MAMEWorld Forums - News - pfeMAME front end v2.3.2 released

pfeMAME version 2.3.2 has been released today

A couple of big changes in this release along with some minor improvements and bug fixes. The first main change is that the games categories selection has been moved from its own window to the main screen. This makes it easier to make changes and they are updated instantly. The second change is the addition of game specific slot configurations for systems (e.g. set up a specific computer game to use a certain type of hardware for joystick interface). You can find this in the game preferences (right click the game and select from the list of options). There is also a new manual configuration for game preferences where you can add any preferences not covered by pfeMAME.

You can download this release from HERE. Builds are available for 64bit Windows and Linux and the source code is also available.

Please read the manual as it has everything you need.

pfeMAME is a front end for the Multiple Arcade Game Emulator (MAME) written in Python. It is cross platform (tested on Linux - Ubuntu and Windows). It also includes a graphical Tile View designed for MAME cabinets which allows control using joystick / gamepad. It supports favorite game flagging, MESS systems, and a Tiled view for arcade cabinets. It was written with a minimalist view in mind but also because there were some features I wanted that other front ends just didn't provide.

Changes in this release;
• The game categories selection has been moved to the main window so you don't have to open the separate window to select / change them. When you change a game category selection the games list is updated automatically. Double-clicking on the category list window will toggle all / none checked.
• Fixed a bug introduced in v2.2 that broke the rom information window. Shelltouse variable was missing.
• A few more generic code improvements.
• Fixed a problem that arose with a new build of Linux (Ubuntu). The loadhistorydat code was crashing with a unicode error. Had to change utf-8 encoding to ISO-8859-1. I’m not really sure why as it had worked ok old slightly older builds and on Windows.
• Fixed an issue created by v0.195 MAME changing the output of the -ll (listfull). Seems they have decided to include all devices as well as roms.
• Fixed a bug in the Rom Information code. Under certain versions of linux it was crashing due to the differences in CRLF between platforms.
• Removed a number of unnecessary try/excepts
• Improved the add favorites code. Got rid of the unnecessary warning that you are tying to add a favorite that already exists and simplified the method for preventing duplicates.
• Double clicking on a games favorites flag will add that game to the favorites list. If it already exists as a favorite, it will delete from the favorites list.
• Double clicking on a games rating box will allow you to set that games rating
• Removed the need to be showing the favorites ‘view’ in order to delete a game from the favorite list
• Adjusted the size of the View drop down box as in Linux it wasnt showing all of the text for the options.
• Removed unnecessary line feeds from the game specific preferences file creation – it was causing extra blank lines in the file.
• Updated the game specific ini file code. It no longer supports manual preferences to be put into these files. The file will now be overwritten if you select game specific preferences. This was done for consistency and to also set up for supporting slot settings which will be added into this code.
• Changed the combo box lengths in the preferences window as they were too short for the displayed text in some Linux builds (Note, Linux doesn't always correctly auto size these critters).
• Added slot device configuration to game specific preferences. This works for systems (e.g. ZX Spectrum), but also the system programs. So you can have one program (e.g. firefly) set up with a kempston joystick and another one (e.g. jetpack) set up with the Interface 1. Its not 100% perfect due to the way MAME provides information about slots. For some systems the information is incomplete so pfeMAME can only go off what is available. Cascading slots seem to be the current issue. I have used the -listslots command. The necessary data is in the -listxml, but it is quite complex so I will come back to this later as an improvement.
• Added video auto load, show the last selected game, and systems support to the default preferences (first time run) and made them True (Selected by default)
• Added a manual preferences input box into the game preferences window. This allows you to add additional game specific preferences that are not explicitly covered by pfeMAME (There are a few, including bgfx, hlsl etc).
• Fixed a bug that raised an exception if you right clicked on a blank area of the games list (e.g. if you are in favorites view and you only have a few favorites so the area bewlow is blank).