MAMEUI request: parent/clone universal icon color

[mame-licious]

Hi

For some reason the chip color for a working parent is grey but the chip color of a working clone of this parent is green. I don't know if this is a bug, but it's applied everywhere for each parent/clone available. A parent, for this reason, can NEVER have a green chip color.

According to me there is no need to have a color difference between a working parent or its working clones. It makes sense to display them all green, no matter if it's a parent or clone.

Would you be interested to change working parent icon's color to green, the same as their clones? It's very confusing the way it works now (the proof is that I was confused about this for days until I found out this specific behavior in MAMEUI)

Below a screenshot of the latest MAMEUI version:

 

- wboy is a parent, working, but grey color

- wboy2 is a clone of wboy, working, and green color

[mame-licious]

You can see the yellow color for parents is working, because if you look at the screenshot, there are 4 games displayed yellow and they are all parent machines.

So if you apply my request, chips having grey color will be completely eliminated from the games list because:

- parents can already have yellow color chips (this behavior is already correct right now)

- parents that WERE grey will be converted to green (if you apply my request) and this eliminates grey color chips completely

This makes the game list have universal yellow/green colors for parents and clones and this is according to me the best to display them.

I hope you can apply this change

Edited Wednesday at 03:10 PM by mame-licious

[mame-licious]

I looked at how ARCADE is doing it and there working parents are green chips. And even more, I like the way the icon chip colors are used in ARCADE more and I would like to ask if you want to apply the icon colors of ARCADE to MAMEUI because they are much better and intuitive for beginners too.

ARCADE:

- working parent: green chip (example "wboy") / working clone: lighter green chip (example "wboy2")

- not working parent or clone: red chip (example "wheelfir")

- partially working parent or clone: yellow chip (example "wow")

- missing roms for parent or clone: grey chip (example "warlords")

 

Why is this better then current MAMEUI icons? You can immediately see working (green), partially working (yellow) or not working (red) while missing roms are grey chips. MAMEUI is displaying grey for working parents and a red cross for not working parents/clones. The grey chip for working parents can create a lot of confusion and the red cross for not working parents/clones could better be replaced by a red chip (since the green and yellow chips also are complemented logically with a red chip for not working games)

It's more consistent and intuitive if the chips are used for ALL green/yellow/red status. And in addition grey chips should be used for MISSING roms (grey is now used for working parents in MAMEUI which is totally not-intuitive !!!).

Edited Wednesday at 06:40 PM by mame-licious

[Robert]

I found that the working parent icon resource was green in arcade and grey in mameui/hbmame. So I copied the arcade resource object across, and now the working icon is green in mameui/hbmame.

I still want to have the red X as an option which will mean an extra choice in the interface options. If you don't choose it you get the red chip, if you do you get the red X.

About the grey chips, there 2 kinds, one with a ? to indicate it hasn't been scanned at all, and the other one has the stop sign to indicate it has been scanned and some roms are missing.

[mame-licious]

Thanks so much!

This is perfect and exactly the change I wanted. Now all confusion is gone, especially for beginning users.

[Robert]

Few more changes with icons. A working bios gets the blue chip.

The redx override setting has a 3-state checkbox (first time I've used one).

- unticked = red/yellow/green chips, but if driver icons are found they will override for working games.

- intermediate = same as above, but the red chip is replaced by red X.

- ticked = driver icons will always be used. If there's no icon, then it falls back to intermediate.

If you don't want driver icons at all, change your icon directory settings to point away from the icons or delete them.

 

[mame-licious]

Hi!

First, it's great working with you since you actively listen to users and implement changes! I just love the new icons approach.

I have several questions here:

- how can a checkbox have 3 states? I never used/saw it and according to me you can only check/uncheck it. So I need explanation in order to understand the next release

- what do you mean by "driver" icons? I only know about the icons (green/red/yellow, see issue about missing icons) that were shipped with John IV's version of MAMEUI. What exactly are driver icons and were to download? I need to know this in order to test the next release

 

You are writing a lot of new information now and I can imagine users don't know how it all works. I will need to save the information too since I won't remember it all.

Once John IV's version of MAMEUI had a CHM file included (see link).

Would you be interested to update this file with this new information and include it with MAMEUI ? Where else can we find a sort of "manual" for MAMEUI?

You could also update the "Art & Support Files" there with all the supported DAT files (since it's not up to date anymore) and remove some information like "Game changes" and "MAMEUI Changes"

 

https://limewire.com/d/UWkgJ#kEI9aro93I

[mame-licious]

Since you are changing the icons, I had another idea. What about making a different icon for machines that support software lists? Right now, we have no way to filter the software list machines and also no way to visually see them in the list.

So there are now grey icons with ? and the stop sign.

Could you make green/yellow chips with another thing (like the ? and the stop sign) that indicates the machines supports software lists? I don't know what would be best but maybe a small floppy? Maybe it's not really visible very well.

Or maybe you could make a new field "supports software lists" here? ("yes"/"no" depending if the machine supports software lists or not)

Just asking your opinion

Edited 1 hour ago by mame-licious