Messages

1

General / Re: Need some help understanding the best way to use mame with am pi

« on: October 27, 2017, 02:55:21 PM »

If I'm following your post correctly, I think what you're asking for is a pre-built emulators.cfg file.  This tells retroarch which non-default emulator to use for each rom.

I'm not 100% sure this will be compatible with your romset, as I didn't built it myself, but this is the file on my setup that tells retroarch which emulator to use for each arcade game.  I dont' think it matters if you don't have every single rom on this list since by default attract mode won't show a game in the list unless there's a file in your folder that matches it.

This file goes in /opt/retropie/configs/all

It's not perfect for me...I still find roms occasionally that need to be tweaked, but for the most part this does the mapping of "best emulator for each rom" pretty well.  At least for my romset.  Again, I didnt' make it, and my romset might be a mix of versions, but I'm fairly sure it's a standard 0.78 romset as well.  Do a backup of your existing file obviously, just in case.

This particular file uses a mix of Mame2003, Mame2010 and Final Burn Alpha.  I'm not a huge fan of fbalpha because you can't do control editing directly within the emulator like you can with mame, and that can be important for arcade games...but the flip side is that fbalpha "just works" more often than mame does.

Mame2010 is used on roms known to be compatible with it, though I find that sometimes they work better in Mame2003 anyway.  There's probably a little bit of advmame in here as well, and those are my personal edits, because I've found a few games that wouldn't load for me with any other emulator.  Your mileage may vary.

2

General / Some emulators have a different retroarch hotkey

« on: October 24, 2017, 01:21:49 PM »

I have retroarch set up to use the "home" key on my 360 controller as the hotkey, and then "start" is the exit button, so Home+Start takes me back to Attract Mode.

Works great in every emulator except for N64, which for some reason uses Select + Start. 

I'm guessing it's got a core-specific config file that's overriding the defaults.  Anyone know where I can find it?

I'm using Retropie+Attract Mode on a Pi3.

3

General / Re: Bluetooth Keyboard not usable in menu

« on: October 24, 2017, 10:42:25 AM »

I came up with a workaround that got my keyboard working.

A USB hardwired keyboard works fine if it's connected at startup.

The bluetooth one I noticed worked OK if you restarted attract-mode  without doing a full reboot.  So that made me think that the keyboard needed to be already connected or else attract mode wouldn't look for it.

I figured out that if I mash a few buttons on the keyboard while the pi is booting that AttractMode will recognize it and let me use it.

Still not ideal.  I don't know why it can't detect a keyboard connected after startup, but at least I know I can reboot the device and make it work.

If anyone has any ideas of how to address this long term, let me know.  I'm pretty sure this isn't working as designed, there must be smoething weird in the pdark image causing it.  When I was using a MadLittlePixel image I didn't have trouble turning my bluetooth keyboard on and off at will.

4

General / Re: Create AM to ES and ES to AM as menu options

« on: October 23, 2017, 08:31:35 PM »

Hey, I was just poking around inside my Pi looking for a mame config and I think i stumbled across the thing you wanted:

In the directory /home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/

there is a file called "Switch To Attract Mode.sh"

There's also an icon file for the menu.

Likewise in /home/pi/.attract/Attract Mode Setup/  there is a file called "Launch Emulation Station to Configure Controllers.sh" and an icon in the wheels subdirectory for that.

I'm not sure if there's a config file or something somewhere you have to add these scripts to to get them to show up, or if just putting them in there is enough.  I'll drop my files here as attachments and you can try it out. 

5

General / Re: Create AM to ES and ES to AM as menu options

« on: October 23, 2017, 03:46:03 PM »

I don't know how to do it myself, but I know what you want is possible, because the image I'm using has those options added in.   It's the pdark image, which I believe is based off of motionblue.  So you might want to check out the motion blue docs.

I have a menu option under Attract Mode that reboots me into emulationstation and one in emulationstation that reboots me into attract mode.

6

General / Bluetooth Keyboard not usable in menu

« on: October 22, 2017, 11:46:12 PM »

I have a small bluetooth keyboard that is paired directly to my Pi3, not using any sort of bluetooth dongle.  In retrospect I wish I had gotten one that was RF and used a dedicated pre-paired dongle because those are just USB keyboards as far as the hardware it's connected to is concerned.

I have attract mode set up and working pretty much how I want it now.  It's set up to be pretty much 100% operated with a 360 wireless controller, and that works no problem.  But they keyboard simply isn't recognized within the attractmode menu at all.

Nothing I do seems to register a key press. 

Up, Down, Left and Right are all configured in controls as defaults, but the arrow keys on my keyboard do nothing.

If I use my controller to map new controls, no button on my keyboard registers as having been pressed, so it just sits there waiting for me to press a button, as if I hadn't done anything at all.

But as soon as I go into something like retroarch, MAME, the retropie setup menu, my keyboard works just fine there.  I can type, I can map keys in retroarch, etc.  Super weird.

Anyone know how I can get it to work in AttractMode?

I'm going to be cloning this setup for use in a cabinet where the controls are an x-arcade tankstick, which emulates keyboard presses, so I'll need the menu to operate via keyboard eventually.

Otherwise I'm really digging attract mode. The wheels and video snaps, along with the customizeable filters solve the problems inherent with having thousands of ROMs on a system.  You can actually navigate it and find something to play this way.

EDIT:  I just plugged in a wired keyboard and that didn't work at first, but then I rebooted and it was detected and I could use the wired keyboard within attract-mode. So I guess that might imply that I won't have a problem when I get to using a tankstick because that will behave like a wired keyboard.  Still, I'd like to get it working, so if anyone has suggestions on getting a bluetooth keyboard working please let me know.