This is a how-to guide on a software called ixbar3000. It's written fast, so there are typos and errors. The pre-alpha-team managed to install their ixbar3000's with this.
Forum (no-registeration needed)
Projectpage (Download and Bug-Tracker)
!!! NO ROMS ARE INCLUDED! DO NOT ASK NO-ONE HERE KNOWS! and you'll be banned! !!!
!!! The Program is in Alpha state, Expect odd behaviour and bugs !!!
Steps 1 & 2 are absolutely essential!
Step 3.1 is a very important step as it is required for all subjequent steps.
Steps 3.2 & 3.3 are for players.
Before you can run this tcl/tk software, you'll need ActiveStates' ActiveTCL, get it from: http://www.activestate.com/activetcl/downloads.
Extract the tar.gz
Open Terminal and go to the directory you just created (by extract) and type.
./install.sh
! If you get an error 'cannot open libXss.so.1', type the following:
sudo apt-get install libxss1
That will install the missing component.
Then type again
./install.sh
Now you should get the install window open. [IMG:Installer]
I suggest to install it under your user ie: '~/activetcl85' , I'm not sure if all performs well if you install it into /opt as the installer suggests. If you wish to experiment you'll probably need sudo the install command. [IMG:Runtime Directory]
After installing ActiveTCL you can also make your own tcl/tk programs easily!
However if you try to start ixbar3000, you'll get an error, for there's a package that needs to be installed first.
Teapot is ActiveTCL's package manager. Under Linux you use it thus (in terminal):
cd ./ActiveTCL85/bin $ ./teacup install crc32
Install the program with admin rights! This is nescessary as it also sets some system paths, enables teacup and such.
After installing ActiveTCL you can also make your own tcl/tk programs easily!
However if you try to start ixbar3000, you'll get an error, for there's a package that needs to be installed first.
Under windows you'll start the cmd (startmenu->run->cmd) and type:
teacup install crc32
Get the software from sourceforge.
ixbar3k doesn't have any check-functions for resolutions, so if you think ib3k is too wide or narrow, edit the '_config.tcl'-file located in the SYS directory.
!! NOTE! As of version 0.14 a preparsed database is provided. Meaning that this step is only for updating. !!
Once you have activated the systems of your choosing, it's time to setup those.
ixbar3000 is strongly based on datfiles (= a file containing information: sizes, names and checksums).
datfiles are provided by: no-intro (ROM), redump-project (CD-images), MAME (Arcade ROM) and then there's the CustomList option (DOS, Linux, Windows).
Depending on what your activated systems are, you'll need the corresponding datfile. [IMG:downloading datfile]
- no-intro
- redump-project (erm, disabled for now)
- MAME (erm, disabled for now)
- CustomList
ixbar3000 does NOT give the user any feed back on the parsing process! The only feedback happens once the parse is done: [IMG:Parse done]. It should take about 1 min / 1 Mb of datfile.
DEPRECATED
To setup emulators, you need to download them and extract them somewhere.
inside the GUI we have these values:
Active -- Sets the system active, ixbar3000 restart needed before the system is displayed.
LoadType -- This tells ixbar how to load the program. See the table at the bottom of this document for reference.
Windows -- Executable. If you use windows set this.
Linux -- Executable. Linux users need only program name here :)
Preset -- presets for the emulator. Most emulators accept additional parameters like "--fullscreen"
Postset -- postsets for the emulator
RomDir -- this is the directory where your roms are. The directory has to be flat, ie. not having any folders (They wont harm, but the function is not recursive).
If you make changes, make sure you save.
There are three *.ixb files, PCLINUXgamelist, PCDOSgamelist and PCgamelist; Linux, Dos and Windows -platforms respectively.
Inside (Linux) you'll find something like this:
abbr{uqm}: name{Ur-Quan Masters};
Inside (DOS) you'll find something like this:
abbr{D_MOO2}: name{Master of Orion 2};
As you can see they look alike. So what should you do with these? Well basically, you'll need to list every program here you wish to use.
It's a major pain in the arse, but well worth it, especially with dosbos as ixbar3000 automounts the drives!
abbr sets the database entry. MAKE SURE THEY'RE UNIQUE!!
name sets the name in the frontend.
Something about the abbr: 'D_' is a DOS identifier, 'W_'is a Windows identifier and for linux, Use the name that the program has. ie. test it in terminal first.
After you've done your CustomList, it can be parsed just like the dat files! But be careful as that syntax is critical! ONLY CHANGE VALUES INSIDE THE { }.
[IMG:Starting Native Programs]
For graphics ixbar3000 uses nointroreloaded graphics packs. Get them:
Once you have the packs you desire, extract them into ./IMG/$DB_NAME/Named_Snaps and ./IMG/$DB_NAME/Named_Titles
$DATABASENAME being the system you have the packs for (MAME, NES, SNES, C64)
ixbar3000 supports the following images: Title - Can be found at (NIR) Gameplay - (NIR) Boxart - Supported, but no known sources Icon - Supported, but no known sources
ixbar3000 supports awards, a feature present only in this software. Award-functionality merges the PSN-trophies and MS-achievements's and extends this into all entries in ixbar3000!
If you are unfamiliar with the seventh generation of consoles, Trophies and Achievements are a way to accomplish small things during the game.
Since this is a very unique feature, I designed it so that it can be used to track any stat. For example High-Scores (Pacman, Super Mario, etc), Best Times (F-Zero, Sonic, etc), Milestones (defeated lv1 boss) and so on.
There's two types of awards boolean and text.
boolean is used when the award is a choise between yes/no. Examples 'Defeated Dracula', 'Found all heart pieces', 'Flawless Victory'
text is used for everything else: times, scores, credits, titles.
Each parsed entry (game) is supported by ixbar3k automatically.
However every award-file needs to be created manually! As such it's a feature that must be crowdsourced. Should you contribute to this project do note that the license of ixbar3000 is CC-BY-NC. Which means that: you'll be credited from your work and you allow others to improve it, but not on any commercial project.
Here's the first three lines from Fallour 3's awardfile.
# ixbar3000 awardfile for Fallout 3, by DeusIX
>id{001}i; name{Platinum Trophy}n; type{bool}t; pts.{100}p; clas{4}c; desc{Collect all other 50 Trophies for this Trophy};
>id{002}i; name{Vault 101 Citizenship Award}n; type{bool}t; pts.{10}p; clas{1}c; desc{Got the Pip-Boy 3000};
1st line - Is only for crediting purposes: # ixbar3000 awardfile for $GAMENAME, by $AUTHOR
2nd & 3rd lines have the award data. Let's take a closer look to the 3rd one:
>id{002}i; - unique id. make sure that these are unique!
name{Vault 101 Citizenship Award}n; - Name of the award
type{bool}t; - The type of the award either bool or text
pts.{10}p; - Amount of point received when completing this.
clas{1}c; - Type of Trophy 1-4 [1=Bronze, 2=Silver, 3=Gold, 4=Platinum]
desc{Got the Pip-Boy 3000}; - Description of the award
Award images are located in the same-named directory than the award-file. So if the award-file is 'Fallout 3.txt' then the directory that holds the images is 'Fallout 3'.
Award images are 48x48 png's. The images use that unique id as filenames, so Award with id 001 correlates to '001.png'.
FYI: You should get an alert 'Game Over Man' if the running program exits properly. However there are plenty of cases where this doesn't happen (uqm, fusion under windows, etc). There should be some effort in charting what emulators/programs exit good and what doesn't.
- If your first program happens to exit abnormally (=no 'game over man') then the database doesn't get created. This means that you won't get stats from that session. However once the database exists then statistics are collected, strange.
This list is updates as we get more feedback.
| SYSTEM | DAT | LOAD | WIN | LIN |
| Linux | CL | LIN | Cygwin ? | native |
| Windows | CL | WIN | native | Wine |
| DOS | CL | DOS | Dosbox | Dosbox |
| DOS (CD) | CL | DOS | Not supported | Not supported |
| MAME | MAME | MAME | MAME | MAME |
| Atari - 5200 | NI | PARAM | ||
| Atari - Jaguar | NI | PARAM | ||
| Atari - Lynx | NI | PARAM | ||
| Atari - ST | NI | PARAM | ||
| Bandai - WonderSwan Color | NI | PARAM | mednafen | |
| Bandai - WonderSwan | NI | PARAM | mednafen | |
| Casio - Loopy | NI | PARAM | ||
| Casio - PV-1000 | NI | PARAM | ||
| Coleco - ColecoVision | NI | PARAM | ||
| Commodore - 64 | NI | CBM | Vice | Vice |
| Commodore - 64 (PP) | NI | CBM | Vice | Vice |
| Commodore - 64 (Tapes) | NI | CBM | Vice | Vice |
| Commodore - Amiga | NI | CBM | Vice | Vice |
| Commodore - Plus-4 | NI | CBM | Vice | Vice |
| Commodore - VIC-20 | NI | CBM | Vice | Vice |
| Emerson - Arcadia 2001 | NI | PARAM | ||
| Entex - Adventure Vision | NI | PARAM | ||
| Epoch - Super Cassette Vision | NI | PARAM | ||
| Fairchild - Channel F | NI | PARAM | ||
| Funtech - Super Acan | NI | PARAM | ||
| GamePark - GP32 | NI | PARAM | ||
| GCE - Vectrex | NI | PARAM | ||
| Hartung - Game Master | NI | PARAM | ||
| Magnavox - Odyssey2 | NI | PARAM | ||
| Microsoft - MSX | NI | PARAM | openmsx | |
| Microsoft - MSX2 | NI | PARAM | openmsx | |
| NEC - PC Engine - TurboGrafx 16 | NI | PARAM | mednafen | |
| NEC - Super Grafx | NI | PARAM | mednafen | |
| Nintendo - Famicom Disk System | NI | PARAM | ||
| Nintendo - Game Boy | NI | PARAM | ||
| Nintendo - Game Boy Advance | NI | PARAM | mednafen | |
| Nintendo - Game Boy Color | NI | PARAM | ||
| Nintendo - Nintendo 3DS | NI | PARAM | ||
| Nintendo - Nintendo 64 | NI | PARAMZ | mupen64plus | mupen64plus |
| Nintendo - Nintendo DS | NI | PARAM | ||
| Nintendo - Nintendo DSi | NI | PARAM | ||
| Nintendo - Nintendo Entertainment System | NI | PARAM | fceux | fceux mednafen |
| Nintendo - Pokemon Mini | NI | PARAM | ||
| Nintendo - Super Nintendo Entertainment System | NI | PARAM | ZSNES | ZSNES |
| Nintendo - Virtual Boy | NI | PARAM | ||
| Nintendo - Dolphin | RD | PS2 | Dolphin | |
| Nokia - N-Gage | NI | -- | ||
| Philips - Videopac+ | NI | PARAM | MESS ^ | |
| RCA - Studio II | NI | PARAM | ||
| Sega - 32X | NI | PARAM | Kega Fusion | |
| Sega - Game Gear | NI | PARAM | Kega Fusion | |
| Sega - Master System - Mark III | NI | PARAM | Kega Fusion | |
| Sega - Mega Drive - Genesis | NI | PARAM | Kega Fusion ¤ | Kega Fusion |
| Sega - PICO | NI | PARAM | Kega Fusion | |
| Sega - SG-1000 | NI | PARAM | Kega Fusion | |
| Sony - Playstation | RD | PSX | pcsx | |
| Sony - Playstation 2 | RD | PS2 | PCSX2 | |
| SNK - Neo Geo Pocket | NI | PARAM | MESS | |
| SNK - Neo Geo Pocket Color | NI | PARAM | MESS | |
| Tiger - Game.com | NI | PARAM | MESS | |
| Tiger - Gizmondo | NI | -- | ||
| VTech - CreatiVision | NI | PARAM | MESS ^ | |
| Watara - Supervision | NI | PARAM | MESS ` | |
| xx | ||||
| Colour Codes: | No Known Issues! | Works Partially | Doesn't Work | Not Tested |
NOTE! While the above table idicates working status, it may NOT work on your setup! Colours are based in the feedback of users, so green means that someone has managed to load it without issues.
NI (No-Intro), CL (CustomList)
¤ Load ok, fail on exit, no stats
` Works in theory, but ixbar3000 lacks functionality
^ Load ok, gets stats, exit needs sudo kill -9
~ Highly experimental. Does run something, but fails alot!
While loading mame works, if one chooses to start a rom that doesn't word, it might freeze the OS! Parser doesn't handle compatibilities. Mame parser skips data.
No questions asked. For FAQ questions, use the kusaba forum to ask (www.imxn.net/kusabax).
© 1998 - 2012 IMXN, All Rights Reserved
![[IMG:Installer]](./ixbar3000/U_ixb_004.jpg){kind=link}
![[IMG:Runtime Directory]](./ixbar3000/U_ixb_003.jpg){kind=link}
![[IMG:Teapot install crc32]](./ixbar3000/U_ixb_005.jpg){kind=link}
![[IMG:downloading datfile]](./ixbar3000/U_ixb_011.jpg){kind=link}
![[IMG:Parse done]](./ixbar3000/U_ixb_009.jpg){kind=link}
![[IMG:Starting Native Programs]](./ixbar3000/U_ixb_013.jpg){kind=link}