Hacking Design Your Own Menu: Community Challenge!

[BassAceGold]

I can't guarantee that homebrew soft reset will make it in, I still have to figure out how that works and theres not a whole lot of information on it out there. As for homebrew compatability, BAGPlug and iMenu both used homebrew menu for launching files, so it won't be a problem to update that to use the newest release. A boot menu can be easily done.

I have never used MENUdo so I have no idea how the skinning in that works.


Updated first post with some details on design requirements, to help get the ball rolling on stuff unrelated to supported functions (which are pretty well defined already)

 

[VatoLoco]

lesse:
argv support of course
integrated music player
integrated video dpg(?),avi player..iirc they never released the source of the dsTwo video player huh.
file fun such as copy/paste, delete, file rename (would need an OSK).
i havent seen anyone mention a mini icon list mode yet.

just talking here, but i was thinking of good ol' DSOrganize that never got as good as it could have (like a lot of ds homebrew=P), maybe grab the source and do some stuff with it

 

[Rydian]

Spoiler

Double-size with 8x8 grid...

http://www.mediafire.com/?qj8139ja7e92cod (PSD)

I'm not very good with text placement in image editors, so pretend the pixel font is better-aligned and a taller form and more text fits and stuff...

• Top Screen
• The top screen has the currently-selected folder/ROM's info and a quick show of important settings.
• Below the ROM's info is a line showing the current path. A reachable button (depending on the leftie/rightie setting) goes up a directory.

• Bottom Screen, touch.
• One tap selects an icon and makes it's properties visible on the top screen, a second tap starts it.
• Tap and hold for a second to access a game's settings. If you tap and hold in a blank space, you can make a new folder?
• Tap and drag to re-arrange icons. I left a hole in the arrangement to show the viability of leaving blank spaces to show background art through... even though I made the background boring for the example. I could slap some tits in there if you want?
• Glow color for a selected game can be changed by the skin (as some colors are more visible on some backgrounds than others).
• Perhaps sliding left and right on the touch screen can go along certain pages? Since all the ROMs in one folder might not fit on one screen.

• Bottom screen, pad+button controls.
• D-pad to move around, top screen shows the highlighted thing (or nothing for a blank space.
• X brings up the game's settings window, or offers to make a new folder (if selecting a blank space).
• Y "picks up" an icon, you can move it around, Y again drops it. This is mainly for re-arranging them on a screen, but if you wanted to give the ability to move ROMs between folders that might be cool.
• L/R changes the currently-viewed page.

 

[BassAceGold]

menu stuff

That looks pretty neat!

I have some ideas of my own that could be used for the top screen. Since everyone wants something different up there, perhaps a widget system should be added. In your screenshots, you would have two widgets, one that displays the currently selected file icon, its settings and another widget that displays the current file path.

So I declare that BAGASMI be used to create widgets. I can create a branch of BAGASMI specifically for use with the menu that includes its own menu related operations to make coding the widgets easier, and to improve performance.

So far, I'm just testing the waters with BAGASMI to see if its feasible to run the interpreter and other things at once. I'm just testing my default BAGASMI scripts, the pixel fixer and the circle drawer, and they are running in their own instances of the interpreter at once, in separate windows and positions. At the same time, not running in an interpreter, there is music being streamed and an icon scrolling back and forth, to kinda show how smooth its all running.

Heres the video of the demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmHMb_KsXH4

Sorry if its side ways, I rotated the video but youtube hasn't finished editing it yet as of the time of this post.

From the looks of it, BAGASMI should be perfect for widgets.

 

[Rydian]

Is that translucency I see? If so, then yeah that'd be great for drawing content boxes and pulling in certain info to certain places. It reminds me of the way rockbox themes are done, and while DS ROMs don't need nearly as much info (traditionally limited to an icon, three lines of text in the header, and some settings) that would also make the skinning system easier. With custom info boxes and fonts and colors possible, people will have a lot of control over the look of the top screen.

I put the current directory thing on the top screen so users wouldn't get lost, because I felt the need to devote the entire bottom screen to icons so they could be spaced apart properly, though I suppose spacing in 4px increments instead of 8 would allow a more even distribution or whatever and might leave room for a small path note at the bottom of the bottom screen (I left extra vertical room between icons for multi-line text with that fat font).

 

[BassAceGold]

Is that translucency I see?

Its an unintentional effect of screen tearing! But all video output of an instance of BAGASMI is just rendered to a sprite, so things like transparency, up scaling, down scaling, or other effects can be applied with ease. I figure as long as the BAGASMI scripts aren't too intensive and is used just to display random information, then there shouldn't be any problems using it. Now the question is how much information should these widgets be able to access?

 

[Rydian]

As far as drawing containers, I think that the following will be enough.

• Rectangles, ovals, rounded rectangles, and lines (for making other polygons).
• Colors for drawing/text, translucency specified.
• A fill tool.

Other things like gradients would be icing on the cake, but the above should be enough to craft various container or decoration shapes.

As far as info available...

• The three lines of text in the header, available separately (say, separate variables or entries in an array of sorts).
• Info for each setting involved that can be applied to a specific ROM, as a boolean, so perhaps people could use phrases like "On" and "Off", or go for alternate phrases or even include enabled/disabled icons by setting what should be shown for true and false (say, in the header of the skin).
• The current working directory.
• The current time.
• File properties, such as size, datestamp, etc.
• Free space on MicroSD.

I can't think of anything else that'd be important or useful right now.

 

[Terminator02]

Is there a way for you to implement brightness changing in the menu?

 

[BassAceGold]

Is there a way for you to implement brightness changing in the menu?

Yeah easily, BAGPlug had an icon for changing screen brightness.

 

[spinal_cord]

Dont forget battery indicator Although you will need to mess with the DS side of the sdk for that.

 

[Boriar]

Dont forget battery indicator Although you will need to mess with the DS side of the sdk for that.

Hey spinal_cord, i want to see integrated in the new menu your checking utility DiagnoSe. A must have program for my DS

 

[BassAceGold]

The battery indicator is useless. It only has two states, enough power and low power, which you can easily tell with the power led. I'd rather not waste screen space on such a useless feature.

 

[spinal_cord]

Hey spinal_cord, i want to see integrated in the new menu your checking utility DiagnoSe. A must have program for my DS

Speak to Bass about that, there wasn't really much to the coding side if it, I imagine most of it could even be done with the widget system he's working on.

The battery indicator is useless. It only has two states, enough power and low power, which you can easily tell with the power led. I'd rather not waste screen space on such a useless feature.

Fair enough

 

[The Catboy]

I also think there should be more font support and language support.

 

[BassAceGold]

I also think there should be more font support and language support.

Currently looking into .fnt file support. There are programs that can convert other fonts to this format and it should support unicode characters.

 

[Deleted_171835]

Anything that resembles MenuDO (the XMB style theme) would be nice!

 

[mateo245]

to make it posible to scroll the cheats names ( a feature that im sure more than one will like ) i thought it was really annoyng to not be able to see the entire cheat name , since i got a supercard after i had an acekard2i for a long time i was somehow mad after seeing this kind of mistake, if posibble you could make it so that we can scroll the cheat names with the touch screen or with the L and R buttons?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Something like MENUdo would be great, if it actually worked properly. With the added power of the DSTWO it could be possible for this kind of thing to work smoothly, and it'd certainly be a big improvement from both the default DSTWO EOS and BAGPlug.

Edit: Just read the bottom of the first post
I was writing up a long list of specific features it should have but managed to click it away and lose the edit. I rewrote it in a shorter form:

- Advanced skinning system with scriptable behavior allowing for any sort of skin you can imagine, whether it be XMB-like or more traditional AceKard-style. This would be hard to implement, but worth it in the end.
- Folders and files pinnable to the home screen, with shown file types configurable per folder.
- File associations like BAGPlug already has.
- A "most used" and/or "used recently" screen with shown file types configurable, so you can choose to only show NDS roms, all roms, or all files. These screens would let you launch your favorite games and the games you've played most recently quickly without going through a long list of ROMs.

These things combined would make the ultimate flashcart menu and would make more people interested in the DSTWO.

 

[BassAceGold]

to make it posible to scroll the cheats names ( a feature that im sure more than one will like ) i thought it was really annoyng to not be able to see the entire cheat name , since i got a supercard after i had an acekard2i for a long time i was somehow mad after seeing this kind of mistake, if posibble you could make it so that we can scroll the cheat names with the touch screen or with the L and R buttons?

Cheats are out of my domain for this menu. Sorry.



I have updated the first post with some advice to kinda help get more useful information:

Basically, the goal here is to leave as little interpretation as possible on my part for the look and behavior of the menu. The main thing is to be very specific in what you would like to see and how it is implemented. General statements like "make it like menudo" are not really helpful and don't contribute to designs others may be working on.

 

[rich333]

the DSTWO main feature to me are the Emulators & Media Players

Having a menu layout something that has 4 options at the beginning

Nindendo DS (NDS Roms)
Media (iPlayer & Moonshell)
Homebrew (homebrew apps)
Retro Games (a Menu for emulators, GBA, SNES, Sega SMS, etc. as well as a homebrew games)

- thank for all your efforts with the emus too!