TODO - v0.2.b20, 29-MAY-2011
Known bugs and restrictions
- Certain GUI styles may cause display problems for the emulator configuration widgets
- The built-in joystick GUI control includes support for trackballs -- this is completely untested due to the lack of controllers with trackballs (it should basically work, but be prepared for bugs and unexpected behavior!)
- The icon sizes of all menu actions are not adjusted to the actual font size -- this is a Qt restriction, and I have not yet found a way to work around this restriction... however, it's just a minor/cosmetic issue
- On UNIX / X11 platforms, the QMC2 variant launcher will try to raise a probably already running other variant -- this feature is very dependent on the window manager which may decide to ignore XMapRaised()
- Variant launching does not work on Windows yet
- MAME/MESS output notifiers are not supported on Windows yet
- The MiniWebBrowser -- used for the MAWS lookup and the documentation browser -- has a fairly restrictive set of features which is tailored to the uses of QMC2.
It's not even meant to be a full-featured browser. However, when using Qt 4.7.1+, the browser works quite nicely. It even supports plugins (when enabled at compile time).
- Depending on the complexity of a style / style sheet combination, it may slow down GUI operations (that's no bug, but you should note it)
- Embedded emulators that change their display sizes at runtime (usually during startup) may not be correctly centered initially -- however, we made several improvements related to this in v0.2.b19 so that it should happen only very rarely
- Corrupted PNG images may cause crashes -- if the log file contains corresponding Qt warning or error messages after the crash, please correct your images!! For instance, we've experienced Qt paint engine crashes due to wrong iCCP chunks. After correcting the corrupted PNGs (using convert from ImageMagick) the crashes were history.
- Both the 'set repair' and 'set rewriter' functions (ROMAlyzer features) only work on ZIPs! As of yet, there's no support for CHDs or ROM sets stored as unzipped files in individual sub-directores.
- When using MinGW on Windows, the support for Phonon audio-effects causes severe troubles, so it#s disabled programmatically and you'll get a FIXME warning related to this in the front-end log -- when we find the root cause of this issue, it will be enabled again (but it's also not very important)
Work in progress
- Completing the support for software lists -- basically working, but some planned functionality is still missing, and there are open questions regarding the official way to scan the hash XML data
- Adding support for an optional ROM/CHD database which can be used to store unique copies of all (good) ROMs and CHDs and to retrieve complete sets from it to a local path -- among other things, this can be used to keep different versions of individual ROM/CHD files (due to changing sets) or to just keep your local ROM path clean
- Adding a standalone template translator tool (see tools/template_tool/*)
- Embedder options: additional functions for the snapshot tool (directly use snapshots as preview- or title-images), add a movie generator, ...
- Arcade mode: partially working, disabled by default (use "make WIP=1 ..." for a preview) -- development frozen: a complete rewrite is planned
Planned changes, new features and improvements for QMC2 0.2
- Add a full-featured chdman UI, probably as a stand-alone tool
- Add a backup / restore tool for QMC2's configuration and caches (though it's a trivial task, see Q2.17 in the FAQ)
- Add export / import functionality for YouTube video attachments (to allow for merging of videos found by different people, or to backup / restore discovered videos)
- Add a 'driver status' column
- Add a sysinfo.dat generator for MESS (may also be used as an official replacement for the existing wiki-to-sysinfo.dat converter from Duke)
- Add support to allow for tagging of games/machines and to use these tags later for batch processing (could be useful for the ROMAlyzer, individual ROM checks, the demo mode and the ROM tool)
- Update MAWS quick download links: the cabinet artwork URLs are no longer found (since the latest MAWS site changes)
- Extend the template syntax to include the version an option was added/removed and process such options only if the current MAME/MESS version lies within this range (both new attributes will be optional, though, meaning that if they are omitted QMC2 will process the respective option regardless of the current MAME/MESS version -- just as it works now)
- Add a joystick & keyboard configurator for MAME and MESS
- Add support for variant launching on Windows
- Add support for MAME/MESS output notifications on Windows
- Add support for even more game/machine images (hiscores, howtos, ...)
- Improve the image checker to also support all additional image data (consider a complete rewrite of the image checker)
- Create an improved setup wizard with QWizard
- Fix case-insensitive obsoleteness checks (image- and sample-checks) on Windows -- see bug tracker ID #5
- Consider improving the encryption for stored passwords (weak now, but a warning is presented)