Frontend For All Emus?

[dcpmark]

Now that this newbie has 4 emus running nicely on my new GP2X (MAME, PicoDrive, PocketSnes, GnGeo2x), I wondered how cool it would be to have one frontend that could list/run all the games from all the different emus. Is this even possible?

 

[frutbunn]

You need GMenu2X: http://gmenu2x.sourceforge.net/page/GMenu2X.

 

[dcpmark]

Yes, that lists all the emus, but can it be used to create one list of individual roms from all the different emus to launch from?

 

[frutbunn]

Don't think so, but if you have only have a few games that you want to pick from, then you could make scripts for them.

Just shove something like this in a text file:

exec </mnt/sd/path/to/emulator.gpe> </mnt/sd/path/to/rom>

And call it something like rom_game.gpe and it will appear as an executable. You could even add an icon for it too - rom_game.png.

For example, to run a BBC Micro game I'd add this to a file to start the rom:

exec /mnt/sd/beebem04/beebem.gpe /mnt/sd/beebem04/discs/Firebird/Cholo.ssd

 

[dcpmark]

Don't think so, but if you have only have a few games that you want to pick from, then you could make scripts for them.

You must have missed the "newbie" handle I gave myself in the first post.... I am not skilled enough to make scripts, and even if I learned how, it still wouldn't be practical. As you pointed out, it would be only good for a few games. I'm talking about a frontend that could be configured to list all found, working roms like Rage2X, but that would work across different emus for hundreds and hundreds of games. Clicking a particular rom would take launch the game within its emu.

Again, I don't know if this is even possible, but it would certainly make game-choosing much easier on the GP2X.

 

[Blah]

It has a GUI. Just press Select on the emulator, then you can set the settings accordingly (they are pretty much self explanatory). When you are done, press Start to save.

 

[jbrodack]

what you want isnt possible or needed really. there are frontends for some emulators but different emulators all use different settings and it wouldnt make sense to try to make a program to launch all emulators.

 

[Godmil]

People seem to being pretty rude about this. The simple answer is: no nothing like that exists right now, but yes it could be kinda nice.

 

[kevcal]

Yes, it would be a great thing to have - you would need to analyse the commandline parameters to each emulator..

You could rename your roms such that they have a different file extension relating to the required emulator.. eg mslug5.rom.neogeo, berzerk.rom.mame, etc and the required emulator be called automatically - I guess this could be possible with gmenu2x ?

EDIT: actually a simple shellscript could do this; just a pain renaming so many files!
eg
:

case $1 in
  *.neogeo) /mnt/sd/neogeo   -f `basename $1` .. etc;;
  *.mame) /mnt/sd/gp2xmame -r `basename $1` .. etc;;
esac

or at least something like that - no access to a linux machine.

 

[dcpmark]

Yes, it would be a great thing to have

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks it would be sweet. Anyone with programming experience want to take a crack at a new super-duper frontend for all emus? I for one would happily donate or pay via PayPal for such a product.

 

[frutbunn]

Anyone with programming experience want to take a crack at a new super-duper frontend for all emus? I for one would happily donate or pay via PayPal for such a product.

You wouldn't really need that. All you'd really need is a simple UNIX shell script or a Windows VB program that can map the file extentions of the ROMs/disc-images to the emulators. Then just create a launch script that feeds the ROM to the emulator via command line in a way it can understand.

(If ROMs have the same file extention however then you may have problems, but only if the ROM images don't have a header.)

Anyone with Visual Basic skills here? It would be quite simple to write. Just do something like my previous post but make everything configurable via a frontend.

 

[Blah]

Gmenu2x does all this, you noobs just don't know how to use it.

edit: oh you mean all of them from the same file list....You realize that is stupid and zipping your roms would break the functionality anyway. It doesn't even work like that on your computer, try getting it working that way on there before you try that on GP2X.

A better way to do it would be by directory rather than extension. Show them in the list as if they were all in the same directory, but use the name of the real directory to figure out which emulator to launch.

 

[frutbunn]

Gmenu2x does all this, you noobs just don't know how to use it.

edit: oh you mean all of them from the same file list....You realize that is stupid and zipping your roms would break the functionality anyway.

No it wouldn't :rolleyes:

 

[frutbunn]

It doesn't even work like that on your computer, try getting it working that way on there before you try that on GP2X.

I'm talking about a custom tool that builds a simple one line script with a .gpe extension to launch the ROM/disc within the emulator. That tool can be PC based and write the scripts to the SD card (or a copy of what is on the SD card etc). That way gmenu2x 'sees' an executable and can work as normal.

A better way to do it would be by directory rather than extension. Show them in the list as if they were all in the same directory, but use the name of the real directory to figure out which emulator to launch.

Wouldn't that require changes to gmenu2x?

 

[kevcal]

No, you could do something like I said above (post #9 shellscript) but get it to switch the emulator on (eg) /roms/mame/berzerk.zip, /roms/neogeo/mslug5.zip, etc as Blah said. Better than renaming all the files

Don't know where re-zipping roms came into this..?

Anyway, this shouldn't require a change to gmenu2x as far as I know.

Given 10 minutes on a unix box, most people could come up with a shellscript that would work; however you'd need to know the command line params for all emulators you're going to support (if they all have them).

EDIT: speeling

 

[frutbunn]

No, you could do something like I said above (post #9 shellscript) but get it to switch the emulator on (eg) /roms/mame/berzerk.zip, /roms/neogeo/mslug5.zip, etc as Blah said. Better than renaming all the files

I haven't looked at the image files for either of those emulators, but shouldn't they contain some sort of header to identify themselves? Or are ROMs generally just raw data dumps?

 

[kevcal]

Roms aren't specific to an emulator.
Just dumps usually.

 

[dcpmark]

Okay. Now that we have established that it is indeed possible, let me be the first to start a bounty for someone to make a frontend similar to Rage2X that can launch roms from at least these 4 emus: MAME, Picodrive, PocketSnes, and GnGeo2x. I will offer $100 (via PayPal) for someone to develop (and periodically update) such a product.....hopefully those of you who would like such a frontend will also kick in a few bucks, too.

Any takers?

 

[JyCet]

Well done it's a good bounty only for a little universal frontend !

 

[dcpmark]

Well done it's a good bounty only for a little universal frontend !

Thanks! Hopefully someone will step forward to collect it, and others who want the frontend will add to the $100.