MAMEWorld Forums - News - Re: Attract-Mode Frontend 1.0

I *finally* got a chance to look at this...

Overall, I like it. It's got a lot of potential. I like the configurability, but it also looks nice right out of the box. The "attracman" theme is cool, if a little over-the-top. Setup is pretty straightforward, I didn't spend any time scratching my head trying to get things working. The little on-screen help blurb for each menu item is useful, especially for some of the more obscure options.

Now for the nits.

- Lists really need to scroll when a key is held down. Ideally, there should be an acceleration curve, i.e. it should be controllable if I just want to jump down 10 games, but if I hold the key down longer it should ramp up to warp speed so I can zip around a list of 28,000 games. As it stands now, getting to a specific game in a huge list is awkward at best.

- The filters are really nice, I like the interface, but multiple filters per list is pretty much a necessity. For example, the list I use most frequently in MAMEWAH shows me everything older than 1992, and filters out *mature*, casino, fruit machines, and electromechanical.

- "Random" should jump the list to a random game, but not start it. If I'm not looking for a specific game, I very often just tap the "random" key until something catches my fancy. It's pretty unlikely to be the first game that "random" comes up with.

- Kind of a minor one, some kind of file browser for entering paths when setting up the emulator would be good. It's kind of a bummer to have to alt-tab out of the app to go and figure out where I put my marquees.

- Generating the main games list for MAME seemed to take a *really* long time. Granted it's parsing 28,000 games, but even then it seemed to take longer than other frontends. Maybe some optimization can be done here? I did appreciate the large, bold text with the update progress, anyway. I was able to do stuff on my other machine and just glance at the progress from across the room.

It's definitely a good first effort. I look forward to seeing it mature.