R. Belmont |
Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Reged: 09/21/03
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Posts: 9716
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Loc: ECV-197 The Orville
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Re: "...either you Get It(tm) immediately and think of a dozen uses for it,..."
09/30/13 05:35 PM
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> Right, and the way you've presented it sounds like a big deal - 5 steps vs. 2 - but > notice the internal UI steps boil down to only a few keypresses extra (scroll lock > and tab) and the web interface steps omit finding the phone if it isn't nearby, > picking up the phone, finding the web browser, entering the URL, etc.
I can assure you, as one of the heaviest users of emulated computers on MESS, it *is* a big deal. Especially since your UI keystrokes leak through to the emulated system. You press Enter several times in the disk switch process; underneath the UI the system is likely saying "switch disks then press Enter" and at least one Apple IIgs game crashes if you press Enter without the correct disk in.
At the same time, you can also do it from a browser on your local computer with a single-click bookmark. This usage closely tracks how many other computer emulators work where you have an emulation window and a second control window which handles media and configuration, often "live" while the emulator runs. I'd originally planned to do the second window as actual hardcoded UI via Qt or something (and we may yet implement it that way too - anything in MAME that doesn't have at least 3 ways to do it isn't worth doing, as long as the backend code is shared). But then I saw that the latest version of the "Sweet16" Apple IIgs emulator had outsourced most of their UI to HTML5, including a working MAME-style debugger in a browser window. And there are many advantages to that setup.
There's also the reverse setup: imagine a future official Android port. Getting the MAME debugger to work on such a device would be painful, and actually using it would be even worse (soft keyboards, anyone?). So in that case, controlling the mobile device from a browser on your PC would be advantageous.
Edited by R. Belmont (09/30/13 05:36 PM)
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