Bitrazer
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Oct 14, 2018 3:37 pm

Simpler mame shell/interface, not fullscreen

Hi there, my first post here, please forgive the terminology.

I recently had to format my PC and re-install MAME, I find any version I can download now totally different from the one I had:
my old version wasn't starting fullscreen, was simpler in terms of interface (with lists, folders and menus more similar to the system default ones) and felt much lighter.
For instance I could easily change some settings without leaving the game, something that I can't seem to be able to do with these new versions.
To clarify, it looked like the one in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-bPzKmRarI
I'm pretty sure it wasn't MESS.

I tried previous realeases (going back by years!), win32, zip versions with the same results...

Another surprising discovery was that some of the roms I had saved can't run on this new version, but this not a massive issue.


Thanks if you can point me in the right direction
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Tafoid
Posts: 351
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2014 12:50 pm
Location: USA
Contact: Website

Re: Simpler mame shell/interface, not fullscreen

Bitrazer wrote: Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:47 pm Hi there, my first post here, please forgive the terminology.

I recently had to format my PC and re-install MAME, I find any version I can download now totally different from the one I had:
my old version wasn't starting fullscreen, was simpler in terms of interface (with lists, folders and menus more similar to the system default ones) and felt much lighter.
For instance I could easily change some settings without leaving the game, something that I can't seem to be able to do with these new versions.
To clarify, it looked like the one in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-bPzKmRarI
I'm pretty sure it wasn't MESS.

I tried previous realeases (going back by years!), win32, zip versions with the same results...

Another surprising discovery was that some of the roms I had saved can't run on this new version, but this not a massive issue.


Thanks if you can point me in the right direction

In MAME 0.171 or thereabouts, we incorporated a relatively full featured front-end to the base project. The menu you are mentioning is known as the Config Menu and is opened by default with TAB key when a game is running. This still happens but the game must be selected if it isn't provided in the command-line when starting MAME. The previous incarnation of UI was simple one, a small 15 item game menu with the ability to type and isolate a game you were looking for. In order to do this with current MAME, you need to edit your mame.ini and look for "ui" line entry and change the value from CONSOLE to SIMPLE (or, if you use command-line sending, adding -ui simple will do the same thing.
Bitrazer
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Oct 14, 2018 3:37 pm

Re: Simpler mame shell/interface, not fullscreen

Hi Tafoid, thanks for your reply

I tried to change ui cabinet to simple in the .ini but it didn't really "simplify" much: it displayed a random selection of games on start on a black, fullscreen background.

I've checked the tab button and it works, I can access some settings while the game is still running, so if I'm staying with this version it will help.

But I'm still I'm looking for a MAME version with a totally stripped UI and my doubt is that, rather than a very old version, I've been running mameui.
Judging by the screenshot this is what it might have happened.
I'll give it a spin soon

Thank you
Bitrazer
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Oct 14, 2018 3:37 pm

Re: Simpler mame shell/interface, not fullscreen

Ok, no, it's not mameui.
It's not an older version (just downloaded again something around 0.159)

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