WryCade theme - simple theme for classic arcade cabinets

[wrybread]

I'm new to Attract Mode and absolutely love it! Running beautifully on my Lubuntu Linux box. But I couldn't find a theme that looked right on my cabinet, which gets used mostly to play old 80s games. I like the front-end to look like the games it plays, and all the themes I found looked a bit too modern or busy.  And I'm a big fan of the old front end Game Launcher, which sadly only runs on Windows, so this is my approximation of the look and feel of that.

Here's a video of my theme running on a vertical monitor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnCFQpRiBM

It works well with horizontal monitors too. All the layout options can be adjusted in the layout configuration, shown in the video.

Feedback invited!

And thanks again to all who worked on this awesome program!

And for what it's worth here's a few things I'd love to add from Game Launcher to my theme:

- I like the scrolling behavior better in Game Launcher, which puts a new list of ROMs onto the screen and then scrolls through them, which I find much easier to follow than the way Attract Mode moves the whole list. See this video of someone else's cabinet for a view of Game Launcher:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mU3MmS0IAc

- And I like the transition when a game is chosen. I couldn't get a sound for that to work in my Theme, and have no idea how I'd make that animation happen.

- I also like the selection style in Game Launcher, where it puts a stroke around the selected ROM. No biggie on that one though.

[keilmillerjr]

I'm going to create a module for that scrolling behavior soon.

For the sound, you need to play a sound during a transition and have togame not complete until length of time of audio file.

[wrybread]

Awesome on the scrolling module!

As far as the sound, here's my code. It doesn't play the sound for ToGame though. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Code: [Select]

function fade_transitions( ttype, var, ttime ) {

switch ( ttype ) {

// sound when starting game. Not working.
  case Transition.ToGame:
local sound = fe.add_sound("sounds/SpaceInvaders_Bass02.wav");
sound.playing=true;
break;

// sound when switching to new list
  case Transition.ToNewList:
local Wheelclick = fe.add_sound("sounds/nintendo_04.wav");
Wheelclick.playing=true;
break;

// sound when scrolling through roms
  case Transition.ToNewSelection:
local Wheelclick = fe.add_sound("sounds/clicked.wav");
Wheelclick.playing=true;
break;
  }


return false;
}


fe.add_transition_callback( "fade_transitions" );



[moritzes]

Funny. I've been reworking an old MAME cabinet that's been dead for a number of years and was having trouble getting Game Launcher to work. Was starting to do some searching just now on the old G L sourceforge site and saw your post w/ link to here.  I'm going to give this a try.  Cool coincidence that you posted this just a few hours ago! Video looks good.

[keilmillerjr]

Awesome on the scrolling module!

As far as the sound, here's my code. It doesn't play the sound for ToGame though. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Code: [Select]

function fade_transitions( ttype, var, ttime ) {

switch ( ttype ) {

// sound when starting game. Not working.
  case Transition.ToGame:
local sound = fe.add_sound("sounds/SpaceInvaders_Bass02.wav");
sound.playing=true;
break;

// sound when switching to new list
  case Transition.ToNewList:
local Wheelclick = fe.add_sound("sounds/nintendo_04.wav");
Wheelclick.playing=true;
break;

// sound when scrolling through roms
  case Transition.ToNewSelection:
local Wheelclick = fe.add_sound("sounds/clicked.wav");
Wheelclick.playing=true;
break;
  }


return false;
}


fe.add_transition_callback( "fade_transitions" );



Everyone seems to forget that your transition is returning before your sound has time to play. Delay it with ticks.