emuControlCenter

[Harrison]

Has anyone tried the emuControlCenter software?

http://www.camya.com

It's an emulator front end, supporting over 100 different systems, and containing full rom management. Looking through the site it looks pretty good, even though it is still in beta release.

[Demon Cleaner]

That one looks very good, now I'm really tempted to try it out. I only tried MameWah, MESS and GameEX, but this one looks a lot better.

I liked GameEX, only problem is that it is not easy to set up, hopefully this one is more userfriendly. One thing is clear, it looks great.

[Demon Cleaner]

Ok, tried it out with Amiga. Works fine so far, only a few things that don't work, or that I'm not getting to work.

First of all, the games have to be in adf format, compressed files are not supported.

Secondly, which I guess you can adjust by tweaking around, is that when you load a game, it starts WinUAE with the last used configuration, f.ex. when I started Perihelion, it tried to load it with an A600 configuration whereas Perihelion needs A1200. I guess you can edit that somewhere, but editing hundreds of games will be a lot of work.

I made some screenshots to show you:

Setting up the ROM folder

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/eccamiga0.jpg

ROM folder set up

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/eccamiga1.jpg

Configuring the emulator exe file

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/eccamiga2.jpg

Editing game info

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/eccamiga3.jpg

Startup script of game

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/eccamiga4.jpg

[Harrison]

So a few things either still need to be ironed out or features added. I expect it is quite a big task because all emulators work in different ways, so adding features to make just one emulator function correctly much be time consuming when it supports over 100 different emulators.

It is still in beta though so lets hope development continues.

But so far, you think it looks promising and is a good frontend?

[Demon Cleaner]

But so far, you think it looks promising and is a good frontend?Definitely. It also has so many features, don't know how they will manage it to run every single emulator properly.

With several emulators, mostly consoles or older computers (8-bit), you can't go wrong as there are no different configurations, but Amiga's WinUAE has several. But a lot of games will run with the standard one, so if you only have to manually edit the games that need another configuration, you can live with it. Perhaps we could help them out with the Amiga emulation?

The possibility to add screenshots or whole imagepacks is also great, although I didn't manage to get it working as their imagepacks link seems to be broken.

They also have a script file ready that you can extract into a script folder, so it's not necessary to write them yourself, just put them in the folder and load them with the emulator setup.

I'm pretty confident and also looking forward, and I hope this one will not suffer from the same problems as f.ex. Lemonade. Hopefully the guys will continue their project with more enthusiasm. Funny thing is, that the ECC frontend is in the same beta (0.9.8) where Lemonade still is since several years :)

Perhaps I should donate and ask to get official beta tester ;) One thing is when you setup EmuControlCenter the first time, it asks if any errors could be reported to them and I agreed, I think that helps a lot. I froze one time when trying to allocate the WinUAE exe file. Second time it worked fine.

But if you want to setup the frontend with every single emulator it has, and you know that we both have every single ROM for these, then you have a lot of work. But I think once this one is fully setup, it could be awesome.

EDIT 1: Just found something in the forum that could work with the individual games configuration:


Hi All,

Welcome to this new thread of GetGemusConfig, the script has been improved and only works when META data is added to the game, what it does?, it get's the gamename from the META data and searches for the config in the Amiga Gamebase MDB database file, when a config is found a window will pup-up, where you can save the config (or not) ;).

[INSTALL NOTES]
1) Extract contents to your ECC root folder (paths are included in the package)
2) Open 'ecc-script\amiga\winuae.eccscript'.
3) Search: #include "..\eccScriptSystem.au3"
4) Underneath the line above, add this line: #include "GetGemusConfig\GetGemusConfig.eccscript"
5) Save 'ecc-script\amiga\winuae.eccscript'.

That's it, now you can run your favorite Amiga games, but make sure you have inserted the game name (META data) then a script will search the 'GameBase Amiga.mdb' database for the proper config script!, you'll get a window, press OK to save, cancel to abort!

Screenshot (http://ecc.phoenixinteractive.mine.nu/download/file.php?id=1784&mode=view)

EDIT 2: Ok, tested Neuromancer with this script, it also finds the game in the GameBase database and shows me the startup configuration like following:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y184/cioprgr/classicamiga/eccamiga5.jpg

but it still starts the game with the last configuration WinUAE used. I can now edit the script, but I thought it would take the correct one from the database, which it also seems to take, if you look closely you can see that it will start with OCS set, but mine started with AGA.

[ecc]

Hi @all.
First of all... its great that there are people like the work phoenix an i (and the people of the emuControlCenter board) have done.


I liked GameEX, only problem is that it is not easy to set up, hopefully this one is more userfriendly.
On the first sign, emuControlCenter can look very confusing because it have become many great features in the last years of developing this. But if you find the right buttons, it is much easier than other frontends, i think and i hope! :-)

A very good entry point to see clearer is the FAQ in the emuControlCenter forum.
http://ecc.phoenixinteractive.mine.nu/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1735

Also the videos (the second one :-)) could give some hints. http://www.camya.com/eccblog/about/video/

And last but not least there is a help section on the blog http://www.camya.com/eccblog/help/
(See hilighted navigation)


Metadata for Amiga
Btw, have you already tried to import Amiga metadata from online romdb?
The meta data of more than 800 Amiga games are already added by emuControlCenter users to this database. Here you can see the statistics: http://www.camya.com/eccdb/statistics/


I expect it is quite a big task because all emulators work in different ways
If you take a look at the platforms, there are only a small amount of platform that needs special configurations for each game. Amiga is one of them :-) So most of the platforms you can configure in 3 steps.

1. Add games
2. Select you emulator
3. Run a game

Easy :-)


Amiga support

Many developement of the amiga scripts for emuControlCenter was made by TheCyberDruid for the eab and support of phoenix. Maybe these threads can help you to find out some more hints for amiga support.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=38211&highlight=emuControlCenter
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=38118&highlight=emuControlCenter
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=37855&highlight=emuControlCenter


The possibility to ass screenshots or whole imagepacks is also great, although I didn't manage to get it working as their imagepacks link seems to be broken.
The emunews server is down, so we have to remove the links by time :-) You can download many imagepacks from blackerking.

If you create an own imagepack for the amiga, you can upload it to the emuControlCenter board in the User Input section http://ecc.phoenixinteractive.mine.nu/viewforum.php?f=31


Donate
You dont have to donate to support emuControlCenter. If you spread that you like emuControlCenter, thats enought! Most of all i think, that emuControlCenter is unknown in the emulation community. Thats strange... maybe its, because it´s only a frontend... dont know.


One thing is when you setup EmuControlCenter the first time, it asks if any errors could be reported to them and I agreed
You can do this without fear... we only get some informations from the error logfile to find the problems faster.


But if you want to setup the frontend with every single emulator... But I think once this one is fully setup, it could be awesome.
You are right.... if you are collecting many platforms you will love the great search features.....!

So, thats for the first time.... i hope some more will take a look at emuControlCenter. As i said... its easier than expected to organize and play games with it!

Andreas (ecc)
http://www.camya.com/

[Demon Cleaner]

Thanx for your reply, I will surely test it out with other emulators when I get the time.

[Harrison]

Hi ecc. Great to see you here. Keep up the great work on this project. When I get time I will be testing it more fully too.

[Demon Cleaner]

Will probably test it further next week, as I'm working in the morning this week, and as you probably can imagine, I'm too tired and have absolutely no patience early in the morning :lol:

[Demon Cleaner]

Version 1.0.0 WIP-02 of emuControlCenter has been released:


New file reorganize feature:
Now you can reorganize your files on your harddrive much better than before using the new “copy/move by searchresult” function. As an example you can limit your searchresult to show only games containing “mario” and copy/move them to a specified mario folder. This is only an example. You can use all emuControlCenter search functions to limit the result for this feature. Another example. Search for “Shoot´em up” games containing the string “[!]” move them to an “/shotemup/good/” folder. If you move files, the new location is automaticly updated in the emuControlCenter database.

You can access this feature from the “Roms” button above the platform navigation

This WIP contains also some changes and fixes for all people collecting meta data.


changelog for emuControlCenter 1.0.0 WIP 02
- added "info ID" to freeform search
- added autocompletion to "info string" and "info id" in meta edit popup
- fixed navigation auto update for "own edited/transfered meta"
- added "copy/move by searchresult"

I didn't get further into it, because I just have so many things to do.

[Submeg]

Wow, that is really something! Hats off to those guys! I'm thinking there should be a link to their site somewhere?

[Harrison]

Great stuff. I will be trying this out later today for sure. :)

[Demon Cleaner]

Now v1.0.0 WIP-03 has been already released:


New features

* Now there is a panel added only for images, so you can view all images at once when selecting a game!
* The meta panel has been reorganized and ECC has been better optimized for a resolution of 1024×768.

changelog for emuControlCenter 1.0.0 WIP 03

* added "IMAGES" panel for direct view of all images
* reorganized meta info panel
* optimized emuControlCenter for resolution 1024x768
I'm not gonna add every update here in the future, so it's up to you who want to use it to stay up to date. I can however announce major updates.

[Harrison]

That's great. Major updates would definitely be useful to be informed about.

It is great to see an Amiga supporting front end in current development, and already coming out of beta into final code.