reasons like this GameEx looses out

[stryker]

Saw this comment on the project mame group on facebook.... did make me wonder if its stuff like this that has GameEx loosing out, which is a shame as I think its one of the most capable and practical front-ends available.

QUOTE

I honestly don't think anyone else on here uses GameEx - I put a request out ages ago for a review of it for our list of frontends and had no responses.

Does exit on the keyboard still work? If so, you can get around it using keymapping software like JoyToKey.

END QUOTE

Noone seems to be talking much about GameEx.... even on these forums at times! :-)

[u-man]

i think it is a tasty thing. on all german forums i explore, there are two fractions. the ones that use Hyperspin with all the nonsense and the one that use either original mame or MALA. thats it, no one talks about GameEx and that has possibly to do with themes, especially themes for Cab-Setups. There are not much 4:3 themes here, especially awesome ones .

I like GameEx very much, it is full of rich features and has a awesome community and the best is regularly updated.... see Maximus Arcade, good Frontend, but no updates, no community.

[Draco1962]

Theme Editor provides for converting MameWAH themes to GameEx. Unfortunately it will not convert MaLa themes.

I don't necessarily think that themes are an issue for others. The tools are there free of charge (Theme Editor, GIMP, etc.) and, while not perfect, if there is a will, there is a way to make it happen. Why do others depend on the 1% to do 100% of the theme and logo files creation. That's bollocks! GameEx has been around for longer than most of the active users. Get out there and create something! Learn a new skill and share back! Go out to these forums if you are a member and promote your support of this product and community!

We presently have 85 user created themes for download. 45 are 4:3, 2 are 3:4. There are also the default themes that download with GameEx that may not necessarily show in the themes download section. So this is not a good argument either and I defer back to my previous paragraph.

[nullPointer]

If it weren't Stryker posting this, and I didn't know better I'd probably consider this troll baiting.

But since I do know better I'll bite.

I honestly fail to see how GameEx is loosing out on anything. All I see is a single comment on Facebook of all places claiming that no one in that particular group uses GameEx. Are we talking about this Facebook group? The one that you need a Facebook account to even view (and thus excludes me from viewing it)? Taken in that context it's a bit underwhelming as proof that GameEx is losing anything.

Those that actually bother to use it generally consider it to be one of the best frontends out there (if not the best). Configurability and user-friendliness are second to none. I have seen various posts elsewhere claiming that, "GameEx is more tailored to HTPC setups than for cabinets". I generally consider this to be a lazy and uninformed view being that it tends to indicate that the user didn't spend much time with GameEx (or worse that their judgement is based purely on YouTube). Admittedly the default theme has a more subdued media center appearance to it, but as Draco points out there are a plethora of alternate themes available, not to mention the tools available to get out there and create what you please.

Further to the point is the fact that these sort of complaints exist for every frontend under the sun. People complain that, "HS is difficult to configure," or that "HS looks to busy," or that "HS is a loosely cobbled together assemblage of flash animations, AHK scripts, and multitudes of hyper-configuration utilities" (OK that last one is mine ) Does that mean that HS is losing out on something? Not at all! The first two critiques are based on the same sort of uninformed laziness exhibited by those who say, "GameEx is for HTPCs". And as far as the last one goes ... well, I'm sure no one over on the HS forums is loosing sleep over the fact that I'm not among their users.

Ultimately I think the course of action here is not to lament that there are users out there uninformed about the greatness of GameEx, but to educate those users on the possibilities of GameEx. I mean we can sit here commiserating or we can do something about it. I say we take action! Join the GameEx street team! The movement starts here and now! OK that last bit was a bit heavy on hyperbole, but the message stands - our discussion of and enthusiasm for GameEx shouldn't strictly be limited to these forums. Spread the word! It starts with you!. (If you need more of this sort of morale boosting I suggest listening to some positive hardcore from the 80s - Gorilla Biscuits is my choice, but you'll have to find your own thang ...)

[stigzler]

What he said...

When started planning this cab project earlier this year - research boiled down to choice between two FEs - GameEx and Hyperspin. All the others looked lacking (although there was a brilliant one that let you walk around a virtual 3D Arcade - what put me off this was it seemed quite old and development seemed to have stopped years ago)

Hyperspin's flash. Buuut, what made me plump for GameEx was customizability (word). For me, a bit like the Apple/Android distinction. Apple - flash and solid, but highly limiting of hacks/customizing and quite propriety (don't wish to spark a separate debate). Android - OS for grifters, allowing greater creativity and customization. So Hyperspin - felt like buying a shirt from a Oxford street shop that gives you a choice of 3 shirts. And I don't like wheels.....

Guys planning to make their own cabs and HTPC setups are naturally creative, imho. Also, personally, if I was going to spend months working on a project, I wanted to be able to customize everything! GameEx gave that. You'll see a cab running Hyperspin and say "that's a hyperspin cab." One running gameex - you'll say "I like that front end" and then learn it's gameex. <like

If I am being totally honest, the only thing missing for me was a good guide on theme design when designing my theme. It may have been that I was time limited + had million and one other things to do for the cab as continuing experimentation would have taught over time (wish I'd have figured out differences between background and foreground stuff before doing mine!). Also understand that the theme editor is being redesigned?

Lastly - there also seems to be so much room and back end for further development. Would love to see extension of the 3D cabs bit so that Page graphics, games and other items can also have 3D models rather than pictures. e.g. In emulators section, have 3D model of the console rather than pic. Or a spinning 3D Sonic. (oops sorry - wrong meeting - should post in suggestions)

Can't wait to get cab finished so can really chase down the fun stuff of the front end/finish and aesthetics.

Good work Tom et al (and you plugin writers).... long may your coding fingers fidget.

[stryker]

Many thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt nullpointer!

Yes this was the purpose of my post, sure many frontends have an obvious lack of support and yes some users make comments on GameEx having not given it a fair shake of the stick, I'm interested in the recent documentation project started here to solve that and plan to format my getting started doc for it once I'm not working 12 hr days after the silly season, also for the record I do sing GameEx praises at every chance as my experience of it has cemented my belief that a frontend worth using is meant to make the job easy so you don't spend your life setting it up and maintaining it... tho I digress lets not start a GameEx is better than.... because thread here...

However what I have observed across the 4 or so classic gamer forums I'm on, the various twitter and facefudge groups I'm on is there is a lot of people that have no idea GameEx exists let alone the benefits over the alternatives.... I want GameEx to be more successful and yes for selfish reasons, I love using it, I want to continue using it.

Its to this end I wanted to see the opinions such as those above and see what comes from the discussion.

My apologies, I've only skim-read the comments above at this time, but I will read them again later.

Cheers

[Adultery]

Word, Drac. Word, nullP. And word stig. You guys nailed it. :-)

[u-man]

I throw me in again.... I understand you Draco but I think you misunderstood me. I was writing my post at work, so i didnt have much time.

What can I say? What I was describing in my previous post, was my experience with GameEx in other german Forums. And like i said, most of the time there are two groups.... MALA or Hyperspin. MALA for the simpleness (some of the guys did development for MALA ) and Hyperspin for cewl FX and overall Look + Style.

Draco, yes its true, maybe there are more than 40 4:3 Themes, but Quantity is not Quality and sorry to say that, but most of them dont look good on a 15khz cab. You cant do 800x600 themes and think, because of the same aspect ratio, it will look nice on a tube .

This is a main problem, for all these 800x600 themes, i bet they where not testet on a real cab. It was a painfull and very time consuming experience for me, to see a good result with my own theme. Best Themes are the default ones with 320x240, they look ok on a tube. Very often in the process of creating my theme, i was struggled in creativity by the limits of the theme-creator, but i cant wait to see the new one . Off course you can make real awesome themes with GameEx, but you cant beat the stuff from Hyperspin, with the given tools GameEx comes with.

Sadly the FX-blinky-blinky eyecatching people dont catch other important stuff, like "what can i do with my frontend?", "how easy can stuff be done" etc. etc.

But thats what i mostly like on GameEx, easy and flexible. Most people also dont understand, that for a good Hyperspin, you will need a big rig pc to handle that jumbo-jambo. GameEx works nice on low-end machines .

Fact is, if i would not like GameEx, i would not spend time here in the forums .

[hansolo77]

The only problem I see is that GameEx requires a bit of "training" to learn how to take full advantage of. People are so lazy any more that they just want stuff done already for them. I'll grant you, GameEx isn't all FLASHY, but it gets the job done. It does what it's advertised to do. The problem with getting more people to use it isn't due to lack of support, or lack of themes, or stuff like that. I think it's just a matter of the technicality involved on getting it to work. It's customizable, you make it the way YOU want it to be made. Other frontends are more geared to the lazy person.. plug and play. Everything is handed to them. GameEx requires work. I think that's the hurdle most difficult to overcome.

[nullPointer]

It's customizable, you make it the way YOU want it to be made. Other frontends are more geared to the lazy person.. plug and play. Everything is handed to them. GameEx requires work. I think that's the hurdle most difficult to overcome.

While I'd absolutely agree with you about some people wanting things handed to them on a platter, I would actually contend that GameEx is the most flexible and user friendly frontend to set up (in my experience at any rate). I've messed around with Maximus Arcade (my first frontend), Mala, and HyperSpin. In my opinion GameEx handily trumps them all in terms of ease of configuration (in large part thanks to the Setup Wizard). To be fair that may be because I know my way around GameEx pretty well at this point, but even as a beginner I don't remember struggling all that much (which admittedly could be seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses, not to mention that by that point I also had some frontend experience under my belt). But to call something like HS "plug and play" I think would be a gross overstatement.

[Draco1962]

@u-man - I understand what you are saying and stick by the intent of my response to your original post. We do have quite a few that stick around for the "table scraps" of the efforts of others when it comes to the themes.

While it is flattering to get an "atta-boy" once in a while for my efforts, I get more of a feeling of accomplishment seeing others that haven't contributed before step up and make an effort. It may not always be great or flashy, or even super functional, but who cares? I have seen too often where someone breezes into the forums demanding this and that and give nothing back.

We have quite a few that have cabs with smaller resolutions. I have been approached on several occasions with "Your theme looks great! Can you scale it down to this size?" Seriously? I had to teach myself how to use Theme Editor to position screen elements and GIMP to create and modify images and, as you know yourself, no matter how skilled you are, it takes time to knock out a decent theme. Since I do not have any low rez equipment for testing, I won't create anything smaller. 320x240 is hideously small and will kill almost any detail thrown at it so you really aren't going to get much more than a color palette to look at anyways.

You said that you created a theme. Have you uploaded it to share with the community? This is not a condemnation or to call you out, but to illustrate a point that there are many more GameEx themes out there that have not been shared, but the person probably benefited from the knowledge the community had to share. All I am saying is if you (general you, not you specifically) want better - make it better!

[Krakerman]

Sum it up GameEx just works man!

I've gotten every emulator under the sun working without any issues and in very little time whereas Hyperspin not so easy for the more obscure systems that they don't have modules written for. It can be done but it takes alot more work and most people don't want to put in the time to learn it.

Me personally ... I like them both and they run great on my systems but I have pretty highend PC's so it's not an issue for me. GameEx is my frontend of choice just because it just works and is so easy to setup everything. Theme creating to me is pretty easy on both GameEx and Hyperspin but that's just me.

I think we have plenty of great themes for GameEx so I agree there is no shortage of themes. The one thing GameEx is missing currently that Hyperspin has is you can create individual themes for each game on a system. It can be somewhat done on GameEx currently but it doesn't quite work the same however from what I heard I believe that might change in the future we will just have to wait for that day. Too me that is a big deal as I like to have and create themes for my games so once Tom gives us that feature I'll be in theme creating heaven. but for now it works and I'm making do as you can see from themes that I'm making.

On the flip side GameEx has alot of awesome Plugins and GameExtender for multiple monitor support is very kool and work really well.

Bottom line GameEx is FUN!! and this community is awesome and friendly!! What more can you ask for.

Thanks guys!

[Riffman81]

Having spent quite a bit of time with the "Big 3" as I like to call them (Hyperspin, GameEx and Maximus Arcade) I'd have to say that I'm one of those individuals that consider GameEx the best thing to ever happen to Front-End software. Comments about it not being tailored for cabs are complete crap IMO. Truthfully, all the FE's I've mentioned aren't without their faults, and I guess it really boils down to how much time one might be willing to put into said front-end/project.

When starting my first cab, I did my research, and spent time with each front-end exploring options and seeing what each one could do. It helps going into such a project if you know what you want from the begining, this ultimately can save quite a bit of time. Maximus lacks support and is in need of an update (and I hear that's underway...?) Hyperspin isn't really all that difficult setting up, the learning curve is quite managble... my problem with HS was hunting down all the .xml's, .dat's, AHK scripts... blah blah blah....

At the time I started putting my cab together, I wanted something that "just worked" and GameEx was just that. I simply can't say enough good things about this FE. Configuration overall was cake! Although I found configuring MA to be just as easy, (Not quite the headache of Hyperspin) it lacked the community and support when I would run into problems. Having to convert all the .mp4 video snaps was another factor... HDD space was being eaten up by huge .avi files... less space for other content.

GameEx was hands down the winner for me! The community has been very helpful with helping noobies such as myself get up and running. As for "cosmetics"... there are plenty of great themes here. If one is willing to put time into learning the theme editor, you can pretty much create whatever you wish... again, this goes back to how much time one might be willing to dedicate. I've always said you get what you give.

[Tom Speirs]

I've got a bit more insight into active users and believe me folks from many moons ago are still using it and often drop it and then get back into it at certain times like the holidays. Its not new and shiny anymore which may be why it does not get a lot of press.

[stryker]

Some positive stuff here.

Yes I'd have to agree that GameEx takes some learning to get it from simply working to being magic, but also yes out of all the FEs I've tried its the most straight forward and helpful. I was trying to help ease the initial learning curve for others when I started work on the demystifying documentation I started... granted work on that has stalled of late.

I think keeping on top of the feature where GameEx installs various emulators and gets them at least running for the user is only a good thing! Perhaps MESS for nes, snes and genesis could be added as thats what I use now as the HSLS feature for emulating a monitor on an LCD screen is not only second to none but mandatory in my book for making the games truly look as they did.

However, as I said its good to see all the positive comments and energy above, but I still stick to the points I made when joining this forum several months ago... that is we just need to hit the sweet spot for the getting started documentation, I still think the majority of people fail within the first hours of using GameEx or any FE for that matter (during the "is this the right one for me" phase) owing to as mentioned above a lack of knowledge leading to misinformed opinions on what GameEx can do and how well it does it.

Cheers

[rtkiii]

I like it...I really don;t care what other forums or communities talk about. I tried several other ones before deciding on Game EX and I am happy with my choice.

[stryker]

I don't know who on here may be members on the jamma+ forum, but this thread shows a nice outcome from singing GameEx's praises.... hope the guy likes it.

http://www.jammaplus.co.uk/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=56991&PID=565646#565646

Jon

[Tom Speirs]

..... need a Facebook account to even view (and thus excludes me from viewing it)?

You've just skyrocketed in my estimations of you by the way

[nullPointer]

You've just skyrocketed in my estimations of you by the way

Sweet! I knew that being a paranoid, anti-social, misfit would pay off in big dividends someday! And look at me now, in the good graces of the King! Woo!

On second thought ...

[stigzler]

My second thoughts often look like that too.

[Krakerman]

Oh and btw when I mentioned multiple monitor support in GameEx well you can also use Display Fusion to create a wallpaper profile for your games and have Adultery's awesome plugin called QuickLaunch to load your profiles before launching your game and essentially display different images on all your monitors so you could have a marquee on one monitor and on another monitor have an instruction card be displayed the possibilities are endless and the when you exit your game you can have the same plugin load your default profile and restore all the monitors back to your default wallpapers.

How easy and cool is that. It doesn't get any easier than that!! With many thanks to Adultery for his hard work on that plugin so that would even be possible.

GameEx has the ability to use 3rd party applications with ease to create awesome things!!

[Adultery]

Side note: I'm more surprised that Tom finds it a rarity that people don't use Facebook. I don't think any of the staff does... Null for sure, Drac doesn't afaik, I don't, and I don't think HK does either? Not sure about Tempest or KRC, but contrary to popular belief I don't want to make it easy for the government to spy on me, or for naughty people to be able to easily steal my identity. I also don't care what you had for lunch today, or where you're going to get hammered after your crappy day at work. If I wanted to talk to ya, I'll call you. If I didn't know you that well before, why would I add you to my friends? I guess that's the hermit in me talking though. :-)

On topic: I'd way rather have the great people that are here now, all of who live and appreciate this marvelous FE, and are so happy to give back to the people that gave of themselves, than to be widely popular, hugely unappreciated, and widely criticized for not being another HS clone.

I love this community for what it is, not for what it could be if we push harder to sell it to the masses. :-)

[Tom Speirs]

Yeah we are mostly all of a similar mindset. The friends I tend to pick in real life are mostly the same too. I guess that is partly the reason why we have come together and bonded like we have.

Although I don't like being number two to HyperSpin sometimes, we do have such a good a thing going here. I wouldn't want it nuts like it is over there.

Cheers!

[Tempest]

I am on Facebook. I agree that I don't care what you had for breakfast. I have a list of rules if you want to stay my friend on Facebook. Post 5 times in one day? Your gone. Continue to post mundane items such as what you had breakfast? Your gone. Post negative comments? Your gone.

It has been good for my family, as it allowed us to easily keep in contact with my Mom after she had her voice box removed. (At first we had given her a clicker, and would only ask her yes and no questions on the phone. One click for yes, two for no.) I have found cousins that I hadn't seen in 30 years, and as a result went to a family reunion to see them in person.

I have 86 friends, 41 of which are family.

I certainly understand why you wouldn't want to be on Facebook, I'm just saying that it can be a useful tool.

I also don't care if the Government spies on me, because my life is truly boring. Sometimes when I'm on the phone I say random things like "Rocket Launcher" or "Nuclear bomb" just for the fun of it.

[Tom Speirs]

As I say to others about the government spying, don't give them too much credit, they are not that smart! Which is pretty much how I disperse of conspiracy theories too. Really, you think a civil servant is smart enough to do that stuff!? lol.

I agree as a communication tool Facebook can be beneficial. Any of my friends that are on Facebook are for purely the same reason as you, for friends and family that are remote. I think the problem arises when other people think it is the only or best way to communicate and use it as such.