Messages

31

General / Re: ARM compiles?

« on: December 29, 2015, 09:59:06 PM »

Can you go into a little more detail on how well PS1 emulation is working? Specifically for FF7 but also some other titles.
I'm about to buy a few RPi2 for multiple boxes and if these can easily do PS1 I would love to know!

The PS1 games play very well on the RPi2, for some reasons I just had issues with the F1 game serie, but all the other games I tested worked fine. I tested the beginning of FF7 and like the other games, it worked perfectly.
However, you need to know a few things:

- The RPi2 is good enough to play the PS1 games, but not good enough to play them with the enhanced resolution feature enabled, which makes the games look much better. Maybe the pi can handle it with some light games, but otherwise the frame rate will be too slow.

- The emulator I use to emulate the PS1 is pcsx-rearmed, you can find it in 2 versions, standalone and libretro. The standalone version is a little faster (maybe more games can be played with the enhanced resolution option), but I never managed to get the games displayed in their original 4/3 ratio (on my 16/9 screen), there is no option to change that. So if you have a 4/3 monitor or if you don't care to play with a stretched image (personally I hate that ), you can use it. Otherwise you will have to use the Libretro version, which is actually the version almost everyone uses I think, it's perfectly stable (the standalone one should be stable too, but I didn't test it a lot), it's easier to configure since it's a retroarch core, so you can easily integrate it with the other emulators of your system.

- FF7 is a multi-disc game, so you have to decide how you want to swap the discs, it requires some manipulations to do it during the game. I personally use the method that packs all the discs in one big pbp file, it's a lot of manipulations to create the file, but once you have it, everything is easier while you are playing, since you don't have to do anything to swap the discs. The only problem comes from the very big games like FF8, because the pbp file is bigger than 2GB, and the pi can't handle file bigger than 2GB (it's a 32-bit limitation), for example FF8 and Fear-Effect 2 are concerned by this issue and you will have to keep the discs separated.

FYI, as "emulator manager" I use Retropie (I start from the RetroPie image), as frontend I use AM (rather than EmulationStation).

32

General / Re: ARM compiles?

« on: December 28, 2015, 07:29:27 PM »

I compiled it on my rpi2 and it works great, but you have to use a different way to animate your elements than using the default animation modules.
Here is a video I've done about 2 months ago to show how it runs on the rpi2. I created a NeoGeo layout just to show the capabilities. The video is done with a DSLR camera in 24fps unfortunately, so you may think it's a little bit "slow" (24 fps), but it plays full speed for the videos and the animations are really smooth in real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNVuFV9mfZA

I bought an Odroid Xu4 one week ago and I didn't manage to compile AM on it, I sent an email to Andrew Mickelson to ask him if he could help me to compile SFML and Attract-Mode on this board, I also created an issue on Github, to get an official support:
https://github.com/mickelson/attract/issues/169
He told me he will take a look at it when he will have a moment... Hopefully soon !
Right now, on my Xu4, I'm stuck with RetroFE, which is ok, but I feel sooo frustrated because there are so many options missing that we have on AM.

33

General / Attract-Mode on odroid xu4 / xu3 / c1

« on: December 11, 2015, 05:58:22 PM »

I was wondering if anybody managed to compile Attract-Mode on an Odroid board with a Linux distribution?
I have a Rpi2 with Attract-Mode on it and it works perfectly, but since the pi is pretty limited when it has to emulate consoles like N64, Dreamcast or PSP, I was thinking to maybe upgrade to something more powerful for my retro-gaming console project, like the Odroid XU4 maybe, but before buying one, I prefer to ask.

Thanks!

34

General / Re: Speed, Stability, and resource useage

« on: November 19, 2015, 09:19:47 PM »

The rpi2 can handle a lot of things (with a lot of work though )
I have AM installed on my pi2 with retropie and it runs pretty well, I created a layout for my neogeo system that works in Full HD with video snapshots and some animations and it's perfectly smooth. I did a video to show it on the retropie forums:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNVuFV9mfZA

My project is completely in work in progress and I only worked on the neogeo layout for the moment, also the video has been recorded with a DSLR camera in 24 FPS and it doesn't look as smooth as in real.

35

General / Re: 1.60 rpi off center

« on: November 14, 2015, 10:49:04 PM »

I don't have any issues on my rpi2, I run attract-mode from the terminal directly, using xinit.
In my attract.cfg file, in the general section, I set:
window_mode          fullscreen

36

Themes / Re: [wip] MODERN CAB theme

« on: October 17, 2015, 08:56:31 PM »

No worries
I'm glad you fixed your color problem !

37

Announcements / Re: Version 1.6 Released!

« on: September 30, 2015, 10:29:29 AM »

I tried to modify fe.layout.width and height, but it doesn't affect the aspect ratio, which I guess is normal... When we have 2 monitors, this version is not very comfortable to work on the layouts. I used to have AM open on one monitor (window mode), while I have all my tools on the other monitor (like notepad++, PS etc...), that way I have a very efficient work-flow. Now, the window mode doesn't work properly since the image is squished, and if I use the fullscreen mode, the 2 monitors are used to display AM, so I can't access my tools easily (only by using ALT+TAB), the aspect ratio is correct though, the workspace is extended with an additional full HD surface available, which can be nice if we want to create an arcade cabinet with one monitor displaying the games while the 2nd monitor displays the flyers, marquee or whatever we want.

Fortunately, my main retro-gaming system is on a Raspberry Pi 2, and it seems that v1.6.0 works like a charm on it.
One thing I noticed on v1.5.3 and I don't know if it's still the case with v1.6.0, if we use the animation module with a layout that uses videosnaps, then the video frame rate drops a lot (on Windows there is no problem, only on Raspberry), and if we use the extended module, then the videos play in slow motion. Because of that I did my own way to animate all the objects, without using any specific module, so it's not a problem for me anymore, but I just wanted to mention it in case, somehow, it can be fixed in the future.

Thanks!

38

Announcements / Re: Version 1.6 Released!

« on: September 26, 2015, 11:36:43 AM »

Also now, when we have 2 monitors, if we chose to be in window, the entire workspace is squashed, the content of the 2 monitors tries to fit a window that has a 16/9 aspect ratio, so basically half of the monitor is black, unless you use this space to extend your layout.
I didn't try to tweak the fe.layout.width and fe.layout.height values to see how it behaves, I'll do some tests tonight.

39

Announcements / Re: Version 1.6 Released!

« on: September 26, 2015, 10:17:57 AM »

It seems that when you have 2 monitors and chose fullscreen, your workspace is extended to the 2 monitors, but the layout won't be stretch over them, you just have a whole new space to put more graphics and information. I don't know if it's a good thing or not, but it's interesting anyway and it opens a lot of possibilities.
It becomes a problem when you have a layout which uses animated graphics that go out  of your frame, because instead of being hidden out of the monitor, it's still visible on the other one

40

Announcements / Re: Version 1.6 Released!

« on: September 25, 2015, 10:06:05 PM »

Awesome !!!
Thank you very much for the hard work.

41

Themes / Re: [wip] MODERN CAB theme

« on: September 17, 2015, 02:25:16 PM »

Yes it's weird, it's like PS uses a specific color profile in it's workspace, but then doesn't save it in the files when you export them. I had the exact same problem a few days ago with the layout I'm working on for my project, it's why I replied to your message, I fixed it by playing with the color space settings, but I can't even remember the final manipulation I did to fix the issue. I think I finally created a new empty file in Photoshop with a sRGB profile (or maybe it was with no profile at all) and duplicated all my layers onto this new file.
Do you have a sample of one of the images you're using in your layout (even just a small red rectangle would do it), that way I could do some tests on my computer and see if it does the same thing and if I can maybe found the manip to fix it?

Otherwise you can visually compare the different settings by having both Photoshop and your image viewer open at the same time, with the same file open on both, that way it's easier to see if it matches or not when you pick a different profile.

42

Themes / Re: [wip] MODERN CAB theme

« on: September 17, 2015, 07:55:57 AM »

The working space profile in Photoshop can be different than the profile the file has itself, so Photoshop can change the way it displays the colors of an image without actually affecting the image.

43

Themes / Re: [wip] MODERN CAB theme

« on: September 16, 2015, 05:00:57 PM »

Maybe I'm wrong, but it's probably because of the color profile you use in Photoshop, I guess AM uses srgb or no profile at all while you maybe use by default your monitor profile. Try to play with the different color profiles or maybe create a new file with the basic srgb profile and duplicate all the layers of your layout onto it and see how it looks.