Arcadeflow theme v 17.4 [Release] Updated 05 September 2024

[zpaolo11x]

Excellent work, very good and complete. Is there any possibility of placing in the artwork (box theme) the titles of the games (wheel) at the top of the image? I am using artworks instead of flyers for that section, since those of Neo Geo are cut due to the resolution in which they are.

Working on it but rather slowly because of the puppy dog we just bought Stay tuned

[yxiie]

How do you generate those romlists?

I wrote my own game launcher script in Python which picks appropriate emulator and settings depending on platform and launches it. This script also checks romlist of appropriate platform and looks for the game name being launched. If it is found, it will take whole line from that romlist and adds that line on top of "Last Played Games.txt" romlist.

For now I have sort of solved the problem by having a copy of Arcadeflow layout assigning it to Last Played Games display only and commenting out z_listsort calls in it.

Kudos for making this theme. It is the best option for having something like modern colsole look and feel - minimalistic and modern. I am trying to assemble something like a superconsole attached to large TV and this theme fits right in.

BTW, loading large romlists are rather slow, i.e. 25000 flash games from Flashpoint, or generated All Games combined romlist. This can easily take 5+ seconds if not longer. I am wondering if this is because of ArcadeFlow or Attract-Mode itself?

[zpaolo11x]

I wrote my own game launcher script in Python which picks appropriate emulator and settings depending on platform and launches it. This script also checks romlist of appropriate platform and looks for the game name being launched. If it is found, it will take whole line from that romlist and adds that line on top of "Last Played Games.txt" romlist.

Would it be useful if I added an option to sort a display by last played game? I'm thinking of a way to do it using "non volatile" Attract Mode settings.

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BTW, loading large romlists are rather slow, i.e. 25000 flash games from Flashpoint, or generated All Games combined romlist. This can easily take 5+ seconds if not longer. I am wondering if this is because of ArcadeFlow or Attract-Mode itself?
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I have to check, I don't have such large romlists but yes ARcadeflow does some romlist calculations at startup so it may slow down a bit.

[dmmarti]

For loading times of large romlist files, I did a quick test on my Windows PC build.

I took all of my current romlist files for all systems (which alot were Hyperspin XML imported conversions) and merged them into a single large romlist file.

I don't have all of the games within the romlist (it ended up being around 90,000 or so games listed) - i only have around 33,000 games available.

I made a new display called All to use it and set it up to use the Basic theme/layout and setup a Filter to show only games available.

It took several seconds before the switch from the main display into the newly created All display I made.  I do have video video snaps for them all also (not sure that matters or not).

I think with that many games, having to parse the romlist and cache which games are available, having a large romlist for a single display just takes some processing by the computer to do it.  So I'd say it's not really Attract Mode (nor theme) related, but more computer related.

Just my quick test though ..... so others may do better tests than I did.

[yxiie]

I think with that many games, having to parse the romlist and cache which games are available, having a large romlist for a single display just takes some processing by the computer to do it.  So I'd say it's not really Attract Mode (nor theme) related, but more computer related.

Just my quick test though ..... so others may do better tests than I did.

Thanks for your testing effort, but in terms of computation, loading the file and parsing 30000 or even 1000000 entries is not that big of a deal, even in scripted language, especially since its a simple comma-separated text file (no fancy syntax or heavy SQL  requests), so it's definitely either ArcadeFlow or Attract-Mode. Flyers / Snaps should have no difference as only the first few that are displayed on the screen are loaded right away, the rest are loaded when you scroll, so they are constant overhead regardless of romlist size.

[yxiie]

Would it be useful if I added an option to sort a display by last played game? I'm thinking of a way to do it using "non volatile" Attract Mode settings.

I don't think it would all that useful as it is still necessary to generate romlist somehow and naturally you want to have in that list games from all romlists, not specific one, so it's a little bit more complex task, something that should be implemented in Attract-Mode itself.

[yxiie]

Ok, I have switched to "Basic" layout for my Flash games display and it loads lightning fast, so it's definitely ArcadeFlow. Perhaps you are doing some allocations / computations for all romlist elements right away instead of doing it on demand like with loading flyers?

[SFNMutt]

Just upgraded from 3.6 to 5.9 & it was super smooth.  everything is working great!

here's a digital leisure logo for the manufacturer folder.  they made Dragon's Lair.

in the sort menu, is there any way to have them not sorted?  I like to have them in the order I put them in my romslist file. i assumed I was just missing an option but not seeing it.  thanks

[SFNMutt]

How to disable sorting in ArcadeFlow? It does not respect Attract Mode sort setting in filter and there is no option to select sort to none in ArcadeFlow itself. I want to make auto-generated last played games romlist and sorting breaks it.

AF 5.8 used the "none" sorting when no sorting option was set, but the current 5.9 revision doesn't, because other part of the layout didn't work well mixing sorting and "none" sorting, so basically now Arcadeflow doesn't consider the original sorting of a display and only applies its own. I will look into it, maybe I can fix the "none" sorting for the future release.

A better option would be to add a sorting option "By last played" but there's no such info I can leverage. How do you generate those romlists?

sorry, guess I should have read thru the other replies before asking this same sorting question.

[zpaolo11x]

here's a digital leisure logo for the manufacturer folder.  they made Dragon's Lair.

Wow that's great, thank you very much. Do you have it in vector format? Arcadeflow 6.0 will feature vector based manufacturer artwork so if you have one it will be even better

[Aaron32]

I'm trying to find fonts where the Neo Geo System, Capcom Play System, Naomi or Taito Type X logos appear among other arcades emulators. I like it for the emulator selection menu, but so far I could only find domestic consoles. I'll see if I can put together my own fountain these days and I'll share it here.

[zpaolo11x]

I'm trying to find fonts where the Neo Geo System, Capcom Play System, Naomi or Taito Type X logos appear among other arcades emulators. I like it for the emulator selection menu, but so far I could only find domestic consoles.

You are right, at the moment the logos are only for consoles and computers, arcade and mame have their own logo but just that. I'm going to add more arcade systems logo, but at the moment I'm super busy vectorizing the manufacturer logos. Just out of curiosity, how do set up AM to use different arcade systems? It's not in the mame romlist, AFAIK

[yxiie]

Just out of curiosity, how do set up AM to use different arcade systems? It's not in the mame romlist, AFAIK

Personally I have written python script which exports mame listxml to separate attract mode romlists, but it's only at initial stage (only sega, taito, and namco machines supported). The biggest problem is not technically exporting it, but rather categorize arcades by platforms correctly. Many arcade machines don't even have their own name, let alone logo. I.e. "Namco Galaga Hardware", "Taito Ninja Warriors Hardware", which featured some other games apart from Galaga and Ninja Warriors respectively.

[Aaron32]

I, for example, create an emulator called Neo Geo System and link it to M.A.M.E. In the romlist of this system I load all the corresponding games such as Fatal Fury, Metal Slug, etc. Then, I create another one called Capcom Play System I and link it again to M.A.M.E. with their respective games and so I do with each one except Naomi, Atomiswave and Taito Type. This method is what I use, maybe a bit complex, but I like to have a more exact order.

[zpaolo11x]

A quick update on the vector brands progress. Attached you can see the result of using the new vector logos (left) versus the old PNG 1Bit logos (right). There's a great improvement in clarity and anti-aliasing. AS far as file size is concerned, I've now converted around 500 logos and the resulting font is 600 KB. Compare this with the old manufacturer images, they were around 900 with a file size of 2.95 MB. If all goes well I should be able to convert all the logos in a font that's less than 1 MB.
I'm now fixing the update routines and shadow filters, after that I'll release AF6.0 with the reduced set of images