Applications

Applications can now be launched by allowing the directory and executable elements in the Emulator.xml file to be swapped per game.

<Emulator>
  <Name>CommandLine</Name>
  <Parser>MameParser</Parser>
  <Directory>{directory}</Directory>
  <Executable>{executable}</Executable>
  <Arguments>{args}</Arguments>
  <ParserArguments>c:\emul\commandLine\commands.xml</ParserArguments>
</Emulator>

Notice, I'm using the MameParser, but with the ParserArguments (to load the xml by, instead of from -listxml).
Also, the directory and executable are in {} so they will be swapped out with a property of the same name for each game.

There is one rule for this. If the Directory has a {} in it, then the ParserArguments MUST be present, and it MUST be a full path to the file, no relative paths!

Now, whats next? The commands.xml file. (*note, this file can be named anything! It's just what we have in the Emulators.xml file*)

<mame build="none" debug="no">
  <game name="timebreak">
    <directory>C:\Program Files\Alawar\TimeBreaker\</directory>
    <executable>TimeBreaker.exe</executable>
    <description>Time Breaker</description>
    <year>2003</year>
    <manufacturer>Alawar</manufacturer>
    <display type="raster" rotate="0" width="640" height="480" refresh="60" />
    <sound channels="1"/>
    <input players="1" buttons="1">
      <control type="trackball"/>
    </input>
    <driver status="good"/>
  </game>
</mame>

Notice that this could be just the name, directory and executable. But I want the frontends to see a description, year, manufacturer ect so that it can sort / filter ect. But the minimum is all MultiMAME needs to run.

Then last… We need to add a filter to add the games. A standard add everything is fine here since we are adding to the command.xml… chances are we don't want to filter any… but we could…

<Filter>
  <Name>All</Name>
  <Emulator>CommandLine</Emulator>
  <Hide>false</Hide>
  <Conditions>
    <Condition>
      <Operator>ALL</Operator>
      <And>false</And>
    </Condition>
  </Conditions>
  <Arguments/>
</Filter>

Good luck! And if anyone wants a setup for a specific game, just let me know. (assuming I can download it and test that is)