View Full Version : How to make pics of box art lauch emulator when d/clicked?
One thing i find difficult to recreate through emulation is the whole act of browsing the shelves of game boxes, looking over and enjoying the artwork and descriptions and taking a flick through the insturction manual before deciding on what game to play.
My best thought to recreate this was to hand pick my favourite, say, 20 games for each system and put pictures of the box art for each inside a folder on my pc so it would display large thumbnails for each and then i wanted to be able to double click on the 'box' i had decided and for it to be a shortcut to launch the game in whatever emulator i wanted.
Is this possible please?
I know it should be with a mutiple emulator fornot end and i'd be glad of those suggestions too, but i really just wanted to keep it clean within a system folder.
Many thanks for any suggestions.
kupomogli
11-11-2008, 10:17 PM
That'd be pretty awesome. Honestly though, I don't use emulators other than on my PSP so I can play the games I own on a portable console.
Daria
11-11-2008, 10:31 PM
I doubt it, but what you could do is give each game it's own folder, set the folder image to a picture of the box art and have the file extension set to a generic picture of the systems cartridge. So you could "open" the box and double click the cart to launch the game.
You'd have a ton of little folders, but at least you could organize all your save files and patches.
Borman
11-12-2008, 01:12 AM
Just set the icon for the rom, and have it autolaunch with the emulator when clicked.
kedawa
11-12-2008, 01:38 AM
It should be pretty easy to give a shortcut a boxart icon.
You just need to know the right syntax for the shortcut.
It would be something like:
C:\emulators\emulator.exe game.bin
Flack
11-12-2008, 10:31 AM
Most MAME front ends allow you to display the artwork while scrolling through the list of games. Many of them support showing the marquees, side art, and screen shots. Many front ends also support multiple emulators. Probably the easiest solution would be to use one of those front ends for your emulators, and put your pictures of box art and whatnot in the appropriate folders.
Daria
11-12-2008, 11:07 AM
Just set the icon for the rom, and have it autolaunch with the emulator when clicked.
Oh... duh. XD
I think I was over thinking the question. But I still think my box and cartridge system is a good idea.
Jorpho
11-12-2008, 12:24 PM
Perhaps you could make an HTML index page, with pictures linked to your locally-stored ROM images?
jb143
11-12-2008, 12:28 PM
Here's some examples of what Flack was talking about. I think the Gameboy advance example is more what your looking for. These are from the mamewah frontend...
http://www.localarcade.com/screenshotarchive/img/skins2/cave_multiskin_small.jpg
The pictures can be of whatever you want and change from game to game.
So as you select each different game from the list on the left, a different box scan can be displayed. As well as screen shot, cartridge scan, instructions, or whatever.
You can get box scans here btw...
http://www.localarcade.com/screenshotarchive/scans.htm
SegaAges
11-13-2008, 09:08 AM
You could always teach yourself silverlight. I have been messing with it, and it would not be that hard to do. Just make a page called Book Shelf or something, and then you would be able to scroll through the games just like a bookshelf and do pretty much whatever you wanted with them from there. You could turn your games into something like what they do with the iPhone or something, and all it would take it doing a google search and getting code from a bunch of places online (silverlight.net is a good source).
You could probably do it in flash too, but I know nothing about flash, unfortunately
Jorpho
11-13-2008, 09:27 AM
I know Flash development software sure isn't free. Is Silverlight different in that respect?
SegaAges
11-13-2008, 09:41 AM
Kinda sorta.
To develop silverlight, you could, potentially, use notepad or something.
there are plug-ins to visual studio and expression studio to make a sweet gui and not do everything in text.
to develop silverlight, it is free, but to get a nice gui, uh, yeah, not so much.
and, what? pay for software? people do that still?
hahaha, jk
(or am i?)