Main wheel spacing/emulator max.

[miguelsluma]

I know theres been a few requests already about more spacing between names in the wheel, but I was wondering if the following could be realised;

The main wheel need quite a few different emulators for the wheel to be full. If not you will for example see mame twice in the screen, snes twice etc. In my opinion that doesnt look very good.
Because i will not be using that many emulators, I was hoping that perhaps spacing could be added to the main wheel, or perhaps a maximum amount of emulators on the main wheel could be set.

cheers!

[Zinger19]

I think the spacing will be fixed in the next release. I think I read that somewhere from BadBoyBill. As for the emulators on the main wheel. You can add whatever you need to make your wheel appealing to you. All you have to create a logo for whatever emulator you want and add it to the wheel.

[SomewhatLost666]

from my uneducated point of view, I think we should scrap this whole concept of sorting things out by emulator... who cares what emulator you are using, the emu is not important, it is the game that is important... maybe separate things out as Arcade / Console / PC or something like that, but what emu is needed for what game should be invisible to the user... HS should just handle picking the best emu...(or something)

just my $0.02 (and thanks to the current economy is worth far less then that)

[The Loafer]

That might be fine as an option but I'd never scrap the way it presently works. There is a huge appeal for having games sorted by system, especially for consoles.

"Hey bud, you have an arcade cab?"
"yeah, check this out"
"Cool, hey, it does console emulation too? I used to have this SNES game, but can't remember the name, some shooter"
"Check it out, you can see a preview video or at least a pic if one isn't available"

The above hasn't happened yet, but I've heard that conversation relevant to arcade games before. Anyway, can you imagine if we had to scroll through 10 000 games?

If one doesn't collect a lot of games, I see common sense in the above suggestion for a "true" favorite list that supercedes the need to categorize. For example, I would LOVE to have one list that would contain my favorite Mame games, a few dazzling Dreamcast games, about 20 SNES, the NHL series for Genesis, Gex, NFS and Road Rash on the 3D0, Battle Squadron, Project X, Alien Breed, the Pinball Dreams and Stunt Car Racer for the Amiga, etc etc. That option would work GREAT for an ultimate favorite list!

[SomewhatLost666]

That might be fine as an option but I'd never scrap the way it presently works. There is a huge appeal for having games sorted by system, especially for consoles.

"Hey bud, you have an arcade cab?"
"yeah, check this out"
"Cool, hey, it does console emulation too? I used to have this SNES game, but can't remember the name, some shooter"
"Check it out, you can see a preview video or at least a pic if one isn't available"

yea, that's why I said sort it out by arcade or system, just not by emu... :)

The above hasn't happened yet, but I've heard that conversation relevant to arcade games before. Anyway, can you imagine if we had to scroll through 10 000 games?

If one doesn't collect a lot of games, I see common sense in the above suggestion for a "true" favorite list that supercedes the need to categorize. For example, I would LOVE to have one list that would contain my favorite Mame games, a few dazzling Dreamcast games, about 20 SNES, the NHL series for Genesis, Gex, NFS and Road Rash on the 3D0, Battle Squadron, Project X, Alien Breed, the Pinball Dreams and Stunt Car Racer for the Amiga, etc etc. That option would work GREAT for an ultimate favorite list!
now imagine you are a noob, and don't know what a 'MAME' or a 'Zinc' is, but you know you played game X (Xenophobe maybe?) in the arcade, would you rather search for it under MAME,Zinc,SNES emu,AAE,etc... or would it make more sense to search in 'Arcade'... even if there are 10000 games in arcade, as long as they are real arcade games it would make sense (even more sense if they were alphabetized)... if you are looking for a 3do game search under 3do, nes - nes etc...
this way all my arcade games could be in one place, I could use the best emu for any given game...

[The Loafer]

Well, technically it IS like that, a lot of those Zinc/Model 2 games can be run in MAme LOL. I see what you are saying, but you mentioned "console" so I thought you meant just that as a section and dump all the different consoles in that one section.

For example, under SNES, it's not listed as ZSNES or SNES9x right? it's just that the arcade machines have different motherboards as a base for emulation and that's what the Zinc/Model2, etc do, they emulate a specific platform and like it or not, many emuholics love testing the games as a platform, not individually.

Example of what I am saying:

- SNES/Genesis/NES/3DO are all reflecting the home console platforms
- Model 2/Zinc/etc are all arcade platforms.

Naturally, having Mame broken down between it's various arcade platforms wouldn't make sense, so I understand why it would have it's own section. Finally, one more reason is: many of these emus might have a separate rom set, which brings more complexity and organizational reasons to have it set up as is. See Daphne for example.

Anyway my point is: nothing should be scrapped though it's cool to add an option that could make your preference a reality.

[BadBoyBill]

Dont worry this feature will be in for sure, its will actually be really easy to do, maybe just a few lines, but I like have this huge list of things small minor things Im squeezing into the release. Maybe I'll take a jab at it for a couple minutes tonight.

What will happen is you'll have a linkage node in your xml like this in mame.xml:
<game name = "dlair">
<description>Dragons Lair</description>
<linkage>Daphne</linkage>
</game>

Then it will refrence daphne.ini for the launch settings rather than mame.ini and it will also reference media/daphne/ for all the artwork and theme. Personally I still like having a seperate daphne, model2, and zinc main menu item, but I could definitely see that some people dont.

The only issue for now is that list building or list merging for this isnt ready yet. So you'd have to manually add the items to your xml. One cool thing though is that your xml no longer has to be in alphabetical order in the next release so you can basically just copy over your daphne xml and paste it to the bottom of your mame.xml.

[SomewhatLost666]

Well, technically it IS like that, a lot of those Zinc/Model 2 games can be run in MAme LOL. I see what you are saying, but you mentioned "console" so I thought you meant just that as a section and dump all the different consoles in that one section.
I was just being lazy... technically, my 'dream wheel' would have arcade, 3do,nes,n64,snes,sega (what was that system called? I had it once),xbox(someday),ps1,ps2,ps3(someday),etc

For example, under SNES, it's not listed as ZSNES or SNES9x right? it's just that the arcade machines have different motherboards as a base for emulation and that's what the Zinc/Model2, etc do, they emulate a specific platform and like it or not, many emuholics love testing the games as a platform, not individually.
nothing wrong with that at all, but from my perspective, if I played the game in an arcade, fed it many quarters/tokens/credits/etc,... it should just be lumped into arcade and the best emulator should run it (in the background so that I don't even know an emu is involved...)

Anyway my point is: nothing should be scrapped though it's cool to add an option that could make your preference a reality.
I agree, besides, I am using the current version (besides, I only have mame setup... see the point above about being lazy)

[The Loafer]

BBB: Wow, wow WOW! That's going to make just about everyone happy and will really provide a reason to have ONE real favorites list! Thanks man!