PureBasic Forums - English

not so sure where to put this, so i'll put it here

one of the things i have been playing with lately (no, not that! yes, i know what YOU were thinking! ) .... anyway, one of the things i have been playing with lately is emulators, such as mame, freezesms, atariwin, mess, etc.

one of the other things i have been playing with lately is frontends

and that, my friends, has been a disappointment

so i was wondering, would building up a front end be a good project for the purebasic crowd? it's useful (who doesn't like games? ) it contains almost every possible feature (graphics, os, api, cd stuff, okay, it *could* contain all those features, and if you really want you could throw in a little jukebox functionality) and not too complex (not if you compare it with your tax deduction application forms)

aren't there other frontends? of course! GameEx is such a beast, and though it's great i just don't like it entirely... it did crash on me... needs .net... and looks like a microsoft product... deliberately!

so, who's in? and how should one start a collaborative project? (spin off's are allowed )

the enthusiasm is overwhelming

I'm currently working on a frontend for DOSBox because it needs one. But to code another frontend, for MAME for example, is useless because there is MAME32 wich is just superb. I also mentioned MAME because I can't think of any other emulator wich is worth coding a frontend for. Anything else doesn't need a frontend like ZSNES, Nestopia, Gens or VB Advance.

Well, maybe I'm just missing your point. If so, enlighten me!

well, here's what i want to do

i'm going to build (finally) my mame cabinet (yes!) but... it's going to do a bit more than just mame

i want to install some kids games (which need to use daemon tools to load the images before starting them), as well as run mame, mess, atari800win, and project64...

i want to put a simple menu on top for my favourite games, i'm not planning to cover everything (doesn't make much sense)

so it's not a replacement for the build in front ends, it's just an umbrella that would lead to my favourite items, and simplify my life when adding a certain game to my favourites

perhaps that makes more sense?