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That's a great story. Kinda reminds me of that time the $20 jumped out of my mom's purse and into the hole in the neighbor's fence. Why the fence? The $20 needed to be "quarantined" until we knew for sure it wouldn't be missed. If it was we certainly didn't want to be caught with it. After a few tense days my brother and I calmed our nerves by blowing it all at the arcade.

I'll meet you there. We'll play doubles on Satan's Hollow.

Hey everyone. I'm a long time fan of MacMAME. Incredible job Brad & to all the contributors. Looking forward to the new direction of the front end.

I was lurking through this thread and felt like giving some input to the front end. I'm not a programmer and I don't really know how to use Interface Builder. Gave it a shot anyway and here are the results. It's not original but it has the right mix I think. Some iTunes elements & some familiar UI pieces from the current MacMAME.

The tabs up top were retained with the addition of the Browse tab. In iTunes I find the 3 column browse view to be very powerful. The only problem when using this in MacMAME is that there would really be no 'root' level to drill down from. -I don't see a logical root... So, instead MacMAME should have the root that can be changed. The other two levels can be changed also just by clicking on the header or dragging the order.

screen shot 1

For the left source view there should be plain playlists, smart ones and net based items. The net playlist could have custom views for anything anyone cares to serve up just like iCal subscriptions. It would also be nice to be able to subscribe to cheats, replays and hi-scores if possible.

Here\'s the info tab...

It looks a little cramped but it should spread out when the window is enlarged.

The video tab...

Here you'll see the familiar controls for video. In addition there's a preset menu to set the video configuration for each game independently or globally. There should be an option to select the presets right in the games list just like the EQ settings in iTunes.

Here\'s your basic audio tab, reports tab and miscellaneous tab.

I haven't figured out how to align every piece to one another so it scales evenly but I'm sure it's possible.

If you want to play with the nib file I'd be happy to send it to you Brad.

That looks like a pretty good approach to the UI. What I really want is _every possible_ attribute viewable as a sortable/searchable column, so I can pick by resolution, refresh rate, number of CPUs, ROM size, etc.

Wow, that looks pretty good. Very similar to what I imagined a iTunes look and feel would be like. It loses some of that ol' MacMAME vibe we've all come to know and love, but I think it would more than make up for it with added functionality.

Those are nice mockups, though for my two cents, I'd rather the MacMAME front-end be a lot more minimalist. For example, I still believe all the settings tabs belong in their own Preferences dialog, away from the main MacMAME window.

The Mac OS X Address Book interface is still my ideal for what MacMAME should look like.

Just like dvessel proposed, I think that a iTunes-like UI for MacMame could be the best one.

iTunes is really great for managing a library of song, and the concept should work for managing games too, no ?

Cool features could be the ability to play games at random, the ability to rate a game (from 0 to 5 stars) and the ability to create playlist and intelligent playlist (example : System is NeoGeo AND genre is Shoot AND rating is more than 4 stars)

For the 3 column browse view, I would choose instead of Genre, Artist, Album (for iTunes) : System, Genre, and Category.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to see the new UI and I'm sure that it will kick some ass

Brad has to be right with his intention to split 'his' (to be written) front-end from MacMame. Reading the good ideas in the rest of the thread (like the ones above -- lets make the interface like this!), there seems lots of interest in a new interface. I certainly hope there will be Free ones.

The problem I find with this is that it's pretty straight forward in iTunes. Each artist will pretty much have a set genre (most of the time) then album.. So, it's logical to have a set order. In Mame there's some sharing of hardware between the different companies. The year especially will be shared among a lot of hardware/companies so there is no logical set order.

I kinda agree with you here. The Address Book layout is especially interesting. You have the grouping capability and I'm sure we could think of a way to expand on that to show more detail when we want but at the same time have the single info window in the collapsed view.

Another idea that was mentioned is the WebKit. To expand on that, if the web interface in MacMAME can be combined with an internal mini server it would allow simpletons like me to make my own gui in html. -kinda like SnapperHead Have simple tags that can query MAME and generate whatever's needed like a search tag, etc... Another thing is that it's could somehow go out on the web and grab bits of info to be incorporated to the interface.

If the donation-ware policy still exists...I'm going to donate some money to NPR (National Public Radio) in Brad's behalf.

..and any mug or T-Shirt they decide to send for becoming a member.