Yes you heard, I’ve dropped the K from my application name. Also I renamed the old Gamefu of mine to “Gamefu/SDL”. This is only to avoid binary and package clash, as someone could have packaged both applications(did something did package Gamefu/SDL ?, I doubt it). Anyway Gamefu/SDL is dead, there are no futher updates, though it looked damn cool. Look for Gamefu/SDL screenshots at http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=126940

Kamefu/Gamefu is now found in KDE SVN in:
/trunk/playground/games/gamefu

This the reasons I gave on the Kamefu mailing-list:

Some KDE projects recently renamed their project to remove the emphasis on the famous “K”. like amaroK
who become Amarok and oKular->Okular.
Also all the new KDE projects for KDE4 doesn’t have the K in their name:
Plasma, Oxygen, Solid, Phonon, Decidel.

So here is the advantages of the rename:
-The new name without the K gives us a “think different” philosophy from
traditional KDE apps names.
-Cooler name and more powerful brand.
-The name is also more clear about the purpose of the program, to play
games
-Give us a nice name ready for KDE4.

The Gamefu name doesn’t mean that the application is not a KDE application anymore,
it will be always a KDE application because KDE and kdelibs rocks.

Yeah no time I’ve blogged I know

I’m really proud to announce the first public beta release of my little project Kamefu (KDE All-Machine Emulator Frontend for UNIX). I published this beta to get feedback on little features to implement before 0.1 release and of course get bug reports

Ah by the way, my call for developers worked. So lately I welcome aboard Brian S. Stephan as my co-developer. Also thansk to Aiua for some patches (I lost track of him). Yet we still need more people to work for the 0.1 release and the next releases.

So what in 0.1-beta1:
-Use Qt SQLite plugin for database support
-Can filter collection based on System, Developer and Country filter.
-Nice display on meta information in sidebar
-Edit metainformation.
-Delete and trash ROM files

With support for the following systems:
-NES (Nintendo Entertainment System)
-SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)
-GB/GBC (Game Boy/Game Boy Color)
-GBA (Game Boy Advance)
-MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)

You can find the dependencies, screenshots and download links at Kamefu’s KDE-apps entry: http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=36846

I am the Lead and Unique Developer on Kamefu, KDE All Machine Emulator Frontend for UNIX.
This is a program that manage a collection of your ROMs. You can launch, filter, search ROMs. It include kfile_plugins too. Think amaroK but for your ROM collection. Each system has a Kamefu system plugin that define that the system is supported and also retrieve metadata from ROMs.

See DESIGN and website for futher description and future ideas:
Website: http://kamefu.pwsp.net/
DESGIN: http://websvn.kde.org/*checkout*/trunk/playground/games/kamefu/DESIGN?rev=488721

The source can be found in KDE SVN, see Kamefu website for instruction to retrieve the source from SVN.
SVN path: /trunk/playground/games/kamefu

This project for me is a spare time project, while Kopete and other stuff in KDE are my main priority. I really belive in the idea of the project but I have no time to work on it fully.

That’s why I’m looking for developers. There is still has much to be done.I’m looking for core developers but beginners developers can come too. You must know C++ and Qt. kdelibs knowledge is a plus.

List of TODO for a 0.1 release:
-Finish the filtering of the ROM collection.
-Finish first final UI.
-Make the MAME and Game Boy/Game Boy Color system plugin.
-Edit the meta-information from database.-Rework First Time Wizard

You can contact me at michael.larouche at kdemail.net and tell me what you want to work on Kamefu. You can also come on IRC in #kamefu. There is also the mailing-list: kemul-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

Looking forward to see new people in Kamefu development team

This morning I imported my current work on Kamefu into KDE SVN
It’s located into: /trunk/playground/games/kamefu

How to access it:

svn co -N svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde//trunk/playground/games/
cd games
svn up kamefu
svn up
make -f Makefile.cvs
./configure –enable-debug
cd kamefu
make
su -c “make install”

I decided on only focus on Kamefu and I forgot this idea of a KDE module only for emulation. Why ? I’m a human student after all

Man that was a productive weekend. I decided to concentrace my weekend freetime to make progress in Kamefu, the KDE All-Machine Emulator Frontend (and collection manager) for UNIX. Note that is NOT a frontend to XMAME like LinuxReviews guess it (see this article about aKademy 2005) The best part is that I wasn’t in Spain to attend aKademy 2005. Heh, that’s the power of the blog planets

First of all I worked on the SystemManager that handle System plugins(example of systems: NES, SNES, Genesis, GBA, MAME). So far I have only NES and SNES plugin. The only thing that they are doing is register to their mimetpye
Today I worked on Collection Building and Access. Collection Building use KDirLister class and support recursion into sub-directories. The only thing missing from Collection Building class is support for ZIP file and related to that support for RomMetaData Factory.
Collection Access can now insert a new ROM into the database.

Still it’s not ready to be imported in SVN (playground), I want to have a usuable version before to import. When all the importants parts of the framework will be there. Also I still have some hardcode into my sources

I think it’s time now to reveal my secret project. Though I didn’t make so much progress, mostly because I was busy with other projects and school.

The idea is to make a KDE module(like kdenetwork or kdeedu) dedicated to emulation. The module will be named KEmul. It offerts kfile plugins, applications and others things to integrate Emulation into the KDE desktop.

Applications planned for now:
-Kamefu (KDE All-Machine Emulator Frontend for UNIX, also a collection manager in his spare time which is the core application of the module.
-Audio plugins for chiptune formats like NSF, SPC, PSF, etc…
-KFile plugins and mimetype for ROM image.

Kamefu Prototype application that list a directory and retrive metainfo from KFile plugin. Note that SNES KFile plugin is not complete.

What is Kamefu ?

The main idea behind Kamefu is to manage a collections of ROMS from various systems. Also to serve as a frontend to differents systems which use differents emulators. Think amaroK but for your ROM collection
Which means that Kamefu will be able to:
-Build a collection manager based on ROM kfile_plugins you have installed on your system.
-Display the collection mostly like amaroK does, allow to filter by various criteria like “Editor”, “Year”, “System” and “Genre”.
-Configure system and his emulator directory into Kamefu.
-Handle list of your favorities (so called playlist in a audio/video application)
-A little application like “kfmclient” that take a rom path in input and launch the required emulator for the system.

And to fulfill this dream I will need developers I have put some information below how to be involved. I don’t have yet a entry in KDE SVN playground since real Kamefu coding haven’t started yet. I have also 3 KFile plugins done(NES, SNES and GBA).

I rediged a early rought draft of Kamefu design here:
http://kemul.sourceforge.net/DESIGN

The devel mailing-list for those interessed in the project:
KEmul-devel mailing list

The IRC channel on Freenode: #kemul

The sourceforge project which is registred since 2004, when I got the idea:

Sourceforge project page.