Most of this is true for both front end versions

The flash front end file itself:

The Flash file performs several important functions—

1. It "traps" keyboard input, allowing the movie to be controlled by key presses
2. It changes the game being displayed based on arrow-key input
      (In MAME, the right joystick input is equivalent to the arrow keys)
3. If the "select" button is pressed it:
   1. Determines what game is being shown
   2. Launches a .bat file based on that information

      

The flash file that I use is a projector file; a compiled flash movie that is a Windows executable file (.exe). Projector files:

• Can be configured to be natively full screen
• Can be viewed without the need for a browser
• Can be set to run at Windows startup

How the Dynamic Front End works

The dynamic version of the front end works similarly. However, there is an extra step involved that allows the front end to call the XML file to determine the name of the game, the name of the bat file, and the contol panel image to show. The diagram below shows how this works

 

• See the XML file loading code here
• See the game selection code here

 

Other considerations:

The fscommand directory

For security reasons, Flash is designed to only launch programs that are in a particular subdirectory (fscommand). This means that you must place your MAME executable and the associated file structure (ROMS, etc.) into the fscommand directory. So the directory structure would be:

mame_fe.exe

/fscommand

MAME32.exe

pacman.bat

centipede.bat

/ROMS

pacman

centiped

etc..

 

The batch (.bat) files

The .bat files are easy to make. Open notepad, type the appropriate commands, and then save with a .bat extension. The text to launch MAME32 with the centiped rom is below:

START Mame32.exe centiped

This can be broken down as follows:

START—Tells Windows to start (open) the file

Mame32.exe—Tells Windows which file start (open)

centiped—This is the "ROM switch" that tells MAME32.exe which