Topics

1

General / What to do when emulator steals focus?

« on: August 02, 2017, 07:57:24 PM »

Certain emulators occasionally steal window focus away from AttractMode in such a way that, when they are exited, the Windows desktop is the focus, and it is even somewhat difficult to get AttractMode to return to focus.  This behavior is not reliable, making it hard to troubleshoot.  I wondered whether there was something that could be done to ensure that AttractMode regains screen priority after an emulator is done.

2

General / Need access to nightly builds

« on: July 31, 2017, 03:00:29 PM »

I'm running out of time.  Just a few more days and whatever I have on the laptop is what I'll be locked-in with.  The latest AttractMode on offer is 2.2.1, and it includes an annoying menu bug which, according to others, has been fixed in more recent revisions.  The problem?  Those recent revisions are available here: https://build.btolab.com/project/attractmode/  Don't bother; the link is dead.  Evidently it is up for a span of months and then down for a span of months, and right now that status is "down".  However this doesn't stop Raspberry Pi users from downloading the latest build if they know how to do it, so obviously there's no real limitation going on here and it's just a matter of making that link work so PC users can get the latest binary.

3

Scripting / Let's say you want to be able to pick a random game with a hotkey...

« on: July 26, 2017, 03:21:08 AM »

What code would you inject into your layout to monitor for said hotkey and then pick a game randomly from the current display?  (Or from all displays, if it's the main menu.)

4

General / Menu wheel shifting several places when exiting displays?

« on: July 24, 2017, 05:34:42 PM »

The phenomenon: From the menu wheel, I enter a display (call it "NES"), and then back out.  The menu wheel has shifted down one entry by itself, so that rather than still being on "NES" it is now on "SNES" which was below "NES".  I do this a few more times and eventually the menu wheel is shifting down three entries.  It seems to increase over time.

What could be causing this behavior?

I'm using Cosmo's 1.1 theme for the main menu and mostly his original "Robospin-like" themes for the various system displays.  Maybe that is a factor and maybe it isn't.

5

Scripting / Controlling volume of videos?

« on: July 22, 2017, 08:21:47 AM »

I know there's a way to mute videos.  But what I'm after is a way to specify their volume (0-100).  Fact of the matter is that some videos are too loud, some too quiet, and this phenomenon tends to affect whole video sets, so I aim to do what I can to balance volume across all displays.

6

General / Setting up the menu to enable +/- volume controls?

« on: July 20, 2017, 09:40:09 AM »

(On PC.)  I've found that not all video snaps are created equal, and in particular, there is not necessarily agreement in sound amplitude between sets of videos.  I could be straining to hear details in one display, and then the next will be shattering my eardrums.

Outside of an auto-levels feature that I wouldn't expect to see in any frontend, some instant means of adjusting the volume is needed.  I took a look at the Controls config and there don't seem to be any keys to define there.  I can make a sweeping adjustment to the volume of all videos, but that's not really what I'm after.  Best case scenario: A definable key that I can set up so that + and - on the numpad, and maybe up/down on the controller's digital pad, tweak AttractMode's volume.

Suggestions?

7

General / Multiple executables on a single Display?

« on: July 19, 2017, 01:55:07 AM »

I have a situation where I need to be able to choose whether to use this or that executable for a given MAME game.  (Specifically, RetroArch handles vector games badly, so in those cases I will need to use regular MAME.)  What I'm trying to avoid is the need to split up my arcade library into two separate displays (MAME Vector and MAME Everything Else), but right now it looks like that's the only way I'm going to be able to ensure that the desired executable gets chosen for vector games specifically.

Hoping there's a way to do this.

8

General / Lack of hardware acceleration on PC holds this frontend back

« on: July 14, 2017, 02:09:27 AM »

That's really the main thing that's missing.  Not a single one of my videos, which are all 60fps, plays at their full framerate, which in turn causes them to lose sync with their audio.  And the logo wheel also doesn't scroll at 60fps (or even half of that, really -- the loading of images makes it chug too much).  HyperSpin is a dated kludge that has its own issues but it has no problems with smooth graphics and video playback, despite its considerable age.

I really feel like this is something AttractMode should see as a focus.

9

General / Reason why RetroArch crashes only from AttractMode?

« on: July 10, 2017, 01:07:55 AM »

I've been as thorough as I can manage on this one.  If I launch a MAME game from the command line like so:

retroarch.exe -L \path\to\cores\mame_libretro.dll \MAME\roms\blkdrgon.zip

It works without a hitch.  However, if I do the same exact thing from within AttractMode, RetroArch crashes uneventfully and without anything in the log to suggest something went wrong (implying RetroArch is functioning like it does outside of AttractMode and not generating the error itself).  The odd thing is that I can use the same RA core (mame_libretro.dll) to run other platforms, such as ColecoVision.  Here is the command from my ColecoVision config:

args                 -L /RetroArch/cores/mame_libretro.dll "coleco -cart1 \"[romfilename]\" -rp /MAME/roms"

and here is the command from my MAME config:

args                 -L /RetroArch/cores/mame_libretro.dll "[romfilename]"

Copy-pasted.  As you can see, there's no reason why this should be happening.

Summary: MAME-arcade-via-RA works outside of AttractMode, MAME-colecovision-via-RA works inside AttractMode, but MAME-arcade-via-RA doesn't work inside AttractMode.

10

General / Forcing PageUp/PageDn to work the way one would expect?

« on: July 07, 2017, 03:55:44 PM »

Topic.  These keys don't do anything by default.  I more or less expected them to navigate the wheel in chunks (either large swathes or by letter of the alphabet or something similar).  If it can't be made to work this way by default, then I suppose what I'm after here is a bit of script I can plug into the themes I'm using to force them to make it happen.    Navigation without something like this is pretty painful over USB2.  Even after I took great pains to ensure that screenshots will load before videos, I'm still waiting too long for the visuals to stop chugging.  And the search function is not a "seek" function.

11

Themes / Theme like Cosmo's, only text in the wheel rather than logos?

« on: July 04, 2017, 04:04:09 PM »

Hoping someone's seen, heard of, created, or can create a theme that is basically the same as Cosmo's Robospin themes, only in place of the wheel you get the name of the game in text.  Closest thing I have come so far is Game Station HD, but I find I prefer the sort of display that visibly showcases the physical platform itself, with the video playing on a TV or on the platform's screen.  Problem with that is there often simply isn't wheel art conveniently laying around for literally thousands of game titles, so it's simply a better option in those cases to stick with text only.

12

General / Confusion over Command Arguments

« on: June 26, 2017, 05:11:15 AM »

Trying to set up Amiga emulation via FS-UAE.  Turns out the process everyone seems to have decided works best is to point FS-UAE at "UUIDs" which correspond to the games in one's library.

To that end, I used an app which generated a bunch of directories named after my games, inside each of which is an empty file whose filename is the exact text which comprises the game's UUID.  The idea is that I take advantage of AttractMode's ability to use directory names for the names of "roms", and simply point the emulator at whatever's inside said directory.  So, for example, the rom directory structure looks like this:

/roms/some_driving_game/asdf1234qwerzxcv

and what AttractMode should be doing is this:

Code: [Select]

Launcher.exe asdf1234qwerzxcv

But of course what AttractMode is actually doing is this:

Code: [Select]

Launcher.exe "roms/some_driving_game/asdf1234qwerzxcv"

This does me no good because FS-UAE is not looking for a file; it's looking for that mess of text that is the filename, by itself.  When it gets anything it can't process, it just opens the GUI.  No dice.

Solutions?  Some magic I can finagle via Command Arguments?

13

Scripting / Adding artwork: Forcing it to fade in? Or out?

« on: June 22, 2017, 03:57:06 AM »

Trying to get the ball rolling on tweaking a theme to better suit the idea of being able to judge a game's worth without having to wait for the video to fade in.  Here are the things I need to ask how they might be done:

1. How to cause an artwork element to fade out at a set rate / over a set amount of time.
2. How to cause an artwork element to fade in at a set rate / over a set amount of time.
3. How to delay either of these operations by a set amount.
4. How to detect whether the video (as opposed to only a screenshot) for a given game is available, so that I can base the followup actions on the result of that query.

And, if it wasn't obvious by now, what I'm trying to do is set things up so that the theme loads the screenshot for a given game immediate, waits for a beat, and then fades it out while fading in the video of the game, if it is available. 

14

Themes / Theme options for a system menu?

« on: June 17, 2017, 03:13:19 PM »

Surprisingly haven't found a whole lot on this.  I suppose most people scroll through their systems one after another, but I like the idea of having a separate system menu that branches out to the rest, and I have seen examples of this when googling around, though the examples never led to a download link.

Right now I'm using Game Station HD (especially for the useful file info it brings up) and Nevato (modded to straighten the wheel and give more real estate to the background) for MAME, and probably plan to use Cosmo's various robospin-like themes (again, possibly killing the angled aspect of the wheels).  So that's sort of the look I'm after.  Vertical wheel on one side, system info with a video and other art taking up the rest.  Probably most themes follow that structure, come to think of it.

15

General / Steps needed to force hardware Video Decoder?

« on: June 17, 2017, 03:03:58 PM »

Finally found the opportunity to hand reasonable-quality 60fps videos over to the front end.  They are all undemanding 480p in CPU-friendly MP4.  And yet AttractMode can't really handle them.  Frames drop all over the place, causing the audio to quickly and increasingly lose sync with the video.

A glance at CPU usage reveals that it's doing the decoding in software, almost entirely on one core, and it is capping.  So, solution, hardware decoding, right?  Can't seem to enable it.  There's a lot of help on this issue for people using RetroPie, but that's not me.  It would frighten me to learn that you can only hardware-accelerate videos on a $30 toy, using a codec that originated on PC, so I won't go there.