Creating a new Front-End

[OldGnashburg]

Hey, I was wondering if anybody would be willing to help me create a Front-End for CEN64, although I cannot understand a single piece of code (though I am going to try), I would however, like to to the artistic aspect. Anybody, want in?

[thedax]

Would it not be better to contribute your artistic skills to one or more of the three already existing? What do you not like about the existing ones?

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wanting to make another frontend, but is there a pressing need for a 4th one out there?

[OldGnashburg]

The Front-End/Gui I am thinking of would be an interactive one. My idea is that when you start CEN64 you would have a screen with an Nintendo 64 hooked up a TV in the emulation screen. When you you Select a ROM, the Nintendo 64 animation would show a Nintendo 64 Cartridge being placed in, when you start the ROM, you the red light on the front of the Nintendo 64, will glow like it would if you turned on a real Nintendo 64. When you go to select a ROM, it will give you a list of ROM's and when you click on a ROM, it will go to a seperate screen and show you technical info, and in the corner, a picture of the Box Art, if possible you could put Notes and if possible, select the game's manual. MarathonMan would have to comply with adding some of these features, but if this emulator is going to be the future of the Nintendo 64, then why not add these features and make it the best. The only way you could make this emulator more accurate anyways is by making the emulator Chip-Accurate (which would bring the accuracy to a solid 100% accurate instead of a measly 99.9999999999...% accurate, yes I know it is perfectly fine as a Cycle-Accurate Simulator, but I spent most of my gaming time playing the Nintendo 64 so it is very dear to me), but since I don't know what MarathonMan's ideas for future emulator cores (perhaps he will make a Chip & Cycle & Pixel Accurate emulator core), I do not know what he will do. But anyways, enough of my rant of my obsession with accuracy (which is why I calculate circles using the first 75 digits of pi, which took me a two weeks to memorize). Once you start the simulation of the game you select, the TV behind the N64 will turn on and the animation will zoom in to the TV screen until it fits the entire area that is used to run the ROM that is loaded, and then the emulation will start. And since I do not know how to code, but I have the vision. Could anybody help me? What do you think MarathonMan? You're running the show. Anybody?

[mustangemu]

Sounds like a good idea. I doubt anyone would want to write the code for it. I could be wrong though.

[juef]

Some of these are pretty nice ideas, but honestly, creating some very, very simple GUIs is already quite the pain in the ass. What you're suggesting here is not simple at all.

Also, I assume that MarathonMan wants to keep his project 100% legal (have you seen many N64 emulators requiring a the PIF file?). Using actual box art or manual pages would certainly not fit un such a project, let alone hosting the files on GitHub.

[Presence]

That interface sounds like it would just be too much of a pain to code. Personally, I prefer simple frontends that use the operating system's native theme and just show you a list of ROMs to double click.

Things like (optionally showing) boxart and game info are a good idea and something I've thought about implementing. The best way to do this would be to use an available game database that's out there. This one looks the most promising:
http://thegamesdb.net/

They have a well documented API for fetching data. For example, here is a search for Ocarina of Time:
http://thegamesdb.net/api/GetGame.php?n ... 0of%20Time

From there you have all the game information and high resolution boxart:
http://thegamesdb.net/banners/boxart/or ... /161-1.jpg

I'd have to check on the legality of it, but something like this should be possible to implement.