QUOTE(guybird @ Nov 4 2010, 03:02 PM)
I feel your pain man. I know probably most people prefer to have all emulators and ports all in one big folder with the small square icons for them; to show off all their systems at once. But seeing as how most things have been ported, there are no more new games coming out, mostly just new revisions of old emulators, I think most of us are now in a collection phase. Personally when going through the 70+ systems emulated on the xbox (not including homebrew/original games) I've been trying to sort them out as much as possible, and categorizing stuff when possible. As is I've been working with an Arcade section (Arcade emu's like Coinops and FBL, ports of arcade games like Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat), a console section (atari's, nintendo's, sega's, etc), a PC Ports section (Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake etc, and I'm considering moving Scumm, Dosbox, TI-99, C64 and other pc emu's here too), and finally Homebrew for all other ports/original games that don't fall into the previous categories.
I really have no idea what ideas to give as far as naming goes, although your variations on Lies/faux/etc seem to be a good start. One thing though, I dunno about others, but the mods/variations on existing Xbox games (DOAV nude, GTA SA mods, Soul Calibur 2 mods, etc) I just leave in my games sections alongside the real thing. I don't see much point in moving the icons to a different area, but using your icons in my games section would definitely be something I would do. Worst come to worst though, you can just leave it with the original Xbox Live banner with your own custom art though, although you're probably better off with just "Lies". What we really need to do though, is to either find an existing one, or make a new spreadsheet of all Emulators/Ports/Homebrews that way we can kinda check off what has been done for each system (my icon style, xboxer's square icon style, your xbox lies covers, and finally fanart). I'll have to look/ask around and see if any of the RX crew has made such a spreadsheet, or if its something I'll have to build from scratch... Let me know if any of the artwork I've used would be useful for you, I know I've posted my old psd's, but those are much smaller than my new batch which would be more helpful with your covers I'd think.
This is how I have my programs folder set up right now:
Inside the Applications folder, I have programs such as DVD2Xbox, Linksbox and Linux.
I obviously keep my emulators in the emulators folder, but I too have the same problems with categorizing them. I'd love to put PC emulators in their own folder. Like ScummVM and DOSbox. I prefer naming the emulators by what they emulate, not by what they are actually called. ScummVM emulates games that ran primarily on DOS, but it's stupid to have 2 icons labeled MS-DOS. And I would hate to have DOOM and Duke Nukem 3d in the same folder as basic PC emulators. The only solution to the problem is to make CUT files and boxart for every single "rom", but that takes a ton of time...and I'm pretty sure cut files only work for certain emulators.
I keep my legitimate Xbox games in my Games folder, and all other types (homebrew, rips, mods, etc.) in the Homebrew folder, but I'm sick of looking at silly little ripped extras categorized as homebrew. The whole point in what I'm doing is so you can have ALL of the games in one folder while still maintaining good organization. The SAME thing can be achieved by simply creating boxart without any kind of theme, but then you can't tell which games are homebrew and which games are legitimate Xbox titles.
The checklists I've been using are the xbins FTP games directory and the homebrew section over at xboxisozone. I made a folder full of sub-directories named after each game that I need to make boxart for. As I find artwork for a game, the images go right into that game's folder.
As for arcade games and emulators, I'm not sure what to do. There are a TON of different arcade emulators, and then there's Xbox Live Arcade.
If Xbox Media Center allowed you to have...not sure how to word this...like a programs menu within your programs menu, everything would be much neater. Like have an Emulators folder, then have Sega, Nintendo, Arcade, etc. Sega would contain Genesis/CD/32x, Master System/Game Gear, and Dreamcast VMU. Nintendo would contain NES, SNES, Virtual Boy, GB/GBC/GBA, and N64. Arcade would contain all of the different types of arcade machines.
WAIT A SECOND I THINK I JUST FIGURED OUT A SOLUTION TO THIS! It takes work, but it could work. You can do exactly what I was just talking about with folders and .xbe shortcuts! Shouldn't take too much work, either.
So on your E or F drive, you'll have a folder called Emulators. Inside that folder, you'll have xSNES9x, MAMEox, Neogenesis, etc.
What you'll do is create separate folders (anywhere) named after each brand (Nintendo, Sega, PC, Arcade, etc.) Inside each of those folder, place .XBE shortcuts for each corresponding emulator. You can name the .xbe shortcuts anything, so you don't have to worry about keeping them all default.xbe, which would make this impossible. So...inside your Arcade folder, you'll have MAME.xbe (a shortcut that leads to MAMEOX's default.xbe), COINOPS.xbe (leading to Coinops's default.xbe), etc. This is tough to explain, but do you get it? I think that will solve our emu organizing problem.
I should point out that the Emulators folder inside the Programs Menu will no longer lead to the actual emulator folder, but the folder containing each brand name (PC, Arcade, Nintendo, Etc.) Crap...alright now I'm doubting myself, I have to go see if this actually works.
IT DOES!!!!! IT WORKS!!!! I wasn't sure if you would actually be seeing the .tbn files listed within the programs menu, but you don't...thankfully. So, yes...it works, and here's how you'd set it up:
Note - I used Halo 2 Killtrocity boxart as the arcade.tbn icon for the Arcade folder that will lead to the multiple Arcade emulators, just as a quick test. I used my dead or alive.xbe SHORTCUT (that leads to the DOA1.xbe file inside my Dead or Alive Ultimate folder, which is in the Games directory) also just as a test shortcut for the Arcade folder. You have to place the tbn file for the correct emulator inside each folder of shortcuts and name it after the .xbe shortcut. So inside the Arcade folder, I have the dead or alive.xbe shortcut AND the dead or alive.tbn image. This is an example of what placing a shortcut file to, say, MAMEox's default.xbe, naming the shortcut MAMEox.xbe and naming its icon MAMEox.tbn...all in the arcade folder. Here's a closer look:
This officially allows us to categorize our emulators WAY better. We can now have all PC emulators within a folder INSIDE the emulators folder, all Arcade emulators inside their own folder, etc...all with icons. Now we can even have, for example, a Sega folder WITH a Sega logo that leads to all of the Sega emulators, all with their own icons. And all without having to worry about seeing stupid little files floating around in our programs menu
