MAMEDEV Forum

Hello MAME team! How can I create a frontend for MAME? What programs do I need to use to create a frontend?
I hope you can help me. I look forward to your replies. Greetings from Argentina!

jdv40 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 17, 2025 11:40 pm Hello MAME team! How can I create a frontend for MAME? What programs do I need to use to create a frontend?
I hope you can help me. I look forward to your replies. Greetings from Argentina!

Hi. I get the feeling that you do not fully understand what it takes to do such a thing. First and foremost, you would need to learn how to develop software using a programming language. I assume (but you know what happens when we assUme) it would likely be something like C or C++.

Greetings back to Argentina!

Hello again, I know a little about C++ programming, but I don't know how to start using the program. Perhaps a tutorial on any platform could help me learn. I hope you understand my message here. Note: I use Google Translate, and the words I type aren't always accurate. I look forward to your reply. Greetings again.

jdv40 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 19, 2025 2:04 pm Hello again, I know a little about C++ programming, but I don't know how to start using the program. Perhaps a tutorial on any platform could help me learn. I hope you understand my message here. Note: I use Google Translate, and the words I type aren't always accurate. I look forward to your reply. Greetings again.

There are quite a few (self-study) books out there that can teach you how to program in C++. It will teach you how to write software using that language, and (presumably) how to use developer tools like an IDE and a compiler. The platform you would want your software to run on (MS-Windows, Linux, MacOS) will most likely help determine what specific developer tools that would be.

However, I have no personal experience with any of such books so I cannot make any recommendations myself here. Perhaps other people can.

And again, I think you are greatly underestimating what skill set(s) it would take to create software in general, and a front-end in particular.

There's no C++ liability for a MAME frontend. It all depends about the scripting capabilities of a given language(s) and how it can read XML out the box. Can be done in Python, in LUA, in Rust, with any web frontend and so on ...

Kale wrote: ↑Thu Nov 20, 2025 7:48 pm There's no C++ liability for a MAME frontend. It all depends about the scripting capabilities of a given language(s) and how it can read XML out the box. Can be done in Python, in LUA, in Rust, with any web frontend and so on ...

Thanks for the correction.

One would still need to learn the given language though, and any tools (IDE/compiler/build system/etc.) that might go along with it (perhaps more likely with compiled languages like C++, and less likely with interpreted languages like Python).

I just got the impression (but may be wildly mistaken here) that the original poster is/was underestimating what it would take to create a frontend (and that it takes more than simply 'installing a program').

jdv40 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 17, 2025 11:40 pm Hello MAME team! How can I create a frontend for MAME? What programs do I need to use to create a frontend?
I hope you can help me. I look forward to your replies. Greetings from Argentina!

It may not be a bad idea to look at some other MAME frontends and see if there are any that are open source that you can pour through the code to see how it works. If you find one you like, maybe try to fork it to get used to making changes and adding or changing features. That's how I'd start.

If you want to take a look at one (albeit I think it's in Delphi) here's all the source code for a front end that was really good and was regularly updated until the author's passing. You could look at it for ideas or even take it over.

https://web.archive.org/web/20251113114 ... orld.info/

I have downloaded all of the latest files from that site from before MameWorld disappeared so if you're interested and you can't download the files from the archive, let me know and I'll put them someplace for you.