Future Mod Ideas
Added 2023-10-06 22:33:11 +0000 UTCDisplayEx is a nice advanced mod. It has taken a bit of time and effort invested, and while not originally intended, I think that's worth it as a premium mod for the CaVE users that support the project the most. But it should not be the only advanced mod.
The theme mods were slated for being the next mod, and originally intended as the premium mod... but I have realized that they make more sense as part of DisplayEx and had to change my loose plans.
So I know I need more advanced mods. I need ideas for them, and I need to evaluate those ideas while weighing them against usefulness, demand, and ease of development. Here for patrons I figure I can make my ideas exclusively available so you can see what I am considering and may be ahead. But I am not committing to anything right now.
- Enable Touch Support
- Increased Save Slots
- MP3 Player
- Cheat Support
- Game Manual In Pause Menu
- Button Swap
- Ideas that are more suited for being included with DisplayEx
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Enable Touch Support
This would primarily serve to try and enable touch support in the apps menus. I have found a lot of evidence that it was worked on by NERD, but disabled. As of yet, I don't know if it was disabled and abandoned for good reason. Like it does not work.
In particular, I am curious if this would enable mouse support in the SNES app. For those who do not know, a couple years back I found that mouse support was at least worked on a little. 3 mouse games got GameCodes assigned, and there is a Mouse Support SFROM param. But using those... the mouse does not work still. I presume its because emulating a mouse with touch screen controls is not exactly a 1 to 1 translation. A mouse drags across a screen from where the cursor currently is, while touch controls start at where your finger lands.
This is a possibility, but I have no clue if enabling touch support will enable those games. Thus far, it has not been worth the time to fully invest in de-compiling the nessacery lua.
Increased Save Slots
This is a feature I think I can do. But the issue is... is there a demand for it? Does anyone need more than 4? I really have no idea.
This of course would also make me need to redo CaVE's Save Management UI, as its pretty firmly designed for 4 slots right now...
MP3 Player
This is of course a novelty. It seems like something fun to make... if I can. But right now, I don't know if I can. I don't know if the app supports MP3 playback. Just WAV. So I would have to test that support first.
A issue with it would be that in the case of SNES, people who confuse the idea, assume and expect/demand MSU support. That... is not possible. Or at least, what Id intend for the feature. I guess it may be possible, but it has the same issue as the next idea...
Cheat Support
This is a of course something many would want. And I might be able to do it to some extent. But not how I would want. Not without a LOT of effort.
This would require code injection. Something I have briefly dabbled in when considering a alternate form of the SNES Full Unlock. But that had issues. And C++ is just not something I am good at anymore, if I ever was.
More importantly, to do this in a way that I feel was proper, I would want to expose custom functions to the LUA scripts, so that there was proper UI options. And right now, I don't know how to do that. This is a project thats a bit beyond me right now, and would take a considerable investment of time and effort... just to see if it is possible.
Game Manual In Pause Menu
This should be possible. And would be very nifty.
I don't know if there is much of a demand for it. And I don't know if I should make it scans, or a mix of scans and transcribing.
Button Swap
This would be to allow you to choose what buttons do what. This would MAINLY be for N64.
But... I don't know if this is possible. I think the emu button configuration is set in the binary, not the lua. But if its in the lua... maybe? IDK. I know I tried a very obvious method before with the kc.dat, and found that is completely ignored.
Something about this seems unfinished. Maybe with the right value set in a lua, it would enable the kc.dat stuff? IDK.
Maybe I can do a binary hack too, to do this.
Ideas that are more suited for being included with DisplayEx
Don't load details images, Title List Pages, Load Images only when visible, Other show/hide game title options beyond just US Only and US + EU.
The first one is a idea I have had for a while. The main issue is... the "problem" it solves mostly helps people who want excessively large collections of ROMs. Thats not something I particularly want to cater to. The next 2 serve the same purpose. Like it or not, the way the NSO apps load images is wasteful. The most realistic of the 3 is the 3rd one. I could have NSO only load title screen images when viewed, and probably save a lot of memory, with very little visible impact to the app. More or less, I would be fixing issues created by NERD.
The 4th idea would expand what games are visible. Mostly adding an option to not see US games at all. And as has been suggested, a option to show/hide SP games may be nice.
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Either way, any work on such mods will be reserved for later. As in, after CaVE v1.5 is out of the Beta. But I am open to hearing ideas.
Keep in mind that, right now I am looking to find a mod replacement for Level 2 access. Right now, Level 2 access is only given to people who go above and beyond to help the project. There is no Patreon tier to get access to it. And currently, the Theme mod is what is given for that access. But I feel its unrealistic and unfitting to keep that mod as such a unique reward. It fits so easily with DisplayEx, that... the next updates to the mod will be with a special version of DisplayEx. I would rather not maintain 2 versions of one mod like that. Of my current ideas, Cheat Support would probably make the most sense. Simply because of the time/effort invested thats needed for it. But even then, I would definitely have to make that available for a higher Patreon tier too, to make the investment more worth while.
What are your thoughts? Any mod ideas? What price would be good for another Patreon tier? And what reward would seem best? Are any of my mod idea's something you would particularly be interested in?
Comments
Yea. Track pad is mostly likely how they would implement it... but would probably feel weird with the main mouse game, Mario Paint. The MP3 Player would be just for me. Something fun to work on. I know there is zero demand for it. But either way, I have since tested things... and the apps do not support mp3's. Just wav's. So that idea is scrapped. I'm not 100% certain how I would implement manuals in either way, but yea. The text part is more to support walkthroughs. As is, I would probably be adapting existing UI for GB/GBA network setup guides, which are a mix of images and text. But I don't think the text part is very good for walkthroughs as is. Too little space. The issue with large databases is loading times, and crashes. Each image loaded by the app takes time and RAM. Each game has 2 images. PNG or XTX.Z, they are basically a Bitmap when it comes to loading and RAM consumption. The general idea of the DisplayEx additions mentioned is to reduce how many images are loaded. If all title screen images are not loaded, loading time and RAM usage is cut near in have (maybe more realistically around 40% since title screen images tend to be smaller). At the very least, loading the title screen images only when directly viewed should be a general improvement with theoretically little to no downside. While the main benefit of such changes is to add more games to your database without instability issues, even in small normal databases... I guess it should have an effect.
DarkAkuma
2023-10-09 16:11:08 +0000 UTCOpinions: Mouse support, great, but as you said touch ≠ mouse movement. I would assume it would work much like touch/mouse translation works, to where the screen just becomes a giant touchpad. It would be awesome, but to me the only game of worth with mouse support is Mario Paint, and I think the dpad patch already solves the issue a bit better. Plus touchscreen support would only work on handheld mode. Save slots. I'm personally good with 4. Even in a situation where I'm fighting a hard boss, I might only have 1 or 2 extra. I don't think I've used 4 total on any games. MP3 player I don't see much use in this at all. But it might just be me. I have other devices if I want to listen to something else. Plus there is also that Tesla overlay that can play mp3s. If this was a feature I even wanted, I would find an overlay to be more useful since I could listen on any game or menu and not just within NSO. Cheat support. This feature I'm most mixed about. I'm a sucker for retroachievements hardcore mode, so I'm pretty adjusted to not running cheats. But at the same time I am aware of how much of a cool feature it is, and I'll still use cheats on games I don't care too much about or games I've already played 100 times. If you're wanting a feature to push a higher patreon tier, this will be it. It is probably the most requested feature, but at the same time could be seen as the most frivolous. I feel locking this feature down would be acceptable to most as an "extra" feature as opposed to locking down DisplayEX. Game manual. I love this idea... A lot. Personally I'd suggest scan + transcribe. Just for my own selfish reason of being able to replace the manual with an old GameFAQs style text file. Of course to work well, the manual/text would need to save it's place between opening and closing the pause menu. Of course even if what I want is way out of scope, even having the manuals in scan form would be great. I have a bit of a soft spot for manuals, based on how many times I would read the manual cover to cover just on the ride home from buying a new game. Button Swap: I'm indifferent to this. While a cool feature, in reality, if I need better controls, I'm just going to use the N64 controller. DisplayEx Indifferent on this feature as well. I think I have fairly large collections on all of the DBs and I don't really have any issues scrolling through. I do like your 4th suggestion to filter to just SP. I do like the building in of the no icon mods. I use custom borders on all DBs, and a no player icon is needed for all of them. If building that part into DisplayEx helps you. Go for it.
Hartley Spurlock
2023-10-09 15:38:10 +0000 UTC
