FruitBar 2022

[appstrader]

It's 2022 and I found a new Frontend section so I better start a new thread.

FruitBar is a frontend for mfme, mame, vpinball its basically a system where you drop supporting files into folders to create your own arcade it is basically that simple, there are not a thousand menus to tweak its basically a drag and drop exercise.

If you did not know FruitBar does have its own online theme store which contains more than a thousand images of all different machines so you can get your system up and running quite quickly, many thanks to everyone involved for your support on this.

The development of FruitBar continues to evolve in different directions and today I have decided I will see if i can get quiz machines integrated into FruitBar so you might see a new section in the theme store that will have the images that can be used within in FruitBar for quiz games.

In a quiz game section you will be able to add the side panel and put anything you wish in there as shown below, it could be video, animation, text you name it its your panel you can put anything you wish in there, you can even have any effects you wish in there too.

The images below show the current view of FruitBar in 2022...

If you would like to suggest a feature or add any input please post below, generally a new feature takes a couple of days to add. 

Its always nice to see peoples ideals as that's how the development grows.

Many thanks for reading, 

Andrew.

 

 

[Reg]

33 minutes ago, appstrader said:

If you would like to suggest a feature or add any input please post below, generally a new feature takes a couple of days to add. 

Great attitude from a developer - thank you.

[appstrader]

I did have one thought, I believe i'm right in thinking most quiz machines wont run in windows 10, so I will add the option to run PC applications that way you can add basically any program you wish to add along with all the graphics as normal.

Lets call it a windows section....

[woodsy]

this front end is gorgeous, and i can confirm the author is bloody helpful too, even with nightmare n00bs like me!! i couldn't get my head around it for ages but with the help of @appstrader and @davep180 i have it running and it's pukka A F

[davep180]

32 minutes ago, woodsy said:

this front end is gorgeous, and i can confirm the author is bloody helpful too

I agree. It works well for me, looks good and once you get the hang of it, only takes a minute or two add a new machine. Andrew has been massively helpful and is willing to add new features if they are feasible, making it a flexible front end too.

[Zakkieboy44]

12 hours ago, appstrader said:

 

If you would like to suggest a feature or add any input please post below, generally a new feature takes a couple of days to add. 

Agree with Reg, great attitude to have!

My feedback, as I have tested it together with a few others - please do take this as a personal view, and not critical of the great work completed so far, and is one persons view!

• No Portrait function, the background fills the screen, but everything else stays the same - in fairness, its probably not used by many except me.
• No Option to turn off intro - its not to my taste, sorry!
• No touchscreen swiping 
• Single EXE - great work
• Doesnt use graphics from my current artwork collection (game.jpg)
• Bypass notes on machine/rom start up is very helpful, 
• No Generic EXE support sadly,

Looking back over the images, I may have an old version so please disregard any mistakes, and I will of course be trying any new versions

Thanks again for your efforts, and open attitude! 

[appstrader]

26 minutes ago, Zakkieboy44 said:

Agree with Reg, great attitude to have!

My feedback, as I have tested it together with a few others - please do take this as a personal view, and not critical of the great work completed so far, and is one persons view!

• No Portrait function, the background fills the screen, but everything else stays the same - in fairness, its probably not used by many except me.
• No Option to turn off intro - its not to my taste, sorry!
• No touchscreen swiping 
• Single EXE - great work
• Doesnt use graphics from my current artwork collection (game.jpg)
• Bypass notes on machine/rom start up is very helpful, 
• No Generic EXE support sadly,

Looking back over the images, I may have an old version so please disregard any mistakes, and I will of course be trying any new versions

Thanks again for your efforts, and open attitude! 

Many thanks for your comment, 

By the looks of your comments its moved way past when you last used it, although the latest release is not online currently so there are lots of features that no one is using just yet with the left side panel where you can add videos, animations, images, text, basically you can add anything you want to add.

There are full touch screen buttons and you can scale the screen and cabinets to your own view, etc basically you set the view how ever you want it, you can move everything on the screen to where you want it and it has had its own theme store for quite a few months now, so images are already created for this program.

You can also add marquee videos, still images, sounds on roms, mame support, mfme, etc

Generic exe support I presume you mean add any exe file, just sorting that now as I would like to add some puzzle arcade games.

The intro will change in time and anyone is welcome to submit there intro for review by a few members I maybe even add the option to use your own intro but not many people create full intro videos.  The intro video on there currently was a quick get an intro running type of intro nothing special but its was something to get things in place.

It's away's interesting to see other peoples work so where can your collection be found ?

[appstrader]

@Zakkieboy44 I did just glance at your content it doesn't show any artwork collection or any thing in the 15 posts you have made since 2018, it would be to see your collection on here so everyone can see where they can use your artwork.

Edited February 18, 2022 by appstrader

[Zakkieboy44]

1 hour ago, appstrader said:

@Zakkieboy44 I did just glance at your content it doesn't show any artwork collection or any thing in the 15 posts you have made since 2018, it would be to see your collection on here so everyone can see where they can use your artwork.

Hey, sorry for delay, 

My terminology was wrong, what I was trying to convey was since I started to build a pseudo cabinet of my own I have had to source/rip thumbnails for the roms which I had never been bothered by before as the text side of game manager was sufficient

But now with the efforts of yourself and others these front ends are adding a new dimension - so thumbnails is a must! - with this, I have started to collect static thumbs and placing them in the rom DIR which is the picked up by the game manager. My comment was based on the fact that this seems to be the official way, it *may* be nice if fruitbar was able to pick up these images in some way.

Again, apologies for any confusion, I sadly dont have half the skills of others on this board possess,so appreciate all the work and efforts of all here

 

[Ginge]

15 hours ago, davep180 said:

agree. It works well for me, looks good and once you get the hang of it, only takes a minute or two add a new machine. Andrew has been massively helpful and is willing to add new features if they are feasible, making it a flexible front end too.

Have to agree with @davep180 thanks Andrew for the work you put in,although I think I’m still using one of the first releases you did, must download the latest version to see what changes have been made. I only use it for the fruit machine side as not got into mame or pinball yet did look into these but found reading up on them very daunting. I did download the latest version of mame the other day just to see what it’s all about still trying to work it all out, I haven’t downloaded any roms yet. I have a super console x which has a sd card in on the card there’s a folder that says mame and then in that folder there’s roms I’m going to try copying these over  to mame 2.40 which I downloaded the other day and see if it works.

[appstrader]

7 hours ago, Zakkieboy44 said:

Hey, sorry for delay, 

My terminology was wrong, what I was trying to convey was since I started to build a pseudo cabinet of my own I have had to source/rip thumbnails for the roms which I had never been bothered by before as the text side of game manager was sufficient

But now with the efforts of yourself and others these front ends are adding a new dimension - so thumbnails is a must! - with this, I have started to collect static thumbs and placing them in the rom DIR which is the picked up by the game manager. My comment was based on the fact that this seems to be the official way, it *may* be nice if fruitbar was able to pick up these images in some way.

Again, apologies for any confusion, I sadly dont have half the skills of others on this board possess,so appreciate all the work and efforts of all here

 

I created the FruitBar system to keep it simple rather than something complicated to setup I use folders, you just put the supporting files in a theme folder off the rom folder its that simple.  I use a theme folder rather than putting all the images into the rom folder simply because it's good house keeping, it keeps the media files separate and easy to view rather than filling the rom folder with everything, personally it makes it easier to save just the rom or just the theme.  Once you have the files in your theme folder its simple to copy a cabinet view into the rom folder and use for MFME manager if that is your wish everyone sets up their own system how they want it to be.

You could put any images you wish into FruitBar but your images need to be in the theme folder named correctly, if I went down the other route with a setup menu you would be clicking through a zillion places to assign an image, video, audio to every rom which would be really intensive.

Even more intensive when you have over a thousand or so Roms, I would wear my mouse out and certainly have a headache.

As I posted previously I have a site setup specifically for images that can be dropped into FruitBar, users are free to upload their own images and share with the community of FruitBar users that includes logo images and cabinet views, I would ask that the images are not reused in other systems without acknowledgement of where the images came from as I pay personally for the hosting of the site and the space used by the images.

As i stated you can use any images you wish in fruitbar so you dont even have to use a cabinet view but the cabinets work well in my view, maybe one day I will experiment and upload some themed images so the entire view is in grey scale, anything is possible basically.

I hope explains the system a little with regards to the images, but feel free to ask any questions.

 

[appstrader]

6 hours ago, Ginge said:

Have to agree with @davep180 thanks Andrew for the work you put in,although I think I’m still using one of the first releases you did, must download the latest version to see what changes have been made. I only use it for the fruit machine side as not got into mame or pinball yet did look into these but found reading up on them very daunting. I did download the latest version of mame the other day just to see what it’s all about still trying to work it all out, I haven’t downloaded any roms yet. I have a super console x which has a sd card in on the card there’s a folder that says mame and then in that folder there’s roms I’m going to try copying these over  to mame 2.40 which I downloaded the other day and see if it works.

Thanks for your comments @Ginge and thank you for keeping the images coming they are appreciated.

The copying process should work if you copy over the roms to your PC , there is a slightly different setup in FruitBar that I use for MAME I will have to write up the instructions for it, the system does with normals zips but I have not added cab's from memory it was a fairly quick implementation and I only wanted to add the main games I would run, lots of the mame roms are historical from way back in history or are in a different language are they are roms I would never load,

Think I actually borrowed the code for mame which was used in the vpinball section mainly due to my cabinet not really being fast enough to run the uhd pinball roms so I borrowed the vpinball section.....

The PC section needs a little more work so you will be able to run any windows programs and have them in a windows section this could be something as simple as a puzzle game, quiz, first person shooter basically any program should run but will see how good this is once the code has been completed, maybe fix it over the weekend....  obviously you would have your images in fruitbar to represent the games you load into this section, 

Hope this makes sense to anyone reading.

 

[woodsy]

10 hours ago, Ginge said:

Have to agree with @davep180 thanks Andrew for the work you put in,although I think I’m still using one of the first releases you did, must download the latest version to see what changes have been made. I only use it for the fruit machine side as not got into mame or pinball yet did look into these but found reading up on them very daunting. I did download the latest version of mame the other day just to see what it’s all about still trying to work it all out, I haven’t downloaded any roms yet. I have a super console x which has a sd card in on the card there’s a folder that says mame and then in that folder there’s roms I’m going to try copying these over  to mame 2.40 which I downloaded the other day and see if it works.

This is pretty much me too! In my Familiar with mame and not likely to start besides super Mario 64 I’m not too fussed, but I do have to say once I got my head around it fruit bar is a work of art!!

[appstrader]

1 minute ago, woodsy said:

This is pretty much me too! In my Familiar with mame and not likely to start besides super Mario 64 I’m not too fussed, but I do have to say once I got my head around it fruit bar is a work of art!!

Once the PC section is running you would for instance be able to load up nintendo 64 - Mario64 or basically anything, if your emulator for mario64 allows command line switches you could could just add the executable with the switch and rom name and it would load into the rom, this depends on the emulator to do this.

Graphics you just add your own as normal, side panel add what ever you want, video, image, animation, etc...

[woodsy]

18 minutes ago, appstrader said:

Once the PC section is running you would for instance be able to load up nintendo 64 - Mario64 or basically anything, if your emulator for mario64 allows command line switches you could could just add the executable with the switch and rom name and it would load into the rom, this depends on the emulator to do this.

Graphics you just add your own as normal, side panel add what ever you want, video, image, animation, etc...

yeah read it but it looked like an encyclopedia for dyslexics 

[appstrader]

Today has been one of those days working on FruitBar,

I have been adding the ability to play Windows software from within FruitBar, so what does this mean ?

It means windows programs can be added into the section and you can show the theme images for these games to run similar to how mfme, mame, etc runs.  So you should be able to add any windows program and you should be able to use switches and even add roms so any emulation should in theory be possible, 

It's just another feature I am working on, video shows how this works in the real world, I have not added a side panel video for this simply because I have not generated the file meaning the panel is always there waiting to popup.

YouTube would not embed but the link is below.

https://youtu.be/oaVcagC-FJw 

[No1Stoney]

I'm really keen to give this program a go to use in a new cab build I am planning. However I just can't seem to get ANYWHERE with the app. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, so hopefully you can help. But I copied fruitbar into a folder which contains a folder named "rom" and load the app. I get a splash screen with music then afterwards a line of blank cabs. Your manual says press Control to open the settings page, but all that happens is the app asks if I want to quit. The 'cog' icon only takes me to the website. I can't seem to get anywhere at all with it to set it up. Strangely, it does seem to pick up the roms folder as above the empty cabs, are the names of machines contained in that folder. If I click to play them, MFME loading bar shows, but the emulator doesn't load up. I'm really confused. Hopefully you are able to assist @appstrader Thanks.

[Zakkieboy44]

Did you press SHIFT when fruitbar's loaded to setup paths etc etc?

 

[No1Stoney]

Thanks @Zakkieboy44 shift was the key I needed. The manual says press Control. I'll have another tinker now. Cheers

[No1Stoney]

Still having no joy with this at all. I got the settings page up and located all the paths and imported the ROMs. All OK so far. Then fruitbar prompts to restart the app which I do. Upon restart, the settings page is back to default again (I've tried clicking the save button under MFME settings too) so nothing is getting saved. Trying to boot a machine results in the MFME loading bar appearing then nothing else. I'm not sure what I'm missing here.

[davep180]

Are any of the folders set to read only? Check the properties for the folder containing Fruitbar, the layout folders and the emulator folder. Not sure where it stores the save file for the rom list, but each machine will end up with a .bar file in it's own theme folder when you have added pics and info.

[appstrader]

Sorry, been away just got back is this resolved ?

[appstrader]

Once you press Shift the loading picture is really old things would of changed a lot since i put that image in there maybe time to updated it.

So once you  press shift, you have tabs at the top click on the different tabs to setup the section, mfme has its own config that really sets the different components size and locations, buttons used, etc.

The rest is simple once you know how, like setting up the folders, images, etc.

 

[davep180]

Hi @No1Stoneydid you get anywhere with your problem?

@appstraderAre any of the recent updates available for release yet, or do I need to manually download a new FruitBar version?

[appstrader]

15 minutes ago, davep180 said:

Hi @No1Stoneydid you get anywhere with your problem?

@appstraderAre any of the recent updates available for release yet, or do I need to manually download a new FruitBar version?

I have a new version the one with the smart panel and lots of other goodies.....

I will have to finalise a few things in it prior to uploading where it will be available automatically, not touched it for a little while. 

I added your images to the store thank you !