S.M.F.E.
Simple M.A.M.E. Frontend

a palm tree

Quote from pugsy's site: "My current MAME frontend of choice, fully featured and requires no installation at all, just run the exe (so it even works with MAME straight off a dvdr with very little work). And it hasn't crashed once!" :-)

Download
Binary: • smfe.exe [2.8MB] or smfe12.rar [0.8Mb] Version 0.12, (26/Jun/2005), tested with MAME 0.97b
• you may optionally get smfe_data.rar [0.9MB] if you have trouble creating your own.
Info: • No installation needed, just run smfe.exe. You must also have mame.exe (or mamepp.exe).
• Check "Help->Getting Started" on how to read game data et.c
• You can sort the table by multiple columns with shift+clicking on their headers
• smfe creates smfe_data.dat which contains all displayed table information, and smfe.ini which contains saved options
• You must remove the old .dat file when you change smfe versions
• If mame.exe can find MAMEINFO.dat, it will use it and smfe will display recommended games.
Sources: You can get the sources (v0.9) smfe09-src.rar. To compile it you will need Borland C++ Builder, Russian Extensions (RX), ADVStringGrid.
Misc: A shell script (for unix) getrom to download a rom from www.mame.dk. Usage: "getrom <romname>". If you don't have the "socket" program, use netcat.Update: www.mame.dk has shut down.
Old Binaries • smfe11.rar [818Kb] for MAME 0.83
• smfe09.rar [818Kb] Version 0.9, (30/Sep/2004), tested with MAME 0.83
• smfe07.zip version 0.7 (2/Sep/2002), for MAME 0.61

Features
  • Simple means simple to use (hopefully)!
  • Configurable image locations
  • Supports PNG, JPG, TIF, GIF, BMP & .ICO formats
  • Configurable mame.exe location
  • Supports network drives & UNC paths (\\hostname\sharename\directory)
  • Can configure various MAME options for video, audio and input options and directory locations.
  • Also supports using the mame.ini configuration file

  • Reads supported MAME games from the MAME executable
  • Checks for rom existence in the system (fast)
  • Checks for rom validity (not so fast)
  • Displays recommended games
  • Supports nplayers.ini parsing (# of players each game supports)
  • Supports HISTORY.DAT parsing (various game info)
  • Saves Table data into file to avoid rerunning time-consuming operations
  • Can kill the mame executable and change back screen resolution in case MAME hangs up. (Ctrl+K)
  • Tested only with Windows 2000

  • Table columns include: ROM name, description, Year, Manufacturer, Clone Info, Played times, Rom Size, Emulated CPU, Game type (raster/vector), Resolution.
  • Supports multi-column sort (shift+click)
  • For each game there is additional info displayed which includes recommended games and other game info.
  • Can export all data in .XLS, .HTML and .TXT formats

  • Options&paths are saved in smfe.ini, and game info/availability in smfe_data.dat at the same directory as the smfe.exe. It does not use the registry.
  • Can run from read-only (CDROM/DVDROM) media just generate the .dat file once and place along it with the .exe and .ini
TODO
  • Record audio in .mp3 format (HELP!)
  • Display the main form rotated. This can already be done (with the driver options) if you have an nvidia card like GeForce.
  • Display only available roms in the table. Note: You can sort by the first column and have your available games on top. You can have a second sorting criterion by shift+clicking on the table column.
  • Mail me for ideas
Screenshot (v0.4)
smfe screenshot
Click image to view the full-size capture.


News
  • 26/Jun/2005:version 0.12. Fixed bugs/typos, changed how verifysets is called, improved (hopefully) menu layout, fixed a bug which prevented games to start after a search for their name was performed.
  • 30/Sep/2004:version 0.9. Now working with mame 0.83, nplayers.ini support + small bug fixes
  • 02/Sep/2002:version 0.7. Fixed bugs with input devices. Thanks to Ric Kalford for the bug report.
  • 23/Jul/2002:version 0.6. 2 new menu options: 1) autosave "played" field is now optional to improve loading times and 2) "save table data now". Fixed "save colun sizes" (hopefully). Added an "Auto fill" button when setting the executable/image/rom paths. Added new column: "Game Category"
  • 18/Jul/2002:version 0.5. bug fixes + support for read-only media + display romset statistics + more debug output in console window
  • 04/Sep/2001:version 0.4. Changed gamelist retrieve timeout + minor bug fixes
  • 04/Sep/2001:Project progress will be delayed until 15 September due to other work.
  • 25/Aug/2001:8402 page hits, 1200 downloads so far! unbelievable!
  • 19/Aug/2001:version 0.3. First public version. Added some confirmation menus + screen resolution restoration code + minor bug fixes
  • 16/Aug/2001:version 0.2. First public SMFE release (with announcement to freshmeat)
  • 09/Aug/2001:Started writing the program.

Links


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