Pink Skin!

Now that the cabinet is working and the computer is mostly configured it's time to start polishing the details. The first order of business is replacing the "gamelauncher" skin on my front end with something a little nicer - and customized for Bella.

When the cabinet is first turned on it loads directly to the MaLa front-end with the "gamelauncher" skin and looks like the picture to the right. There's nothing "wrong" with it I guess - it displays all of the game names over top of a screenshot. It's simple and easy to use but I really want to tie the front end in with the rest of the design - and that means making it pink!

The great thing about MaLa is that it is totally customizable but unfortunately you need some computer skills to get the job done. I was lucky enough to have superbigjay over at the BYOAC forums take a few minutes away from his awesome project to design something for Bella's Arcade.

Check out the results:

It looks great! The main gamelist appears in the largest box on the left and the screenshot for each game appears in the large box on the right as you scroll through the list. The other rectangles contain information like the name of the Gamelist (Favorites, Maze, Puzzle, etc.) or the controls (4-way/1 button, etc.). This is all customizable so I can get it looking however I want.

The design isn't finalized yet - I still need to pick a "girly" font to display the game names (Arial is the default and it's a little plain) and finalize the type of information I want to display in each panel but it's a great start. The cabinet's pink theme is really coming together!