Weird rom list navigation

[felixthadog]

Hi all,

I have connected my Rpi3 to a HD TV and I use the AttracMan layout for the games list in Attract-Mode. I have configured the "Left" & "Right" arrow keys to jump to the "Previous Letter" & "Next Letter", which works for the most part. However, when the current letter is "T" and I press the right arrow key (Next Letter), instead of jumping to the letter "U" it jumps to the first game with "The" at the beginning of the title. I have to keep pressing the right arrow key until I reach the last game with "The" at the beginning of the title, then it will jump to the letter "U". Similarly, if the current letter is "V", pressing the right arrow key (Next Letter) will jump to the first game with "Vs" at the beginning of the title. I have to keep pressing the right arrow key until I reach the last game with "Vs" at the beginning of the title, then it will jump to the letter "W". I have looked through all of the Attract-Mode settings but I have been unable to find anything that could explain this behaviour. Any suggestions why this could be happening?

Example rom list:

sabotenb;Saboten Bombers (set 1);advmame;;1992;NMK / Tecmo;;;;;;;;;;
ttchamp;Table Tennis Champions (set 1);advmame;;;Gamart;;;;;;;;;;
tgmj;Tetris The Grand Master (JAPAN 980710);advmame;;1998;Capcom/Arika;;;;;;;;;;
mrflea;The Amazing Adventures of Mr. F. Lea;advmame;;1982;Pacific Novelty;;;;;;;;;;
thedeep;The Deep (Japan);advmame;;1987;Woodplace Inc.;;;;;;;;;;
theend;The End;advmame;;1980;Konami;;;;;;;;;;
tinstar;The Tin Star;advmame;;1983;Taito Corporation;;;;;;;;;;
thief;Thief;advmame;;1981;Pacific Novelty;;;;;;;;;;
ufosensi;Ufo Senshi Yohko Chan;advmame;;1988;Sega;;;;;;;;;;
valkyrie;Valkyrie No Densetsu (Japan);advmame;;1989;Namco;;;;;;;;;;
vblokbrk;VS Block Breaker (Asia);advmame;;1997;Kaneko / Mediaworks;;;;;;;;;;
cstlevna;Vs. Castlevania;advmame;;1987;Konami;;;;;;;;;;
wrecking;Vs. Wrecking Crew;advmame;;1984;Nintendo;;;;;;;;;;
vulcan;Vulcan Venture;advmame;;1988;Konami;;;;;;;;;;
wacko;Wacko;advmame;;1982;Bally Midway;;;;;;;;;;

Cheers,
Matthew

[felixthadog]

Any ideas?

[akafox]

I'm confused..

so you can jump from say E to F....ect correctly

then when you get to the letter V you have to cycle through them one by one till you get to W?

[zpaolo11x]

This is probably an artifact due to the fact that "The" and "Vs." are skipped in the romlist sorting. Now I don't remember correctly because I encountered the same issue some time ago for my layout, but it seems that next letter considers "V" as the starting letter of items with "Vs. " at the beginning of the name.

Is your "All" filter sorted? This has an impact on the next/prev letter if i remember correctly...

[felixthadog]

I'm confused..

so you can jump from say E to F....ect correctly

then when you get to the letter V you have to cycle through them one by one till you get to W?

I can go through the letters from A to T without issue. However, pressing the right arrow key (Next Letter) from the first game name starting with "T" will jump to the first game name that starts with "The" (not to "U" like I expected). I then have to press the right arrow key continually until I get past the last game name starting with "The", then I can jump to the letter "U".

Using this list as an example:

Start here -> asuka;Asuka & Asuka (Japan);advmame;;1988;Taito Corporation;;;;;;;;;;;
Press right arrow key (Next Letter)
Jumps to here -> sabotenb;Saboten Bombers (set 1);advmame;;1992;NMK / Tecmo;;;;;;;;;;
Press right arrow key (Next Letter)
Jumps to here -> ttchamp;Table Tennis Champions (set 1);advmame;;;Gamart;;;;;;;;;;
Press right arrow key (Next Letter)
Jumps to here -> tgmj;Tetris The Grand Master (JAPAN 980710);advmame;;1998;Capcom/Arika;;;;;;;;;;
Press right arrow key (Next Letter)
Jumps to here -> mrflea;The Amazing Adventures of Mr. F. Lea;advmame;;1982;Pacific Novelty;;;;;;;;;;
Press right arrow key (Next Letter)
Jumps to here -> thedeep;The Deep (Japan);advmame;;1987;Woodplace Inc.;;;;;;;;;;
Press right arrow key (Next Letter)
Jumps to here -> tinstar;The Tin Star;advmame;;1983;Taito Corporation;;;;;;;;;;
Press right arrow key (Next Letter)
Jumps to here -> thief;Thief;advmame;;1981;Pacific Novelty;;;;;;;;;;
Press right arrow key (Next Letter)
Jumps to here -> ufosensi;Ufo Senshi Yohko Chan;advmame;;1988;Sega;;;;;;;;;;

Cheers,
Matthew

[felixthadog]

This is probably an artifact due to the fact that "The" and "Vs." are skipped in the romlist sorting. Now I don't remember correctly because I encountered the same issue some time ago for my layout, but it seems that next letter considers "V" as the starting letter of items with "Vs. " at the beginning of the name.

Is your "All" filter sorted? This has an impact on the next/prev letter if i remember correctly...

This is the command being used to create the games list file that Attract-Mode references:

cat Arcade.txt | sort -t ";" -k2 > allGames.txt

Would this "sort" option be causing the issue?

This is the line from the attract.cfg file:

display   All Games
   layout               AttracMan
   romlist              allGames
   in_cycle             yes
   in_menu              yes
   filter               All
   filter               Favourites
   rule                 Favourite equals 1

Cheers,
Matthew

[felixthadog]

It seems that the "." in game titles starting with "Vs." is causing problems for the A-M games list sorting. If I remove the "." in all of the game titles, I can skip from "U" to "V" to "W" using the right arrow key (Next Letter). This is a reasonable alternative for me. However, I would like to resolve the issue with game titles beginning with "The". I know I can rename the titles to move the "The" to the end of the title (e.g. "Killing Blade, The") but I'm not satisfied with that workaround. I would really appreciate any other suggestions to fix this, if possible.

Cheers,
Matthew

[Arcade-TV]

I was pulling my hair over this and I wasn't able to pull off anything useful from the source code, so I made a fix with some custom squirrel code:
http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=4348.0

Hope this helps anyone struggeling with that issue.