Dingoonity.org

Before giving a low vote on the Play Store, notice that some crashes are not related to my application, but to the emulators. Some emus will have such bugs fixed in the upcoming updates (mostly RetroArch). Moreover, this release is still experimental.

The first universal emulator frontend for Android is here!

Get it on the Play Store! (All features are free and fully working. The "PRO" version just removes ads at the moment)

The Gamesome Emulator Frontend (a.k.a. Gamesome Frontend) will keep your roms organized for you!
It's as easy as setting the root folder where your roms of a specific platform are stored, Gamesome Frontend will do the magic for you! The app will identify each rom in your collection*, get its title and boxart plus some further data like the release date and the description of the game. Your collection can be shown in two different ways: as a list of boxarts or as a list of titles , with a side panel containing the image and all the info about your games. You can even search a game by its title.

This is only the very, very beginning of what this app can do: in fact you will be able to launch your games, whatever the platform they are made for, with your favorite emulator!**

The biggest wish of all the Android gamers finally becomes true!

List of supported platforms and emulators:***

- Atari 2600 (A2600.EMU, RetroArch, Ataroid)
- Atary Lynx (RetroArch)
- Bandai Wonderswan/Color (RetroArch)
- Colecovision/MSX (MSX.EMU)
- Commodore 64 (C64.EMU)
- M.A.M.E. (RetroArch)
- Nintendo (NES.EMU, RetroArch, NESoid)
- Nintendo 64 (Mupen64AE+, Mupen64AE+ free, RetroArch, N64oid)
- Nintendo DS (DraStic, RetroArch)
- Nintendo Game Boy/Color (GBC.EMU, RetroArch, GBCoid)
- Nintendo Game Boy Advance (GBA.EMU, RetroArch, GBAoid)
- Nintendo Virtual Boy (RetroArch)
- Super Nintendo (Snes9x EX+, SuperGNES, SuperGNES lite, RetroArch, SNESoid)
- Sega Dreamcast (Reicast)
- Sega Game Gear (RetroArch, Gearoid)
- Sega Master System (RetroArch, Gearoid)
- Sega Mega Drive (MD.EMU, RetroArch, Gensoid)
- SNK NeoGeo (NEO.EMU, RetroArch)
- SNK NeoGeo Pocket/Color (NGP.EMU, RetroArch)
- Sony PlayStation (ePSXe, RetroArch)
- Sony PSP (PPSSPP)
- Turbografx 16 (PCE.EMU, RetroArch)

IMPORTANT: Games and emulators are not included in this app. I also am not supporting or endorsing any of the software above.

Support Wiki (work in progress): http://wiki.gamesomeapp.com

*: The identification mechanism can identify most of the officially released games for each platform.
**: Gamesome Frontend Emulator supports almost all emulators (check the list above).
***: The compatibility list might change, some emulators might be added, but also removed if they are no more compatible, I do not take any responsibility for this.

All the logos, products, and company names mentioned above are trademarks of their respective owners and subject to their own copyright laws, Foreign or Domestic. Gamesome Frontend Emulator is not endorsing either supporting them in any way.

Screenshots:

Platform selection


Browse games as boxarts


Browse games as title list with panel


Game search screen

Looks very promising, indeed . Definitely will install this app tonight.

First thing noticed by a comrade :
-only one folder per emulator (he arranges his roms per letter, one folder per letter, so more than 26 folders per system emulated...), is it possible to scan subfolders too ?

The current version only scans the folder that you set up, but I can easily add subfolder scan in the next update!

In the next days I will also complete the support site with further informations.

This is, for example , a particular case:
To play Dreamcast games, the frontend scans for subfolders in the root folder, these folders will contain the game files and unfortunately there's no way to automatically identify such games.

Example:

Dreamcast dir : /roms/DC
Dreamcast game dir : /roms/DC/Dead or Alive 2
Dreamcast game files: /roms/DC/Dead or Alive 2/game.gdi,  /roms/DC/Dead or Alive 2/track01.bin, .... and so on.

Sugestion - make games start with a second tap because when we want to see a description, I tap the pic and it starts the game right away. Maibe with physical pads there's no need for this but with tablets it doesn't let us read or see description when tapping 

Cheers!

Thank you for the appreciation!

I am aware of this problem: on Android there is no way to distinguish a tap from a hardware button pressure (at least, not in this case. "Launch game" event is triggered by both touch and pressure without distinction).
So I preferred giving the user immediate play with a single tap. In the next release I'll put double tap with a on screen message saying "tap/press once again to play".

That's a good way to solve the problem I think. Keep it up!

Do you want us here to report problems or you're aware of most of them?

As far as i Know there are issues when you start games with retroarch if you use the official release (1.0.0.1) available on store, fpse crashes and epsxe has audio lag. This is all documented in the wiki in "supported platform and emulators" and "known issues" pages. If you discover further problems let me know and I'll work to fix them if I can (a.k.a. If not depending from emulator's code)

Vektor, you're a tremendous gift to this community.  Thanks so much for doing this.

Reminds me to Nostalgia app from the ouya store.

Yes, but that's only available on ouya store and supports less platforms and emulators. And it's paid

When you change system the game title is still the one for the previous one.

Coleco and MSX are mixed.

Nice work

Wow, a positive feedback by you is really appreciated, thanks 

You can fix the problem by checking the time of the event and launch on slightly longer press. This improves the experience avoiding unwanted taps while swiping.

A better solution than mine!

- I think it would be very convenient that you scan asynchronously.
- Also an option to cache the covers. This would be specially nice if you could define more than one folder per system in case you have a combined local/network drive situation.

Scan is already asynchronous, only the progressbar is updated in the main UI thread. Or you mean usable ui while scan is in progress?
Covers are already cached in /romdir/METADATA folder, the alphanumeric files you see are in fact covers stored in jpeg format(I use Google Volley with a Disk Cache implementation of ImageCache interface). Only one file is cached even for multiple versions of the same game.
For multiple folders, I'll try working on it, maybe in the very next update I'll just add subdir scan.

If that CRC you store is enough for unique rom identification then you could add a import/autorename/remove dupes option.

You mean phisically remove duplicate files from folder or just avoid duplicates in the list? Both can be easily done by using a Map instead of an ArrayList to handle roms.

I noticed that if the name of the zip is not identical to the file inside you unzip even if there is only one file inside the zip.

I'm not sure I've understood this point.
1 zip = 1 rom.
Roms are temporarily unzipped by RetroArch when you play a game and if you close it by pressing home and removing it from the recent apps stack the extracted file isn't deleted. You should instead use back button or retroarch menu to quit properly and this deletes the file.

Style wise I suggest that you try to use a standard action bar on top and move the ads to the bottom or below the bar. Also you can use the standard icon pack. Set some extra padding on some lists.

I replaced the standard action bar with this because it's smaller and this gives better results on small screen devices like phones.

When you change system the game title is still the one for the previous one.

Coleco and MSX are mixed.

Coleco and MSX are mixed because I'm a bit ignorant on very old consoles, I'll make them separate in the next update
Thanks for all the precious advices!

Mame in retroarch lacks the hack option in the mame menu. This is useful for some games to soeed up, like revenge of death adder.

Perhaps in the future add mame4droid..? This frontend reminds me wgat archos did for movies and series, but this demands way much work. (I wish mxplayer had an UI like these)

For mame4droid i'll see what can be done, but for movies/series get XBMC, managing series and movies it's really far from the main goal of this app

Just a quick update request: please add PCE.EMU for TurboGrafX 16 emulation, and please add MD.EMU for both Sega Master System and Game Gear emulation. Thanks!