*all* Emulators Should Include This:

[DaveC]

I think that all emus should have a menu selection that would take you into a "museum" of sorts. The thing with emus is that they preserve the games of the past. It would nice to have in this "museum" something that could be as simple as a picture of the system being emulated. It could also be as complex as a few pictures and a page or two of text describing the system and specs. Some emus now come kind of close by having the system pictured on the splash page. I would even be willing to help any emu coders by gathering the system images and formatting them into a 320 x 240 image ready to use in the emu. Anyone interested in this too?

 

[Memnoch]

For what it's worth I really like the idea.

 

[solarice]

Thats a lot of games.... :unsure:

Not a bad idea though....but youd probably end up creating a very big emulator (final compiled size)....as youd have to be adding all these extra images / pages etc.

Feel free to prove me wrong mind as im not 100% on this.

 

[Tobriand]

Does sound kinda cool - though I'd prefer it as an addon than necessarily compiled into the .fxe if only for loading times.

Great idea though

 

[Prophet]

He doesn't mean a seperate history for every game, just a history of the system itself. It would take up relatively very little space.

Only thing is... Once people have read it once or twice, it would no longer serve a purpose, and would arguably just increase the file size for no useful reason. And considering SMC's are only 128MB, even an extra 100K of data or so is meaningful - it could mean one less ROM on your SMC.

So while I'm not against the idea, I also don't particularly think it's needed. A nice splash screen showing an image of the original system is good enough IMO. And it's very easy to go online and read complete histories and specs for all the old systems, so the info is available for the curious.

 

[ravuya]

I would like to see it, but chances are it would just increase the size of the program. Providing a link to somewhere like Old Computers would probably be good enough.

 

[kknd_cf]

He doesn't mean a seperate history for every game, just a history of the system itself. It would take up relatively very little space.

Only thing is... Once people have read it once or twice, it would no longer serve a purpose, and would arguably just increase the file size for no useful reason. And considering SMC's are only 128MB, even an extra 100K of data or so is meaningful - it could mean one less ROM on your SMC.

So while I'm not against the idea, I also don't particularly think it's needed. A nice splash screen showing an image of the original system is good enough IMO. And it's very easy to go online and read complete histories and specs for all the old systems, so the info is available for the curious.

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do you play the snes emu?
There's alot of stuff on that that irritates me because it slows down loading times, but I live with it, A tiny text file with a picture or two should be ok, I think.
Also Little John's menu is very advanced, but is it better than a white, blank screen?

 

[DaveC]

I would like to see it, but chances are it would just increase the size of the program. Providing a link to somewhere like Old Computers would probably be good enough.

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It wouldn't take all that much space. 40k for a 320x240 .jpg image, and one page of text would increase it around 50k or so. A splash screen with the systems pictured would work too. Currently though many emu splash screens have some other pic/logo on it.

 

[Shirohagen]

What about a GP32 application which does this? A dedicated FXE which is a computer museum with pics, dates, info and stats of systems and top 10 games to try etc...

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[DaveC]

What about a GP32 application which does this? A dedicated FXE which is a computer museum with pics, dates, info and stats of systems and top 10 games to try etc...

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That would work too. I wonder if I could make one in Fenix or Zot! or something. I can't code but flipping through images and text can't be too hard to write.

 

[toxibunny]

it's a good idea. some of those old game screenshots would probably take about 1k when compressed ... little bit of text: another 1k each. I bet you could fit a pretty comprehensive little GP32-related prog in about 2 meg...

and i hope version 2.0 includes manuals, tips, and walkthrougts in about 6meg...

seriously though.... great idea

 

[Lina_Inverse]

Emulators don't need this cause most classic games have the musem funtion built in if the game has enough storage in it.

 

[kknd_cf]

Emulators don't need this cause most classic games have the musem funtion built in if the game has enough storage in it.

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they do?
The only one I can think of is Game and Watch Gallery series (not sure about all of them)

 

[Shirohagen]

MAME Roms all contain info about the game which MAME displays, most console ROMS include info about the name of the game and the country etc, perhaps this info could appear in the game lists, like the fEmulators have started to do, irrespective of what the ROM itself is named on the SMC, but perhaps with the manufacturer and year? If this is not contained in the files, then perhaps some sort of database could work, like the one in CaSTaway, to show more info...

Just an idea, not really necessary for me, but maybe a nice touch at the point any emulator is considered "finished"

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