Difference between revisions of "UltraMame"

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[[Image:UltraStyleFE.jpg|thumb|Kymaera Screenshot|320px|right]]
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[[Image:UltraMame.jpg|thumb|UltraMame Screenshot|320px|right]]
  
http://www.mameworld.net/ultrastyle/
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http://rittwage.com/ultramame
  
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Like a lot of you, I've tried out all the front-ends over the years and at some point ran across Mike Billings' "CocktailFE" program. It used the MAME control keys, was configurable somewhat as to what graphics you could put where, and was clean and fast. Since it used Windows fonts, it had the bonus feature of working with the ClearType feature of Windows XP. This made it look beautiful on my setup. There has been another fork of Mike's project called "EmuWizard" which added the ability to use other emulators (somewhat) but didn't add any new display features other than using other graphic formats. This wasn't very useful as all MAME art is in PNG format anyway.
  
'''List of Features:'''
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Then one day I took the family to Pizza Hut, only to find a new arcade machine called "Ultracade". Ultracade looked to me like a MAME ripoff with a nice frontend, but after later research it turns out it's legitimate, or at least it hasn't proven to be illegimate. Has anyone tried to look at the hard drive of an Ultracade PC to see what's there? Anyway, it had a beautiful interface where you chose the games by the marquee on the left (2x4 grid) and it shows the live attract mode running on the right. Newer versions of this machine don't look as good to me as it now has some crazy looking broad on the screen with the marquees in a rotating semicircle on the right and the live attract on the left.
 
 
* customizable background (in .jpg format)
 
* upright or cocktail mode - clockwise and counter-clockwise (Horizontal)
 
* custom font under screenshot cube and on marquees for games without .pngs
 
* customize font color for game name under cube
 
* custom resolutions 640x480,800x600,1024x768
 
* GUI based setup
 
* 3 wheel sizes, start off with any wheel size you like
 
* Mouse/Trackball wheel control
 
* customizable sounds
 
* see all artwork associated with a game
 
* optional filter system using files from the Catlist, up to 136 sub-categories
 
* 3D game art viewer has 4 shapes to choose from
 
* all controls are bindable
 
* startup in one of hundreds of sub-categories, or your favorites, last game played, or the filter wheel itself!
 
* 2 sizes for the cube normal and bigger then normal
 
* MAME command line option
 
* additional sound packs and skins available
 
* Hide the clones
 
* Non-working ROMs removed, list generated to help you find out what games don't work
 
* Background MP3 music (optional) while you browse your games
 
* supported file formats: raw/mod/s3m/xm/it/mid/rmi/wav/mp2/mp3/ogg/wma/asf
 
* Add/Remove favorites from within ultrastyle
 
* see the attract video on the screenshot cube (optional, video must be in avi format)
 
* merged sets supported
 
* run an .EXE of your choice (I.E. Daphne games, HOTD, Virtua Cop/Squad)
 
* optional clock
 
* presets for commercial control panels
 
* new marquee style - Plank
 
* native NPlayers.ini support
 
* optional controller info for each game
 
* configurable mouse buttons
 
* Setup Wizard
 
* remove favorites from within ultrastyle
 

Latest revision as of 01:18, 23 June 2008

UltraMame Screenshot

http://rittwage.com/ultramame

Like a lot of you, I've tried out all the front-ends over the years and at some point ran across Mike Billings' "CocktailFE" program. It used the MAME control keys, was configurable somewhat as to what graphics you could put where, and was clean and fast. Since it used Windows fonts, it had the bonus feature of working with the ClearType feature of Windows XP. This made it look beautiful on my setup. There has been another fork of Mike's project called "EmuWizard" which added the ability to use other emulators (somewhat) but didn't add any new display features other than using other graphic formats. This wasn't very useful as all MAME art is in PNG format anyway.

Then one day I took the family to Pizza Hut, only to find a new arcade machine called "Ultracade". Ultracade looked to me like a MAME ripoff with a nice frontend, but after later research it turns out it's legitimate, or at least it hasn't proven to be illegimate. Has anyone tried to look at the hard drive of an Ultracade PC to see what's there? Anyway, it had a beautiful interface where you chose the games by the marquee on the left (2x4 grid) and it shows the live attract mode running on the right. Newer versions of this machine don't look as good to me as it now has some crazy looking broad on the screen with the marquees in a rotating semicircle on the right and the live attract on the left.