Attract-Mode Support > Scripting
Possible to make a screensaver that cycles through games? (solved, sort of)
wrybread:
I'd like to make a screensaver that cycles through games, as opposed to videos of games. And when a user presses a button, no need to exit the cycling, just stay in that game and let the user play it.
Would this be possible?
Any advice for a starting point?
Or maybe something already exists?
keilmillerjr:
It’s doable with autohotkey scripting. However, it wouldn’t be an easy task. You would also have to save and load states past the boot screen of each game for it to seem presentable. A lot of work for a feature I’m not too sure would even make sense. Perhaps a time out script to return to attract, and then have attract time out and select a random game?
wrybread:
The feature makes lots of sense to me. My cabinet sits in my living room running mostly the same few games. Sometimes I launch a game using a random hotkey, but in general it's pretty consistent and it gets a little monotonous. Would be great to inject some automated variety. I'm thinking changing the game every 10 minutes or so, after an hour of inactivity, that kind of thing. And the reason I prefer it over videos is that if the game looks interesting to someone they can simply start playing it.
AHK isn't an option for me as I'm on Linux, but good idea.
I guess I could script something using Python, but I was hoping to use Attract Mode scripting natively for various reasons, including the ability to enable and disable it directly from AM.
> You would also have to save and load states past the boot screen of each game for it to seem presentable.
Not sure what you mean by that? But I use the -autosave MAME option anyway (aka "save state"), so I *think* things should be pretty smooth. Unless it gets caught on a MAME warning screen, which I still haven't figured out how to bypass. But I guess I could either send keystrokes just in case, or recompile MAME to skip it. But this isn't really an eye candy type screensaver, so it doesn't matter if there's a rough transition here and there.
Does anyone know if there's a way to remote control AM, short of sending keystrokes? Something like "start game", and "exit game", etc?
wrybread:
Well shoot, it looks like the timer for screensaver.nut doesn't get reset when in a game, only when in Attract Mode. In other words it can't tell if someone is playing a game, only if there's activity in AM. Reasonable enough I guess, but it means that (I think) the screensaver I have in mind would need to be an external script.
wrybread:
Interestingly, this exists as a program:
http://tomspeirs.com/mamescreensaver/
Won't work for me since it's Windows only, but interesting to note.
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