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spinal
Created : 21 July 2011
Edited : 17 December 2017

EmuMenu

Multi Emu frontend

Just thought I share this with everyone. I made a nice little front end for [most] emulators, so that I can start any game on any emulator from one place.



Please feel free to try it out, I have two versions, one with a bunch of emulators, one without. Both have a few folders already set up with a couple of public domain games in each.


EmuMenu.rar

All of the data for loading games is in each game systems folder and follows a simple file_extension.ini format, each .ini file tells the menu the location of each emulator.
eg.

smc.ini


Controls
D-Pad/Joystick/cursors = navigate menu
Fire/Space = load game

For games that can't load through the above way, see the dow/windows examples. the '.shortcut' files are plain text, the first line is the emulator (such as dosbox) the next line is the command line argument. For windows games, just set the first line to that of the game you want to load.

system/settings.ini can be used to override the background color and screen resolution.

Any bug reports or suggestions are more than welcome

 

Comments


Thursday, 21 July 2011, 10:37
Jayenkai
So, um.. how do I start a game!?
Thursday, 21 July 2011, 10:55
spinal
bug #1 found... forgot to add a key for starting a game I've been using my joypad, so if you have one, it should be one of the first 8 joypad buttons.
Thursday, 21 July 2011, 12:36
spinal
Minor update, for those without joysticks attached, replace EmuMenu.exe with the following version, to allow 'Enter' for starting a game.

EmuMenu_exe_only.rar
Monday, 22 August 2011, 06:19
waroffice
Awesome stuff
Monday, 22 August 2011, 11:03
JL235
I am planning to build an arcade cabinet, so this will come in handy. Thanks!

|edit| It flickers, very, very badly for me. It looks like it's swapping between the front and the back buffer, but the back is not being cleared.

Also, could you put a nicer font in it? |edit|

Tuesday, 23 August 2011, 04:04
spinal
I used FONText for creating the font,
https://www.mediafire.com/?24ng952x3dm
feel free to crate your own, if you come up with a good one why not post it here!
(You will need to switch off font smoothing in windows)

Does this version work any better (includes a more readable font)?
Tuesday, 23 August 2011, 04:12
JL235
Yes, the issue is solved. Although the way it switches to fullscreen and back is very unpleasant. It moves lots of my windows around, and changes their order, most other fullscreen applications don't do this. But it's not a major issue.

Re font, could you use a system font rather then a bmp? If the name is just placed in a setting somewhere, then it would be trivial to change this.

All of the graphics are quite heavily aliased, including the font. I'd advise cleaning up all of the edges as it gives it a really cheap feel.

The list of games is not prominent enough. It only lists about 4 on screen at once, and is stuck in the left corner. I think you should centre it, and have it take priority over showing the image of the console.

Finally, it'd be very cool if you could put game box art in there too. I'm thinking if you have an image with the same name as a rom, it would load and display the image on the fly when it goes to display it. If there is no image, it'll just show text. Then you can scroll through games, and see an actual shot of it.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011, 06:38
spinal
That's a whole lot of work that I'm too lazy to do

Unfortunately I chose blitz basic to create this menu in, as a result I can not do anything 'nice' to the graphics, then is no alpha blending support, the edges will always look crap. The full-screening again, is a result of the crazy method that blitz uses to switch to full screen, the only real method to correct this would be detecting whatever your resolution is and stretch the images rather than changing the screen resolution (to 800x600).

I could release the source, not that it's particularly tidy, I don't code 'tidy'
Thursday, 06 October 2011, 06:32
spinal
Updated, added support for windows games and dos games using dosbox, scummvm games can also be loaded in a method similar to dos games.

emumenu.rar

Probably wont update after this, my demo of blitzmax has only 2 days left
Wednesday, 30 November 2011, 02:21
spinal
So... does anyone use this? how well does it stand up to prolonged use?
Friday, 18 April 2014, 05:16
rickdangerous
Hello
Is this frontend is still developed?
Thanks and happy easter
Saturday, 10 May 2014, 11:07
spinal
I'm not even sure i'd be able to find the source for it.

What features would be needed to be added?