> > I tried out FEEL and Attract-Mode, and was not up and running in minutes. FEEL > > doesn't have a set-up menu. Attract-Mode's was just incomprehensible - which > > surprised me given the author seems to be a native english speaker. A-M seems like > > it's made for touch screens. Really bizarre. In either case, I wasn't able to set > the > > exe path. > > Haven't tried FEEL, but I'm sort of using Attract Mode these days. Once you get your > head around the way the UI is, it kind of makes sense. But yeah, it's not exactly > user friendly. > > Although, the same is true for most frontends. MAMEWAH was my go to for years, and > that had some funky dependencies and took lots of config file editing to get it off > the ground. I finally gave up there because it required more and more hacks to get it > to work with new OSes, as it got increasingly out of date. > > I think part of it is just that frontends are tricky. There's a lot of moving parts > that all have to be set correctly before the the frontend can do anything. It also > seems like a lot of frontend authors come from a Linux background, where funky UI and > editing config files is the norm. I'd love to try my hand at a frontend that takes a > more Apple-style "it just works" approach, but sadly my time for such projects is too > limited to have any hope of producing anything.
I agree with most of this. I downloaded the new Mame yesterday, and the built-in UI is hilariously inept and horrible to use, though like anything you get used to its fugliness.
If you're familiar with most of the older ones, then MameUI64 is the best right now, I think.
Basically the problem with every one I've seen is that they're designed from the inside out, rather then the outside in. Meaning, usability is about last on the list of requirements.
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