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    The HyperSpin 2 beta is here!

    We’re starting the first public testing phase with Platinum Members to keep the scope manageable while we test the current feature set and begin to add more. In the future, we’ll provide a version for basic members as well.  On behalf of the entire HyperSpin team, we look forward to another exciting adventure with our community.

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EmuBox. A free and open source frontend.

asdfrewq

By asdfrewq
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asdfrewq Newbie

asdfrewq

Posted
Posted

Another frontend! Why?!

Quite simply, because the one's out there didn't fulfill my needs, so I created one that does (or will. [eventually.]).

What it does (right now):

  • EmuBox is Hyperspin compatible. You point it to your HyperSpin and RocketLauncher install directories, push a button, and all your systems, games, themes and videos will show up and launch (via rocketlauncher) just as they do in HS (mostly).
  • EmuBox will also pull your launch statistics from RocketLauncher to create both global and system specific 'recently played' and 'most played' lists.
  • EmuBox connects to online databases (currently just GamesDB.com but more will come) to grab meta data for games and systems in your library.
  • EmuBox extends the genre system of Hyperspin to allow selecting multiple genres from either a specific system or from the global game list.
  • EmuBox is designed from the ground up to be skinnable. Sure it's great that you can load the aeon nox theme and view it like in hyperspin. But the possibility is there to recreate the skin, in native resolution with dynamic content and multiple views.
  • EmuBox features full global lists. Want to view every game in your library, in one list? Why not. Want to filter it to just your favourites, or a specific genre, or your most played games? Sure, probably a good idea.
  • EmuBox doesn't alter any data in your hyperspin or rocketlauncher directories. I know you put a ton of time into your setup, and I wouldn't dare risk that by messing around in there.
  • EmuBox is beta software. Alpha, really... no lets go with beta. It will have bugs. It will glitch. It will (probably) break.
  • EmuBox is free and open source!

What it will do (soonish):

  • Global search is coming. As soon as I have a decent solution for an onscreen keyboard.
  • Better interface control, including a fullscreen toggle button that actually works!
  • Better gamepad customization. Currently, it's setup for a xbox 360 pad and is not configurable. That will change soon. (Keyboard controls are configurable, however)
  • Better resource management when launching games. The frontend will go into a low resource state while in game, freeing up resources for the emulator, then relaunch to the same state upon completion.

What is planned (in approximate order of priority):

  • A Collections system. Create your own, share them online, import from others. All from within the EmuBox ui. Collections will be either system specific, or global. Examples: "Mario's greatest hits" "Best Gamecube sports games" "Top ten grossing Arcade games" "Some Old Magazine's top 20 snes games of 1993" you get the idea.
  • A full rom scanning and matching system using hashes, filename lookup and fuzzymatch. For those who won't be transitioning from Hyperspin.
  • Full media scan and download capabilities. I hope to use the HyperBase Live public api for this. Download the app > set your paths > enter your HS login credentials and let EmuBox do all the work. The dream.
  • A recommendation engine. If people don't mind sending anonymous usage stats back to a server, it would be fairly trivial to create a database of games "people like you" would like. Setting up global (as in world wide) lists for most played games, or trending games, or games that no one has played ever would be neat too.
  • Full access to the core via an HTTP API. This means creating addons like a web remote, or a marquee display or virtually anything which needs to share data with the frontend.
  • Much more...

Sound's good, want to give it a try? Download the latest beta from the release page.

Installation is as easy as unpacking the .zip to the desired location and running EmuBoxFE.exe. The configuration screen will display on first run, so input your paths, press the scan button, tweak if you want to tweak, and that's it!

Other links

  • http://www.emubox.io/ is the official project site, if you want to stare at a logo and a download link.
  • https://github.com/LukeMcDonnell/EmuBoxFE is the github repo. If you'd like to get involved, there will be more info on installing and setting up the project dev environment soon, or feel free to contact me.

Feel free to drop any thoughts, bug reports, or feature requests, either in this thread, on the github repo or via PM.

 

asdfrewq Newbie

asdfrewq

Posted
  • Author
Posted

My internets are down right now, but I'll post some screenshots and possibly a vid when it's back up tomorrow. 

Edit: Looks like my area is having widespread connection issues. I'll get some screenshots and a video up as soon as I can.

asdfrewq Newbie

asdfrewq

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Finally back online! Screenshots!

This setup is using the default 4:3 themes and art found in hypersync and adjusts their apsect ratio by making the list 'solid' and separate from the theme. If you're using 16:9 themes, you can use the widescreen preset found in the skin settings to change this.

Systems List:

OvFx3Nc.jpg

 

Games list (recently played games):

YZJgYOi.jpg

 

More information/context menu:

jLZ7x4U.jpg

 

Main Menu/ genre selection:

PyWVeI5.jpg

 

I'll get a video up in the next couple days.

 

diskmach Newbie

diskmach

Posted
Posted

Nice idea. Kudos for starting something big like this..

 

I decided to try it out. I put in the dirs, click scan, it finds a lot of stuff, says DB operation complete.

To the left still No database entries found. I press Return below that, the menu shows up but shows nothing.

Am I doing something wrong?

asdfrewq Newbie

asdfrewq

Posted
  • Author
Posted
4 hours ago, diskmach said:

Am I doing something wrong?

No, that is all you should need to do. Can you post the full log from the scan output? I wanna see if I can spot any clues.

2 hours ago, THK said:

ew!! that system logos have ® and ™ in it and the game logo is cut very poorly!

get better game logos from over here and plz use my System logo redraws ASAP!

Haha. I'm just using the defaults from hypersync for testing. I'm assuming this is the art most users will be using? 

THK Apprentice

THK

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, asdfrewq said:

Haha. I'm just using the defaults from hypersync for testing. I'm assuming this is the art most users will be using? 

You can use mine in you FE as defaults if you want. You can resize em to the optimal size and format as most are .ai and a few large .png's in worst case scenario.

It's a pretty comprehensive set which should cover almost all systems even though it's not complete.

asdfrewq Newbie

asdfrewq

Posted
  • Author
Posted
4 hours ago, THK said:

You can use mine in you FE as defaults if you want....

EmuBox currently doesn't ship with any art assets, nor does it download any media from a server. Right now, it uses the same media directory as your hyperspin install. Presumably, for most users this means it will be using the defaults provided by hypersync (or hyperbase live, when it launches)

diskmach Newbie

diskmach

Posted
Posted
51 minutes ago, asdfrewq said:

EmuBox currently doesn't ship with any art assets, nor does it download any media from a server. Right now, it uses the same media directory as your hyperspin install. Presumably, for most users this means it will be using the defaults provided by hypersync (or hyperbase live, when it launches)

Technically the right way to do it, whatever THK says... ;)

diskmach Newbie

diskmach

Posted
Posted

Edit: Removed the code box, too long and we already know what the problem is.

 

Sorry, the long code box syndrome again.

Doesn't seem to be any serious errors here.

Is the Database box supposed to be populated directly after adding the paths, or after you've scanned?

My stuff is on hdd D.

 

The systems that refer to an .exe give an Import error. I suppose you plan to add that functionality later on?

 

Also, I'm using a XBox 360 controller, the left analogue stick is very jumpy, and if I use the d-pad it goes to every second setting in the menu?

Edit: Sorry, forgot that I had a keymapper active. Working better now.

 

asdfrewq Newbie

asdfrewq

Posted
  • Author
Posted
3 hours ago, diskmach said:

The systems that refer to an .exe give an Import error. I suppose you plan to add that functionality later on?

Yeah, that functionality is coming. They shouldn't be causing issue though, and it seems like the scan process continues just fine. I'm actually a little bit stumped. If you don't mind, could you possibly PM me the files in your data/database directory of your EmuBox folder? There should be 4 .db files there. With them, I should be able to figure out what's going wrong :)

 

2 hours ago, klopjero said:

you say skinning..you have a toolbox for that ?

Not yet, emubox is still under heavy development, so any skins created now will be broken very quickly. As a 1.0 release nears, I will document the skinning process to make things easy as possible.

The Emubox frontend is written in HTML, CSS and JS (using the Angular 1.x framework) so skinning could be as simple as editing a css stylesheet to modify colors, backgrounds and borders. Or it could be as complicated as rewriting the angular directives to completely change the application flow. But again, there will be more info on skinning later. ;)

KlopjerO Newbie

KlopjerO

Posted
Posted
27 minutes ago, asdfrewq said:

Yeah, that functionality is coming. They shouldn't be causing issue though, and it seems like the scan process continues just fine. I'm actually a little bit stumped. If you don't mind, could you possibly PM me the files in your data/database directory of your EmuBox folder? There should be 4 .db files there. With them, I should be able to figure out what's going wrong :)

 

Not yet, emubox is still under heavy development, so any skins created now will be broken very quickly. As a 1.0 release nears, I will document the skinning process to make things easy as possible.

The Emubox frontend is written in HTML, CSS and JS (using the Angular 1.x framework) so skinning could be as simple as editing a css stylesheet to modify colors, backgrounds and borders. Or it could be as complicated as rewriting the angular directives to completely change the application flow. But again, there will be more info on skinning later. ;)

I'm looking forward to it. I've been fidling about with launchbox/big box and I can't see what people are so excited about. maybe I'm to invested in hyperspin at this point. Emubox (great name btw, nice touch with the emu, it's so obvious it's great) looks like a mashup of launchbox and hyperspin.

I'll go fiddle with emubox this week..

diskmach Newbie

diskmach

Posted
Posted

OK, for some reason systems and games didn't get enabled after my scan. But after asdfrewq directed me to the db files, I tried to enable everything manually with a text editor, and all my systems and games show up now. 

Will mess around a bit with this and check things out. One thing I noticed now is that it shows all the games in the xml (of course), will you implement "Wheels only", "Roms only" as in HyperHQ, that is really useful?

And in MAME we might want to hide clones. Or just use some of the settings in HyperHQ that are already there?

asdfrewq Newbie

asdfrewq

Posted
  • Author
Posted
8 minutes ago, diskmach said:

OK, for some reason systems and games didn't get enabled after my scan. But after asdfrewq directed me to the db files, I tried to enable everything manually with a text editor, and all my systems and games show up now. 

Will mess around a bit with this and check things out. One thing I noticed now is that it shows all the games in the xml (of course), will you implement "Wheels only", "Roms only" as in HyperHQ, that is really useful?

And in MAME we might want to hide clones. Or just use some of the settings in HyperHQ that are already there?

Haha, I just sent you a PM. Looks like we both came to the same conclusion.

For everyone else, the issue is caused by a bug in the scan process that treats game or system entries that don't contain an explicit enabled=true flag as automatically disabled. Hyperspin on the other hand looks for an explicit enabled=false  in order to disable a game, and treats the lack of any enabled flag as automatically true. I'll fix this in the next beta.

Backend filtering for missing roms, artwork and clones will indeed be implemented at a later date.

diskmach Newbie

diskmach

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, ninja2bceen said:

^_^got any tutorials for setup?

1. Put in paths for HS and RL

2. Press Scan

3. When it's done press Return below that.

4. Fiddle away!

:)

  • 1 month later...
KlopjerO Newbie

KlopjerO

Posted
Posted
On 2/11/2017 at 0:16 PM, asdfrewq said:

Another frontend! Why?!

Quite simply, because the one's out there didn't fulfill my needs, so I created one that does (or will. [eventually.]).

....

Feel free to drop any thoughts, bug reports, or feature requests, either in this thread, on the github repo or via PM.

 

how is your front end comming along

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