openMenu Alpha 1

[RazorX]

Simplest way would when adding games/homebrew is place them in a root folder and add that folder and the card manager knows and write a new folder.txt file with the folder type, where they go in openMenu.

I mean there could be a button to assign a content (folder) type, highlight a load of games, click button and pick content type or enter it manually & pick done and it updates them all.

When coming from USBGDRom mine was all folderized. So I made a bat file to set the names in the name.txt as the directory names, once done I rename all folders to numerals & card manager reads that file when loaded. Saving me hours upon hours of adding stuff individually. (Took 5 hours to transfer them all to the SD Card in bulk, hate to think doing it 1 at a time )

But yeah specifying a folder to be used would be great, as I have homebrew, mods and TV only games that I want in their own root folders. Currently I add (Homebrew), (Mod) & (TV) to the end of title. (Add what the mod does to the synopsis info) luckily openMenu doesn’t care about folder ordering, only GDEMU Menu does.

I also have those at the end of the list on the SD Card, so games, mods, tv only & homebrew. When sorting I move the tv & homebrew to a folder, sort the sd card (if I change names as I was testing with 60 char length) save and then move the content back to the root and save again so it’s all in my set order. (Makes knowing where stuff is easier, since we can’t use folder names)

If we had folders in Openmenu I'd happily ditch my MODE. it's the only thing keeping it alive at the moment. being able to split the games out any way I like gives me a lot less anxiety than 1 big list of them. I do agree with ateam though, it would take a change at the Openmenu side to be able to display them as well as the SD card manager side to organise them.... or possibly even a standalone app that creates the virtual folder structure as say a txt file that Openmenu could read. My thinking was that we can change from the list of games to lettered folders... so there may be a way to manipulate that so it displays what we want instead of the lettered folders, which is kind of what ateam was getting at. Prev Megavolt had mentioned it wasn't a planned feature, although it would be a great one if it could be done.

you're never going to be able to use actual folders on the gdemu, the firmware doesn't support that, it has to be laid out in numbered folders otherwise it won't see them.
the best you're going to get is virtual folders with openmenu.

[ateam]

you're never going to be able to use actual folders on the gdemu, the firmware doesn't support that, it has to be laid out in numbered folders otherwise it won't see them.
the best you're going to get is virtual folders with openmenu.

Yeah, that's precisely what we were talking about here: virtual nested folders.

[RazorX]

you're never going to be able to use actual folders on the gdemu, the firmware doesn't support that, it has to be laid out in numbered folders otherwise it won't see them.
the best you're going to get is virtual folders with openmenu.

Yeah, that's precisely what we were talking about here: virtual nested folders.

yeah, just thought i'd make it clear for anyone that didn't fully understand that you're never going to be able to setup your sd card like on the mode because the gdemu doesn't support that, that's all

[Krakatoa]

posting to get access to the DAT tool

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=15253

[pmp174]

Would it be possible to add support for FTP or even retronas to Openmenu? Or is the dreamcast/gdemu limited by the hardware?

[dogeymon]

I’m trying to understand why I loaded 130 games on open menu loader app and the whole list is there, but when I put the sd card in my Dreamcast, open menu only shows the first 8 games.

Can you help me understand what’s wrong?

[megavolt85]

Would it be possible to add support for FTP or even retronas to Openmenu?

1) access to the SD card inserted into GDEMU is impossible
2) FTP in KOS SDK is not working, only very small files can be transferred through it

Can you help me understand what’s wrong?

Most likely there is a damaged game in folder number 9 or 10

[pmp174]

I really like this project. I have a few ideas. I know they may not all be feasible but Openmenu has a lot of potential. I have added some mockups.

Feature ideas/requests
VMU/Save Management and serial port access for VMU backup to sd card. (currently a dreamshell feature https://github.com/DC-SWAT/DreamShell)





Button Tester (would be useful for people using third party controllers)


Date and time (it adds a context to the UI, it can help a user realize how long they have been playing)
Dreamcast now gamer id icon and a display of the game with the highest player count.



Updated Menu Prompt for Bios/code breaker



Updated Settings Screen

[ateam]

If you're using a VM2, openMenu will use the "alternate" 3D BIOS when you select "Exit to BIOS". Megavolt85 says this is actually supposed to be the case for OEM VMUs as well, but due to some bug, it is not.

That being said, if you're using a VM2 and prefer to restore the original BIOS, it's very easy to do.

I could have re-compiled openMenu from source, but I was able to make this change in a few short minutes with a quick assembly hack.

Here's the original code...



This can be seen in its original form in the openMenu source code: https://github.com/megavolt85/openmenu/ ... ain.c#L367

To force the 3D BIOS to never be used, we must only change these six bytes:

Code: Select all

8c01ba78     00 e1     mov     #0x0,r1
8c01ba7a     09 00     nop
8c01ba7c     09 00     nop

If you'd like to do this yourself, it's easy! Simply open GDMENUCardManager.v2.0.1-win-x64\tools\openMenu\menu_data\1ST_READ.BIN in a hex editor and find FF E1 08 20 1A 61, then replace it with 00 E1 09 00 09 00.

After that, use the SD Card Manager utility to rebuild openMenu (i.e., just click "Save Changes") and you're done!

If you're not handy with a hex editor, you can also simply replace GDMENUCardManager.v2.0.1-win-x64\tools\openMenu\menu_data\1ST_READ.BIN with the file from the ZIP archive below.

openMenu 1ST_READ.BIN - Force Regular BIOS.zip
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=down ... R9nn9i9E01

[pmp174]

These icons and font are excellent. It fixed a lot of the blurriness I was seeing in the UI. Keep up the good work.

First time poster here, but recently moved from USB-GDRom to GDEmu and openMenu.

Didn't really like the icons due to running in higher than native or 640x480 resolutions. The font also looked off but that turned out to be 16:9, seems to destroy the quality of the font.

Anyways I redone the icons for the vmu, controller, rumble etc... and the font file to be easier on the eye. (this one works better across 16:9 and 4:3)

icon_white.png
icon_black.png
I may add more detail to the ethernet and disc at some point but its not really needed.

Not able to capture the DC but took a photo Had to resize these to fit as an attachment, but you can see the icons.
light.jpg
dark.jpg


Also want to say thank you to mrneo240 & megavolt85 for openMenu. Much appreciated.

Not sure if its a bug or not, but the game title when in the horizontal view (images above) is always small (odd title is large but off screen), when other videos/images show it being larger than the synopsis font size.