Skin Proposal For Emu Makers

[CyberAxe]

I propose a unified skin system for the gp2x that would allow making skins for emus more manageable, easier and portable

all I propose is that the frontends for emulators look on the NAND for a folder such as /bin/sh/imgall/imgemulators/snes/ and the images would similar to hose form smsplus or snesgp2x with a body.png folder.png loading.png

And in the event a skin for the system that emulator is for doesn’t exist just fall back to a default skin supplied with emu or use the game menu graphics of the main loader skin

Someone could even make a frontend that was created for this format that emus could easily use in their emu so that they don’t have extra coding to do

Just an idea so skin makers could if they wanted to create a skin and include emu skins as well if they wished and if all emulators started supporting that then we'd not have to make various skins for various emus and everything would be nice and customizable and keep everytihng in a similar fashion to the loader

Just a thought

 

[Talyz]

...or even follow LittleJohnZ's example and make one big emulator which is expandable through modules.

 

[God Ginrai]

Storing the Skins in NAND is a bad idea, it would be better to have a common directory on the SD.

 

[nickspoon]

/mnt/sd/skin sounds like a good idea, but isn't so ideal for those who want one folder for games and everything involved, one folder for utils, etc.

 

[rokdcasbah]

i'm sorry, i just don't see it happening. all of the various emulators (i'm assuming you only mention emus because they require the most time spent in menus) already have or will need various options in their layout that are specific either to the particular program code or emulated console. a skin format that was flexible enough to be 'adapted' would lead to countless broken skins as soon as anything was updated and a fixed format would just force devs' hand (no new menu options?) when they should be worrying about more important things. that's assuming they'd use something like that at all...which is impossible when there's no code to begin with.

i'm not trying to be cruel, but the discussion has came up before and i agree with those who have said that while a de facto ui standard is possible, a de jure one is not.