Uniform Command Line Interface Across Emulaters.

[hessiess]

Just a suggestion, if all the emulators have a uniform CLI interface, at least as far as ROM loading goes.

CODE
emulator /path/to/ROM.whatever


It would be easy to create a graphical front end that asotiates a extension with a specific emulator. because of this having a unique ROM browser in every emu would be unsessoserry, which in turn would help to make the Pandora's interface more uniform,

 

[streak]

Just a suggestion, if all the emulators have a uniform CLI interface, at least as far as ROM loading goes.

CODE
emulator /path/to/ROM.whatever

It would be easy to create a graphical front end that asotiates a extension with a specific emulator. because of this having a unique ROM browser in every emu would be unsessoserry, which in turn would help to make the Pandora's interface more uniform,


I have 2 ideas about it:
idea 1:

to standarize emulator rom paths the emulators should use only 3 rompaths [ to check for roms ]

/sd/roms/[system]/
/sd/roms/
/emulator path/roms/


[system] -> atarist / amiga / atarixl / commodore / ....

idea 2:

use pandora global [ remember dos PATH=C:/TEMP ? ] variable to point where every rom will be put

for example all glibal variable will be in file globals.cfg in a root dir. you could add some variables like:
ATARIST_ROMS=SD/ROMS/ATARIST
AMIGA=SD/ROMS/AMIGA

and for example every atari st emulator will be using atarist variable to to findout roms directory.

that will solve every problem rom-releated, after downloading from repositories, and also will help to manage it quickly

 

[rokdcasbah]

one issue that i think popped up with the 2x is that the stock firmware is not set up for passing a filename to an app the way that gmenu is.

had this been possible sooner and on *every* unit i think maybe we'd see more emu authors kick back and let the os do the work.

although, some of the emus have some pretty cool menus. maybe that's worth more than efficiency

 

[Kings]

There might be an issue when the Emu is on one SD card and the roms on another. Someone might use this setup if they have a huge library of roms and want to keep all their apps on a single card for easy updating.

 

[Squidge]

There might be an issue when the Emu is on one SD card and the roms on another. Someone might use this setup if they have a huge library of roms and want to keep all their apps on a single card for easy updating.

Easy fix There's 2 SD card slots, so the logical volume manager could be used to make both the cards look like a single big card

 

[Exophase]

I don't see any good reason why there need to be standard search directories for ROM paths. I didn't really get why emulators on PSP and GP2X did this, but even worse is when they made it so it can ONLY load ROMs in a certain directory. Don't do that. Please.

It'd be quite bizarre for emulators to not support loading a ROM this way by filename since it'd make it that much more work to test your own emulator. Especially if it was ported off of PC, it probably had command line options. But of course you'll never be able to force everyone to do it this way, but I'm sure just about everyone will.

 

[hessiess]

QUOTE
There might be an issue when the Emu is on one SD card and the roms on another. Someone might use this setup if they have a huge library of roms and want to keep all their apps on a single card for easy updating.


Linux has a single tree filesystem, which you can mount a physical device anywhere i.e. you can have a separate partition for /(root) and /home(user data store). so should you need to reinstall the OS, your data is untutched. hence the physical location of data becomes irrelevant.

QUOTE
I have 2 ideas about it:
idea 1:

to standarize emulator rom paths the emulators should use only 3 rompaths [ to check for roms ]

/sd/roms/[system]/
/sd/roms/
/emulator path/roms/


[system] -> atarist / amiga / atarixl / commodore / ....

idea 2:

use pandora global [ remember dos PATH=C:/TEMP ? ] variable to point where every rom will be put

for example all glibal variable will be in file globals.cfg in a root dir. you could add some variables like:
ATARIST_ROMS=SD/ROMS/ATARIST
AMIGA=SD/ROMS/AMIGA

and for example every atari st emulator will be using atarist variable to to findout roms directory.

that will solve every problem rom-releated, after downloading from repositories, and also will help to manage it quickly


QUOTE

I don't see any good reason why there need to be standard search directories for ROM paths. I didn't really get why emulators on PSP and GP2X did this, but even worse is when they made it so it can ONLY load ROMs in a certain directory. Don't do that. Please.

It'd be quite bizarre for emulators to not support loading a ROM this way by filename since it'd make it that much more work to test your own emulator. Especially if it was ported off of PC, it probably had command line options. But of course you'll never be able to force everyone to do it this way, but I'm sure just about everyone will.


Im siding with Emphases, ROM directory's should not be fixed, this would alow you to, for instance, groop all ISO,s for a multi CD game into one directory.

What I would like is to be able to run emulated softwere transparently, IE as if it was native. running the rom from a file manager would start up the emulater atomaticly and let you play the game, without haveing to first run the emulater, then find the game you want to play and run it.

 

[Game_over]

I agree and that's usually where frontends come in.

 

[Squidge]

Maybe someone can create a library that picks up a set of search directories from the user, scans these dirs, and passes those filenames with dir to the emu? Then each emu can have either it's own search directories, or the same, depending on the user.

We just need to make sure emu's don't go along the lines of "roms MUST be in dir x".

 

[parag0n]

If roms stick with a standard naming convention, and emulators have a commandline way to launch with a specific rom, we could use one of the awesome arcade frontends like wah!cade