Topics

16

General / Lost ability to hold next game button

« on: December 29, 2018, 04:28:55 PM »

Default behavior is to hold next or previous game button and it will keep cycling through games. I am on mac os x running precompiled attract 2.5.1. Now all of a sudden, holding the next or previous game key only moves the index 1 game. This action is regardless of what theme I use. I have had attract crash twice in the last two days. Restart attract would result in a black screen and only the debug plugin showing. Deleting attract.am corrected the issue. Also regained the holding key ability. Then it happened again. Didn’t regain ability this time. Not sure if the two are related. Ideas? I tried to see if there was a config gui option and couldn’t find anything.

17

General / Merry Christmas!

« on: December 24, 2018, 09:38:41 PM »

Merry Christmas to my favorite hobby and all the friends I’ve made along the way!

Feel free to share any new Christmas gifts you may have received, or projects your currently working on! I had a little bit of time while waiting for kids to sleep to work on a major update to my shaders module. Hopefully making it something that will be used across layouts other than my own. Working this holiday week starting tomorrow. Perhaps extra income can yield me marquee plexi since I accidentally slipped when cutting mine.

18

Scripting / Issue with surface?

« on: December 08, 2018, 11:58:20 PM »

I have two layouts that use the same general format - mvscomplete and playchoicecomplete. I have an issue where if you start attractmode on a display using one of the layouts, my „container" surface is not shown unless I reload the layout. Remember, layouts get reloaded between displays. If I start with a different layout such as arcadeflow, and then switch displays, the issue will not be present. Using the intro, issue is not present. Using microsoft windows, issue is not present. Only on my mac. Which is very odd. Any ideas? Can some one take a look? I’m about to scrap the surface idea to resolve the issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gp5-aH2yLI&feature=youtu.be

https://github.com/keilmillerjr/mvscomplete/blob/master/layout.nut
https://github.com/keilmillerjr/playchoicecomplete-layout/layout.nut

19

General / Display art

« on: November 27, 2018, 03:57:10 AM »

Had a busy month. Going to do some updating/bug fixing to the random plugin after work today. With the addition of using displays, I realized that I’m lacking good artwork for them. My mvscomplete theme uses flyers/minis and video snaps. Vs system has no video snap on emumovies. I could make the video snaps. Flyers/minis? Should I make a different layout for displays? Maybe use a logo for background? Ideas?

20

General / Fun with raspberry pi

« on: November 23, 2018, 10:46:03 AM »

RetroFlag MegaPi case
Raspberry Pi 3 b+
Case fan and heatsinks
Raspbian Lite 10/09/2018
Composite 240p for crt

Compiled mame 0.203
Attract 2.5.1

Will do testing soon. I’m having an issue with my psu and think it’s effecting performance greatly. Mame speed has been decreasing. Under voltage issue.

21

General / Compiling Attract on Rasbian Stretch Lite

« on: October 28, 2018, 06:18:13 PM »

Creating my own rPi image from scratch. Using Raspbian Stretch Lite. I have recompiled SDL 2.0.8 and have mame 0.200 installed.

Does the Compiling on the Raspberry Pi (Raspbian Jessie) guide still apply to stretch? Git isn’t installed. Can probably substitute with wget.

What are the differences and advantages/disadvantages between software video decoding only and hardware accelerated video decoding?

22

General / Issue with attract and my Mac

« on: October 22, 2018, 03:40:11 AM »

I notice we finally have a few Mac users. I’ve been having issues with my mid-2011 iMac and attract for a few years now. Layouts on first load are usually missing an object or a few. It’s always consistent. I can’t make sense of it. Added a small snippet to mvscomplete last week, I get my background snap back but now loose the list count object. Reloading the layout corrects these issues. Doesn’t happen on my arcade machine running win10.

I also don’t get artwork working in arcadeflow. Odd.

Is everything working ok for other Mac users?

23

Scripting / What action causes Transition.EndNavigation?

« on: September 21, 2018, 09:02:52 AM »

I’m working on the sequencer experimental branch. It’s important to send signals for themes that move a selected game indicator. I think the plugin is currently causing issues with the fadeart module because it’s triggered by Transition.EndNavigation (or ToNewList). What does attract use as indication of navigation? Repetitive signaling? Probably not. Repetitive input states? I get lost looking at attractmode source.

24

General / Finally pushing some small bits to github

« on: August 05, 2018, 02:56:03 PM »

I’ve been busy lately. Yayaya. Obtained a new job and waiting for the official offer, fixing CNC machines and eventually will be programming the PLC’s. With the release of mame 0.200, I decided to update my romset and push some things I worked on a while ago to GitHub.

playchoicecomplete is a layout inspired from the Nintendo Playchoice-10 arcade machine. Once my romset is finished updating, I’ll get a proper gif. I think it would be weird showing you guys this theme with only neo geo titles as I currently have nothing else on my dev machine. Repo is pushed and should be all set minus that gif, if you want to check it out.

https://github.com/keilmillerjr/playchoicecomplete-layout

QuirkFix is a plugin that helps to fix small user quirks during arcade use. It can close emulator after specified period of inactivity. This can eliminate burn in from a game left on. AttractMode has a good screensaver. It can also close emulator after holding signal (key) for specified period of time. This prevents accidental button press exiting emulator. It can also be expanded based on feedback, but would like to keep it lightweight. I just need to compile and create docs.

attract-tag-parser is a ruby script that parses attract tag lists and can tell you which files you have matching/missing, copy resources matching the tag list, etc. Its meant to be used with something like the no filler tag list I created for attract, or any custom one you choose. You can create small romsets tailored for your specific setup. Code is like 90% complete. All components work, but I have some command line print out issues that need to be resolved.

Flavors theme could use a small update. I realized that people are actually using the theme. I’m currently at 0% completion with it. It’s probably a single hours worth of work, to get some small formatting updated and the shaders for vertical mode corrected.

Hopefully I can get these completely finished and shared this week.

I think I figured out in my head how to add animation compatibility to shuffle to make it more wiiflow/conveyor like, while still being super easy and layout developer configurable - but we will see if I ever get to it.

25

General / Installing MXE via home-brew on Mac to compile attract

« on: February 15, 2018, 06:05:56 PM »

http://mxe.cc/#requirements

Installing MXE via home-brew on Mac to compile attract.

I have home-brew already installed. Ran the following command:

Code: [Select]

brew install \
    autoconf automake coreutils gdk-pixbuf gettext \
    gnu-sed gnu-tar intltool libtool p7zip wget xz

This part of the requirements is what bothers me:

Some formulae are keg-only and will need brew link to be found.

You can tell there is some issues relating to keg-only based on the output from the command. Too long for this post so I will attach full length to post and in a gist link: https://gist.github.com/keilmillerjr/60a59bcdeaafd7c6ab453d2c8bd6ff6e

I tried running „make“ on the local repo and it confirms the issues:

Code: [Select]

Keils-iMac:mxe keiljr$ make
[create settings.mk]
[check requirements]
Missing requirement: autopoint
Missing requirement: scons

Please have a look at "docs/index.html" to ensure
that your system meets all requirements.

Can anyone help me sort out what I need to do to get the requirements part working so I can compile attract for windows?

26

General / attract-tags

« on: January 30, 2018, 07:48:30 PM »

Pushed attract-tags to github.

attract tags is tag files for the AttractMode front end. It was designed because I was seeking an easy way to include my entire romset and extras while only showing certain games. The tag system is a great way to acomplish this, and even easier with some prebuilt tags!

Includes the "all filler, no killer“ separated into 2-player and 4-player tag lists, and neogeo. Let me know if you guys spot any issues with the tag lists, or have ideas for other lists.

27

General / Filter by Button Count

« on: January 29, 2018, 03:51:06 AM »

I would like to filter by button count. Apparently, this feature was added here. I am having trouble getting this to work.

Here’s some small snippets.

Emulator config:

Code: [Select]

import_extras        /Applications/mame0192b_macOS/catver.ini;/Applications/mame0192b_macOS/controls.ini;/Applications/mame0192b_macOS/nplayers.ini
romlist:

Code: [Select]

#Name;Title;Emulator;CloneOf;Year;Manufacturer;Category;Players;Rotation;Control;Status;DisplayCount;DisplayType;AltRomname;AltTitle;Extra;Buttons
2020bb;2020 Super Baseball (set 1);neogeo;;1991;SNK / Pallas;Sports / Baseball;2P sim;0;joystick (8-way),joystick (8-way);good;1;raster;neogeo;;;

I have tried generating full romlist and there is no difference. controls.ini is the latest version 0.141.1. However, the commit says „- Now parses button count from mame -listxml output and allows filtering based on buttons“ so I assume it wouldn’t even need controls.ini file.

Anyone have any ideas of things to try? Or is this feature broken? I have the all killer no filler tag list ready to push to github, but want to make sure it can actually be filtered within attract mode, else I have to create separate lists for people with different amounts of buttons.

28

General / Merged vs Split Romset and AttractMode

« on: January 24, 2018, 05:23:48 PM »

I have a merged romset. It saves space, and makes sense. My arcade machine is almost completely set up. There are child roms that I want to play instead of the parent rom, such as Sunset Riders where you can not pick any character in the 4 player version so it does not make sense on a 2 player cabinet.

How can I have attract mode or mame pick the correct version for specific games?

The only way I see is to manually edit the rom name field in the romlist.txt file.

29

General / Filter out drivers

« on: December 10, 2017, 01:24:47 PM »

Is there a way to filter in attractmode drivers from mame? It is not the same as Manufacturer. For instance, the driver for neogeo has many manufacturers that made games for it. I would like to use attract mode to pool all roms for that driver (system) instead of separating them manually.

Similar to mame built in function:

Code: [Select]

mame -listsoftware drivername

30

Scripting / rom_index

« on: November 23, 2017, 05:03:01 AM »

https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/5459f2b73cf8e84962da5f37d21980457eadaf8d/src/fe_settings.cpp

Code: [Select]

case 5: // "ListEntry"
rep = as_str( rom_index + 1 );
break;
Is there any way to pull a rom_index in squirrel? I created a module Shuffle to navigate through slots. It would be nice to add the feature of having a list not loop. To do so, I would need to know the where a rom is in reference to the whole list.

Or am I overthinking features, just forget it and release the module?