Messages

1

General / Re: Attract Mode Freeze / Win XP / 32 Bit

« on: February 26, 2018, 11:00:21 PM »

I've been experiencing this problem on macOS for some time now. I posted on it elsewhere but it's been so long that I forgot where. It's still a problem.

2

General / Re: Fullscreen mode cannot focus on game window when executed (AM 2.2.0 / Win10)

« on: April 07, 2017, 08:22:08 PM »

Same problem here on macOS Sierra. See my post in a different thread.

3

General / Re: Attract Mode window focus problem - but only with MAME?

« on: April 06, 2017, 07:40:17 PM »

Hi All,


I have the opposite problem. When launching a game from AM, mame64 is started correctly but never brought to the front. I have to use Cmd-TAB to bring the mame process to the front. This only happens in Fullscreen Mode. If I change the Window Mode to Window [No Border] then mame is brought to the foreground correctly. This is not ideal though.


OS: macOS Sierra 10.12.4
AM: 2.2.0-3
MAME: SDLMAME v0.184 64-bit

4

General / Re: Better config syntax: Squirrel Table

« on: August 17, 2015, 04:54:43 PM »

Actually I was talking about AM config files. But I can appreciate what you're saying about simplicity. People who do not have a lot of coding experience should be able to configure the system and once you start introducing braces and semicolons they'll make a lot of mistakes.


As for syntax highlighting I was initially using JavaScript as it was close enough for me but now I am using a Sublime package.


This just in, I've just found this which might be even better. Will need to try it out at home tonight.


cheers,
-tomek

OK you are talking about the nut files for layouts and such not the AM cfg file. Yeah they need to be highlighted..all code should be..makes it easier to read.

5

General / Better config syntax: Squirrel Table

« on: August 16, 2015, 05:26:49 PM »

What do you think about changing the syntax of the config file to use something like Squirrel Tables? I think it would make for a much nicer experience when editing the config files. At the moment since the syntax is really loose my editor of choice (Sublime) can be used in limited capacity and doesn't offer any of nice features that are usually on offer through syntax highlighting modes.


-t

6

General / Re: Yet another n00b filter question

« on: August 14, 2015, 03:51:43 PM »

It's really not that bad, really. Think of the filters as progressive refinement the it will make more sense. Each filter line can use the OR operator "|".


You can always pre-filter your list before it even gets to AM. See my other post if you're interested in this approach:


http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=315.msg2256#msg2256


cheers,
-tomek

7

Scripting / Re: Is there a way to avoid stretching preview videos?

« on: August 13, 2015, 08:47:43 PM »

Well then, I stand corrected. I thought you'd have to do that yourself but there you go, AM is all kinds of clever.

8

Scripting / Re: Is there a way to avoid stretching preview videos?

« on: August 13, 2015, 07:19:00 PM »

So what you want to do is to preserve the aspect ratio of your videos. You will end up with some bars to either side of your vertical videos, there is no choice in that, but they don't have to be black. You could composite your videos on a graphical background and that's what you'd see on either side of your vertical videos.


Now, to preserve the aspect ration at run time, this is something that has to be implemented in the layout you're using. Basically the surface which contains the video will need to be resized dynamically and repositioned as you change selection.


There is no simple setting for this in AM or a one-off script that you can run.


-t

9

Scripting / Re: Arrange Surface in Order?

« on: August 11, 2015, 02:01:49 AM »

Thanks for that. I was stumped by the docs:

A surface is an off- screen texture upon which you can draw other image, artwork, text, listbox and surface objects.

I understood that as an object which you don't see until you decide to show it. But I couldn't see any show/display/render method on the class.


Anyway, I'm getting a pretty good idea of how the system works now. Thanks to you clever folks.


I'll be putting a quick preview of my theme together soon and I'll be sure to post a link to the forum. I'm taking a slightly different approach from most themes in that mine is going to rely heavily on purchased stock material. Background videos and sounds etc. I can highly recommend envato.com as a good source of pretty cheap source material. The only issue is that I won't be able to share any of the digital assets of my theme as the license prohibits me from sharing. But I'll be happy to share the nuts ;-)


cheers,
-tomek

10

Scripting / Re: Arrange Surface in Order?

« on: August 10, 2015, 01:40:07 AM »

Slightly off topic but related, how do I actually render a surface? They're off screen textures and I can use them to composite graphics but how do I show it?

11

Scripting / Re: What's the difference between Modules and Plug-ins?

« on: August 10, 2015, 01:37:32 AM »

Thanks all fir the exhaustive answers. I'm just trying to get a good understanding of the system at this stage. It's mostly well thought out and quite intuitive but every now and then I'll come up against something that is not documented and so I have to ask.

-t

12

General / Re: Seeing Desktop on OS X when launching & ending games

« on: August 08, 2015, 12:50:05 PM »

Further to this. I've not really noticed it before because I'm just starting out with a custom layout and my initial one was extremely simple so it loaded fast. Now my layout has a large background video which takes a few moments to load. While it's loading the menu bar becomes visible and the screen goes white.

This is a pretty undesirable visual artefact. However I suspect that it may not have anything to do with AM but rather the underlying graphics library that it is based on.

This is with AM 1.5.2 on OS X 10.10.4.

13

General / Re: Romset trouble (Mame)

« on: August 08, 2015, 12:41:04 PM »

[name] is a special tag/place holder in AM which is replaced at run time with the name of the ROM. You can try to configure AM to use this tag explicitly to pass it as argument to your MAME executable. See if it helps resolve your problem.

14

Scripting / Re: What's the difference between Modules and Plug-ins?

« on: August 07, 2015, 10:48:38 PM »

I guess that makes sense, sort of.


Since modules are basically equivalent to the concept of a "module" in any other language, they are generic and can store any sort of code, reusable or not. So plugins could be implemented as modules? If yes then I don't see the point of plugins. But then I haven't actually spent that much time familiarising myself with AM so I might be missing the point entirely.

15

Scripting / Re: automatic coins

« on: August 07, 2015, 03:20:31 AM »

I don't think that knowing squirrel will help you at all. AP is basically a fancy user interface used to start an emulator. That's it. Once the emulator is running there is no communication if any kind between the front end and the emulator. So in short, there is no way to do what you want with AM + MAME.