Lupen - A stylish frontend for Mupen64Plus. Looking for beta testers!

[Danny]

I've been working on a nice front-end for Mupen64 for Win/Mac for a while now as a bedtime project.

The goal, ideally, is to become the best Mupen64Plus frontend available. I'll let you be the judge.

It's a native app and will be available for Windows and Mac OS X.

It supports:

* Game boxart
* Game Description
* Game metadata (players, ratings etc)
* Game screenshots
* Game trailers
* Game controller configuration(my next job)
* Customizing Mupen64 parameters
(screen size, video/audio plugins etc)
* Full screen or windowed mode

Hopefully enough people want this to gain some interest.
I'm looking for some beta testers, so please PM me if you're interested in trying it out!

PS: If anyone is good with graphic design and wants to contribute to this project, please send me a pm)

Let me know what you think!

Some screenshots:

-- New game view

-- Old game view

Video:

-- New UI

-- Old UI

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

This should be a news post.

- - - Updated - - -

Are images cached or must they reload at each startup, what is the maximum image size? We can up upscale the heck out of them!

 

[Danny]

This should be a news post.

- - - Updated - - -

Are images cached or must they reload at each startup, what is the maximum image size? We can up upscale the heck out of them!

It's not out yet though. so I didn't think it warranted it. If you think it does, feel free to move it

The images are cached and will probably be distributed with the front end. The maximum size depends on what images your talking about

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

I would like to upscale the box arts to 1080> HD or so.

 

[Danny]

[MENTION=29958]NES_player4LIFE[/MENTION]: When you say upscale, you mean resize the boxart to a custom size in the game list? Like a setting to display the boxes at a set resolution?

Just trying to envision what you would like to achieve

@All:

Re-worked the game view screen... Thoughts in comparison to the original one?

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

Using Photozoom pro 6 I can enlarge photos beyond High definition. These images could be cached within your program offering a superb look on larger desplays; much like Hires texture packs do for n64 games.
Just an idea I had.

 

[Danny]

After receiving feedback from various sources, I decided to go back to an original design I had before making this public. I took parts of my original design idea and integrated it with parts of the previous design.

This has resulted in much faster navigation, more streamlined access to your games metadata and more.

Checkout the video below, and let me know what you think.

PS: I am to start distributing beta's in about a weeks time, or less. Depends on family, work etc.

Thanks!

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

Great work!

 

[Danny]

Great work!

Do you prefer the new UI?

I also forgot to answer your question. I have never heard of that program you use to be honest. So all I can say is try it when I send you a beta
The main problem with your idea is that thegamesdb has some extremely low resolution boxart in it's database, that is just scaled up to a near hd resolution.

It's about 30% of the library from what i've seen. I am working on contributing to their database to improve the boxart, add missing screenshots, videos etc. Unfortunately, that is a time consuming process.

I also looked into the possibility of including the image/metadata resources for all N64 games in the front-end download. I wrote an app to download the metadata/images for all N64 roms in mupen64plus's ini file, and the resulting data came to a whopping 5.9gb! So suffice to say, there is no way I can include that with the app.

It's going to have to retrieve the information from their database when you first run the app, as it does currently.

 

[NES_player4LIFE]

Yes, It is sleek! Very professional looking.

PhotoZoom is a program much like PhotoShop but PhotoZoom will upscale images without causing pixel distortion.
Again this is only a thought and is not necessary.

 

[Richard42]

This looks very promising. There were a lot of people unhappy with the removal of the old GUI applications in Mupen64Plus 2.0, so I'm sure there will be much rejoicing if you get this front-end completed to a good state. What language / frameworks are you using for this? You can join us on irc at #mupen64plus on freenode if you have any technical questions.

 

[Danny]

This looks very promising. There were a lot of people unhappy with the removal of the old GUI applications in Mupen64Plus 2.0, so I'm sure there will be much rejoicing if you get this front-end completed to a good state. What language / frameworks are you using for this? You can join us on irc at #mupen64plus on freenode if you have any technical questions.

Hey [MENTION=61428]Richard42[/MENTION] !

Wonderful to see the lead dev on Mupen64Plus weigh in here.
I actually have hired a graphics artist to do a better job with the front-end, to make it more professional.

The concept will stay the same, but have even more features.
This is written in Lua, using the Corona SDK (which is free to use). I will also be open sourcing this.

The only downside is that this will only work on Linux via Wine. The SDK i'm using doesn't support Linux.
I may write a LOVE2D version to get around that limitation however. Depending on how well it is received.

I am actually having difficulty with controller mapping. For instance, I created a config for an xbox one controller, and used the same values that the Windows game controller verifier program reported, but Mupen still didn't use the correct buttons.

So, i'll jump on your IRC channel, and hopefully you can fill me in on the intricacies