New Beta Of Gp2xmb

[kardasan]

3 days ago brorsson released new beta of his GP2XMB and on his website he asks for help with testing. Unfortunately nobody had noticed and there was no post on the gp32x boards.

So now go and check out the not-so-brand (3 days old) version of GP2XMB.

Features:

• Animated backgrounds
• internal OGG player
• you can launch native MPlayer to watch videos
• Photo viewer.
• Game browser scans through your SD (or internal flash) and finds .gpe files
• More to come...

 

[slaanesh]

It does look very nice, I'll give it a go!

 

[hando]

quite impressive

 

[Super Jamie]

WOW
very nice. this is probably the only launcher i'd even consider using instead of the default

some suggestions:

- swap X and B buttons round to conform with rest of GP2X interfaces. B should be select, X should be cancel, regardless of what they are on PSP etc

- option to turn sound off (yes, you can turn volume down, but just "off" would be nice)

- option to not search for all executables in games, etc. this takes a long time if you have a memory card full of games and roms and exes. also, sometimes exes have the same name (example: prboom folder with doom.wad, prboom folder with doom2.wad). this is what a well-organised folder/file structure is for, correct?

- option to turn the launch screen w/ sound effect off. nice eye/ear candy but will get tired very quickly, i just want to launch my apps as fast as possible

- doesn't find my mp3 files. mk2 gp2x, fw 2.1.1, mp3s in "Music\Strapping Young Lad\The New Black (2006)" directory on sdcard

- and it's probably stupid and totally useless, but you don't seem to be using the L and R shoulder buttons, how about making them accelerate the background animation? one could do top, one could do bottom. just an idea

overall, totally awesome! works very smoothly, appears to have nice visual configuration and skinning potential, got a little ways to go yet. this is certainly one app i'll be keeping an eye on!

 

[Malachi]

Wow, I've never even heard of this until now. Looks nice; very professional.

 

[Slinky]

Looks nice, i'll give it a try.

 

[DaveC]

WOW
very nice. this is probably the only launcher i'd even consider using instead of the default

Why?

Gmenu2X is much better for getting to what you want than this. This is all about fluff and fancy backgrounds (and copying Sony, Bah Sony )and less about functionality. After all isn't getting to and loading an app quickly more important than some animated background that you will eventually get tired of?

With this if you have alot of apps it will mean alot of wasted time scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to get to what you want. Plus you can't see most of your apps either until you scroll to it. Very inefficient slow and cumbersome.

 

[deepmenace]

very nice, for someone who uses less apps, emus and features of the gp2x this could be a very valid replacement for gmenu2x. i.e. gmenu2x as more of a power users interface - this for someone who basically just plays emus.

as ever, the most important thing is user configuribility. i'd like to be able to change the order of the items on the x-bar and the size of the icons.

i'll have more of a play later but i do like it.

 

[kardasan]

- doesn't find my mp3 files. mk2 gp2x, fw 2.1.1, mp3s in "Music\Strapping Young Lad\The New Black (2006)" directory on sdcard

If I understand correctly what is written on the GP2XMB page, then there is no MP3 support yet. Only OGG.

- option to not search for all executables in games, etc. this takes a long time if you have a memory card full of games and roms and exes. also, sometimes exes have the same name (example: prboom folder with doom.wad, prboom folder with doom2.wad). this is what a well-organised folder/file structure is for, correct?

I second that! I think SD should be scanned once for the first time and make a list of apps and then it should work as Gmenu2X (have an option to add next apps).

 

[Cervante]

this kicks so much ass on so many levels..

 

[torpor]

nice app .. but it should be using libcairo/librsvg/libsvg-cairo to do the skinning ..

 

[purple_goat]

how about storing all the locations so everytime you pick game it dosent take 2-3 mins <_<

 

[DaveC]

very nice, for someone who uses less apps, emus and features of the gp2x this could be a very valid replacement for gmenu2x. i.e. gmenu2x as more of a power users interface - this for someone who basically just plays emus.

I mostly just play emus. I already have 1-1/2 screens full of icons of emus on Gmenu2X set at the max amount of columns/rows. With this I would be scrolling way too much to find what I want, and it would take too long. I used my PSP a while ago to try a bunch of emus. I remember thinking that the PSP menu was kind of slow and I couldn't see what all I had for emus without alot of scrolling. I remember thinking the PSP had a real cumbersome menu, and a poor use of screen space for icons I guess this would be ok for someone without alot of stuff, like 10 apps or less, and likes the PSP alot.

 

[pferguso]

I am going to forward an exchange between me and the author. I think he is going to address some of the concerns, because so far, mine are the same as some posted on this thread:

1. How can I change the clicking sound when you move around the menus? The
current one is a bit too strong, although I like how you provided a volume
control. Nice.

In the child directory "sound" you should find four files:
xmb_back.wav, xmb_move.wav, xmb_ok.wav and xmb_run.wav
Just switch them to whatever you want

2. What frequency does this file launcher run in? It seems like it would
take a faster CPU to do what it is doing, and it is more responsive than the
default browser.

Due to all the graphics I have been forced to set it at 200 MHz. I am
not sure about the frame rate, but I suspect it to be around 10 FPS. I
should probably check that some day... In difference to other
applications (games and launchers) I do not use a double buffer, as it
for some reason created a lot of weird errors.

3. Is there a way to control the icons that appear on the game launcher? I
would love to customize the heck out of it.

You can always change them "images/icons", but there is currently no
support for icons with a size different from the one I am using, so you
are bit limited there. In the future I will add support for a more
structured approach to this (icon themes), but everything takes time and
that feature is not very high on my priority list right now.

4. Is there a way to control which games appear on the game launcher? Mine
has to wait a few seconds before it can retrieve a list, and I have so much
stuff, the list is huge, causing me to scroll down through several icons
before I can find which game I want to launch.

For the next release (I hope this weekend), I will add/switch the game
browser to use the same solution as for the other browsers
(images/music). The current list will remain but will become more of a
quick launcher or something where you can store shortcuts.

 

[nickspoon]

It would be nice if the news article actually explained what the release was, so I'd know if I were interested or not.

As it stands I was able to guess, but...

 

[Goemon4]

thanks for the update, Great Job!

and @ nickspoon, its pretty much the psp's XMB interface for the 2x (if you didnt know)

 

[Shadowsithe]

Hmm, not ready to jump onto this quite yet. I'm sure the next version will bring me around.

 

[Orkie]

It's very nice - could very well be much better than gmenu2x with work. Just need to work on getting it compiled for my open2x system

 

[thumpgun]

is there a way to launch this at boot, rather than launching it manually?

 

[Shadowsithe]

I would imagine enabling autorun under Settings, and renaming the gpe to autorun.gpe? Haven't tried this myself though so... maybe?