Issue with attract and my Mac

[keilmillerjr]

I notice we finally have a few Mac users. I’ve been having issues with my mid-2011 iMac and attract for a few years now. Layouts on first load are usually missing an object or a few. It’s always consistent. I can’t make sense of it. Added a small snippet to mvscomplete last week, I get my background snap back but now loose the list count object. Reloading the layout corrects these issues. Doesn’t happen on my arcade machine running win10.

I also don’t get artwork working in arcadeflow. Odd.

Is everything working ok for other Mac users?

[zpaolo11x]

I'm a Mac user myself, and actually turned to AM because it was the only nice frontend for MAME on the Mac

I had my issues in the past: AM 2.1 was good but many themes using surfaces or making use of other features crawled and had a lot of issues, then I upgraded to 2.2 and 2.3, both unofficial builds using homebrew to provide the missing libraries. These were much better, especially 2.3, I never had great issues with that. And from 2.4 we finally have an official build so I got rid of homebrew.

I'm not having any issues with that, at least I don't see much differences between my Windows 7 test machine and my Macbook Pro Retina 13" Late 2013. There is an issue with glsl shaders though, on the Mac some features are not supported, don't know if it's my graphics card (Iris), the drivers or the libraries that are used by AM. This is not a great issue though, all the themes I tested work, just some shaders I built using GL3 or GL4 commands gave me issues.

Oh, one thing I noticed is that I can only use "software" video decoding, that's why when using video-heavy themes the fan starts spinning at full speed and my mac makes the noise of a jet engine

[RetroMacGamer]

Been on the Mac OSX Attract Mode band wagon for the last few years and pretty much no issues that I can complain about.

I am also the main Mac guy behind building the Hyperpie Mac Versions, we are getting new users everyday as its IMHO the best frontend for Mac User.

The only limitations are Emulators, less available on Mac.

If you want a good base image (no roms) feel free to try HP2 for macOS

[estefan3112]

Hi, I just wrote s small Blog entry about how stable AM is currently running:
https://mameonmacs.blogspot.com/2018/10/brief-update-on-attract-mode-24128.html?m=1
In the past I had issues on my Mac, e.g videosnaps did not run in my favorite layouts. I eventually did a fresh AM configuration by archiving the .attract folder and let AM create a new one. Since then no problems any longer, and the latest optimizations in loading artwork are impressive. So far a quite perfect piece of software for me!
Cheers and good luck

[keilmillerjr]

Hi, I just wrote s small Blog entry about how stable AM is currently running:
https://mameonmacs.blogspot.com/2018/10/brief-update-on-attract-mode-24128.html?m=1
In the past I had issues on my Mac, e.g videosnaps did not run in my favorite layouts. I eventually did a fresh AM configuration by archiving the .attract folder and let AM create a new one. Since then no problems any longer, and the latest optimizations in loading artwork are impressive. So far a quite perfect piece of software for me!
Cheers and good luck

I will try that. Thank you.

[iOtero]

To me, directly, since version 2.2 of AM does not work properly on my MacBook with Mountain Lion ... and I can not compile a new one either .....

Version 2.4 searches for libraries that Mountain Lion does not have and that can only be installed through homebrew.

And in Mountain Lion now there is no way to install homebrew.

So you have to settle for version 2.2 

[keilmillerjr]

To me, directly, since version 2.2 of AM does not work properly on my MacBook with Mountain Lion ... and I can not compile a new one either .....

Version 2.4 searches for libraries that Mountain Lion does not have and that can only be installed through homebrew.

And in Mountain Lion now there is no way to install homebrew.

So you have to settle for version 2.2 

Did you install xquartz? I believe that was the issue with himebrew on mountain lion. It was required, but now packaged separately.

[estefan3112]

Now that version 2.5.0 is out, easy to test with a blank .attract directory 👍🏻

[keilmillerjr]

Now that version 2.5.0 is out, easy to test with a blank .attract directory 👍🏻

$ mv ~/.attract ~/attract_backup

Fresh install of attract 2.5 on my mac. Edited MAME config through the GUI, and added a single display with default configuration to eliminate variables that could cause an issue. Closed, copied my mvscomplete theme and dependencies. Shows up all messed up. Removed mvscomplete and dependencies, tried Arcadeflow_28.zip. Didn’t load theme at all. Unzipped, and it loaded with no snaps like before. Also threw errors in tick2 function and had to force close attract.

Deep breath...

[toothlessgrinn]

Just a thought, I'm not a Mac person but I'm seeing a pattern lately. I mean the 64bit version of am seems to conflict with a lot of things. Weather its a Mac , pc , or pi. I was having major crash issues and what not. I switched to 32bit and haven't had ANY issue since. Just a thought but maybe a fix? Idk .

[zpaolo11x]

Just a thought, I'm not a Mac person but I'm seeing a pattern lately. I mean the 64bit version of am seems to conflict with a lot of things. Weather its a Mac , pc , or pi.

I don't know, 32 bit is already deprecated on Mac, and AFAIK all the Mac builds of AM are 64 bit. I never had an issue with AM on Mac, except some performance issues with 2.1 and earlier. I've just installed 2.5 for a quick test and everything seems to be fine.

[zpaolo11x]

Fresh install of attract 2.5 on my mac. Edited MAME config through the GUI, and added a single display with default configuration to eliminate variables that could cause an issue. Closed, copied my mvscomplete theme and dependencies. Shows up all messed up. Removed mvscomplete and dependencies, tried Arcadeflow_28.zip. Didn’t load theme at all. Unzipped, and it loaded with no snaps like before. Also threw errors in tick2 function and had to force close attract.

Deep breath...

Wow... it seems something is going really wrong there, so even your own theme is messy?

Regarding Arcadeflow, probably it doesn't work in zip format because of a packaging mistake I made (damn Mac compression utility ).

For the missing artwork, I was thinking of an issue with graphics card drivers, if that's the case you could try disabling your external graphics card and use only the integrated one (if you can...).

I have no idea what errors the tick2 function can throw, do you have an output log to share?