Messages

1

Announcements / Re: Version 1.5.2

« on: July 04, 2015, 06:10:09 PM »

I can confirm what Liquid sees.  I'm personally looking for this feature so I can use QuickSync with a virtual monitor.  Cannot currently do that with AttractMode because it scales the frontend across both monitors.

2

General / Re: Turn off font anti-aliasing?

« on: May 11, 2015, 08:38:59 AM »

Vita-

Thanks for the advice. And, I agree with the motto " less is more ". The less is more concept just started to sink in my brain recently when I realized that most of my layouts looked like pixel explosions. And, I was trying to put pixels everywhere because I was worried about having too much negative space. But, I guess that is all part of the learning process.

Everyone goes through that phase, even most professional designers struggle with it.  It's also incredible how difficult the "less is more" philosophy is to implement.  Our human nature is to always add more "stuff", lest it not look "complete".  But the best interfaces actually tend to be invisible to the user (they just work and become second nature).  And those interfaces take by far the most time to design even though there's less stuff in them.

If it helps, try a design where you focus on one specific thing, and let it be the "star".  Say it's the game screenshots,  really make them stand out, and minimize the influence of most of the other things (which will help give the images priority).  Many people make the mistake of giving priority to lots of different things on the screen, but if you give priority to everything then nothing truly has priority.  People won't know what it is they're supposed to look at.  In a proper design it should be immediately obvious what the focal point is supposed to be.  And everything else flows down from that.

3

General / Re: Turn off font anti-aliasing?

« on: May 11, 2015, 08:29:45 AM »

Hi Vitaflo,

There isn't a way to turn this off at the moment for the fonts.  There is a setting for images but the font stuff is still hidden away.  I'll poke around a bit and see what I can do...

Thanks raygun, any tweaks there would be appreciated.  Another culprit is it seems that AM doesn't use sub-pixel anti-aliasing (clear type, et al), which probably exacerbates the problem on arcade monitor CRTs.

4

General / Re: Turn off font anti-aliasing?

« on: May 10, 2015, 07:37:37 PM »

Yes, I'm porting my old MameWah design I did in 2003, which is now woefully out of date and looks like it.  Eventually I'm going to redo the entire interface since AM seems to give me more to play with.

I think you'd be disappointed in what a designer like myself (I own a company that designs websites and mobile apps) would do with a frontend.  It would probably feel too sparse for most.  The biggest problem (IMO) I see people do is they try to do too much or be too "cute".  They try to cram every last pixel with something to make it visually "impressive".  Usually this just adds too much visual noise and overwhelms the interface.

There needs to be a reason for every single thing on the screen, it needs to communicate to the user, and it needs to be instantly obvious what is going on.  Design to a grid, use negative space to your advantage (hint, it helps call out the important bits), don't mix fonts.

Be subtle, don't hit people over the head.  Take out every image in the interface...is it still enjoyable to use?  If not rework it before you add the images back in.  Only add effects (graphical or interactive) if they're needed to communicate something necessary to the user.  Ditch the ones that are superfluous.

Basically follow this motto:  "The design isn't done when there's nothing more to add, it's done when there's nothing more to take away."

5

General / Re: Turn off font anti-aliasing?

« on: May 10, 2015, 12:52:01 PM »

I've tried many fonts, and font family and weight don't really make a difference.  I'm a graphic designer so I have thousands of fonts.  It's not the font it's how it's rendered.  Anti-aliased fonts are meant for LCD's not arcade monitors.

If nobody knows the answer that's fine, I thought perhaps there was a setting somewhere.

6

General / Re: Turn off font anti-aliasing?

« on: May 10, 2015, 07:01:42 AM »

I'm using a multi-sync monitor at 640x480.  This isn't a terrible problem, but when I used MameWah on Win2k back in the day the fonts looked better because they weren't anti-aliased.

7

General / Re: Turn off font anti-aliasing?

« on: May 09, 2015, 07:50:04 AM »

I guess this is why I asked, as turning off font smoothing (clear type) in the OS (win7) doesn't turn it off in AM.

8

General / Turn off font anti-aliasing?

« on: May 08, 2015, 09:04:35 PM »

Weird request, but is there any way to turn off font anti-aliasing in AM?  I use an arcade monitor and anti-aliasing just makes the fonts look blurry.  Non-antialised fonts look better (the monitor basically anti-aliases it for you), but I can't seem to make the frontend change it.