Help, splash screen per game

[Tcartta]

Sorry if this is a silly question, but I've been searching high and low and not only can't find an answer, I'm not even sure I know how to phrase my question succinctly, so any help in the right direction is appreciated.

I'm in the early stages of building a mame cabinet, and I've finally got everything mame related nailed down and tweaked, and have moved on to the front end.  So far I've been able to get attract mode set up, figured out filters, editing the rom lists, etc to get everything displayed and working functionally how I would like, apart from one thing.  I don't even know if this is possible, but I would dearly love to have a splash screen come up for each game when selected.

Essentially, what I'd like to do in my ideal world is when a game has been selected, instead of starting right away a screen will pop up showing which controls to use, and basic how to play layout, then another button press will actually load up the game.  I figure if push comes to shove I could replace the video clips with a layout screen, but I kind of really like the preview videos, and I'd like a splash screen so its harder for someone to miss that they're supposed to use the 4 way joystick for this game, etc.

I've only done a cursory dive into the themes as its taken several nights of work just to nail down basic attract mode functionality for how I would like it, so maybe that is the key, but I couldn't see anything like that exactly while browsing through and searching.


If anyone knows if this is possible or how I could go about doing this, I would be very much appreciative!

[rand0m]

Easy way: Use fadtoblack plugin and either use [Title].png or add-artwork, this is explained here by Jedione > http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=1893.0

Or use a function on "select" which displays the image, where ideally pressing "select" again would run the game and "back" would bring you back to the list.

Or you could use transition_call back which is discussed here by checkist > http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=1081.0


!! All of the above would require having the controls/ howto play images.

[Tcartta]

Thanks!  Its very much appreciate, I've been reading through both those links and at a minimum it looks like that should work great if I can't get something that stays on screen until a button press. Speaking of...

Or use a function on "select" which displays the image, where ideally pressing "select" again would run the game and "back" would bring you back to the list.

I had a look through all the settings I could to find a function feature or something like that, but couldn't see anything so I'm going to take a guess and say what you're describing here would entail some actual programming of code?  If thats the case do you know where I might look into how to set that, or is this a "you need to know how to write code" kind of thing thats just sort of out of luck for the non programmer?

cheers