cxmame0.1 (c) Jordan Muscott 2002 jordan@no-future.com

A simple ncurses frontend for xmame (http://x.mame.net)

Introduction
Installation
Known bugs
Changelog

1)Introduction

CXmame is a simple console based frontend for xmame, written in C using the ncurses library.

I started building this because i thought it would be nice to have a console based frontend for xmame.svgalib, especially for people who want to run xmame on a machine without X. But i suppose something like this is ideal for someone who just wants a minimal frontend.

2) Installation

Well - just unpack the tarball anywhere you have write permissions, eg

$ tar zxf cxmame-0.3.src.tar.gz

$ tar xfj cxmame-0.3.src.tar.bz2

(although you've probably already done this if you are reading this)

then cd to the directory and:

make
make install

note - make install needs to be done as root.

Before you run cxmame you have to create a ~/.cxmamerc file with the name of the xmame exectable you want to use (with full path if its not in your PATH ), followed by a ';'. For example my ~/.cxmamerc looks like this:

xmame.svgalib;

Then, the first time you run cxmame it will scan your roms and build a gamelist from them. This could take a little while depending on how many roms you've got in your rompath, but it only happens the first time. ( you have to set your rompath as per normal , eg in your xmamerc file ).

3) Known bugs.

If you are using xmame.svgalib, building the gamelist from within an xterm does not work. This is because svgalib opens a new virtual terminal and all the output goes to that. I'll have a go at fixing this soon. If anyone has any tips please let me know. This means you shouldn't run cxmame for the first time from within an xterm if you are using xmame.svgalib.

WORKAROUND: If using xmame.svgalib don't build the gamelist from within X.

b) When the menu's are first drawn in wmxmame the 'incorrect roms' are displayed in the 'all roms' collumn. Can't be hard to fix, I must be doing something wrong with WINGs.

If anyone finds anything else wrong please let me know. jordan@no-future.com

4) Changelog

CXmame-0.4.2

1) Ripped out wmaker gui because i like the idea of keeping cxmame slimline. If anyone wants the code its still in the old tarballs.. or just send me a mail and i'll send it too you.
2) Fixed a bug that stopped the menu being displayed in an xterm when you have game names over a certain length. I'll probably need to come up with a more robust fix for this... which I will do as soon as I have some time.

CXmame-0.4.1

Code cleanups.
I think I accidently broke checking for corrupted roms in the last release. This is now fixed.

CXmame-0.4

Fixed the annoying redraw problem when using xmame.svgalib from a terminal.
Various code cleanups + bugfixes.
Multi-threaded code in wmxmame so that gui doesn't lock up whilst building the gamelist.

CXmame-0.3.1

Fixed some rather nasty memory allocation. Oops :( Don't know how i was getting away with this.

CXmame-0.3

Tidied up code (a bit)
Extra error checking code
Fixed bug with long game names getting scrambled.
Window Maker fans can build a WINGs GUI, rather than using the console based one.

CXmame-0.2

Added code to handle errors in rom zipfiles whilst building gamelist.
Whilst doing the above i noticed a bug in building the gamelist. With my compiler (gcc2.96) this resulted in some of the games not appearing on the first run - i've a feeling this may have been arbitrary and could have been worse. Anyway, it is FIXED :=)
Had a nice pizza for dinner.

CXmame-0.1.1

Quick change in this release - you can type the name of the game you want and the menu will jump to it. CURSOR LEFT moves you back one character, and RETURN clears the buffer of characters.