Mid-twenties gamers with roots starting with SMB2. I am a software engineering major with only a year to go until completion. I hope to land a job with a gaming company as an associate producer or at least some sort of engineering/program design area of work. Hopefully 2-3 years of that stuff will get me far enough ahead that I can then set my plans of Studio creation into motion. The header at the top of my profile is simply the evolution of my "company" logo - Seventh Border, currently going through registration processes, extremely slowly. However I do have an official T-shirt, and a shitty slogan - harumph.
As for my technical prowess, as stated earlier Software Engineer with 2 games, and game-ish project in my portfolio:
o Wooden Crusaders - a sort of Warcraft turn based strategy game
o Super Stick Brothers - a simple Smash Brothers rip off using simple polygons as fighters (circle, triangle, square etc.)
o Arcade Front End - a UI/OS for selecting games for use in a MAME cabinet, will be up for distribution soon.
I am proficient or knowledgeable in the following programming languages:
o Java
o C/C++
o Python
o ABAP - bloody useless
I've also dabbled with some multimedia stuff such Adobe Photoshop and Premiere.
I only game on my 360, though I might look into PS3 soon for Blu-Ray mostly ;).
For any of you having read my previous post calling all artists for background images for an arcade cabinet front-end, here is a small demo of what I am currently doing. It's all quite hard-coded at this point though.
This video showcases the code I put together to have a white noise transition between selects. Note that in the final release, there will be 0 mouse input, as all control will done through an X-Arcade dualstick. . Please note that all backgrounds and images are subject to change with time. I left in the dtoid version for fun.
Today I should be completing work, so that in-game snapshots populate the select screen, and the correct items show up during selection of criteria (year, developer, alphabetical, genre). With more accurate sorting coming up probably next week (ie actually showing shmups when selecting this genre, instead of just all games).
is that going to be used to display cab shots, snapshots, etc? or is that your plan for navigating rom files? if your only going to show one game at a time, its gonna get impractical as your set grows. most important thing when designing a front end is ease of navigation, focus on flash/style second. in the initial screens you presented in your last post, i was under the impression that the games would be scrolled thru like a wheel (where you have selection 1,2,3,4 etc, with filter hotkeys on the left for genre, year, etc), that layout is very promising. if you expect a user to click and see a preview for each title, you aren't gonna get many downloads. the navigation process will be too cumbersome.
here's my advice (going off the mr dtoid screen cap).
-filter buttons on the left, as currently displayed. ultimately, you will want to make these flexible, and let the user dictate their filter preferences.
-on the right (where you have your selections) try to use all that real estate and display at least 15 titles at a time. again, take a look at ultrastyle, they have the scrolling wheel layout you see on ultracade cabinets nailed down perfectly. it would be really nice to populate those selections with game marquees if available and if not, just display the game title in a nice font.
-in between the filter and carousel (selections) place that cabinet that was on the second form (with the white noise). allow the user to switch between screen caps, cabinet art, etc all from one form. no one likes to have to jump around.
also, it would be sweet to be able to access individual game controls from within the front end. i use mame 32 now, and the only way i know how to do that is to bring up the game options from within the rom using the tab key. if buttons could be remapped from the front end, shit, i'd throw it on my cabinet.
Thanks for the long list of details. i've just spent the better part of today matching up my list of roms to screenshots, which i will probably NOT-Torrent...Anyways, every Rom I have now currently has in game snapshot (not cabinet). I also took the liberty of getting rid of all the shit I thought just look awful, like the 500 Mahjong clones, or 80s japanese porn games.
In essense I see this UI as working sort hand in hand with the cabinet I will be building, with little room for change, though technically speaking, simply putting in a ROM would still play, provided we can fetch its sorting information (Year, Manufacturer, etc). It's meant to work as a sort of embedded system, always running and pretty immutable, but i will take your advice seriously tho.
Finally, as for the controls, it's an interesting proposition. I don't know if MAME has external support for configuring controls (command line), if it does, then it's quite easy to pipe into our UI. I'll look into it.
As for the noise effect, I still plan on displaying the picture->noise->picture, though will look into have a sort of ac/deceleration effect, much like the album scroll on an ipod.
Concerning the customized sorting, I don't believe I will put that in, since beyond Genre, which I will have to sort through manually, the only interesting factors I can fetch from a ROM through MAME command line are well the full name of the game, Manufacturer and Year, beyond that it's pretty much jibberish, that is of no use sorting wise. (I'm sure you've experience this in MAME32).
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is that going to be used to display cab shots, snapshots, etc? or is that your plan for navigating rom files? if your only going to show one game at a time, its gonna get impractical as your set grows. most important thing when designing a front end is ease of navigation, focus on flash/style second. in the initial screens you presented in your last post, i was under the impression that the games would be scrolled thru like a wheel (where you have selection 1,2,3,4 etc, with filter hotkeys on the left for genre, year, etc), that layout is very promising. if you expect a user to click and see a preview for each title, you aren't gonna get many downloads. the navigation process will be too cumbersome.
here's my advice (going off the mr dtoid screen cap).
-filter buttons on the left, as currently displayed. ultimately, you will want to make these flexible, and let the user dictate their filter preferences.
-on the right (where you have your selections) try to use all that real estate and display at least 15 titles at a time. again, take a look at ultrastyle, they have the scrolling wheel layout you see on ultracade cabinets nailed down perfectly. it would be really nice to populate those selections with game marquees if available and if not, just display the game title in a nice font.
-in between the filter and carousel (selections) place that cabinet that was on the second form (with the white noise). allow the user to switch between screen caps, cabinet art, etc all from one form. no one likes to have to jump around.
also, it would be sweet to be able to access individual game controls from within the front end. i use mame 32 now, and the only way i know how to do that is to bring up the game options from within the rom using the tab key. if buttons could be remapped from the front end, shit, i'd throw it on my cabinet.
good luck and keep up the good work.
In essense I see this UI as working sort hand in hand with the cabinet I will be building, with little room for change, though technically speaking, simply putting in a ROM would still play, provided we can fetch its sorting information (Year, Manufacturer, etc). It's meant to work as a sort of embedded system, always running and pretty immutable, but i will take your advice seriously tho.
Finally, as for the controls, it's an interesting proposition. I don't know if MAME has external support for configuring controls (command line), if it does, then it's quite easy to pipe into our UI. I'll look into it.
As for the noise effect, I still plan on displaying the picture->noise->picture, though will look into have a sort of ac/deceleration effect, much like the album scroll on an ipod.
Concerning the customized sorting, I don't believe I will put that in, since beyond Genre, which I will have to sort through manually, the only interesting factors I can fetch from a ROM through MAME command line are well the full name of the game, Manufacturer and Year, beyond that it's pretty much jibberish, that is of no use sorting wise. (I'm sure you've experience this in MAME32).
Alright, I think I've covered most of it.
Cheers mate!