iMAME4all favorites and game filtering

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I've almost finished the favorites and game filtering on the game selection 
screen. I've attached the latest build with these additions to see what you 
think before committing to SVN.

To change the favorites simply press the COIN button. The filtering menus are 
accessed from the "options" button. The favorites are stored in 
"folders/Favorites.ini" and this is compatible with the PC version.

I've also made a slight change to the game settings screen, moving the game 
name up a line and adding the year and manufacturer.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by squid123...@gmail.com on 19 Sep 2011 at 8:09

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good work mate... !

I have tested on my iPad 2 and iPhone 4... no problems there. really good work.

I think it could be nice to add some type game filtering.. arcade, 
platforms...? is it posible? also i think is missing an option to reset 
favorites... or maybe i haven't found it...

When i was thinking to do a game filtering i was thinking in doing something 
like this:

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/21489-alternate-frontend-for-mame/

http://pdroms.de/gp2x/femame-gp2x-15-04-2009-frontend-for-mame-gp2x

This thing is really portable and it would have been posible to control all 
game selection with the external device like a wiimote...(that's why i keep 
gp2x frontend) I'm thinking in the tv-out option... i really like to put my 
iPhone4 with the hdmi output and play  using bluetooth multiplayer using only 
the wiimote to play gauntlet ;) with friends... it's the better mame experience 
posible (umm don't visit mameworld and tell there...ahaha) and you only need 
your phone... if somebody had told me some time ago i dont believe him :).. and 
it wouuld be more easy to add to MAME4droid also...

Said that.. maybe you can add int the future the little window screenshot like 
this mame frontend... Ithink is very useful to do an idea what game are you 
browsing when you dont know waht are you looking for...

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 19 Sep 2011 at 10:30

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This are the images (snapshots)

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/gp2x.cgi?0,1,0,0,73,2765

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 19 Sep 2011 at 10:50

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I'm not sure about your comments, are you saying it's OK to proceed with my 
changes or you want a more portable version? For now I would go with my 
filtering changes and later a more portable version could be made - which would 
take much more effort. There's many ways iMAME4all can evolve in future of 
course.

I can add game categories but as this isn't stored in this version of MAME I'll 
have to piece the info together, but I'll look into it. The core code for this 
filtering will handle categories. I can also add a "delete favorites" button, 
but would that ever actually be used?

Original comment by squid123...@gmail.com on 20 Sep 2011 at 8:41

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No... I thinks is ok now... Really good work, very useful...

The only think is that if it would be done inside c portable stuff, like gp2x 
front end... I could reuse easily in mame4droid... 

I have a jni layer to pass data from java code to c code...really a boring 
stuf.. And I would have to do some widgets... Really I think I'll do after some 
pending things... 

Respect game categories... I was watching femame fontend and in the last 
version called gp2xfemame for mame4all 1.6 there are a cfg files which have all 
the data structures you need... Really hard work there... Take a look.

http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/gp2x.cgi?0,0,0,0,73,2764

I asking me if it would be a good idea to lost 2 top  game lines and draw a 
line telling what kind of filtering are you making like femame.... What do you 
think...?

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 20 Sep 2011 at 9:00

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Umm respect to favorites... I was playing with favorites and I finally get 50  
roms... so I thought to delete them  and reworked my favorite set... But is 
me... :)

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 20 Sep 2011 at 9:04

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Also I like femame possibility to filter by  letters... Take a look to filter 
done there 

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 20 Sep 2011 at 9:08

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I've put categories in now and redesigned the filter a bit - works better. I've 
displayed the filter, if it is set, in the MAME version number at the bottom of 
the screen, the original version message displays if a filter isn't set. Screen 
space is tight so I can't see any alternative.

There's also an additional "rescan roms" button in the options to rescan the 
ROM dir due to iMAME4all not completely quitting and I added a cache to speed 
ROM filtering so the dir wouldn't be read unless iMAME4all completely quitted - 
needing this "rescan" button.

Not sure how the letter filtering could be done, possibly L & R keys (my 
favourite) could be used to skip through the alphabet letters and leave the 
left/right for page up/down.

Original comment by squid123...@gmail.com on 21 Sep 2011 at 8:25

• Added labels: Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

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Yes... far better now. I really like the your game filter.

I was thinking... and maybe letter filtering is not so useful, with the number 
of options that already exits.. but i was thing in some kind of:

    "#-B" Desc Starts with  ( 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0,A,B )
    "C-E" Desc Starts with  ( C,D,E )
    "F-H" Desc Starts with  ( F,G,H ) 

also when i look to femame Manufacturer filter i saw a lot more 
manufacturers,... like gremlin, tecmo... and so on... maybe you can add an 
"others" option to filter by the rest not showed ?¿?

i have notice that when the first time iMAME4all is launched... the splash 
screen is not hidden after i move the stick in few seconds... is maybe 
generating the data filter? maybe you can show some kind of progress/wait 
window ¿?

anyway.. i think is ok now... i going to be busy till sunday... but if you 
upload the changes, update the readme, build the exe... i'll do the package on 
sunday.

thanks for your hard work.

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 21 Sep 2011 at 10:46

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I've added more manufacturers to the list and added a "Other" item for all the 
others. I've fixed the performance issue on the splash screen, a sprintf (so 
slow) inside a frequent loop caused it!

I've uploaded the mame file to "mame20110922test" in the deprecated downloads 
due to me not being able to attach any more binaries to this message.

Changes have been committed to SVN, source, Info.plist and readme.txt etc. I'll 
understand if you don't reply for a while.

Original comment by squid123...@gmail.com on 22 Sep 2011 at 5:52

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Hi Squid.

Good work. :)

I have made the deb file and i will publish on Cydia shortly.

I have comitted some changes related to compilation issues with my toolchain.

What next? :)

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 25 Sep 2011 at 11:00

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i have realized a nasty bug... when you show options/filter window... the game 
pointer is reset to the begining of the list, loosing the game you were 
selecting...

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 25 Sep 2011 at 11:10

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i only think it has sense in case you have changed the game filter or you have 
rescaned the roms directory..

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 25 Sep 2011 at 11:13

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Good to see it released! I'll look into the filter bug.

What's next? How about some time actually playing games? :)

Original comment by squid123...@gmail.com on 25 Sep 2011 at 7:07

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Let me know if you find. The bug... I'll wait some days before send to cydia

Yes. Play some games is a good idea mate.. :)

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 25 Sep 2011 at 7:50

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Noticed it doesn't have the filter issue on the iPad, only the iPhone. This may 
take some time...

Original comment by squid123...@gmail.com on 26 Sep 2011 at 8:25

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I've fixed the bug and put the changes in SVN. Uploaded a new build to 
MAME20110926test.zip in the deprecated directory.
First time you run the app on your iphone will probably redraw as it fixes the 
bug in the options, from then on it should work fine. Shouldn't affect anyone 
else who hasn't been testing.

Original comment by squid123...@gmail.com on 26 Sep 2011 at 10:54

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it's seems to work well now. thank you.

i'm very busy this days... my kids are new in the kindergarten and i have 
return to job after holydays... :)

i hope to get some free time to keep mame4droid development... :)

Original comment by seleuco....@gmail.com on 27 Sep 2011 at 5:10

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Good to see it has been released. 

Yes better to spend time with your kids, although... we are talking about MAME! 
;)

Original comment by squid123...@gmail.com on 28 Sep 2011 at 11:40

• Changed state: Fixed