PartyOn! -- The Front End For Parties
by Andrew "Just a Flesh Wound" Burt
(Sept.1999)

Before I describe my PartyOn! program, I hope you don't mind if I bend your ear for a moment on another subject. Besides writing software for a living, I'm also a professional science fiction / techno-thriller writer. Since you obviously enjoy gaming and have a computer, you might say you're in the crosshairs of the target audience for my fiction, and chances are high that you'll enjoy it tremendously. There are various stories there for various tastes.

While I make PartyOn available for free, I do charge to read some of my stories. Others are readable for free, and you can make a voluntary donation if you like them. Or if you'd like to make a donation for PartyOn, I sure won't stop you. :-)

Okay, thanks for listening -- now on to that PartyOn program you wanted to read about!

What the heck is PartyOn? Well, when my wife and I purchased our wonderful HanaHo ArcadePC (see review here), we wanted to set it up so guests at parties could use it as simply as possible, without having to use a keyboard, mouse, or struggle with computer geek stuff like mame options, windows clicking, etc. (In fact, we wanted to lock the keyboard/mouse away during parties.) We didn't want it to look anything like a computer, but a fancy arcade game, and be as simple to use.

So I wrote a small front end, PartyOn!, a windows program that uses solely the ArcadePC's joysticks and buttons (same as their HotRod joystick, which is very mame-compatible). Here are the salient features:

• Create as many screen lists as you like, cycle through them (e.g., a list of favorites, a list of two player games, a list of racing games...)
  

• Joysticks (or arrow keys) select which item to run, one button to start

• Runs any programs (mame, other emulators, PC games, MS Word, whatever) at the touch of a button
  

• Displays screen shots (or other graphics) for each item (.png, .pcx, .jpg, etc.)

• Easily add sound effects to any navigation step (e.g. 'fire' sounds on movement, explosions on start game, klaxons on screen change, etc.) -- some guests have said it's fun just to play with the front end :-)

• Choose any mix of colors, fonts, and sizes
  

• Options like colors/fonts/sounds are both global and can be selected for each screen

• Can display a help file for each program (e.g. for instructions) -- shown right before program starts
  

• Screen-saver mode -- cycles through screen shot graphics for items that have them; you control how soon screen saver kicks in and how long it pauses on each shot
  

• Easily add/edit list entries, screens, or options
  

• Can set mame or other program options for each list item

• Needs no keyboard or mouse when used with a HotRod or kin

Now, here's what it doesn't do, and who won't want it:

• If you don't have an ArcadePC or HotRod joystick, I'm not exactly sure why you'd want this, but... :-)

• Only runs under windows; much as I love Linux (been a Unix kernel hacker for a couple decades), the box this was written for runs windows for other reasons, so that's that. And as much as I despise DOS, don't even think of asking for a pure DOS version. :-)

• No support; I wrote this for us, and it does what we want. But other folks asked for it when they saw it on our review of the ArcadePC, so I'm tossing it out there, but unsupported. I'm willing to entertain requests for other features, but please bear in mind my limited time. (And sorry, source wouldn't do you any good, since it uses libraries I'm not licensed to give out.) I will probably release new versions, but no promises on what/when! Thanks for understanding.

• If you want to set it up perfectly for HotRod use with programs other than mame36 or later, you have to address the 'how to quit the program' issue. Mame36 now lets you map a key to that (we mapped the HotRod's "second" credit button, which sends '4'), so that's easy. Other programs (Netscape, say) need keys to quit that aren't on the HotRod's panel (like ALT-F4). Several ways to work around that are here.

• You probably won't want this if you're the only one playing with your system. Well, I dunno. I rather like it since it's much simpler than other front ends and doesn't look like a windows program, but it doesn't have all the features of other front ends that hard core mamers might want.

• You probably wouldn't need it if you use a keyboard to play. I suppose if you wanted to use mainly your joystick this might be somewhat useful. Of course, it kind of aggregates the games nicely... so, heck, whatever. Use it if you like it!

Still interested? Great! Download partyon.zip (563K). read the readme, and as Bill & Ted would say, Party On!

If you have questions, comments, etc., about PartyOn! (or that book of mine that I'm pretty sure you'll like...), drop me a line. I'd love to hear from you.

That should about cover it. Be excellent to each other!