[mythtv] Nintendo64 and/or Genesis

Anthony Zawacki aczmail at cox.net
Wed Jan 19 18:08:17 EST 2005


Alan Gonzalez wrote:

>>Hello,
>>I was searching the mailing list archives for information related to
>>mythgame because I also wanted Nintendo64 support.  In addition, support
>>for another game emulator (VisualBoyAdvance, for my brother.)  I was
>>planning on making changes in the near future to change the way mythgame
>>prompted for information, in particular, so that when an xmame upgrade
>>changed command line parameters, so that it wouldn't require code
>>changes.  Do you have some references to describe the other fixes you
>>were talking about?
>>    
>>
>
>The references are to the discussions in this thread.  Where
>commandline arguments would be specified in the settings dialog,
>specifically commandline, and not in the Menu button from the Games
>section of Myth.  Also an improvement would be a simple way to add new
>games from the GUI.
>  
>
That is actually a good idea...  I was thinking of eliminating the 
ability to bring up the menu at the system level (MAME), but leave it at 
the ROM level in case different ROMS needed different parameters, but I 
too thought that all of the configuration should be in the settings 
stuff.  It actually took me quite some time to find out where to change 
these settings while configuring my system.

Adding new games referring to ROMs or game systems?

>I have an idea about this, and I should be able to get a prototype out
>to start with.  Maybe that would help you get started?
>  
>

If I can help you at all, I'd be happy to do so.  As I was saying, I'm 
still in the preliminary stages...  I've been programming C++ for more 
than 10 years on both Linux and Windows environments, but I haven't 
worked with the QT graphics stuff before...  And while I've done 
database programming in the past, I haven't looked at the schema that 
mythtv uses.  But I was planning to look into both things this weekend.

My thinking to this point was to create a set of configuration files...  
The "master" configuration file, perhaps something similar to 
mythgame.xml would contain system level information...
<emulators>
    <emulator name="MAME" system_id="1" enabled="true" config="mame.xml" 
description="The Multiple Arcade..."/>
    <emulator name="Nintendo 64" system_id="2" enabled="true" 
config="mupen64.xml" description="..."/>
    <emulator name="Amiga" system_id="3" enabled="false" 
config="uae.xml" description="..."/>
</emulators>

Then, each config file like mame.xml describes the configuration of that 
console system...  Then the mythgame module reads these configuration 
files and dynamically generates the user interface based on the xml.  So 
the first screen in the setup would be a column of check boxes to 
determine which emulators the user is interested in.  Clicking next then 
goes through the screens for each emulator that is enabled.

Adding new emulators would be as simple as adding an entry to 
mythgame.xml and to create the corresponding config file for the 
system.  The configuration file syntax would include the ability to just 
set the values so that the user cannot change a setting from the GUI 
(for instances where there would been too much to configure, and many 
the user may not be interested in changing.)  It should be possible to 
completely replicate the current functionality from configuration files, 
so that adding a new system is easy for a non-programmer to do, though 
they'd need to be a little bit xml literate.  But still, it would mean 
no code changes with emulator upgrades.

How does this compare with your ideas?

>>Is mythgame under active development by many people, or just a few?
>>Would there be interest in an additional developer?
>>    
>>
>
>It's not very active, since it seems to work for most people the way it is.
>
>  
>
Well, it was something that I was going to look at for N64...  You've 
met my need...  Though as I said, my brother would like VBA...


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