Messages

1

General / New FAQ Section (for beginners)

« on: May 17, 2020, 04:59:53 AM »

Hi,

so here is a suggestion for a (Beginner-)FAQ section:

Topics:

What do i need, to implement an Retrogame-System with Attract Mode on PC?

The Attract Mode Software
Download here: http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?board=4.0

Games, Emulators, Emulator Bios
Could find here: https://www.arcadepunks.com/ or https://vimm.net/

Guides
http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=328.0 and https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/v2.6.1/Readme.md

Why some of my games are not show up in the Frontend?

For example you have a screen for Atari  Lynx, and some but not all of your games are listed.

First you should check, if all your games have the same suffix (like .zip). This is case-sensitive, so when the missing files have .Zip for example, you have to add that suffix in the attract-mode configuration. Go to the emulators-section, choose Atari Lynx, and just add the suffix, when it´s not already there.

But in most cases the reason for missing games will found in the romlists.

Before you start it might be a good idea to make backup-copy of your romlists folder. The fastest way is: click on the folder "romlists", press Strg+c then Strg+v. On your keyboard maybe you have to press Ctrl+c then Ctrl+v. Now you have a "romlists copy" folder, for the case something gets messed up. I advice to make such copies for all configuration files anyway. If you are not sure about that, you can make a backupcopy of the whole "Attract" folder.

Go to the romlists folder, and open the system.txt file with notepad. In our example it would be "Atari Lynx.txt"
A line will look like this: Lynx Casino (USA, Europe);Lynx Casino (USA, Europe);Atari Lynx;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

If you have that game in your Roms folder, but it dont appear in the frontend screen, then compare the exact filename (case sensitive and without suffix) with the first entry in the corresponding line.
If your filename is "lynx casino (USA, Europe).zip" for example, change the entry in the text file, so it will look like this:
lynx casino (USA, Europe);Lynx Casino (USA, Europe);Atari Lynx;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
When the game is not present in the "Atari Lynx.txt" file, you can just insert a new line for the game the same way.

When you are done save the file and close notepad.
Now all games should show up in the list for Atari Lynx.

But this solution is only reasonable, when you dont have very much games in the list or there are only a few games missing.
A much better way to have a perfect list of all your games including metadata and media might be, to scrape your Roms folder. Please go the FAQ-sections which belongs to scraping.

Some further Topic-Suggestions:
How to get Metadata (like Year of Release, Publisher,...) and medias (like Screenshots, videos, Boxart,...) for your games, aka How you scrape your Roms
What is History.dat and how to setup?
How can i add or get Descriptions (aka Overview) fo my games?
Do i need Rocketlauncher to work with Attractmode?
I installed Hyperpie PC (aka HyperPC), what should i do now?
How can i avoid, that my beloved Retrogames-System gets broken?


Please tell me, if you find this way to implement an FAQ-Section (for Beginners) useful.
If yes, i suggest you pin the first topics to the general section of the forum, and i will bring up more content soon. Of course any kind of additional reasonable contend, editing and optimization is highly welcome.
But if you dont like my idea, i will have no problem on that, and i will stop to continue in that direction.


Best Regards
Wolfgang

2

General / Re: Attract Mode from the viewpoint of an absolut Beginner

« on: May 15, 2020, 01:18:30 AM »

Hello,

as i startet my work on the tutorial, i realized it would be to specific.

The intention why i wanted to do something for newbies, is because i experienced some problems during my implementation of my Retrosystem, and it was sometimes hard to find the solutions on different websites. Also the solutions seems to demanding sometimes, for example programming knowledge as self-evident.
I have to point out, that my start was not with AM directly, as i used the Hyper PC setup, where many things are preconfigurated, which make it much easyer for the start, but then took some time to understand how the whole system with AM and Rocketlaunch and the emulators are working.

Now i think, if someone start just with AM, there are already good guides and informations here available.
But i had another idea. I think an FAQ-Section would be a nice addition here. I have already some specific points on my mind, and i will post the first ones in the next days here.

3

General / Re: NewbieTroubles (MULTI)- Games not showing up in AM show in Emulation Station etc

« on: May 14, 2020, 02:32:35 AM »

maybe this will help:

1. your generated Game Collections are in the folder ROMLISTS as txt files for each system. you can delete the whole txt file or edit in notepad, to delete just whats to much.
2. i think that the emulator settings miss the right suffix. go to the emulator settings for playstation und look if the right suffix is there. if your playstation games have the suffix .bin for example, and that is not there in the settings, just add it. you can add multiple suffixes divided by semikolon, like .bin;.zip;.exe
3. i use the emulator PROJECT64 2.x for n64, because other emulators failed. but i have an gamin pc, i´m not sure if an Pi can handle n64 anyway, but maybe it can.
4. sorry, not sure what you mean.

hope this helps a little. 

4

General / Attract Mode from the viewpoint of an absolut Beginner

« on: May 11, 2020, 12:45:38 PM »

It startet all, when i saw a yt-video of a RetroPie-System and then i knew i want such thing.
I have no RasperryPi but an gaming-PC, so i stumbled over Hyperpie PC https://www.hyperpie.org/. It promises preconfiguratet frontend, emulators should mean like "just move your ROM´s inside, and run".
And yes, it´s nearly that way. 

But i spent a huge load of my time, to figure out why some things don´t work the way they should. Most problems on the begining belongs to ROM´s that were not listet in the frontend.
My own computer experiences are when i learned BASIC on my own in the 80´s on TI99/4A (and others), and also Assembler on an Atari 800XL. So when it comes to frontends, emulators, squirrel, python,... i startet barnaked.

The reason, why i tell you this?
Now my little Retro-Gamesystem comes to an state, where nearly all things are the way i supposed.
As i´m very thankful to the people, who works on AM, the plugins and the support, i wonder how i could make a little contribute for the project.
Sadly there seems to be no way to donate money to support the project, because i have tons of money and it would mean nothing to me, to donate some Million Dollar. (Sorry, this was a joke) 

Seriously, i consider to making some tutorials for beginners like me, that are understandable even for people who get excited when open an config.txt file with notepad the first time of their life. 

Because everything is easy, when you know how. But it was not soo easy to find this and that out for me, that it could be.
I think the best way for such beginner-tutorials is to make yt-vids step by step.

I have to say, that the orginal tutorial from AM https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/v2.6.1/Readme.md helps me alot, but for an real beginner there still remains so many questions, thats where i want to jump in.

I would post the first tutorial here by the end of this week.

5

General / Re: Game Descriptions missing

« on: May 09, 2020, 12:15:26 PM »

I got this reply from the history.dat support:

MAME has all the softlists (for consoles and computers) too, it's why I said the history.dat has all the information for the amiga, gameboy , etc... Not only the Arcade.

I think you should ask the frontend developper why it's program is not supporting the consoles and computers information. Everything is on the History.dat file

here is how History.dat should be reads:

info for games: $info=rom1,rom2,
info for machines: $info=bios1,bios2,
info for softlist: $softlist_name=rom1,rom2,
Some games can have two or more $xxx= tags.


For example, for the Nintendo 64 games, in the History.dat, the information can be found below the tag :

$n64=smb64,
$n64=fzerox,
etc.....

I have no knowlege of coding, but for me this seems to get done with a little tweaking in AM or the historie.dat plugin. Then (nearly) every system should have the Informations from historie.dat.

6

General / Re: Game Descriptions missing

« on: May 09, 2020, 06:00:45 AM »

Hmm, but with the link joyrider postet (https://github.com/dmmarti/overview) i have already nice Overview data.
And the kind of information is different, so it would be the best thing to combine regular Overview Text with historie.dat.

For example, i use a layout with permanent Overviewtext, thats perfect for a quick impression. When i want more info, i press the configured Key (e.g. "H") and the historie.dat shows up. Beside of curiosity, this is useful to see Facts like the Year of Release, i use this to complete missing metadata. (By the way this is so user-friendly with AM. I defined a button for editing on my xbox-controller, and i can immediatly input the data, like Year and even the Overviewtext. Thanks to the fine people, who work on this project. 8D )
If this would work this way on all systems instead of just mame, i would be perfect satisfied.

If your plugin will add historie.dat to existing Overview, i would prefer it this way, instead of overwriting existing data.

Anyway, my main problem now is, that i have no historie.dat for all the consoles and computers. And the data for all this systems is already on their database, but i didnt find a way to use this data for my own collection. I dont even know, how to input some stuff by hand. (I dont have such intensions, but e.g. with Overview that´s a piece of cake )

7

General / Re: Game Descriptions missing

« on: May 09, 2020, 01:29:30 AM »

Thank you joyrider, this is useful.

I still hope for a way to get historie.dat working for all kinds of roms. it generates idx files for every game, but only the arcade section showing up infos. I think its because the historie.dat file i downloaded has just mame related data, but i cant find any other version of history.dat. On their database, they have data for every system like consoles or computers, but i didnt find a way to get an historie.dat file for every system.
I will start a new thread belong to history.dat if there will dont come an solve in this thread while the next days.

8

General / Re: Game Descriptions missing

« on: May 08, 2020, 08:32:25 AM »

Ok, in the meantime i found out the following:

1. In older versions of AM the Overviews(what i called Game Descriptions") where in subdirectories of the romlists drawer as cfg files. Now the Overview have to be in scraper/[emulator]/overview as txt files. Easiest way i found to get this done, is download the data from https://github.com/billyc999/RetroFe-Game-info and extract the txt files to the corresponding folders. So now most of the ROMs have their overview text.

2. Another way to see game informations is, to use the history.dat plugin. I downloaded the actual historie.dat from here: https://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=download
But i got only infos for my Arcade section, not the consoles or computers. How can i get historie.dat information for all of my roms?

As for case 1 i could solve myself now, i hope someone can help me on case 2.

9

General / Game Descriptions missing

« on: May 08, 2020, 04:41:31 AM »

Hi,

after changed attract-mode to latest version, the game descriptions are missing.
The layouts leave that field empty, or it says "There is no information available for ***"
I tryed different layouts, and off course in the theme-options the description is turned on.
In the Romlists drawer there are all the cfg files with the descriptions. Please how can i get attract- mode to read that descriptions for the games, or is there any other way, to get descriptions for the Rom´s?

Thank you for help in advance