POLL: What system are you running Attract Mode on?

[Oomek]

Not neccesarily. We have a database of 4529 forum users and I don't believe all of them have registered here to seek guidance in developing themes. Even though I'm not a fan of sending spam emails from administrators maybe in this case it would be beneficial to do so. That would give us a pretty good statistical sample.

[Oomek]

Didn't you guys just skew the results? Who is going to vote for Vista or Windows 8 now?

IMO - You should have limited the vote to one (primary) OS (like you started with). I, and many others, have AM on several OSes but I (and most likely others) always play games on one OS.

This poll is machine, not user oriented, so no, I don't believe the results are skewed in any way.

[iOtero]

This poll is machine, not user oriented, so no, I don't believe the results are skewed in any way.

My exact thoughts

[Favdeacon]

IMO - You should have limited the vote to one (primary) OS (like you started with). I, and many others, have AM on several OSes but I (and most likely others) always play games on one OS.

I respectfully beg to differ, since I play retro games on both my PC with Kubuntu and my Raspberry Pi with Retropie roughly to the same extent. The Pi is the heart of my DIY arcade cabinet, and the PC is for games that are not suited for either the Pi or the cabinet. And I often enough hear from people with similar setups to find a multi-vote better than forcing us to choose a main system we don't actually have.

[keilmillerjr]

Not neccesarily. We have a database of 4529 forum users and I don't believe all of them have registered here to seek guidance in developing themes. Even though I'm not a fan of sending spam emails from administrators maybe in this case it would be beneficial to do so. That would give us a pretty good statistical sample.

Theres about 50 people with 50 posts or more, but over 4500 users. I recognize almost all the top 50 people and most have contributed in some way. An estimated 3100 users have zero posts. Either spam, or came to download a theme. Which is a good thing! But like I said, I guarantee this poll would end up either windows or "wtf is unix"?

http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?action=mlist;sort=posts;desc;start=30

Regardless, I love that this front end is multiplatform. I can program on my mac, and use windows in the arcade because of crt emu drivers and lack of support for groovy arcade. I honestly cant tell you when the last time I used my arcade machine was. I enjoy the tinkering. rPi has been an interesting project. Not a fan of how bloated existing images are. I created my own setup just for mame. It would be an easy and cheap solution for some one making a home made cabinet with a crt tv and jpac!

[zpaolo11x]

Ask this poll on any arcade related facebook group, and I bet you will get either windows or „raspberry pi“ because most people do not know even know what operating system they have running on their raspberry pi.

You are right, in the past emulation was mostly a Windows thing, now I see a lot of people using RPi, which is really great. I also love the fact that AM is multiplatform, I used to run Mame on Parallels before but it's much better to have some native software. Although I'm really scared what would happen of all the carefully crafted GLSL shaders if (when?) Apple decides to ditch OpenGL altogether

[Favdeacon]

Regardless, I love that this front end is multiplatform.

I second that wholeheartedly. In a multiplatform community, it (mostly) doesn't matter which system you happen to use. Instead, we all can just enjoy our common interest and benefit from everyone's contribution.

[Oomek]

I think you all deserve an explanation of what is the purpose of this poll. My moderate OCD dictates me to make Attract Mode stutter free, able to sustain a constant 60fps even on Raspberry Pi. I have a proof of concept of asynchronous image loader with caching, so you will not longer need rawset_index_offset property. That means non blocking loading of resources that aren't yet on the screen, so in theory even if you write for example just an array of 100 add_image or add_artwork and cycle through games AM should keep 60fps. But first thing to fix is any other source of stuttering not loading related. The differences between Windows 10 and lower versions for example force different approaches of syncing, as the new DWM gets in the way. Vsync and double/triple buffering in SFML works differently on each window mode and differently in multimonitor mode, and even when you have your dpi scaling other than 100%. I have it almost fixed for Windows, but tests wil be required on all platforms to make sure I sync accordingly for each platform. I already got myself a mac and waiting for RPI to arrive. So my personal  purpose of the poll is to let me know which platforms are commonly used so I prioritize this fairly.

[Favdeacon]

Thanks for the explanation and my best wishes for success in your endeavor.

[rand0m]

Luckily, there is no one who uses Vista...
What i do not understand is why someone is still using Windows 8... 

That would be me, long story but right when I was about to upgrade to Win 10 there was a huge outcry about it being invasive and privacy nightmare, so I didn't upgrade. A few weeks back when I was again seriously considering to upgrade some issue with updates breaking Win 10 came into news ( I follow gHacks for that). Win 8.1 is working pretty well though, once I got rid of Metro  

[MikeFromPA]

Luckily, there is no one who uses Vista...
What i do not understand is why someone is still using Windows 8... 

That would be me, long story but right when I was about to upgrade to Win 10 there was a huge outcry about it being invasive and privacy nightmare, so I didn't upgrade. A few weeks back when I was again seriously considering to upgrade some issue with updates breaking Win 10 came into news ( I follow gHacks for that). Win 8.1 is working pretty well though, once I got rid of Metro

You know, this really shouldn't concern you if you're making a dedicated rig.  I bought a used i3 Dell from a 2nd hand store for $19 that had its nic die.  Thought to myself, why would a pure gaming computer need network access?  Microsoft ( or anyone else ) can only exploit your machine if it's connected to the Internet.

I think you all deserve an explanation of what is the purpose of this poll. My moderate OCD dictates me to make Attract Mode stutter free, able to sustain a constant 60fps even on Raspberry Pi. I have a proof of concept of asynchronous image loader with caching, so you will not longer need rawset_index_offset property. That means non blocking loading of resources that aren't yet on the screen, so in theory even if you write for example just an array of 100 add_image or add_artwork and cycle through games AM should keep 60fps. But first thing to fix is any other source of stuttering not loading related. The differences between Windows 10 and lower versions for example force different approaches of syncing, as the new DWM gets in the way. Vsync and double/triple buffering in SFML works differently on each window mode and differently in multimonitor mode, and even when you have your dpi scaling other than 100%. I have it almost fixed for Windows, but tests wil be required on all platforms to make sure I sync accordingly for each platform. I already got myself a mac and waiting for RPI to arrive. So my personal  purpose of the poll is to let me know which platforms are commonly used so I prioritize this fairly.

To answer the poll, I've used primarly Windows XP in the past, now use Windows 7.  I do buy my 'newer' tech used, and the Dells and Gateways of the world are still super suited to play 20+ year old emulated games.  I keep with Windows 7 because I've bought the Windows 7 OEM discs on ebay for Dell and Gateway, so every system I have has a legit Windows on it for free.

With that said, I've been looking into Linux distros for a few thin clients I've come into.  Have been playing around with Tinycore as an OS to put a front end on.  Was using PuppyArcade for a while but I don't think that has been updated for years.

[pecosdave]

I've built it from source three different times over the past couple of years, always some flavor of Ubuntu or derivative.  Lubuntu twice, KDE Plasma last time. Usually I focus on it as an arcade of an experience as possible, using a barbones window manager like TinyWM so there's nothing in the way.  Unfortunately I can't use Attract Mode as the window manager due to complexity with the graphical environment.   I went with Plasma this time because I may still want to use this particular system as a desktop.

I gave up on Windows when Win 2000 was still new and Mac OS is annoying with how much it tried to help me   My previous two builds were on ancient Athlon dual core systems with separate ancient Nvidia cards (turns out integrated Nvidia chips don't work well with Linux). My last build was on an old Core 2 Duo 24" iMac (KDE Plasma) with a built in Radeon.  The newest one I plan to focus on ScummVM instead of MAME but I have Mednfen doing at least three consoles as well. I'm just waiting for the new scraper, the thing is sitting there mostly built. The previous two were for arcade cabinets, the newest one is for my nearly 4 year old and his Living Books and Humongous Entertainment games I got from the Humble Bundle.

[RetroMacGamer]

I am the lead macOS dev at HyperPie Expanded where we provide a base image (no Roms) using Attract Mode.

Since I started the HyperPie macOS version 18 months ago, we have had a ton of users join the group for macOS.

Some of the Tutorial Install Videos have had several thousand views

The macOS retro gaming community is growing rapidly with Attract Mode being the only True Front End available.

Many thanks for all the hard work and great to see the macOS releases side by side with Windows

Happy to help with anything I can, sing out.

Cheers

[keilmillerjr]

RetroFE can be compiled on Mac. Haven’t visited it in long time... because I like attractmode.

[iOtero]

RetroFE can be compiled on Mac. Haven’t visited it in long time... because I like attractmode.

Is that RetroFE can be "cloned" in Attract-Mode without problems...