AM on Pi

[slippyblade]

I've got the AM image installed on a Pi model B and it is working great.  My trouble is I'm not entirely sure what to do from here.  I've got my layouts, romlists, and emulators all setup on my windows machine.  I chose only emulators that have linux variants so I should be able to get them on the Pi, I just have no idea how to go about that.

Any advice?

[omegaman]

Slippyblade-

I'm using the wheezy image, but the process should be the same. In your "/home/pi/" folder there should be an .attract folder created where you will put your layouts, romlist etc... note: You might need to change your file-manger to view hidden folders to see everything.

Then just create a media folder or whatever you want to call it in your home directory " /home/pi/media/". I use media for example. Here you will put the snap, marquee, wheel, and flyer folders. So, for example my /home/pi/media/snes/ will have these media folders. You can also put the roms folder here or make a separate rom folder with something list this '/home/pi/roms/snes. Whatever suits you taste.

If you installed the retropie script for emulators - you will find a retropie folder in your home directory to place your roms and bios.

The last step is to have your am emulator configs point to these folders.

Hope this helps.
         

[slippyblade]

I DL'd the Diet-Pi distro that is available through this board.  It loads and runs fine, the the default disply is a rotated vertical one.  Got that swapped to a horizontal display that I can read.  The problem comes when I exit AM; I am getting a black screen with a mouse cursor.  If I mouse to the bottom' there is a toolbar that pops up.  I just figured out how to exit from what I'm assuming is a borked windows manager before I left for work.

Not using RetroPi at all.

I'll screw around some more when I get home.

[omegaman]

Well, if you exit out of am you will see a black desktop. Because, AM is launched from the LXDE X11 desktop environment. Sort of the same way an app is launched in windows startup. If you exit out of am and want to load it again you can find the binary here /usr/local/bin/attract or just logout of the desktop and run startx at the cmd line.

Once you have everything setup. You can configure attract to shutdown linux when exiting.

[nitrogen_widget]

Hey Slippy,
I set the tool bar to be hidden along with hiding the icons so you didn't see them when AM launched a rom.
It's just like a windows 7 auto-hidden tool bar.

In the home directory is a retropi setup script.
I don't have my RPI in front of me so it may be in a sub folder.
Choose BINARY install otherwise you'll be compiling emulators forever & a day.

To re-run AM just trigger the tool bar by going to the bottom of the screen & hit the "start" button & choose the "run command" and simply type "attract" and hit enter.
To copy roms just have your RPI hooked up to your network & browse the network neighborhood from windows.

the retropie script should create folders for you as it installs emulators.
If not make your own.

The emulators will end up in ./user/local/opt I think.
I know /opt is the folder the executables end up in but the linux directory structure can be confusing.

Honestly, LXDE is very similiar to windows 7 or XP in terms of funtionality and it's almost as intuitive.
I hope I helped.
Not having the rpi in front of me = going by memory & I havn't been in the guts of mine for a month.

[slippyblade]

Awesome, thanks for the clarification Nitrogen!  That makes a lot more sense.  I was a Mala fan for a long time, but am switching over to AM.  The flexibility and feature set are just so nice, and the cross platform is just gravy.

[omegaman]

The retropie emulators are installed @ /opt/retropie/emulators. The old school unix directory. Before you choose binary , I would select the update retropie script first under the retropie.setup. And, nitro is right. Selecting the binary is the best option unless you want to wait for hours on end.  Made that mistake once, LOL..

[slippyblade]

Ok, got things sorted, got emulators installed and am slowly starting to make heads and tails of this.

New problem.  My artwork isn't coming into the layout.  I added a media folder to the shares and then create an nes/carts and nes/snap within.  Copied the art over just fine.  Setup the paths in AM just like on the windows machine - different paths of course.  Partially working.  I have cartridge images tagged in AM as Marquee and screenshots tagged as snap.  The carts are showing in the marquee spot where they should, but the snaps aren't showing.  On windows I'd be able to look at the terminal window that pops, but I can't seem to window AM on the Pi to check the terminal window.

Here's the emulator config - I no that I don't have the exe path set, I'm trying to get the other parts working first.

Code: [Select]

# Generated by Attract-Mode 1.5.2
#
args                 "[romfilename]"
rompath              ~/RetroPie/roms/nes
romext               .zip
artwork    marquee            /home/media/nes/carts
artwork    snap            /home/media/nes/snap


[omegaman]

Slippyblade-

GJ, looks like you're almost to the finish line. First thing, does your romlist match what is in the snap folder " needs to match exactly" ? That is the first thing to check off. Next, are your snaps images or videos. If they are videos, did you install ffmpeg? Just for a sanity check.   

[slippyblade]

GJ, looks like you're almost to the finish line. First thing, does your romlist match what is in the snap folder " needs to match exactly" ? That is the first thing to check off. Next, are your snaps images or videos. If they are videos, did you install ffmpeg? Just for a sanity check.

Snaps are straight PNG files.  Yes, filenames in the snap/cart/rom folder all match.  I am using the exact same setup on the windows machine which works fine.  The only thing I've really changed is the paths.  Does AM write a log file?  On the windows setup I was able to troubleshoot several issues by watching the console window - I can't get to it on the Pi though. 

[omegaman]

Slippy-

Run ./attract from terminal. Once you exit AM there should be a dialog generated with any errors that you might have. Also, make sure your home folder is correct. On raspbian "wheezy" the home folder is actually /home/pi/ based on the user login name pi.  So, your home folder should actually be /home/username/ then your media folder.

[slippyblade]

the home folder is actually /home/pi/ based on the user login name pi.  So, your home folder should actually be /home/username/ then your media folder.

It's an absolute path to the directory.  The snap and carts directory are parallel directories, that's where my confusion is coming in.  I'll try the terminal run method and see how that works.

[slippyblade]

Ok, looks like it's not AM's fault at all, or mine for that matter.  It's the Pi's fault.  It simply doesn't like the image format.  If I open each image ON the pi and then do nothing more than re-save it, the image works.  If I convert the images stored on my windows machine to JPEG and then copy them over, they work then as well.  Apparently the PI just doesn't like the particular flavor of PNG I saved em in.

[slippyblade]

Yep - very weird.  Copying over the rest of my images and it is hit and miss on which batches work and which don't.  Sometimes simply re-saving works, sometimes changing format does, layouts graphics are now the big issue.

[slippyblade]

Hey Omega, or anybody who has this working...

Would you mind posting one of your emulator configs?  I can't seem to get the paths setup in a way that works.  I can get the damn thing running from the command line, but it seems to bork when I use the same thing from within AM.