Cxmame

I recently had the opportunity to try out the Cxmame project, a console-based frontend for xmame. The software uses the ncurses library and was designed with xmame.svgalib in mind, but I was pleased to discover that it works well with all xmame targets.

Before running Cxmame, I had to create a ~/.cxmamerc file containing the name of the xmame executable (with full path if it's not in my PATH) followed by a ';'. This was a straightforward process, and I appreciated the clear instructions provided by the software.

The first time I ran Cxmame, it scanned my roms and built a gamelist from them. This process took a little while, but it only happens the first time, and I was able to set my rompath as per normal in my xmamerc file.

In terms of updates, the latest release of Cxmame has made some important changes. The wmaker gui has been removed, which I found helped to keep the software slimline. Additionally, a bug that prevented the menu from being displayed in an xterm has been fixed, which is a welcome improvement.

Overall, I found the Cxmame project to be a simple and effective tool for managing xmame. If you're looking for a console-based frontend, I would definitely recommend giving this software a try.