The Master Cow's Game Menu v0.99k5
copyright 1999 - 2007 Jason Quattrini
readme.txt
This is preliminary. It is by no means complete, until I say so.
OK, "so."
What exactly is this beast?
===========================
[ The majority of text in this file is old. The brother referred to is
now much older. The idea is still the same... the computer... well,
that has undergone several transformations, through a Pentium II
running Windows 98 and now an AMD Athlon64 running Windows XP. Any newer
text will pop up in these convenient bracket piles. End! ]
Well, my little brother (8 years old) can understand the basics of using a
computer. I'm running MS-DOS 6.22 on a 486/66. He gets frustrated when
he can't get the computer to change to the right directory to run a game.
So i figured "Hmm, I hate programming, so why not write a program that will
let someone run any game(*) from one simple menu...", so that's what I did.
(*) Originally intended for games, but if you can put it in the menu, you
can probably run it.
What's that, you say? Sounds familiar?
=======================================
Well, on a (not so) recent trek to visit my friends up at college, one of
them commented "So you pretty much took the big selling point of Windows 95
and did it with text instead of graphics." "What do you mean?" said I.
"The Start Button was the major selling point for Win95." After he said
that, I thought about it, and he's pretty much right.
[ Wow! Now that's old text! ]
And now, the basics:
====================
Run it with runme.bat. Don't type gmenu.exe, or it won't actually run your
game. If there is no current configuration file, one will be created. If
there is one, and you haven't messed it up, you should be off and running.
It runs under MS-DOS, Win9x, and perhaps DOS emulators (for LINUX etc.)
I've tested it extensively using DOS 6.22, and Win98, and haven't run into
any problems. [ The newest version 0.99k3 was mildly modified to work
properly in Windows XP. ] One note, though, that if you're running
a windows-based game/application from the menu, it will drop right back to
the menu when you run it. Not to say your program won't run, because it
will. You will be able to use the menu while it is running though.
So, like this
x:\whatever\> runme.bat [-options]
or click on the runme icon. Eesh.
You can use several options, but if you'll be changing more than five
colors at any one time, you'll either have to do it twice, using five
color changes each time, or run gmenu [-options]. The reason for this is
that you can only use up to 10 things to pass to the exe using that batch
file.
Available options are
mainbg - sets the background color of the main screen
mainfg - sets the text color of the main screen (excluding the
button thingies)
namebg - sets the color of the game list window
namefg - sets the text color of the game list
winbg - set the background and text colors for the option,
winfg - directory, and executable name windows
barbg - set the colors for the highlight bar in the game list
barfg - window
resetcols - resets the color scheme to the default
cs # - selects one of five predefined color schemes
help, h, or ? - displays a brief help message
These options must be preceded by either a dash "-" or a slash "/".
Currently, they are case sensitive, so please use all lower case letters.
can be any one of the following:
black grey
blue lblue
green lgreen
cyan lcyan
red lred
magenta lmagenta
brown yellow
lgrey white
Any backgrounds may only be colors from the first column. If a color from
the second column is used, it'll use the color next to it in the first
column instead. Any text (foreground) may be any of the colors listed.
An "l" as the first letter means it's either light, or bright, but not
Lite Brite.
There are five predefined color schemes you can select with the -cs option.
-cs 1 (Ahh! Comp Sci 1!) makes the main window blue, the highlight bar
red, and some other stuff. It produces the same effect as using the
-resetcols option
-cs 2 provides a red based menu
-cs 3 is black for all backgrounds and light grey for all foregrounds
(white for the highlight bar foreground) . This provides for a
pseudo cow-like effect.
-cs 4 if for those of you who want an old dumb terminal feeling for your
menu. Everything is done with black and greens, except for the
things that you cant's change the colors for.
-cs 5 is sort of honey-ish. Browns and yellows.
I like 1, 2, and 3. 5 is OK. 4 is hideous.
As for the keys to use while running the program:
Up Down Left Right PageUp PageDown Home End
Scrolling in list x x x x x x
Editing names/descripts x x x x x x
Moving between buttons
in a sub-menu x x x x
DEL will bring up a confirmation window for deleting the current game
entry if you are in the main scrolly window.
INS will copy the currently selected game/item.
ENTER uses/confirms/enters everything.
ESC can be used to cancel a submenu. When not in a submenu, it quits
the program.
Pressing any letter/character while in the game list will bring you to
the next item that starts with that character.
And, now (since v0.99k) you may use the function keys F1 - F8 to cycle
through the colors for the elements of the menu that you can actually set
the colors for in the first place. Thus you may not need my beautiful
command lines color options I worked so hard on so long ago...
*sniff sniff*
You can use pretty much everything when entering name, descriptions, etc.,
so make sure you enter valid stuff for directory name, executable name,
and options, or your program won't run right (or at all). If the names of
the items are longer than what can fit in their respective windows, an
ellipses (Oh my god! Someone has stolen the sun!) (...) will appear to let
you know not everything is being displayed.
A breakdown of the configuration file:
======================================
The first line of the config file is a list of eight numbers, each within
the 0 to 15 range. Each number corresponds to a color, falling in the same
order as the color options are listed above.
Each game name is preceded by ‘ (character 145, created by holding ALT and
typing 145 at the same time when editing a text file... in DOS anyway).
The name is on the same line as the character. The next line is the
directory (folder for you windows-dependant people) that the game resides
in. It DOES NOT contain a trailing backslash "\". I might fix it later so
you can do it either way. The third line lists the name of the file to
run, be it an executable file, a com file, a batch file, or whatever. The
fourth line contains any options you want to run it with. These are typed
exactly as you would type the if running the game without the menu. This
fourth line ends with ’, which is ALT-146, similar to the above mentioned
character.
Try not to mess up this format. The configuration file is done as a plain
text file for two reasons:
I hate not being able to manually edit a configuration file (usually for
time consumption reasons, but also when something breaks and the program
won't run.... case in point: copying a game item before TMCGM 0.96).
I hate programming. I don't feel like figuring out how compress the
file, or encrypt it, or whatever. It's simple, and it works.
Semi-technical info:
====================
Blah blah blah
This program was written using Borland Turbo C 3.something (I think).
It is a hybrid mish-mash of C and C++. It's probably not very well
organized. The main function clearly should be broken down into many
different functions.
I think the only system requirements are a computer, a 16 color display,
some sort of MS-DOS compatible operating system and/or OS emulator, and
a keyboard and/or a keyboard emulator. Oh, and ~70k of disk space.
If you feel so inclined, you could run it on an 8086 with MCGA graphics
(possibly even EGA graphics), but there probably wouldn't be a use for it
then, except maybe to play some text adventures or Prince of Persia.
Actually, this may no longer be true because of the memory model used to
compile it, but since my 8086 has long since kicked the bucket (well, OK,
only the hard drive died) I haven't tested it on one.
One note of warning:
====================
Because this menu lets you run anything, don't do something stupid just to
see if it will do it. Yes, it will format your hard drive if you try it,
so DON'T DO IT! (unless, of course, you didn't like your hard drive
anyway...) It'll probably run anything else as well, including deleting
itself, if you feel so inclined.
Another note: (not of warning though)
=====================================
If you feel inclined to use long file names, I think you have to put double
quotes around any part of a directory or file name that has a space in it.
This menu may or may not run something if the total length of all the
combined things is exceedingly long. I personally don't have any games or
anything with a 255 character path and 255 character executable name, so I
don't know if I gave them too much space for it to still work right.
Question, problems, gripes, persnickity?
========================================
Well, that's all I have to say I think. If I forgot anything, or you find
some problem with my beautiful software, send some e-mail to
[ quattj@yahoo.com with a subject that won't get thrown away as spam. ]
Preferably some e-mail pertaining to the software and the problem. As I
mentioned earlier, I don't particularly like programming, but I might see
what I can do about it. Send me email if you think you should pay me for
this, whether or not you actually would.
I need to insert much more humor in this text. Maybe soon.
Please, please please use it? And tell me you use it??? It's nice, really
it is...
Check http://www.geocities.com/quattj/menu/index.html to find the latest
version of my amazing menu program.
(
geocities.com/quattj)