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blog:x68_launcher_1 [2020/08/22 12:29] – [Design Principles] john | blog:x68_launcher_1 [2021/02/24 15:32] (current) – john | ||
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- | ====== X68000 Game Launcher - Article 1: Design | + | ====== |
- | So, you've got a fancy new (old) [[https:// | + | {{:blog:x68000_launcher_2.png?500|}} |
- | But you can't remember what all of those games are, where they are on your hard-drive, SD card or CF card, or what those truncated directory names like ' | + | My // |
- | Also, I'm old now and I can't be bothered to navigate around a DOS filesystem any more, and the common ' | + | //What is it, and what does it do?// |
- | {{: | + | // |
- | ... and it's not even a decent file explorer... it's for extracting archives! | + | It runs on the Sharp X68000 hardware itself, either emulated or real physical system; |
- | Well in this series of articles I'm going to document my process for writing | + | * It creates |
+ | * It can load and display additional metadata per game (i.e developer, genre, release date etc) | ||
+ | * It can load and display screenshots | ||
+ | * It can export an audit file of all the found games | ||
+ | * It can launch any game for which a start file is either found (e.g. start.bat), or which has been defined in metadata (e.g. run.com, go.exe, etc) | ||
- | ===== Design Principles ===== | + | A demo of a (early) version of the application can be found on my Youtube channel: |
- | There are some design principles for this application: | + | {{youtube> |
- | * **Must be able to be installed and run with minimal technical knowledge** | + | You can find versions of the X68kLauncher application ready to download |
- | * I'm a programmer, but many people who use these old systems are not; they just want to play games on them. It should be possible to just unzip this application into a directory, edit a simple text file, and get it running. No developer or technical skills needed. | + | |
- | * **Must run on the base X68000 configuration with hard drive** | + | As a reminder, you'll need the following: |
- | * There are many different X68000 models, but the application should be able to run on all of them, without requiring any special hardware (e.g. FPU, or large memory expansions). | + | |
- | | + | |
- | | + | |
+ | * Minimum of 2MB of memory | ||
- | * **Display a nice user interface | + | All the files necessary |
- | * The big one. This is what will set the application | + | |
- | * Launch any selected game | + | ===== Application Binaries ===== |
- | * //(Optionally)// Inject extra metadata | + | |
- | * //(Optionally)// Allow control by keyboard, joystick or mouse | + | Pre-compiled versions of the X68kLauncher application are listed here. |
- | * //(Optionally)// Output an audit file of all games | + | |
+ | ^ Date ^ Notes ^ Download Links ^ | ||
+ | | | | | | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===== Application Source Code ===== | ||
+ | |||
+ | Source code for the X68kLauncher application can always be found at Github: | ||
+ | |||
+ | | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===== Game Metadata ===== | ||
+ | |||
+ | These packages include a pre-written __launch.dat__ | ||
+ | |||
+ | The packages should unzip directly to a directory such as __A: | ||
+ | |||
+ | ^ Info ^ Name ^ Developer | ||
+ | | | |