New FAQ Section (for beginners)

[Hanappi]

Hi,

so here is a suggestion for a (Beginner-)FAQ section:

Topics:

What do i need, to implement an Retrogame-System with Attract Mode on PC?

The Attract Mode Software
Download here: http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?board=4.0

Games, Emulators, Emulator Bios
Could find here: https://www.arcadepunks.com/ or https://vimm.net/

Guides
http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=328.0 and https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/v2.6.1/Readme.md

Why some of my games are not show up in the Frontend?

For example you have a screen for Atari  Lynx, and some but not all of your games are listed.

First you should check, if all your games have the same suffix (like .zip). This is case-sensitive, so when the missing files have .Zip for example, you have to add that suffix in the attract-mode configuration. Go to the emulators-section, choose Atari Lynx, and just add the suffix, when it´s not already there.

But in most cases the reason for missing games will found in the romlists.

Before you start it might be a good idea to make backup-copy of your romlists folder. The fastest way is: click on the folder "romlists", press Strg+c then Strg+v. On your keyboard maybe you have to press Ctrl+c then Ctrl+v. Now you have a "romlists copy" folder, for the case something gets messed up. I advice to make such copies for all configuration files anyway. If you are not sure about that, you can make a backupcopy of the whole "Attract" folder.

Go to the romlists folder, and open the system.txt file with notepad. In our example it would be "Atari Lynx.txt"
A line will look like this: Lynx Casino (USA, Europe);Lynx Casino (USA, Europe);Atari Lynx;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

If you have that game in your Roms folder, but it dont appear in the frontend screen, then compare the exact filename (case sensitive and without suffix) with the first entry in the corresponding line.
If your filename is "lynx casino (USA, Europe).zip" for example, change the entry in the text file, so it will look like this:
lynx casino (USA, Europe);Lynx Casino (USA, Europe);Atari Lynx;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
When the game is not present in the "Atari Lynx.txt" file, you can just insert a new line for the game the same way.

When you are done save the file and close notepad.
Now all games should show up in the list for Atari Lynx.

But this solution is only reasonable, when you dont have very much games in the list or there are only a few games missing.
A much better way to have a perfect list of all your games including metadata and media might be, to scrape your Roms folder. Please go the FAQ-sections which belongs to scraping.

Some further Topic-Suggestions:
How to get Metadata (like Year of Release, Publisher,...) and medias (like Screenshots, videos, Boxart,...) for your games, aka How you scrape your Roms
What is History.dat and how to setup?
How can i add or get Descriptions (aka Overview) fo my games?
Do i need Rocketlauncher to work with Attractmode?
I installed Hyperpie PC (aka HyperPC), what should i do now?
How can i avoid, that my beloved Retrogames-System gets broken?


Please tell me, if you find this way to implement an FAQ-Section (for Beginners) useful.
If yes, i suggest you pin the first topics to the general section of the forum, and i will bring up more content soon. Of course any kind of additional reasonable contend, editing and optimization is highly welcome.
But if you dont like my idea, i will have no problem on that, and i will stop to continue in that direction.


Best Regards
Wolfgang

[Mark Norville]

You are very very very lucky that the admin/mods or the forum is not busy.

My beginners guide for you

1) You should never post links for PIRATED MATERIAL

Mmmmm gee now let me think about that one, I would have edited your post, sent you a warning.

2) You are posting links to the websites own website.

I actually searched for over view, as I wanted to find out how to do it.

However, seeing your illegal links can get this website in a hell of a lot of trouble.

YOU DO NOT POST WAREZ/ROM SITES