Welcome to the QuickPlay homepage. QuickPlay is a windows-only powerful universal emulator
'frontend-of-frontends', which has support for countless emulators and systems, old and new, with a philosophy of being quick and easy for new users, yet comprehensive and flexible for old-timers. It was written in the heyday of RAD and OO frontends (as such it's written in Delphi), and like other frontends of the time, its very powerful and able to support considerable complexity and customisation (think MAMEUI, but on steroids). However unlike many other frontends of the time, its also very flexible and adaptable, and still updated by enthusiastic supporters. It takes a fresh approach to the backend which, in particular, gives blisteringly-fast search over large and diverse romsets.
Its creator, John Scott (wherever you are), came up with the idea of EMU-Finder files and scans, which have stood the test of time and proved to be immensely powerful. To date i think that QuickPlay supports the most emulators, multi-emulators, and other frontends (MAME, MESS, RetroArch, Gamebase, Mednafen, BlueMSX, WinUAELoader, and others). It also favors archived roms (7zip, the Good sets in particular) and incorporates a Multiloader disk loader for all kinds of CD/DVD-based systems, no matter how you compress them, and Tempest's ROMDATA files, giving auto-game information for a great many 80's and 90's systems.
Quickplay is quite a different proposition than other retro-frontends as it favours functionality and simplicity over looks - you'll find thoroughness and consideration for users here, rather than gameplay videos and logos
Its creator, John Scott (wherever you are), came up with the idea of EMU-Finder files and scans, which have stood the test of time and proved to be immensely powerful. To date i think that QuickPlay supports the most emulators, multi-emulators, and other frontends (MAME, MESS, RetroArch, Gamebase, Mednafen, BlueMSX, WinUAELoader, and others). It also favors archived roms (7zip, the Good sets in particular) and incorporates a Multiloader disk loader for all kinds of CD/DVD-based systems, no matter how you compress them, and Tempest's ROMDATA files, giving auto-game information for a great many 80's and 90's systems.
Quickplay is quite a different proposition than other retro-frontends as it favours functionality and simplicity over looks - you'll find thoroughness and consideration for users here, rather than gameplay videos and logos
News
QuickPlay 4.7.6 is released
Features
- export: #49 - added name and comment to ini export
- see https://forums.quickplayfrontend.com/viewtopic.php?t=1449
- thanks to user hasseno for raising this
Mametool
- mame: Fix issues found running against Mame 0.241
- Fix issue with softlist printing -
- https://forums.quickplayfrontend.com/viewtopic.php?t=2652
- thanks to user u-neeks
- stop hardcoding Mame64 in generated Mame efind. Instead use the Mame emulator the user has selected
- fix illegal filename chars introduced in a single emulator in Mame 0.219, causing softlist printing to exit
- Exclude more new boring systems
- Re-class all ZX Spectrums as Sinclair (Mame started calling some Amstrad)
- mame: rethink Mame filepaths functionlity:
- Possibilities for Mame rompaths set by users is arbitrary, therefore convention can't be guessed by machines, instead ask the user to tell us via dropdowns where each of the four romtypes we deal with are
- Thanks to Ulao and others for raising issues that led to this conclusion
- fix bug with Mame filepaths checkbox/flag, also disable correct sections if filepath printing has been disabled
- alter Mame Options form to accomodate filepaths
- alter all Mame 'printer' forms - should never have been able to change Mame emulator at the point of printing (since this potentially invalidates a number of decisions already made in Mame Options like rompaths)
- add call to to get rompath from Mame's settings ini, add UI elements to display to user
- always turn mame rompaths absolute (in case use has relative rompaths)
- logic to invalidate rompath is your mame executable or its ini file change
- improve saving of filepath/rompath
- trim mame.ini's rompath properly
- make no-path printing consistent between arcade and softlist printing
Bugfixes
- romlist: relabel 'delete rom'...
- this does not delete any files from disk, it removes item from your romdata
- https://forums.quickplayfrontend.com/viewtopic.php?t=1452
- thanks to user quickplayer
- romlist: prompt before clearing romlist
- https://forums.quickplayfrontend.com/viewtopic.php?t=1452
- thanks to jaw970 for posting this one
- open dir: fix opening Rom in explorer issue when comma part of filename,
- properly escape filename...
- see https://forums.quickplayfrontend.com/viewtopic.php?t=1338
- thanks to user quickplayer for pointing this out
- qpnode: upgrade node.js version qpnode from node 10 to 14
- This should stop windows defender flagging QPnode.exe as a potential virus
- see https://forums.quickplayfrontend.com/viewtopic.php?t=1436#p2008
- Thanks to Sandman1973 on the forums for raising this
- synctool: increase default time tolerance for file comparison
- for whatever reason, often src and dest files have timestamps which differ only by ms, they are the same file
Technical Debt
- git: Add 'lib' directory to source code
- often we don't add tons of external libs to our source, however several needs arose over time, and in this case, it makes sense
- qpnode: fix issue with pkg and native module
- see https://github.com/vercel/pkg/issues/1319
- qpnode: enable combinatory operations to be run in sequence
- e.g.:(scan then softlist printing in dev)
- qpnode: better usage info when invoked with no args
- qpnode: slightly improved logging
- qpnode: add linting config
- qpnode: improve readme/dev instructions
- mame: Refactor Mame options logic generally e.g.: gatekeepers for xml scan
- mame: add inputs to source code
QuickPlay 4.7.5 is released
- misc fixes for about form
- mametool fix bug when user only has one rompath in their mame.ini for all romtypes (ie: when CHDs etc are subfolders of their ROMS folder) - bug found by user sekelje
- mametool allow rompaths in mame.ini to be relative (detect relative paths, and append mame emulator path to all paths found if folder is relative) - raiseed by sekelje
- mametool fix issue discovered with Mame 220: devices do not need instances or extensions according to MAME DTD, Mametool was assuming all devices would have instances (useless without?). Remove devices without instances and additionally defensively protect use of device briefnames - bug found by sekelje
- mametool take naming of 'Acorn Computers' (MAME 220) back to 'Acorn' (QuickPlay company names try to be as simple/short as possible, if the intention was to highight a difference between well-known Acorn and another Acorn, should have renamed the other Acorn)
- romdata magician Genesis can't coexist w Genesis/32X...
- Romdata Magician GBA current system name needs bumping...
- updated repo readme
QuickPlay 4.7.4 is released
- Update retroarch efind to retroarch 1.81
- new 3ds ico
QuickPlay 4.7.3 is released
- correct version no (thanks jaw970)
QuickPlay 4.7.2 is released
- Fix internationalisation issue
- Update jap 7zip dll
- Make extract to qpdir default
- Add and update numerous efinds
