iMenu step-by-step set-up tutorial

CannonFoddr · Mar 8, 2011

Not quite (just found this out).... It seems that some Homebrew (well - one game actually) get 'screen corruption' when launched by iMenu (Deflektor) but seems fine when run through other menus

And although not 'bugs' - I think a couple more 'additions' to iMenu may not go amiss in the 'final'......
1) IIRC someone complained about having to 'retype everything' when creating new Icons (or something like that) & I think I tried to suss out & explain what he meant. I THINK what he meant was
- When creating a New icon, add a way that once you select a 'file' - certain other items in the INI file are automatically changed to that of the selected item

E.G. if I select 'Xenofile.nds' as the 'file:' then

'Name:' automatically becomes 'Xenofile'
'ININame:' automatically becomes 'Xenofile.ini'
(possibly) If a 'xenofile.bmp' is found - that is automatically selected as 'Icon:'

(If no Icon is found of same name - then I guess it stays as 'error.bmp')
then all we have to do, if we're happy with the details, is just select 'Save'

2) Any way to stop iMenu rebooting after EVERY New/Delete icon change ??
Could a new option be added to the Icon menu - such as [ Exit ] or [ Update iMenu ]

When you use [ New ] and select 'save' - it return back to the icon menu so that you can choose one of the other options
The same goes for the [ Edit ] function & If you use [ Delete ] & press [ A ] - that also returns back to the icon menu
( [ Move ] can stay the same I guess )

Only when you select the [ Exit ] / [ Update iMenu ] option - that's when iMenu reboots & re-reads the INI files (or whatever it does when re-booting)

~~3) & I'm sure some1 else will say this, although I'm happy the way it is ..... 'Touch Support'~~

EDIT: Dam it - Terminator beat me to it.....

Terminator02 · Mar 8, 2011

i do remember requesting that first # you posted

also I think being able to check for updates would be pretty cool and have it overwrite everything except the .ini files (unless that's really needed)

also, like cannon said, if there is some way to edit icons and such without restarting that would be cool

jurassicplayer · Mar 9, 2011

Bug-wise, there doesn't seem to be much else besides whatever anyone else might have reported...but there is one that does seem to have been unvoiced.
-Pressing B after selecting the New icon option will freeze the menu.

The only suggestions that I have left that I can think of (a couple of them are ideas from some time ago):
-Faster boot time (this one is probably stupidly impossible, but meh you never know)...iMenu kind of loads up slow for me, though it's more of a user issue rather than an iMenu issue since I currently have 10 pages of icons =D (and still expanding slowly)
-Don't autoswap the keyboard back to letters after choosing one character (bothersome when typing in numbers).
-Add an optional 12 hour format
-A customizable loading screen (animated splash screen maybe =D)
-Optional sound effects and background music (changeable at the user's discretion since I recall CannonFoddr not liking this idea at all xD)
-Changing that multiples of 8 mandatory width for the clock numbers to something smaller
-Allowing theme changing from the menu
-Add key repeat for the L/R buttons (or all buttons is fine too)
-Add key repeat for left/right D-Pad in file select menus
-Configurable key repeat time (so I can speed it up while shuffling through my icons xD)
-Configurable key map (for people who might have had some mishaps happen to some of their buttons)
-Option to change brightness (or button...though a button dedicated just for brightness is kind of meh IMO)
-Allow for pressing B to cancel in the icon/file/arg select menus and the New icon menu (after fixing the freezing of course)
-Maybe allow pressing B to cancel moving (not REALLY needed, but I do find myself trying to do that sometimes)
-A quick jump to the first page or last page
-Create new icons at the cursor's current location instead of added at the end (I end up going all the way to the end to get the icons and bring it all the way back since I place only icons from my otakupack in front of the other ones xD)
-Inherit the Name and iniName from the File select (if arg isn't avaliable) or Arg select (if available).

CannonFoddr · Mar 9, 2011

^^^^^ That's a LOT of suggestions ^^^^^^

As for the 'themes' idea - I did give a suggestion to Spinal in the supercard Forums about asking help from Stormwave in modifying his ds2skin program especially for iMenu

(so instead of the 'EOS'/'Loading'/'Plugin' etc options, change it to something like 'Wallpaper' / 'Cursor' / 'clock' / 'dock' - that way you can 'mix & match' from different themes) - whether Spinal will take up the challenge or not is up to him

jurassicplayer · Mar 11, 2011

Well, with the new autorun last rom feature that was added in the latest kernel, I decided I'd try my hand and see if I actually learned anything from poking around at nesDS along with Taiju's stuff. Amazingly enough, I spewed out something that works =D...probably not the most elegant solution to do (I'm thinking Spinal_cord could come up with a better solution that can be integrated into iMenu entirely, but meh I wanted to try my brain), but at least with this you can now have .nds files loaded from iMenu (and BAGUI) meaning there are still a LOT more icons that can be made (like hell I'm going to allow anyone to stop making more icons xD).
To use it, just set up a regular icon with arg support and then shit happens, and yay it might work (probably will work...maybe...I didn't test it much, but it worked for me anyways).
-snip- http://gbatemp.net/t260979-imenu-step-by-s...t&p=3515211

Have fun guys...and make more themes (since you don't really need to go to DSGame to play games anymore, you can technically call iMenu a new OS...at least, I'm intending to call it that =D).

-edit-
Oh, and btw you might be able to use it as an extlink loader for moonshell2...maybe...

spinal_cord · Mar 11, 2011

I haven't had a look at that one yet, but... did you set it to be the 'old' engine by default instead of the new one? The new engine doesn't play nice with the loader I (we, me and Bass) used for iMenu.

Out of that list, the following are implemented -

Automatically choose icon, display name, note and ini name based on selected nds/plg.
Stylus support (don't get your hopes up, it's not working very well and will only be in the main menu)

jurassicplayer · Mar 11, 2011

spinal_cord said:
I haven't had a look at that one yet, but... did you set it to be the 'old' engine by default instead of the new one? The new engine doesn't play nice with the loader I (we, me and Bass) used for iMenu.

It's actually a workaround xD. It's just some regular homebrew that you can pretty much run on most flashcarts. The only thing it does is look at the plgarg.dat (same way as it does in the nesDS mod) and then write the correct stuff to the lastsave.ini...and change the globalsettings value needed (lastRomRun=1). Apart from that, it loads up DSGame.nds and that is it (I consider this an accomplishment since I actually have no idea what I did...I kind of just guessed at it).

BassAceGold · Mar 11, 2011

jurassicplayer said:
spinal_cord said:

I haven't had a look at that one yet, but... did you set it to be the 'old' engine by default instead of the new one? The new engine doesn't play nice with the loader I (we, me and Bass) used for iMenu.

Click to expand...

It's actually a workaround xD. It's just some regular homebrew that you can pretty much run on most flashcarts. The only thing it does is look at the plgarg.dat (same way as it does in the nesDS mod) and then write the correct stuff to the lastsave.ini...and change the globalsettings value needed (lastRomRun=1). Apart from that, it loads up DSGame.nds and that is it (I consider this an accomplishment since I actually have no idea what I did...I kind of just guessed at it).

Oh jeez, I just added support for the auto run feature in my menu. Looks like I did it for nothing

spinal_cord · Mar 11, 2011

oh, I got my wires crossed, I thought you had re-released nesds...

CannonFoddr · Mar 11, 2011

@JP : Whoa - well done

- running DS games from iMenu actually works....
....except NOW I've got to remember to press [ B ] when I re-select DS_Game

2-bias · Mar 11, 2011

CannonFoddr said:
@JP : Whoa - well done

- running DS games from iMenu actually works....
....except NOW I've got to remember to press [ B ] when I re-select DS_Game

Maybe JB also makes an iniclear.nds

But for now i'am using menuDO as my gamebrowser and iMenu for all that other stuff.

CannonFoddr · Mar 11, 2011

2-bias said:
CannonFoddr said:

@JP : Whoa - well done

- running DS games from iMenu actually works....
....except NOW I've got to remember to press [ B ] when I re-select DS_Game

Click to expand...

Maybe JB also makes an iniclear.nds

Who's JB ??

But I know what you mean - still that's quick work on JP side of things, new EOS/Firmware out today & already we've got a DS loader

2-bias · Mar 11, 2011

CannonFoddr said:
2-bias said:

CannonFoddr said:

@JP : Whoa - well done

- running DS games from iMenu actually works....
....except NOW I've got to remember to press [ B ] when I re-select DS_Game

Click to expand...

Maybe JB also makes an iniclear.nds

Click to expand...

Who's JB ??

But I know what you mean - still that's quick work on JP side of things, new EOS/Firmware out today & already we've got a DS loader

Oops, i mean JP

Terminator02 · Mar 11, 2011

CannonFoddr said:
....except NOW I've got to remember to press [ B ] when I re-select DS_Game

what do you mean by that?

Edit: omg, supercard screwed up their download page, they no longer have a package -.-

no longer included in the download:

/_ds2Video
/_dstwoplug
/iReader
/moonshl2
/NDSGBA

i guess i'll be adding them to my package

omg my package is so much bigger now >.>

P.S. JP, you mind if i take your file and package it with a custom .ini? it'll probably be on filetrip

2-bias · Mar 12, 2011

Awesome. JP's loader works with DScovered too! Now thats a fine combination.

EDIT:
Is it possible to move the _imenu folder inside a DATA Folder? I mean something like /DATA/_imenu
I don't like all these folders in my Root.

jurassicplayer · Mar 12, 2011

...I don't really think you guys should be calling it my loader...I mean sure I poked at a lot of the original stuff, but it was based off of the stuff Taiju had. Technically, it's all his coding and I just mixed and matched it to do what I wanted (and deleting everything that gave me an error while compiling...whether it was needed or not).
I don't really care if you want to package it with a custom ini (though it doesn't make much sense to me why you would need to do that, since it only can take one file at a time anyways...so it's like an ini per game).
Oh...and it did work with DSCovered o.0...well at least now I know what that went to...
DSTWO iniclear...well not really, it just toggles the lastRomRun from 1 to 0, but same difference anyways. Just load this and then it will redirect to dsgame.nds after it changes the ini.
-snip- Outdated already =D.

-edit-
2-bias's question: you have to ask Spinal_cord if you want it placed somewhere else.

2-bias · Mar 12, 2011

jurassicplayer said:
...I don't really think you guys should be calling it my loader...I mean sure I poked at a lot of the original stuff, but it was based off of the stuff Taiju had. Technically, it's all his coding and I just mixed and matched it to do what I wanted (and deleting everything that gave me an error while compiling...whether it was needed or not).
I don't really care if you want to package it with a custom ini (though it doesn't make much sense to me why you would need to do that, since it only can take one file at a time anyways...so it's like an ini per game).
Oh...and it did work with DSCovered o.0...well at least now I know what that went to...
DSTWO iniclear...well not really, it just toggles the lastRomRun from 1 to 0, but same difference anyways. Just load this and then it will redirect to dsgame.nds after it changes the ini.
http://www.mediafire.com/?5pggmd24q8gm4i5

-edit-
2-bias's question: you have to ask Spinal_cord if you want it placed somewhere else.

This corrupts my globalsettings.ini and i have to restore it from a backup.

A little Tipp for those who want to use DScovered as main system. If you set it as primary file in the boot.ini you can't use the dstwo.nds from imenu 3b to load imenu. Because this will load DScovered again. But you can use the dstwo.nds from imenu b1. This loads the dstwo.plg from the _imenu folder directly and doesn't use the boot.ini.
This should also work to load imenu from anywhere else if you replaced the primary file with any other file.

CannonFoddr · Mar 12, 2011

just had a thought about this 'iniclear' business.
Perhaps spinal could add a new setting to imenu like 'resetauto='
If it's '1' then when imenu boots up the dstwo autorun is reset to 'off' and the 'last file used' is blanked. This way if anyone starts up the ds_game, they won't need to press 'B' to bypass the autorun. If '0' then the ds_game acts as it does now - like a 'run last played game' or 'Favorite Game'

@ terminator: And what I meant about 'remembering to press B' is this...
If you create a new icon to run a ds game (e.g AC:WW),and use it - play the game - then reset the ds (powering off)
Now if you switch on & and select the original 'ds_game' icon (e.g you want to change hotkey setting perhaps) - that will start and re-run the last game (AC:WW) you played UNLESS you press & hold 'B' while it loads, which bypasses the autorun feature

spinal_cord · Mar 12, 2011

So does this thing work by taking the arg value and setting it as the last played game in the ds_game menu? If so, why not create an icon with the arg being blank, wouldn't that just load ds_game.nds without a last played game?

The Catboy · Mar 12, 2011

spinal_cord said:
So does this thing work by taking the arg value and setting it as the last played game in the ds_game menu? If so, why not create an icon with the arg being blank, wouldn't that just load ds_game.nds without a last played game?

I tried last night and it didn't work for me.

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