Help With Mame Config?

[Gath]

Hi, I'm relatively new to mame, and very new to setting up attract.

I'm running lubuntu, compiled mame v.151 and attract v.1.3.2

I configured mame, and then generated a rom list in attract, but whenever I launch a rom in attract the mame screen flashes with loading game 0% and goes right back to attract menu.

It never even starts the game, just flashes the mame loading game 0%.

I launched mame and tried launching a few games, and some work, other complain about missing .chd or bios. As usual.

Why won't attract launch the game's correctly, I'm using almost the default mame config that attract gives, just modified paths. 

[Gath]

One more question is, how do i switch layouts?


I've set the toggle layouts button, but when I toggle the layout attract mode crashes with this error:

Code: [Select]

~/Desktop$ ./StartAttract.sh
Warning: Attract-Mode was compiled to look for its default configuration files in: /usr/local/share/attract/, which is not available.
Error loading language resource file: en
Script file not found:
Script file not found:
./StartAttract.sh: line 1:  2066 Floating point exception(core dumped)
I've gotten zsnes working perfectly, just not mame. I'd like to have a cool layout showing boxart maybe screenshots/videos instead of the bland black default layout.

[Luke_Nukem]

First thing I've got to ask, is MAME working correctly on its own?

Usually it will dump back out to console after trying to load a game that is missing roms etc.



As for the other problem.
"Warning: Attract-Mode was compiled to look for its default configuration files in: /usr/local/share/attract/, which is not available." holds the key.
Create that directory, and put the attract files in there. Attract will also look for its files in the current working dir.

I'm sure Raygun will correct me if I'm wrong.

[Gath]

First thing I've got to ask, is MAME working correctly on its own?

Usually it will dump back out to console after trying to load a game that is missing roms etc.



As for the other problem.
"Warning: Attract-Mode was compiled to look for its default configuration files in: /usr/local/share/attract/, which is not available." holds the key.
Create that directory, and put the attract files in there. Attract will also look for its files in the current working dir.

I'm sure Raygun will correct me if I'm wrong.

I got mame working correctly, it loads games mostly perfect now. I was just missing some required roms.

I did what you said and created /usr/local/share/attract folder and filled it with config files and layout scripts, plugins, etc. It still crashes when trying to change layout.

This is the error I get now when I start attract-mode and attempt to toggle through layouts:

Code: [Select]

nobody@nothing:~/attract-1.3.2$ ./attract
Script file not found:
Floating point exception (core dumped)
nobody@nothing:~/attract-1.3.2$


[raygun]

Hi Gath,

You can change the layout that gets used in the "lists" configuration in the config menu.  Its one of the options for each list.  The toggle layout button is for switching between multiple versions of the same layout (if multiple vers are present).

I'm not sure why its crashing when you press the toggle layout button.  if you could let me know what layout you are getting the crash on I'll try to reproduce it here.

[Gath]

Hi Gath,

You can change the layout that gets used in the "lists" configuration in the config menu.  Its one of the options for each list.  The toggle layout button is for switching between multiple versions of the same layout (if multiple vers are present).

I'm not sure why its crashing when you press the toggle layout button.  if you could let me know what layout you are getting the crash on I'll try to reproduce it here.

Ahhhh, stupid me. I thought toggle lists meant going through the lists.. I have the layouts working correctly now thanks to you.

The layout that crashes when you press the toggle layout button is the very default one, as you can see in this attract.cfg snippet zsnes would be using the default layout since no layout is specified.

Code: [Select]

# Generated by Attract-Mode 1.3.2
#
list mame
layout               attracman
romlist              mame

list zsnes
romlist              zsnes

sound
sound_volume         100
ambient_volume       100
movie_volume         100
One more thing, forget what I said about mame working. Mame for some reason or another only works if I cd to my mame directory, launch mame, start one game, then go back to my attract dir and launch attract.

If I don't launch mame first, then mame will just flash loading game 0% upon selecting a mame game in attract.

Here's my mame.cfg:

Code: [Select]

# Generated by Attract-Mode 1.3.2
#
executable           $HOME/mame/mame64
args                 [name]
rompath              $HOME/mame/roms/
romext               .zip;.7z;<DIR>
listxml              mame
artwork    flyer           
artwork    marquee         $HOME/mame/marquees
artwork    snap            $HOME/mame/videos;$HOME/mame/snap
artwork    wheel           


[Gath]

Ok, I've found the real reason why mame isn't working.

Mame only works if I launch attract from my mame directory.

Like:

Code: [Select]

null@nothing:~$ cd mame
null@nothing:~/mame$ ../Desktop/StartAttract.sh

Is there any way to fix this?

EDIT:
Fixed by adding this to my startup script:

Code: [Select]

cd $HOME/mame/

[raygun]

Ok that's great that you fixed it.

I'll look into having the frontend change the working directory to match the location of the executable on Linux.  That will match the behaviour on windows and should avoid this problem for the future for others.

[Gath]

alright, that would be awesome.

Especially since currently I've been having to do some really hacky stuff to get everything working correctly (like putting my glide64.ini in my mame folder to get mame and mupen64plus to both work correctly)