Day 31 Software Almost Built

So, the emulators I've got up and running are MAME (the arcade games, I had about 5000 but I'm almost finished downloading the full 26,000), 3DO, Atari 2600, Atari Jaguar, Nintendo 64, SNES, Sega Dreamcast, Sega Mega Drive (Genesis), Future Pinball, Visual Pinball. 3DO and Dreamcast are pushing it a bit to get fullscreen.

I'm using the mala front-end. There are two modes you can do. First is the original one which simply gives you the menu of an emulator (i.e. a picture and list of games) and you toggle between emulators and gamelists using the joypad. The other mode is a menu list of your emulators and you drill down the menu into gamelists, etc then select your game (called the tree view).

I've wrote a hefty document on setting up all the emulators and the front-end which I'll publish when I'm finished. It's not an easy task getting it all done and getting the emulators to quit nicely.

I had originally used the first method, but I think I've changed my mind as it's easier to switch to emulators (i.e. a few menu moves as opposed to switching between each emulator).

As far as design goes, I'm not exactly a graphic artist, so my first option was to pinch ones I could find on the internet and I ended up with an eclectic selection, each one unique to an emulator (either taken as is or  modified by my good self). Here is a selection of what I used to have:

But I changed my mind (especially with the tree view) and I'm using the same style for each, just changing slightly the graphics. This is a work in progress:

MAME rom download is at 95% so we'll seen soon enough whether the zip is valid (60Gb and it's taken a week so far).

Day 30 - No News is Good News

Well, it's been a while. I've been tinkering with the software and went on a two month course that stopped me from doing much.

Where I'm up to is the control panel artwork, after that I can order the side art, get the controls and upload some videos of the CP wiring, software build, vinyl sticking and the grand opening :)

I can't order the buttons or artwork though until I know what colours to buy and I can't figure out the colours until I get the control panel art done. Which I think I'm now going to have to do with my cack-hands, which I've done a few and they are not exactly great. Ah well. Unless somebody fancies volunteering ;)

This is the marquee, which was done by a proper artist so looks very nice. I've been toying with the idea of putting a few white sprites on the bottom right (e.g. like the kickplate pictures below) but I don't know.

Here are the sorry Control Panels I've started with, just trying to mix the cabinet colour scheme in (a kind of vermillion, yellowish, black, white, chrome). I have no idea what to do with the front section of the control panel yet. You can probably click to enlarge if you feel you must ;)

 As an explanation there are 6 buttons per player plus a joystick, a trackball beneath and the buttons to the top are the coin and player selects. The picture I added (metal slug) because it looked bare.