Arcadeflow theme v 9.9 [Release] Updated 22 February 2021

[zpaolo11x]

Okay so there's still bugs in this version, unfortunately.  I have recorded some videos to help show what I'm encountering.  Please note that all of these bugs were also happening back in the 4.6 version.

Thank you for all the work you did with the videos! I hope I can help fixing these issues, let me some time to study them, and maybe I'll need your attract.cfg file to proper debug it. I never saw this issues in my tests with mixed romlists.

Question.  When I go to Layout Options I see one of the options being "Show boxart or flyer mode" and the choices are "Yes" or "No".  What does that mean.  Also it's set to No by default.  How does this play a role in some systems being in boxart mode, like PS2 and arcade but then you have some systems like the ps1 in screenshot mode?  I'm assuming this is a bug?

The setting "Show boxart or flyer mode" should be renamed because it's confusing: it's not a selection of boxart vs flyers, actually boxart and flyers are the same thing in AM. So despite the bad wording, if it's set to "Yes" then boxart (or flyers for arcade) are shown, if it's set to "No" then screenshots are shown. But this is just a "default" setting. Each display can have its own setting, just set a hotkey (by default Custom3) or use the utility menu to switch each display as you like it.

Oh and the non-centered displays menu is by design, the right portion of the screen should be artowrk put in the menu-art folder. I'll make an option to enlarge the menu if no artwork is needed.

Hey one good news though is there's no more crashing with this version like there was in 4.6!

Edit:  Oh and one more thing.  I don't see any option for "Small Thumbnails" in the Layout options.  If I switch "Rows in Horizontal" from 3 to 1 then I still get large 3 thumb rows. 

Good to know that at least crashes are no more! The small thumbnails is an option in Horizontal Rows: the option is now 1-Small, 1, 2, 3 and the first one is what you should set to see small thumbs

[zpaolo11x]

After playing a little with the new version everything seems to be way more stable and with no crashes. Great job

It took me a week to find the single line of code that worked up to 4.5 but completely broke 4.6 LOL

The only "major" bug that I've found for the moment is the video snaps sound not stopping when you change from one game to the next. I always put "on" the options of audio in videos in thumbs and history. In 4.5 it worked normal. Scroll to a game, screenshot goes out and video starts playing. Change to other game the sound of the one before stops and you only hear the video sound of your current selection. In 4.7 both in the games list or in the history panel, the sound of the game before doesn't stop when you scroll to other game.

There's now a slow fade-out of the video instead of an abrupt stop, but I can't fade out the audio. I didn't check it (my bad) but maybe the old video keeps playing a bit longer and then stops? Or it never stops? I'll check the issue with the history page too, thank you for the heads up

[Enkak]

It never stops both in the gaming list or history panel, so you can imagine the sound chaos after selecting 3 games or more 
In 4.5 when you changed the game selected the video sound always stopped for the next one to start.

[dukpoki]

The setting "Show boxart or flyer mode" should be renamed because it's confusing: it's not a selection of boxart vs flyers, actually boxart and flyers are the same thing in AM. So despite the bad wording, if it's set to "Yes" then boxart (or flyers for arcade) are shown, if it's set to "No" then screenshots are shown. But this is just a "default" setting. Each display can have its own setting, just set a hotkey (by default Custom3) or use the utility menu to switch each display as you like it.

Apparently I'm an idiot.  Not only did I read that question in the wrong manner, I also for some reason thought it was asking between flyer/boxart vs screenshot.  (Looks like I need glasses.  )

Good to know that at least crashes are no more! The small thumbnails is an option in Horizontal Rows: the option is now 1-Small, 1, 2, 3 and the first one is what you should set to see small thumbs

Okay I didn't scroll down far down enough.  And I just tested it out.  Looks and works great!

Some other things:
1. You can scratch the random SNES boxart showing up off the list of things to fix.  That one was my fault.  I just checked my snap folder and for reason I had a single snes jpeg in there named as fatal fury 3.  So sorry!

2.  After putting it on 1-Small, going back and forth between displays for some reason is bug free.  Going from PS1 to Arcade results in proper boxarts to the game name.  I confirmed it by setting it to 2 again and then things got wonky again.  So the problem looks to be when when there are multiple rows.

[zpaolo11x]

It never stops both in the gaming list or history panel, so you can imagine the sound chaos after selecting 3 games or more 
In 4.5 when you changed the game selected the video sound always stopped for the next one to start.

I see that the thumbs videos are not stopping as expected: if you let a video fade in, then move to another thumb, wait for the old video to fade out, then you move again to the old thumb the video is not restarting from the beginning. This is probably the reason why it keeps playing the audio. I'll fix this ASAP and check the history page too.

[zpaolo11x]

It never stops both in the gaming list or history panel, so you can imagine the sound chaos after selecting 3 games or more 

Can you check if the issue is solved in this layout, now the sound stops as soon as the fade out finishes. There might be some mixing of both sounds during fade out but it should work. Oh and the history page should work too...

[zpaolo11x]

Video 1
You can see in this video, that I load up AM and it goes straight into PS1 display.

I'm looking into this video... what happens is that PS1 is loaded correctly, but when you change display only wheel (logos) artwork is updated, while no screenshots are updated. As you move then wheel art disappears, and further images are boxart and not screenshots. So it seems that Arcade is loaded in boxart mode, but the layout can't correctly update the thumbnails. I'll try to replicate the issue

Please check some things in your setup:
- Are you using the same layout for all your displays? Don't mix 4.7 with previous versions.
- Do you have a script.nv file in your AM folder? If yes, please share it here so I can check it
- Can you share your attract.cfg and cfg files in the Emulators directory?

Also if you can run the same as video 1 using attract-console --loglevel debug and paste the output here it might help.

[Enkak]

It never stops both in the gaming list or history panel, so you can imagine the sound chaos after selecting 3 games or more 

Can you check if the issue is solved in this layout, now the sound stops as soon as the fade out finishes. There might be some mixing of both sounds during fade out but it should work. Oh and the history page should work too...

Working perfectly now in game list and history panel, thanks again

There's a small bug that I just found related to this but I can live with it. Lets see if I can explain it:
Select a game (Bubble Bobble for example, can be any other), video starts playing, click button for context menu and chose history panel. There, scroll to left or right to other games, the video behavior with sound working perfect, etc. Now go back to the gaming list again. If you go the game you first selected to access the history panel and all the others you scrolled there before the last one you will notice that those videos start playing but now always without sound.

In other matter, I noticed that with Mame romlist if the list has the players numbers like "2P sim", "2P alt", "1P" and so on that will not appear in the players icon in the theme on top. Maybe this will help you if you want the code to check possible alternative entries in the lists.

[zpaolo11x]

There's a small bug that I just found related to this but I can live with it. Lets see if I can explain it:
Select a game (Bubble Bobble for example, can be any other), video starts playing, click button for context menu and chose history panel. There, scroll to left or right to other games, the video behavior with sound working perfect, etc. Now go back to the gaming list again. If you go the game you first selected to access the history panel and all the others you scrolled there before the last one you will notice that those videos start playing but now always without sound.

Found and fixed, there are so many places where things are changed now that it's difficult to track and fix them all, I really need to cleanup and rationalize the code.

In other matter, I noticed that with Mame romlist if the list has the players numbers like "2P sim", "2P alt", "1P" and so on that will not appear in the players icon in the theme on top. Maybe this will help you if you want the code to check possible alternative entries in the lists.

What version of mame has this? I will try a blind fix (I don't have this kind of player data), but if you really want to try something to help me, go in the "players_images" folder inside Arcadeflow, it should be enough to duplicate, for example

players_1.png

and rename it

players_1P.png

You can also duplicate and rename players_2.png to "players_2P sim.png" while I come up with an icon for "2p alt"

[Enkak]

There's a small bug that I just found related to this but I can live with it. Lets see if I can explain it:
Select a game (Bubble Bobble for example, can be any other), video starts playing, click button for context menu and chose history panel. There, scroll to left or right to other games, the video behavior with sound working perfect, etc. Now go back to the gaming list again. If you go the game you first selected to access the history panel and all the others you scrolled there before the last one you will notice that those videos start playing but now always without sound.

Found and fixed, there are so many places where things are changed now that it's difficult to track and fix them all, I really need to cleanup and rationalize the code.

In other matter, I noticed that with Mame romlist if the list has the players numbers like "2P sim", "2P alt", "1P" and so on that will not appear in the players icon in the theme on top. Maybe this will help you if you want the code to check possible alternative entries in the lists.

What version of mame has this? I will try a blind fix (I don't have this kind of player data), but if you really want to try something to help me, go in the "players_images" folder inside Arcadeflow, it should be enough to duplicate, for example

players_1.png

and rename it

players_1P.png

You can also duplicate and rename players_2.png to "players_2P sim.png" while I come up with an icon for "2p alt"

Yeah, theme is complex and with so many things I bet its not easy to track them all. We're here to help.

Regarding MAME list, you can get a list like that here: http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mame.php
Then chose options, export the results. There you have the option for Attract-Mode list. It exports automatic with those values for players numbers.

I use that site and function to get a fullset list to use after with AM Global filter rule: rule                 FileIsAvailable equals 1
This can avoid the need to generate a new romlist everytime you add or delete games for example

Oh nice trick regarding the .png files, thx. I went with notepad++ route before since it can make easier to replace lots of similar entries with others.

[zpaolo11x]

Regarding MAME list, you can get a list like that here: http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mame.php
Then chose options, export the results. There you have the option for Attract-Mode list. It exports automatic with those values for players numbers.

I use that site and function to get a fullset list to use after with AM Global filter rule: rule                 FileIsAvailable equals 1
This can avoid the need to generate a new romlist everytime you add or delete games for example

Oh good to know, I only got my game data from catver.ini and generated romlist inside AM which, as far as I understand, is dependent on MAME version. My MAME is 0.185, but I think the "1P" naming started around mame 0.192. I don't want to fix my roms so I'm sticking with 0.185 but an "updated" romlist will help in the debug.

[Enkak]

Not sure when they started doing that but I checked just now nplayers.ini and noticed it uses that system so maybe its related.
PS: On that site you can also select the mame version before exporting the file if needed.

[dukpoki]

Are you using the same layout for all your displays? Don't mix 4.7 with previous versions.

Yes.  Deleted 4.6 along time ago.

Do you have a script.nv file in your AM folder? If yes, please share it here so I can check it
Can you share your attract.cfg and cfg files in the Emulators directory?

Done.  Attached in zip form.

[dukpoki]

Even in 1-Small mode, I'm getting problems when I switch to "Arcade".

When I switch Display mode to Arcade, the last display's boxart is there.

I've attached the log.   Hopefully you can get to the bottom of this.  Would having my romlists, at least for all my arcade lists, help?

[zpaolo11x]

I've attached the log.   Hopefully you can get to the bottom of this.  Would having my romlists, at least for all my arcade lists, help?

The log was very helpful: Arcadeflow is throwing an error, and that's the reason why you see that inconsistent and strange behavior. It's the same kind of error you had in the past, there are two very similar functions in Arcadeflow, one for game sorting used to populate the labels, one for extracting the first letter of the name. Basically one was patched and the other not.

If you want you can try this patched layout.nut, and tell me if it works better...