The Future of Rominator

[hankchill]

Hey Everyone,

As most of you know, I'm the developer of a piece of software called Rominator. It was becoming quite an awesome program, with many features catered towards the NDS... when one day while transferred my data to a new computer, my hard drive decided to corrupt itself and I lost everything but the source code for Rominator. All external scripts, images, etc were gone so I couldn't code it anymore.

Fast forward to almost a couple years later, Rominator has just recently been 'shut down' on the server side, due to lack of support. Behind the scenes though I was making one that was bigger and better, when disaster has just struck -- Another hard drive failure. At the worst time too; my new backup drive just arrived today and I don't get home until later to set it up. I lost everything that hadn't been backed up in the last few months. Needless to say, I'm pissed at Western Digital, but hard drives do fail.

I've decided to bite the bullet and do a new recode, again. This time it's from scratch so I can't borrow code from the old version. I want to make it not just for NDS games, but for DS, GBA, NES, SNES, Genesis, PSX, PS2, PSP, Wii etc etc... I can accomplish this not by maintaining the database myself, but having an 'open' database concept for all the users.

Essentially I want to know: What do YOU want to see in Rominator, the ultimate Rom Manager for OS X and Windows?

• Should Rominator have a name change?
• What features should be incorporated?
• What should *not* be done with Rominator?
• When you think 'Ultimate Rom Manager', what do you think that app should do?

All feedback is appreciated; please don't leave private messages to me; share your opinion with the rest of the community so we can all collaborate our ideas. I want to hear what YOU guys want!

I'd also like to point out a huge thanks to Glenn (Snippy) of www.snippy.lu for providing me the hosting for the project -- Your favour does not go unthanked and I promise I will return the huge favour you've done for me one day -- I'll take you out for some beers

 

[Urza]

Don't work too hard, there's pretty good competition coming

 

[Demonbart]

* Should Rominator have a name change? I think the current name is fine
* What features should be incorporated? A function to directly search ROMs through the program (that is, if it won't make it illegal to such a degree that Filetrip won't host it) and it should be able to sort ROMs by name, release number, genre, region etc. With an image, maybe a couple of screenshots, and if it's possible a trailer or gameplay video. You might also wanna add a suggestions function that suggests games based on what ROMs the user has downloaded/imported/whatever.
* What should *not* be done with Rominator? It should, by all means, not be abandoned
* When you think 'Ultimate Rom Manager', what do you think that app should doAlready told you at the features-point

 

[exangel]

I've decided to bite the bullet and do a new recode, again. This time it's from scratch so I can't borrow code from the old version. I want to make it not just for NDS games, but for DS, GBA, NES, SNES, Genesis, PSX, PS2, PSP, Wii etc etc... I can accomplish this not by maintaining the database myself, but having an 'open' database concept for all the users.

Essentially I want to know: What do YOU want to see in Rominator, the ultimate Rom Manager for OS X and Windows?

• Should Rominator have a name change?
• What features should be incorporated?
• What should *not* be done with Rominator?
• When you think 'Ultimate Rom Manager', what do you think that app should do?

* No name changes necessary.
* Tabs for each ROM type, option to disable unused tabs for ROM types you don't collect, multiple indexing options (file name, file size, date last modified, and other data) with some way to on the fly edit file information like ID3 tags (very handy for formats that don't have easy to read headers), drop down menu to select a scene number for untagged files. Batch file name conversion options based on "tagged" data. Trim on extract, Trim on copy to media, or no-Trim option (for applicable formats obviously).
* I don't think there should be any direct from client file searching capability (except for local) for many reasons.
* Organize my ROMs, display extended information about each one when selected, function for adding ROMs to media.

other thoughts: skinnable or at least skinnable icons for each type/tab would be nifty, as an afterthought though.

 

[sturmen]

Should Rominator have a name change?
The current name is fine, but if you come up with something awesome than I won't be sad to see it go.
What features should be incorporated?
A way to wipe everything if the feds come knocking. Just kidding. How about some way to launch emulators to load a specified ROM? This seems quite hard, because emulators all have different loading mechanisms, no?
What should *not* be done with Rominator?
Abandoned. Both overall and especially the Mac version. Community-made Mac software is hard to come by these days.
When you think 'Ultimate Rom Manager', what do you think that app should do?
Sort, manage, flash/burn, and identify/tag ROMs. Trimming and all that, too.

 

[Avid]

1) No

2) I think Rominator should be skinnable and should be able to recognize flashcarts. This way, you can choose which ROMS to pass to you Acekard/R4/CycloDS/etc.

3) Rominator should *not* be abandoned.

4) I think it should do most things other ROM managers (like Happy Box) can't do.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Don't work too hard, there's pretty good competition coming

Elaborate, now!

Anyways, my suggestion: add something like a rating for the ROMs, on which every user can rate the game, those ratings get saved in an external database, then you can see what ratings other people gave the game so you can see if it's actually worth putting on your card or not. Shouldn't be hard to code, I guess.

 

[Devil May Cry]

* Should Rominator have a name change? No, maybe Rominator *FULL* or something
* What features should be incorporated? Support for plugins like xpert2
* What should *not* be done with Rominator? Annoying ads, fancy intro
* When you think 'Ultimate Rom Manager', what do you think that app should do? Fully open a game (like xpert2 or UMDGENv4) and re-close it, compression, file swapping (for re-dubs and what not)

 

[Daminite]

7zip support would be nice

 

[jakeyjake]

I have no clue what this is, but I assume that it's just one big emulator that can play all roms, and it can do other magic stuff to roms/saves?

Maybe call it Magic Emu? xD

p.s, I really don't know what this about...

 

[elviswjr]

I have no clue what this is, but I assume that it's just one big emulator that can play all roms, and it can do other magic stuff to roms/saves?

Maybe call it Magic Emu? xD

p.s, I really don't know what this about...

This is not an emulator, it's a rom organizer.

May I first say that I am new to the ds-scene (though I've been following the Wii-scene for a while) and have just recently discovered Rominator. I think the current (2008) version is great and I really hope it gets revived.

With that said, here are some features I think should be included in a new (multi-platform) version:
Wii:
WBFS, ciso, and maybe wdf support
covers downloaded from wiitdb (why create a new database?)
convert to and from different formats (iso, ciso, wbfs, wdf)
Maybe:
channel creation
built in disc burning (could apply to GCN, Dreamcast, PS2)

DS:
All the features of the current version
Internal name (not just header)
ability to add custom icons and change internal name (like RomeR)
Maybe:
Manage homebrew apps

Other platforms:
I dunno.

All:
score, rating (ESRB, CERO, PEGI, etc.), description, language, region, release date
ability to give your own scores and sort by scores (downloaded or personal)
different views (like grid, coverflow, etc.)
dragable border between game lists and games
right-click column descriptions to add/remove fields
right-click rom/iso to reveal in Finder/Explorer
display info in a sidebar to the right that is part of the main window and a button to collapse it
some of the major functions of other rom/iso managers and tools
maybe:
Put "Save Games" in right-click context menu and double-click to open in assigned emulator.
click box art to see larger image (may mean keeping larger images in the database)
folders and lists (kind of like playlists in iTunes)
some language patching tools built in. Drag patch to game to bring up a wizard. (where to save patched rom, whether to overwrite, etc.)
ability to add comments to games or saves

Can't think of any more features right now.

Whatever you do, please don't give up on this project. Any improvement to Rominator is better than nothing.

 

[sturmen]

Are you still working on this?