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Topics - rsn8887

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1
General / How to turn off random image selection?
« on: June 16, 2016, 08:07:04 PM »
I just upgraded Attract Mode, and suddently I am getting a random selection of artwork.

It seems like everytime I select a game, the artwork is picked randomly from my various configured artwork folders.

I would like AM to use the first directory, unless there's no artwork there, THEN and ONLY THEN use the second directory, etc.

I believe this is how the old AM behaved. Is there a way to revert back to the old behaviour?

2
General / Finalburn Alpha romlist with correct names?
« on: May 04, 2016, 06:38:39 AM »
Has anybody found out an easy way to generate a romlist for FBA with correct names and other metadata?

3
Emulators / Various emulator settings
« on: December 23, 2015, 11:17:30 AM »
I am going to list some findings I made when setting up the cabinet. I am planning to update this as I learn more.

Fusion:
Use
-fullscreen "[romfilename]"
command line argument to ensure escape exits the emulator instead of switching between fullscreen and windowed.

Download the "fusion shader pack" http://www.emucr.com/2013/04/kega-fusion-plugins-20130427.html extract to plugins, start emulator, right click, video->render plugin->double snake to apply a 2x prescale and reduce blurring.

Finalburn Alpha:
select blitter -> enhanced, blitter options -> enable prescale to reduce blurring

Retroarch:
command line arguments example for higan (bsnes):
-f -L P:\emulators\retroarch\cores\bsnes_balanced_libretro.dll "[romfilename]"

load a game, press F1->quick menu->shader options->load shader preset->retro/sharp-bilinear.cg, then select shader 0 filter->nearest, shader0 scale ->2x or 4x to minimize blurring

Visualboyadvance-M-WX:
use these lines in vbam.ini before [GB] to enable prescale and keep aspect.
[Display]
Bilinear=1
Filter=simple4x
FilterPlugin=
IFB=none
KeepOnTop=0
MaxThreads=1
RenderMethod=opengl
Scale=3
Stretch=1

FS-UAE:
for KG whdload packs, use executable
FS-UAE\Windows\fs-uae-launcher.exe
and the standard argument "[romfilename]"
to load whdload packs. Just unzip all the whdload packs to get the .lha files.
Use rom extension .lha and fs-uae-launcher.exe will automatically setup and boot the whd load game. Put whdload.key in the fs-uae directory to get rid of the nag screens. whdload.key is expensive, but worth it.


4
General / [SOLVED] Autohotkey to trigger exit key in AM?
« on: December 21, 2015, 02:59:40 PM »
I would like to use the exit key functionality from Attract Mode to be able to exit any emulator quickly. But I want to only exit if I hold "Player 1 Joy Button 7" and THEN press "Player 1 Joy Button 8".

Since AM does not support such a combo, my idea is to configure "Esc" as exit key in Attract Mode for all my emulators. Then I planned to use Autohotkey to send the "Esc" keycode to Attract Mode whenever I hold Joy 7 and then press Joy 8 (or any other key, I also tried this with some other non-Escape keys).

Separately, everything works:

- I got Autohotkey to work (testing with Notepad) by itself and it can send any keypress I wish when I press Joy 8 while holding down Joy 7.

-The exit key in Attract Mode works by itself. Pressing escape closes any emulator.

But when I put it together, and try my Joy 7 & Joy 8 hotkey inside an emulator started by AM, nothing happens.

Here's what's weird: if I set Autohotkey to send "Alt F4" on my Joy 7 & Joy 8 it works in almost all emulators.

So somehow Attract Mode is not accepting the escape keycode whenever it is send by Autohotkey, but it reacts perfectly fine if I manually press key.

Has anybody figured this out and could help me?

I tried a few things such as that #installkeyboardhook command in AHK and some other things, but have had no luck.

Thank you!

5
Themes / CoinOps theme based on CoinOps emulator for XBox classic
« on: December 12, 2015, 03:24:34 PM »
I am attaching here always the latest version of the CoinOps theme based on the CoinOps emulator on XBox Classic.

6
Themes / Finalburn theme based on Finalburn Legends
« on: December 12, 2015, 03:22:36 PM »
I am attaching here always the latest version of my Finalburn theme based on Finalburn Legends from XBox classic. It is intended for arcade games (Mame or Final Burn Alpha).

7
Themes / Xtras theme based on Gilou emulator skins
« on: December 12, 2015, 03:01:33 PM »
I am attaching here always the latest version of my "xtras" theme based on Gilou9999's skins for Madmab edition emulators on Xbox Classic.

It now supports system banners. If you name your system for each emulator according to the "thegamesdb" convention, then the layout will display the corresponding banner automatically in the top right corner.

The files in the "banners" folder shows all the system names. To add banners, simply put your banners in the use "systemname_banner1.png" as filename.

[attachment deleted by admin]

8
General / Running Final Burn Alpha from Attract Mode?
« on: December 11, 2015, 10:22:07 PM »
Hello,
I am trying to run Final Burn Alpha 02937 from Attract Mode 1.6.2, and I cannot get it to switch to the game display. I briefly see the Final Burn loading progress indicator come up, but then just a frozen Attract Mode screen.

I cannot even switch to the Final Burn screen using alt Tab. It is just not there, but it shows up in task manager and I can hear the game sound, so Attract Mode seems to be launching it. There's just no image.

When I start Final Burn from the command line using cmd.exe it works just fine.

This is on Windows 10. I tried both 32bit and 64bit versions of Finalburn, and I tried the various blitters in Final Burn and the various options under Attract Mode general, but it just won't work.

Has anyone gotten Final Burn 0.29.37 to work with Attract Mode 1.6.2?

EDIT: I got it to work. I switched the resolution to 1024*768 instead of my native 1280*1024. How lame that it doesn't work at my native resolution when I launch it from Attract Mode, but it works when I launch it via cmd.exe.

EDIT2: Coming from an XBox Classic with Madmab edition emulators, I am really disappointed what a buggy chaos the fullscreen options in all the emulators for PC are. Most don't support pre-scaling (resulting in a blurry display) and many crash as soon as you start experimenting with the fullscreen options, they switch needlessly from window to fullscreen mode all the time, many have aspect ratio options that never give the correct ratio, or it takes me forever to find blitter settings that look at least ok. Some support OpenGL but not DirectX, some only support a certain version of DirectX, but not OpenGL. I almost want to quit this project.

On top of that many emulators switch between full screen and windowed if you try to configure them and of course, they can not be configured when in fullscreen mode. And they can only be configured with a mouse. What a complete mess! Of course, NONE of the emulators have overscan modes to simulate the overscan of the old CRTs. All of this works perfect on the old Xbox, and most of these problems have been solved on the old Sony PSP and even on modern Android devices (the emulators there are 100 times more user-friendly than anything I have seen on PC in the last few weeks). It shows me once again how the emulators on consoles and mobile devices have now completely overtaken anything available on PC.

Attract Mode is wonderful, though.

9
Emulators / Clean loading of Final Burn Alpha into Fullscreen mode?
« on: December 04, 2015, 08:18:21 PM »
Finalburn Alpha is taking a long time to load (5 seconds) but most importantly, it switches back and forth between full-screen and windowed at least two times as it loads. Is there any way to make it load smoothly and quickly from Attract Mode directly into fullscreen mode, without all this switching?

10
I love Attract Mode, I am completely hooked. Squirrel is simple enough that I could understand the basics in 2 days.

But I have a few questions regarding additional game info. I would like to give the user of my layout the option to show game history, synopsis etc.

Can I automatically scrape for additional information (beyond catver.ini and nplayers.ini)?

Where does the scraper save its information? Is it being put in the generated romlist file? What about any images it finds online, will they overwrite my own?

Is there any way to have Attract Mode automatically parse "history.dat" for Mame and make the game synopsis display in my layout?

11
Scripting / Change emulator command based on rom extension?
« on: November 30, 2015, 01:45:49 PM »
Is there a simple way to modify the emulator command based on the rom extension?
Explanation:
For my Amiga display, I would like to run a certain emulator command for all ".hdf" files, and a different one for all ".whd" files.

My current solution is to have separate emulators, e.g. "FS-UAE-HDF" for my hdf files and "FS-UAE-WHD" for my whd files. But this creates two auto-generated romlists and correspondingly two displays. It also causes a bunch of other config file duplication. None of it is buggy, I think it is all as intended. But I would like to have all my amiga games in a single display, preferably auto-generated.

I found that I can manually merge the romlist files to get around the issue of having two Amiga related displays, but I have to do it again everytime I re-generate my romlists. When all I really want is to use one emulator command for .whd and a different one for .hdf.

I guess I could make my own launcher batch files or something, but that would complicate things a bit...

12
Themes / Layouts based on Xbox xtras
« on: November 30, 2015, 12:28:03 PM »
EDIT: I separated the layouts into separate archives and threads and posted the newest version in three new threads here:
CoinOps layout: http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=484.0
Finalburn layout: http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=483.0
Xtras layout: http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=482.0

please refer to the above threads for the latest versions.


First of all: I love Attract Mode. I have searched through dozens of PC frontends trying to find something that would resemble what I have setup on my old XBox classic. Attract Mode is by far the best. It is fast, completely customizable and works reliably.

Over the last week, I made three themes based on the XBox homebrew emulator skins:

- one layout for home systems based on the default skins of the Madmab edition emulators, called "xtras"
- one layout for arcade based on CoinOPs 7, called "coinops"
- one layout for arcade based on Finalburn Legends, called "finalburn"

I will attach the layout files tonight. I intended them to be used with the boxart, marquee and videos that came with the XBox Classic emulation packages, specifically the Resurrection Xtras packs, CoinOPS, and Final Burn Legends. The complete versions of those contain thousands of preview videos that will be played in the layouts. The videos on the xbox are in xmv format, but can be converted to avi using
ffmpeg.exe -i xxx.xmv -codec copy xxx.avi
for use in Attract Mode.

However, my layouts can be used with any marquee, snapshot, box art, snaps and/or video previews. They are not limited to the xtras packs.

For now, here are some screenshots of the layouts powering my mame, finalburn alpha, snes, and amiga collections. I think the xtras layout requires more work, but I am pretty happy with the two arcade layouts so far.

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