Gamepad Controlled GUI

[coffeecup086]

I have a machine built specifically for PJ64. One of the things I would love to see implemented into PJ64 would be a GUI that can be controlled by the controller. The current user interface could probably be tweaked to work this way. It would be awesome though for PJ64 to launch full screen at startup and be able to be controlled by the controller so I would never have to touch a keyboard. It would be nice if we could add box art to our game library and use the controller to select the game that way. Just a suggestion that I would love to see! Thanks for PJ64 BTW, it's freaking awesome!

[haneeya]

Oh yeah, I've seen that thread on Emutalk. I remember there was some moron who posted some of the shittiest logo attempts I've ever seen, and when everyone questioned if he was serious or just trolling, he was like "well I didn't put my full efforts into it because it's just a N64 emu, so who cares? It would probably get shut down by Nintendo in any moment so I don't want to start designing a logo for it and then find out the emu is no more" or some bullshit like that.

[Eery Petrol]

Good point! Gamepad navigation in Project64 would be useful and doesn't seem to be available. In the mean time, launching a game through Project64 can be done by any outside program and here there are some options.

I use Steam (Big Picture Mode) combined with Ice (Google 'ice for steam') to have one hub for gaming. After configuration, running Ice will integrate ROMs and emulators such as Project64 into Steam automatically. Setting Steam to launch at startup in Big Picture mode means full controller support. Steam's a relatively big application so I don't know if your PJ64 machine can support it. But the good thing is that many of its features, such as browsing the internet, are accessible through a gamepad.

Box Art can be taken from consolegrid.com, a site based on user generated content that collects custom game images for a selection of consoles. These can range from original box covers to fan art. Ice automatically searches this site for the top ranked image of your game and sets it as a custom image within Steam's grid view (I had to reduce game titles such as 'Mario Kart 64 [EU]' -> 'Mario Kart 64' for it to work).

[coffeecup086]

Dude, that's an awesome suggestion! My PJ64 box is a pretty powerful machine. So, it should be able to do this no problem. I am definitely going to give this a shot. Thanks for the input!

[coffeecup086]

I found a pretty awesome front end that can be used with PJ64 called EmulationStation. I have it set up and working and have been using it for a couple of days and it works very very well. It has everything in it that I was looking for. It has the ability to select a game and navigate with whatever gamepad you have plugged in, and it also has the ability to download box art and descriptions for your games, which works surprisingly well. If anyone wants to know the steps for setting it up for use with PJ64 I can provide those. I also sound another front end that looks really cool as well, but I decided to not to use it because of the massive amount of configurations that have to be done. If anyone is interested it is called HyperSpin.

I have included a couple of screenshots from EmulationStation from the interwebs.