.

Also, the group category is supposed to move with the selections. My whole idea is pretty much a giant ripoff of Rock Band's tracklist system, which I assumed someone here has used [apparently not, ] So you could use that for reference of what I mean.

Heres a reference for the RB menu:

Anyways, amazing work. Just need a few tweaks here and there.

Also, heres an icon I made up for the album art thing, which I thought was a great idea:



EDIT: Is there any way you could get full 800x480 screenshots not including your desktop?

Side bar for the main menu or sidebar in the games library? I can speed up any of the animations I need to and yes I agree it needs to be a little quicker in the leaving.

Originally I had it setup so that it would behave like your are saying. And I assumed that's what you were ripping off but I found that when you have more than 60 or so games for one emulator its nice to have that constant reminder of what your currently scrolling through. I do plan to have a modified version of your/harmonixs idea. Basically when your are scrolling through and your reach the end of a section the next section appears very much like your rendering. When the Sections "Title" reaches the top line it replaces the old sections title. If you go the other direction then once the previous section has been reached the title bar reverts to that sections title. I have a few SNES roms now and I plan to implement the idea. I'll post a video of it when I have it.

I can take just screen of the program. I just wanted everyone to see that it wasn't just a fancy flash file or another mockup.

Thanks for the "album art" default pic. I was going to ask for one.

Perfect, I'm actually sort of liking how the category stays at the top better. I can imagine it being a very neat and useful effect actually, good thinking.

It would be the slide out after you go into the games listing. And the slide in after choosing a game.

NOTE: After selecting to play a game, instead of just hard cutting to a black screen, could you softly fade out at about .5 of a second.

Also, sorry if I sounded a bit harsh on my last post. The scaling on the sidebar buttons is just throwing me off a bit.

EDIT:

I just read your last post, I'm still not sure which sort of options I have to worry about in the mockup.

Edited by Tiptup300, 07 January 2009 - 05:21 PM.

[Aimless_E]

[/quote]

Perfect, I'm actually sort of liking how the category stays at the top better. I can imagine it being a very neat and useful effect actually, good thinking.

It would be the slide out after you go into the games listing. And the slide in after choosing a game.

NOTE: After selecting to play a game, instead of just hard cutting to a black screen, could you softly fade out at about .5 of a second.

Also, sorry if I sounded a bit harsh on my last post. The scaling on the sidebar buttons is just throwing me off a bit.

EDIT:

I just read your last post, I'm still not sure which sort of options I have to worry about in the mockup.
[/quote]

Thats right sorry. How about I just throw something together send you a screen shot and have you fix it?

The hard black out is done by MAME as it initializes the video. I don't think I can soften that... But I could add a loading screen and have the interface fade out behind it. I think the program needs more user feedback when loading the games I'm just not sure what the best solution is yet.

And I didn't think you sounded harsh I understand where your coming from, but the graphics library I decided to use for the GUI doesn't care about original size so I have to set it manually which can be rather tedious . I'll see what I can do to make it look more like your originals.

[audovoice]

I only read half of this thread so far but I wanted to suggest this. Fore most emulator there are probably only a limited number of configurations that really work the best with any emulator on any game. Meaning that wile there might be a million combination's for dos box and a thousand for Playstation you would at most you about 20 presets for playstation games and a few more (lets say 36) presets could probably get 99% of dos games running very nearly perfectly.


I am afraid I am not making as much sense as I could. You work out the best presets for some made up game Mario_Dico.iso and you call it preset (1) and rename the game, Mario_Disco(1).iso but Ma(1)io_Dico.iso or (1)Mario_Disco.iso or any thing else with (1) also would have worked. Because for the same system a great many games are made in a similar way and Pandora is built all to one specification, preset (1) also works for Game_B.iso and so it is renamed Game_B(1).iso Game_C.iso is a little difforent so it's preset is named (2). And so on like that. So when Joe User gets a new playstation game that no one has chosen a preset for he just selects the presets in the front end, trying out (1) and then (2) and so on until he got to (a) and eventually (z). If none of them worked he could try to manually configure it and at it as a new preset number. I doubt 36 would get used up.

Each system would use it's own designation for presets. Meaning that there would be a (1) that was a preset for Nintendo roms and a (1) that would be for sega roms.


Some selection in program could do the renaming of the rom (to add the designation of a preset number) for you. It could even be an empty .txt file that holds the preset information in it's name. Having a Mario(2).rom.txt file would make the (2) appear as choice for that rom in the front end, but it would not exclude the possibility of also having a Mario(a).rom.txt file that would make that option appear as well. So with to small text files named Mario(2).rom.txt and Mario(a).rom.txt the presets (2) and (a) would be available meaning that they are two presets that work well. The txt file could optionally be filled with a small comment about that particular preset on that particular game like "runs smoothly but buggy sound", or "runs slightly to fast".

Some tie in with an online site would be good. It could have just a long list of alphabetical game names, with extra entries for game language and version number (just like any rom site) and it would list there recommended presets. It could even have some thing like a user voting system, 5 users have said they used preset (4), 3 users have said they used preset (9).

[Tiptup300]

Thats right sorry. How about I just throw something together send you a screen shot and have you fix it?

The hard black out is done by MAME as it initializes the video. I don't think I can soften that... But I could add a loading screen and have the interface fade out behind it. I think the program needs more user feedback when loading the games I'm just not sure what the best solution is yet.

And I didn't think you sounded harsh I understand where your coming from, but the graphics library I decided to use for the GUI doesn't care about original size so I have to set it manually which can be rather tedious . I'll see what I can do to make it look more like your originals.

That idea would work.

What was more thinking of is just draw a big black box over everything and just up the transparency over time.

Would it be possible to dynamically generate the button textures. That might be going a little bit overboard though.

Edited by Tiptup300, 07 January 2009 - 07:11 PM.

[Aimless_E]

That idea would work.

What was more thinking of is just draw a big black box over everything and just up the transparency over time.

Would it be possible to dynamically generate the button textures. That might be going a little bit overboard though.

Yeah I think I'll avoid the button texture thing. What I plan on doing is opening up each of your pngs that you sent me. I wasn't very careful when I set up the buttons originally so going back over them should fix the problem.

[iain.dalton]

I just wanted to say that I'll probably use your loader for Z-Machine games. Here's a Mac app that works similar to yours (but only for IF, and only the top two pictures are relevant): http://ccxvii.net/sp...ht/screens.html and here's a page that might prove helpful if you want to support the Z-Machine: http://babel.ifarchive.org/

Edited by iain.dalton, 09 January 2009 - 04:39 AM.

[Aimless_E]

Okay here are a few images of the interface with the buttons "un"resized not all of them have been fixed however.

http://picasaweb.goo...feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.goo...feat=directlink

http://picasaweb.goo...feat=directlink

Edit: screw it! above are links to the pics.

Edited by Aimless_E, 09 January 2009 - 03:06 PM.

[Tiptup300]

Not quite working.

[Aimless_E]

Not quite working.

fixed above......

[Mithrildor]

Nice but i'd dont like the Play Game with CAPS.

[Tiptup300]

Nice but i'd dont like the Play Game with CAPS.

I agree, and why type of GUI middleware are you using?

[Aimless_E]

Nice but i'd dont like the Play Game with CAPS.

I agree, and why type of GUI middleware are you using?

Can do.

There's middleware that I can use to make gui's ?

Truthfully I use a program called edje_editor to help me with layout and quick changes. But I have to clean up the code after I save the file so I avoid it when I can.

why? oh and right now I'm using vera as the font. If you would prefer another font let me know.

[hells_dark]

Looks really good now
But i don't like the spaces randomly wide before the rom names.
All titles are not at the "same level".

[Aimless_E]

Looks really good now
But i don't like the spaces randomly wide before the rom names.
All titles are not at the "same level".

Yeah neither do I . Ill see what I can do to fix it.