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[ressurectionx]

See what I mean XT?  

No need to remove functionality unless there were huge benefits like a giant reduction in code that would improve performance.  That's what I'm trying to do on MAME.  My desire is to include every single working rom that's not a blatent clone of another, and then putting in the ability to mask a lot of the late 70's and early-mid 80's ones that aren't classics for those of us that don't want to ever play them.  Nothing is lost by doing this except for my time because there will be max 400MB of these games and, in my opinion, it's a small price to pay to have about a 5 to 10% larger romset if just one single person who uses it gets enjoyment by playing a game they remember since their childhood that they really loved, but might have been deemed unfit for other emulators.  They'll all have perfect control in them too, which even if you're able to scan roms into another emulator, they may not have been fixed so that the controls make sense.

That being said, I'm sure Cospefogo isn't the only one who feels that way about the trash bin ability in XPorts emus.  

(Crap... I had no idea there was even a trashbin when I worked meticulously on my romsets.  LOL... in my 1 and a half years here, I've done a ton of stuff that I found out later I didn't need to do.  It's cool though, because my box is nearly complete and it's very customized because I did most of it by hand.  That trashbin would have made things slightly easier for me had I known about it when I needed it.)  



Hey Cospefogo,

I haven't tried out your new skins for XPort yet, but it's definately on my to do list when I get some things worked out and go back to the general XBox tweaking.  Maybe when I take time out to get the new NES emu this weekend I'll grab your NES skin and the others and let ya know what I think.  I'm sure they're great.  

I'd love to hear your suggestions for new skins on the XPort emus.  I'm sure that madmab and XT would too.  This ain't a popularity contest here.  There's always a chance that a suggestion is impossible or more work than it's worth, but there's at least a good a chance that somebody's ideas end up in the final product and rock socks.  

Maybe you'd even like to work on another one     Or not.... that's cool too.

Let it be known what you suggest man.

Regards to both of you,
~Rx

[kimota2004]

I don't care if the "send to garbage" feature is kept or not, but I can see why you wanted to get rid of it as it's quite possibly the most useless feature ever, especially when we are blessed with a favourites folder.

Makes. No. Sense.

[Cospefogo]

QUOTE(kimota2004 @ Apr 12 2008, 07:06 PM)

I don't care if the "send to garbage" feature is kept or not, but I can see why you wanted to get rid of it as it's quite possibly the most useless feature ever, especially when we are blessed with a favourites folder.

Makes. No. Sense.

I.Do.Not.See.Your.Point.

Favorites are for Favorites.
It's a feature created to SELECT the most liked games,
and not a feature to HIDE the disliked ones.

I don't like to keep GARBAGE and CRAP games in my Xbox.
It's the same thing as to have a shelf FULL of useless books in another language,
or a drawer full of old used clothes.

I don't want them near me, and I have all the freedom to throw
them out. To dump. To give to someone. This feature is one of
the most useful created ever.

Deleting roms through the File Manager of the DashBoard, or
even through FTP is a pain.

All the PLAYERS know what I am
talking about, but maybe the ROM COLLECTORS not.

I do not collect.
I play.

Cospefogo.

[ressurectionx]

Yeah Cospefogo.... I see the use of it myself.  I just didn't get to use it at all because I wasn't aware of it until after I got my romsets the way I want em.  All done by hand on FTP.... ugh.  

Bottom line is though that no features should be taken out whatsoever, but the emulator will be improved greatly if most of them can be set the way you want and then masked from less knowledgeable users, or by users that just can't stand having all of that stuff they barely care about cluttering up the interface.  That looks like the direction that is going to be taken.  No sense in arguing over the virtues or lack thereof about the features.  

~Rx

[Cospefogo]

QUOTE(ressurectionx @ Apr 13 2008, 01:53 AM)

Yeah Cospefogo.... I see the use of it myself.  I just didn't get to use it at all because I wasn't aware of it until after I got my romsets the way I want em.  All done by hand on FTP.... ugh.  

Bottom line is though that no features should be taken out whatsoever, but the emulator will be improved greatly if most of them can be set the way you want and then masked from less knowledgeable users, or by users that just can't stand having all of that stuff they barely care about cluttering up the interface.  That looks like the direction that is going to be taken.  No sense in arguing over the virtues or lack thereof about the features.  

~Rx

Agreed.
End of story!

[ressurectionx]

QUOTE(RMM @ Apr 13 2008, 04:43 PM)

I personally think the Xport emulators need to be a little more simplified.  I think any emulator should be made so that even a 5 year old could simply pick a game and have it play.  Keep it simple and make it to where it would be hard for someone that didnt know what they are doing to mess up things.

Yep RMM... that's exactly my thinking.  

XT and Madmab... what do you think of this idea?

We settle on what we believe the perfect settings to be, implement them, and then semi-lock them from being able to be changed.

There will always be a way to unlock them, but your average user, even a 5 year old kid, can easily use the emulator without all the stuff they're never going to care about.  The emu will be packaged with the ideal settings and locked that way.  A complex key combination can unlock it like Rtrigger Ltrigger and Black together at the same time or something, otherwise, roms load right up without the settings selection screen, and only the most basic options like save/load game or change state are available when you click on the right trigger.  (maybe a few more, but that can be left up to debate).  All of this information can then be put in a help file that will also be available among the very few options that are left when you press the right trigger.

Tell me where to go to make these changes and I'll gladly work on it tonight.


BTW... I have successfully compiled this emulator on my box and played games on it.  

Regards,
~Rx

[VampX]

*mumbles something about loving to see MekaX supporting separate rom lists/save dirs/screenshot dirs for gamegear and master system roms*

offtopic i know but still...  

[Cospefogo]

QUOTE(kimota2004 @ Apr 13 2008, 03:16 PM)

(...)
Regards.

[ressurectionx]

BTW madmab and XT....


I tried your new pallet out and wow..... Faxanadu hasn't looked this good since '89

Nice work!

~Rx

[madmab]

Well FWIW mednafen is a pretty big source to take on.  It's like multi-emu's rolled up in one so it can be a little confusing.  So don't worry to much.  Even with my familiarity with the atarixlbox source it's a bit of a jump.

The MESS code that is in atari7800box is even messier.

I really feel for anyone who took on something like MAME as a first project.  

[ressurectionx]

Hey madmab,

The thing with MAME is that it takes about 5-7 minutes to generate the code and transfer it over, and for many of the changes you do, you have to redump MAME, scan for roms and refresh the metadata so it takes anywhere from 12-15 minutes to test changes.  XPorts are nothing like that, as you already know.  Builds take a matter of seconds if you're just updating them and there is no redumping or refreshing metadata so I really like that.

The problem is that there are hardly any notes in XPort source and where MAME was broken up into a billion files that were pretty specific to the function, the Common source in XPorts is over 20,000 lines long and has countless functions in it.  

LOL... at this point, all I've managed to do is turn the options that I want to mask in the main menu into long lines of squares.  The options still work though, and when you back out to the main menu, somehow the intended text is back ("Utilities" & "Configuration").



What I'm trying to do now is isolate the instances of any code that we want to keep usable in "idiot proof".  Then figure out a way through if/else statements to get only that code to run if we're in "idiot proof".  (What will be kept for "idiot proof" mode is definately up for debate, I'm just trying to get something working now)

It's turning out to be a much much much harder task than I had originally assumed it would have been.

So..... I'm working in commonfuncs.cpp.  Is that where you would be working, or is there somewhere else you'd recommend?

~Rx

[DizzyC64]

Hi again ressurectionx,
It's good to see your pals madmab and XT's Xport project really taking off now. I shouted my ideas
a few days ago about removing send to garbage option (by bad )  but even I was surpised to see
 how many people seem to use this feature so the idea to add it to the idiot proof mode makes perfect
sense here

But regarding how to lock/unlock the idiot proof mode i'm not sure if key comboing is the way to go as it's just
that when I tend to give the controller the person who I've just added Xports to there xbox they always seem
to find a way of unlocking any sort of key combo by there buttion bashing madness before I remove all such combos, possibly the ability to lock/unlock this feature might be best implemented in the settings menu via a
big obvious enable/disable idiot proof mode.

But i think the biggest thing that should be on XT's mind right now for this project is ... a better name for this
sodding early dubbed "idiout proof" mode were all on about  

[Cospefogo]

QUOTE(DizzyC64 @ Apr 14 2008, 12:05 PM)

[madmab]

A stripped down .xbe would be FAR easier to do... That might be the way to go.

[XTecuterX73]

QUOTE(madmab @ Apr 14 2008, 08:26 PM)

A stripped down .xbe would be FAR easier to do... That might be the way to go.

yea that's what i was thinking as well, have 2 xbe's packaged in the emu. how about mednafenx nes dumbass edition  no offense to anyone. It definately will not be named  "idiot edition".  I started working on the emu database earlier, so i hope to have some progress made in the next few days, i'm still learning loops and wraparounds and how mednafenx works so i hope i can get the nst database to be recognized by mednafenx sometime. Hey madmab do you want me to send you the nst database so you can take a look at it as well??

Right now i'm trying to figure out how i can get mednafenx to recognize this database, i'm thinking though i could be wrong that i may have to go and change alot of things, i have to match crc's and all this other stuff, the listings in the database  have to match the correct game, the problem is though, that the database does not use the rom's name, rather the crc and header info i beleive. Also, this being nestopia databse, it has a crap ton of header info for games that are not even supported yet by mednafenx, but i will leave them be as maybe one day these games will run and those mappers supported.  

This may prove to be a lengthy project yet.

XT