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1

General / Set theory maths needed ?

« on: November 09, 2018, 11:10:06 AM »

Just wondering if anyone can come up with a clever Attract_mode based solution to my current dilemma.

My cabinet has swappable control panels. I set up a different gameslist for each panel, so that the user only sees games that the control panel can play. The button to swap the display/gamelist is under the panel so once the panel is clipped down everything is 'safe'.

My problem is now where I have a combination as follows. I have a Defender layout, plus Left and Right buttons, plus a 4/8 way swappable joystick. The 4/8way is a JLF so the gate is swapped by lifting the panel. I can treat the 2 configuration as 2 panels because changing the gate is same effect as swapping to a different panel. That works OK except for that the favourites doesn't work how I'd like for the Left/Right games eg Asteroids, if the user sets it as a favourite I want it to be a favourite for both the 4way display and the 8way display/gamelist.

Note: I'm using tags for setting favourites etc. I could do it by having tags for 4wayfaves, 8wayfaves,2wayfaves and then have a single display with filters for 8+2way and 4+2way, but that would not be foolproof as it needs the user to know about 4way and 8way games.

At the moment I only have a bad external solution: on exit, I could examine the favourites lists from both displays and copy relevant games across (or just form a union of the lists).

2

General / Some notes on Lost focus / Temporary Freeze on game exit win7-64

« on: November 25, 2017, 05:27:40 AM »

Thinking of moving from XP-32 to win7-64 for my MAME system.

My current AM setup was AM2.0.0

Moving to win7-64 I have a problem with loss of focus on exit from game. Tried various new versions. Sometimes the problem only happens if I exit the game with 8s of selecting it. Some AM versions give a blank screen, some give a frozen game list. Note: some users are putting scripts in place to fix the focus problem.

Thanks to a comment here: https://github.com/mickelson/attract/issues/199 I found that AM2.0.0RC2 works

My results:

On win7-64 desktop, core i3, nvidia GT710, LCD monitor.
groovymame171 (not using switchres etc).

GOOD:
1.6.2.32
1.6.2.64
2.0.0.rc2.32
2.0.0.rc2.64

FAST EXIT PROBLEM (exit before 8s in game)
2.0.0.64
2.1.0.32
2.1.0.64

GENERAL EXIT PROBLEM (exit after 10s in game)
2.2.1.64
2.3.0.64

hope that helps someone

3

General / what is script.nv

« on: August 24, 2017, 06:31:48 AM »

What is script.nv ?

I recently had a problem with a corrupted (empty) script.nv file causing AM not to run.

OK, So I can guess from looking at mine that it is an empty script file. But can I tell AM not to bother trying to read this file?

4

Themes / Rotatable theme

« on: February 21, 2017, 09:27:18 AM »

Anyone done this?

My screen is 1280x1024 so I want something that takes up the 1024x1024 square regardless of the orientation. I think.

Or is there a way to use the rotation state to call different versions of the layout?

5

General / AM non-responsive (Screen saver issue ?)

« on: November 05, 2016, 09:54:05 AM »

On my system (winXP on core2duo, calling MAME.) there is something weird with exiting MAME back to AM, it seems to hang for 2 or 3 seconds sometimes before it will accept inputs.

I think the screensaver might be involved, it might activate in background while you are playing a game. Just now when I exited a game I found myself in the AM screensaver, and it wouldn't come out of screensaver when I pressed buttons (it did after about 10s of pressing buttons).

anyone else found this, or got any thoughts?

My screensaver is the default one, showing the snaps, all the options set to No/None.

edit:
I tried disabling the screensaver by setting the timer to 0. And that caused AM not to accept inputs when I exited a game. I could open task manager but when I went back to AM it was still not responding to inputs.

6

General / filtering buy number of buttons, controls.ini

« on: March 23, 2016, 09:02:01 AM »

When I add controls.ini to my inputs it doesn't change the mame.txt romlist created
Is that correct behaviour?

The output doesn't matter, but I want to be able to use the button info in my filters, how to do that?

without import_extra I get:

#Name;Title;Emulator;CloneOf;Year;Manufacturer;Category;Players;Rotation;Control;Status;DisplayCount;DisplayType;AltRomname;AltTitle;Extra
1942;1942 (Revision B);mame;;1984;Capcom;;2;270;joystick (8-way);good;1;raster;;;

with
import_extras C:/mame/nplayers.ini;C:/mame/controls.ini

I get:
#Name;Title;Emulator;CloneOf;Year;Manufacturer;Category;Players;Rotation;Control;Status;DisplayCount;DisplayType;AltRomname;AltTitle;Extra
1942;1942 (Revision B);mame;;1984;Capcom;;2P alt;270;joystick (8-way);good;1;raster;;;

note: nplayers has modified the Players column.

7

General / Help me with rotation ?

« on: November 07, 2015, 01:15:27 PM »

I going to build a PC based MAME machine with a manual (for the time being) rotation of the screen. So the way I want things to work is you select your game and it will appear in the screen in the correct orientation (ie filling it) and if that is not the current rotation you will then rotate the screen, when you exit the game Attractmode appear correctly oriented (I've seen there is a plugin for that).

Up to now I've only done dedicated horizontal or vertical MAME set-ups, so how do I go about this please?
Is it a MAME set-up thing or will AM do it for me?

Thanks.

8

General / Using Attract Mode without romlists?

« on: March 27, 2015, 06:22:00 AM »

I love the dynamic filtering but that jars a bit with the romlist method.

Is there a way to use AM without romlists or to automate ROM list update?

The use case is I've built a machine for someone, and I need to give them instructions on how to add ROMS.
Ideally they would just have to plonk the ROM into the ROM folder and not alter AM setup. But the way I use AM I'd have to tell them how to go into the admin panels and regenerate the rom list(s).

This is for MAME only system.

9

General / Problem exiting screensaver mode

« on: September 18, 2014, 03:19:42 PM »

Sorry I'm going to be a bit vague, but if you don't know of this problem I will document it more accurately.

First it seems like AM doesn't want to exit screensave mode (snaps displayed full screen). I have to keep pressing buttons for several seconds (or am I pressing wrong buttons?)

And also, I'm not 100% sure but I think sometimes when I press next list it goes back into screensave.

10

General / using catver.ini

« on: July 09, 2014, 06:40:00 AM »

I'm trying/failing to use the example filters from the wiki,

Where do I put catver.ini ?
Is it case sensitive?

Do I need a special command to read it?

Quote

filter "SHMUPs"
rule Title not_contains bootleg|prototype|Sports|Trivia|Quiz|Mahjong
rule Year not_contains ?
rule Manufacturer not_contains bootleg
rule Category contains "Shooter / Flying"
rule Players equals 1|2
rule Rotation equals 90|270
rule Control contains joystick
rule Control contains 2-way|4-way|8-way
rule Status equals good|imperfect
rule DisplayCount equals 1
rule DisplayType equals raster
[\QUOTE]

11

General / Favourites not working properly ?

« on: July 09, 2014, 05:17:30 AM »

I have a single rom list (mame.txt)

I have several AM lists using it with different filters. See attached config. The reason for this approach is that I have swappable control panels, so the idea is that the user first chooses an appropriate list based on the control panel installed.

Anyway, I was hoping that pressing F would simply add or remove the highlighted game from mame.tag from any of the lists, but something goes wrong.

Everything works fine when I add favourites from my ALL list. But it goes wrong when I add them from the 4way or 8way list. I think it applies the filter to the existing list. ie if I try to add a favourite from the 4way list it removes all existing favourites that don't match the current (4way) filter, so I lose all the 8way games.

If it's meant to work like that, any ideas how I should arrange my menu system? I suppose I could make copies of my list with different names, but having separate favourite lists won't work quite so well (because eg more than 1 panel has 2way support)