Pandora Pandora Emulator Frontend

[javaJake]

The search will narrow results down: it'll show you what results match. It's good for finding a game in a long list. But what if you mistype? In my experience, it's a pain to have to backspace and type the right letter again, versus it just already being there. This feature was meant to speed things up, so having something about that feature slow you back down is frustrating.

Could it be something that can be turned on or off to keep everyone happy?

 

[Aimless_E]

The search will narrow results down: it'll show you what results match. It's good for finding a game in a long list. But what if you mistype? In my experience, it's a pain to have to backspace and type the right letter again, versus it just already being there. This feature was meant to speed things up, so having something about that feature slow you back down is frustrating.

Could it be something that can be turned on or off to keep everyone happy?

I haven't much time to work on the program the last couple of days but I don't see why we couldn't have an option for it. I might suggest a hybrid of the two ideas

If you type in "Mario"

Above the 100% match/es you would get ,in grey, everything that matched "Mari" and beneath everything that match "Mario?" (the question mark is a wild card) again in grey. It would still shorten the list to only showing the ones that match 99% 100% and 101%, but it would help eliminate typos.

 

[Tiptup300]

The search will narrow results down: it'll show you what results match. It's good for finding a game in a long list. But what if you mistype? In my experience, it's a pain to have to backspace and type the right letter again, versus it just already being there. This feature was meant to speed things up, so having something about that feature slow you back down is frustrating.

Could it be something that can be turned on or off to keep everyone happy?

I haven't much time to work on the program the last couple of days but I don't see why we couldn't have an option for it. I might suggest a hybrid of the two ideas

If you type in "Mario"

Above the 100% match/es you would get ,in grey, everything that matched "Mari" and beneath everything that match "Mario?" (the question mark is a wild card) again in grey. It would still shorten the list to only showing the ones that match 99% 100% and 101%, but it would help eliminate typos.


I like the 99/101% idea, but honestly. Is hitting backspace and another key really that time consuming?

EDIT: I'm not so sure about wildcards, I'd rather it just have every result have wildcards. Like

"ar" could return a list like

Super Mario World
Super Mario 64
Hanar Game Studio [?]

Could the Pandora handle that and still be instant? As of right now, I'm a little lost at the actual capabilities of the Pandora.

 

[iain.dalton]

Let's visualize the scenario javaJake is suggesting.

In the remove-invalid-results situation, typing 'mario' might show you:

Mario Party
Mario Party 2
Super Mario Brothers
Super Mario 64

In the gray-out-invalid-results situation, you might instead see:

Mario Party
Mario Party 2
Megaman
Megaman 2
Megaman 3
Metal Gear

And you'd have to do something like press L twice to display the third result for 'mario'

So while in the case of a typo it avoids the waste of a keystroke to correct, in the case of no typo it creates extra keystrokes.

Unrelated to the above topic, will a space be part of the pattern match or will it signify a new token (both of which must be matched)? I assume the first is easier and I can't see a reason for the second, but I thought I'd throw it out.

 

[sindbad]

Take a look at Quicksilver for mac and Krunner in KDE4 for searching ideas.

 

[Aimless_E]

The search will narrow results down: it'll show you what results match. It's good for finding a game in a long list. But what if you mistype? In my experience, it's a pain to have to backspace and type the right letter again, versus it just already being there. This feature was meant to speed things up, so having something about that feature slow you back down is frustrating.

Could it be something that can be turned on or off to keep everyone happy?

I haven't much time to work on the program the last couple of days but I don't see why we couldn't have an option for it. I might suggest a hybrid of the two ideas

If you type in "Mario"

Above the 100% match/es you would get ,in grey, everything that matched "Mari" and beneath everything that match "Mario?" (the question mark is a wild card) again in grey. It would still shorten the list to only showing the ones that match 99% 100% and 101%, but it would help eliminate typos.


I like the 99/101% idea, but honestly. Is hitting backspace and another key really that time consuming?

EDIT: I'm not so sure about wildcards, I'd rather it just have every result have wildcards. Like

"ar" could return a list like

Super Mario World
Super Mario 64
Hanar Game Studio [?]

Could the Pandora handle that and still be instant? As of right now, I'm a little lost at the actual capabilities of the Pandora.


Oh the wild card thing above was just to reference that it could be what ever it needs to be but only one character ahead. I agree that actually using "? * []" and the like is a bad idea.

As far as the capabilities of the Pandora we will have to wait and see. But I think it would be safe to say that starting at the first letter and going forward will be far faster than starting in any arbitrary position in the string.

 

[Tiptup300]

Oh the wild card thing above was just to reference that it could be what ever it needs to be but only one character ahead. I agree that actually using "? * []" and the like is a bad idea.

As far as the capabilities of the Pandora we will have to wait and see. But I think it would be safe to say that starting at the first letter and going forward will be far faster than starting in any arbitrary position in the string.



Well yeah, but on a pc it'd be instant for both start and middle. I'm just worried about the mentioned

"
Mario Party
Super Mario
"

situation.

 

[Aimless_E]

Oh the wild card thing above was just to reference that it could be what ever it needs to be but only one character ahead. I agree that actually using "? * []" and the like is a bad idea.

As far as the capabilities of the Pandora we will have to wait and see. But I think it would be safe to say that starting at the first letter and going forward will be far faster than starting in any arbitrary position in the string.



Well yeah, but on a pc it'd be instant for both start and middle. I'm just worried about the mentioned

"
Mario Party
Super Mario
"

situation.


Good point.....

I'll set it to search the begining of each string in the name using space or underscore or hyphen as the delimiter. That way the matches still reflected what your looking for.

How are those mockups coming? and I still need that "Y" button from the Game library Image. No rush just wanted to let you know. Thanks

And to all: The way that quicksilver works is by creating a database of everything that is in its search path. Same with its buddies on Vista and Gnome and KDE. It's not a bad idea. And it may work very well but I do worry that allot of the more advanced features will only slow ZiB down.

I also have an aversion to looking at other programs and saying "I want mine to do that". I prefer the ideas to be our own. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a search that works like quicksilver. It just means that I don't like to find out that my brilliant solution to slow searches was already done by some one else.

 

[Aimless_E]

Still having trouble with screencasting so here are a few screenshots

Note: In pic #3 the title above the Game options is for dev purposes only.

 

[Tiptup300]

Okay, looking good so far, but I see a few...problems:

The text isn't the right style in nearly all the places, or is that just temporary? [Color,outline,shadow]

The right sidebar isn't the right texture either. Did you get that last time?

If there are only a few options [Play game, game settings, back] it should still be the default size and not upscale.

And that's really the only problems I'm seeing, great job!

 

[hells_dark]

Can it launch something already ? (= is there something behind ?)

 

[Aimless_E]

Okay, looking good so far, but I see a few...problems:

The text isn't the right style in nearly all the places, or is that just temporary? [Color,outline,shadow]

The right sidebar isn't the right texture either. Did you get that last time?

If there are only a few options [Play game, game settings, back] it should still be the default size and not upscale.

And that's really the only problems I'm seeing, great job!

Here's a list of what I have.

bg-InformationBar.png
bg-mainmenu.png
bg.png
bg-sidebar.png

frontmenu.png
gameicon.png

infobar-Console.png
infobar-Emulator.png
infobar-Misc.png

MainMenuMockup.png
MenuMockup.png

selection-Catagory.png
selection-Item.png
selection-SelectedItem.png
selection-UknownItem.png

sidbar-button-selected.png
sidebar-button-unselected.png

What style and font would you like the text to have on in all areas. I just used the Default in all cases.

 

[Aimless_E]

Can it launch something already ? (= is there something behind ?)

Yes the MAME games can be selected and played. ZiB has the ability to send config options to mame but I haven't a screen for that yet.

 

[hells_dark]

Can it launch something already ? (= is there something behind ?)

Yes the MAME games can be selected and played. ZiB has the ability to send config options to mame but I haven't a screen for that yet.
Nice

 

[Tiptup300]

It should be bg-sidebar... I had it as a 1px height to save space. Just scale it up.

Heres the styles for the fonts.

formatted like so:

HTML Color - Style

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/3259/deletehc9hy7.png

Heres the "Y"

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/527/delete2zy3.png

 

[Aimless_E]

It should be bg-sidebar... I had it as a 1px height to save space. Just scale it up.

Heres the styles for the fonts.

formatted like so:

HTML Color - Style

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/3259/deletehc9hy7.png

Heres the "Y"

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/527/delete2zy3.png



Hmmm the bg-sidbar.png image has no color its just a 1px clear bar. Scaling it up gives me a whole lot of nothing.

In your mockup pic what are the left and right arrows used for?

 

[Tiptup300]

It should be bg-sidebar... I had it as a 1px height to save space. Just scale it up.

Heres the styles for the fonts.

formatted like so:

HTML Color - Style

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/3259/deletehc9hy7.png

Heres the "Y"

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/527/delete2zy3.png



Hmmm the bg-sidbar.png image has no color its just a 1px clear bar. Scaling it up gives me a whole lot of nothing.

In your mockup pic what are the left and right arrows used for?


Your right, I did screw the bg-sidebar, heres the right file:

http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/6314/deletehc9no8.png

And ignore the arrows, they're just some bad ideas.

 

[Aimless_E]

Thanks TipTup300

It looks much better. Still working on the fonts though. See.

Small Update to Game Library. It will be the first step toward the search function. Notice the watermark and remark if you please.

 

[Yamara]

Small Update to Game Library. It will be the first step toward the search function. Notice the watermark and remark if you please.
I find the watermark distracting, and not in keeping with the clean swaths of solid color (grey is a color ). I suppose you could have an option: default with the logo, no background (grey or chosen solid color), or chosen image as background. As mentioned before, I love the overall look so far, and the direction the interface is going.

 

[Aimless_E]

Small Update to Game Library. It will be the first step toward the search function. Notice the watermark and remark if you please.
I find the watermark distracting, and not in keeping with the clean swaths of solid color (grey is a color ). I suppose you could have an option: default with the logo, no background (grey or chosen solid color), or chosen image as background. As mentioned before, I love the overall look so far, and the direction the interface is going.

Really? I thought it looked to bland with out it. I'll be adding "theme support" someday but I want to get the rest running first before going overboard. With configuration options.