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General / Re: Hello old friends!
« on: July 17, 2020, 04:58:49 PM »Hello, welcome back
Thanks Kent, I see your themes have really evolved into something special.
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Thanks Kent, I see your themes have really evolved into something special.
2
General / Re: Hello old friends!
« on: July 17, 2020, 04:57:32 PM »good to see you guys who've made a lot of contributions like Verion and fox still fighting the good fight
I've gave up my coding efforts and focused only on design... but I couldn't find any coders willing to code my designs. Or to be precise - a few has tried but gave up half-way in.
So sadly - I'm thinking about moving my arcade emulation to my nvidia shield - and that means, no AM
LOL! Maybe, because you strive for perfection and that doesn't always translate well.
That said, you had some cool and refreshing ideas from what I remember. The nvidia shield is decent for emulation from what i've read. I still love AM for how light weight and fast it is - maybe development will pick up again for android in the future.
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General / Re: Hello old friends!
« on: July 17, 2020, 04:41:07 PM »Look Omegaman it's okay you can tell hem that my army of rabbits finally tracked you down...there is no shame in it. But if you want me to..I will tell everyone I sent you out to spread the word of Attract Mode and while you were gone an evil anti-emulation organization got you and my army of rabbits had to bust you out. Then you had to lay low for a while to make plans to take them down but you made it back in one piece!
Either story is fine with me..just let me know before people notice your are back...
It's good to have you back and I am glad to know you are safe and healthy!
Indeed, the rabbits found me then feasted upon my flesh. Thanks, my old friend.
GLAD to see you back Omegaman stick around this time huh?
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General / Re: Hello old friends!
« on: July 16, 2020, 08:33:51 AM »
Sounds awesome. I need to start printing and reading. 
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General / Re: Hello old friends!
« on: July 15, 2020, 08:42:45 AM »Hey omegaman. Long time no see. There have been a lot of changes to add features, optimize performance and allow better handling of artwork and graphics in layouts. You can check out the AM commits for full details.
Some newer features include:
- per game options and emulator exceptions
- being able to toggle between multiple layout.nut within the same layout
- custom displays menu
- shortcuts/pointers allowed in romlists to allow tiered menus
- pause and exit key/button settings for each emulator
- search plugin with onscreen keyboard
- game overviews
- RocketLauncher integration
Some of the newer (not cut and paste) layouts worth mentioning:
- Silky
- Ambience HD
- Arcadeflow
- Blueprint
Other non AM things might include
- MAME and MESS merged
- emulators that can play newer console systems like PS2, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360, etc.
- some emulators that support large roms now use .chd files which allows for compression (storage savings) but run native in the emulator so you don't have long wait times
Welcome back!
For "allow better handling of artwork and graphics in layouts" you talking fixes to using surfaces etc... and I guess improvements to animate, fade modules. Just a sneak peak. I will dig into it soon.
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General / Re: Hello old friends!
« on: July 15, 2020, 08:25:51 AM »
See progets... this is exactly why I tried to coax you into becoming a moderator. Good to see ya finally gave in. So, I'm still somewhat uptodate on the emulation scene in general. I just have not had the time to do a deep dive into AM for awhile. But, now with all this covid stuff going on, I might be able to again. I still get a lot of request about robospin which is kind of crazy to me with all the awesome themes that are available now. Anyway, I've been pretty busy with restoring arcades in my personal collection and doing some custom build stuff like virtual pins. But, I am to the point now where I just want to sell off my collection and just have a nice multicade and virtual pin. I've made some pretty cool virtual pins thus far, so if someone needs help, just shoot me a message.
Anyway, good to see you guys who've made a lot of contributions like Verion and fox still fighting the good fight. I still think AM is one of the best front ends available and I don't get all the hype with others like coinops or launchbox besides being totally noob proof. Let's keep AM in the fore.
Anyway, good to see you guys who've made a lot of contributions like Verion and fox still fighting the good fight. I still think AM is one of the best front ends available and I don't get all the hype with others like coinops or launchbox besides being totally noob proof. Let's keep AM in the fore.
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General / Hello old friends!
« on: July 13, 2020, 08:08:45 AM »
It's been a long time... Besides, improved and updated attract-mode is anything else new. I see a lot of cut and paste of old code with some improvements - other than that what do i need to get caught up on.
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Themes / Re: ArcadeSD theme
« on: June 15, 2017, 06:00:41 PM »
Jedione-
For the pie, you could just add a user option to load a looping star.mpeg for the background with little overhead. It would serve the same purpose and give more depth to your theme.
For the pie, you could just add a user option to load a looping star.mpeg for the background with little overhead. It would serve the same purpose and give more depth to your theme.
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Themes / Re: I present... AMBuilder: Layout Designer!
« on: June 12, 2017, 06:37:03 AM »
Liquid8d-
Awesome work as always - where do you find the time :p
I think your preserve_aspect_ratio should work well enough for most 4x3, 16x9, and 5x4 layouts using a bottom up approach. Creating layouts in 640x480 or 800x600 then scaling up to 1080p probably works for a majority of the users.
Heck, I am still doing fill to screen manually in my layouts like robospin - which I assume your preserve_aspect does without the extra coding needed for defining coordinates with x and y etc... Should I switch?
But having precise ratios "if there is such a thing" is not a bad thing either especially for those OCD people out there. I think 4:3 is probably the most used followed by, 16:9, 5:3, 5:4, then 16:10.
Awesome work as always - where do you find the time :p
I think your preserve_aspect_ratio should work well enough for most 4x3, 16x9, and 5x4 layouts using a bottom up approach. Creating layouts in 640x480 or 800x600 then scaling up to 1080p probably works for a majority of the users.
Heck, I am still doing fill to screen manually in my layouts like robospin - which I assume your preserve_aspect does without the extra coding needed for defining coordinates with x and y etc... Should I switch?
But having precise ratios "if there is such a thing" is not a bad thing either especially for those OCD people out there. I think 4:3 is probably the most used followed by, 16:9, 5:3, 5:4, then 16:10.
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Themes / Re: Can you use/port over a theme from Launchbox?
« on: May 25, 2017, 10:45:31 AM »
This could be created in attract with relative ease. The overlay could even be done with something simple like paint.net.
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Themes / Re: If statements using magic tokens
« on: May 19, 2017, 11:49:53 PM »
Joeif-
Mahuti is spot on but there is another way to use one theme for all your displays. That is, if you don't mind your theme using the same snap and text positions for each layout transition etc. You can use magic tokens for emulator or display matching on arts to update backgrounds, cab skins, and whatever for each system like I do in robospin. This allows each display to be different but yet have the same consistency. It might not be as sexy as maybe changing the snap or text to a different position on each layout transition but it looks good just the same.
For example, if you want different background arts for each display you just do something like this with magic tokens; Each background art in the bg folder will be named to match the defined emulator names. You can do the same for DisplayName tokens to match different cabinet skins for each system as well.
local bg = fe.add_image("BG/[Emulator]", flx*0.25, fly*0.53, flw*0.38, flh*0.38 );
bg.trigger = Transition.EndNavigation;
I believe the Transition.Endnavigation will allow the art to be refreshed or redrawn on the next display transition etc. I could be wrong though because I'm a little rusty. It helps regardless, without having to use a transition_callback for each case.
I've already done this on an updated robospin that I'm working on. It's a simpler way relying more on efficient design. And, its great just needing to use one layout for all the displays, including the displays menu. It's late so this might all just be gibberish at this point.
Mahuti is spot on but there is another way to use one theme for all your displays. That is, if you don't mind your theme using the same snap and text positions for each layout transition etc. You can use magic tokens for emulator or display matching on arts to update backgrounds, cab skins, and whatever for each system like I do in robospin. This allows each display to be different but yet have the same consistency. It might not be as sexy as maybe changing the snap or text to a different position on each layout transition but it looks good just the same.
For example, if you want different background arts for each display you just do something like this with magic tokens; Each background art in the bg folder will be named to match the defined emulator names. You can do the same for DisplayName tokens to match different cabinet skins for each system as well.
local bg = fe.add_image("BG/[Emulator]", flx*0.25, fly*0.53, flw*0.38, flh*0.38 );
bg.trigger = Transition.EndNavigation;
I believe the Transition.Endnavigation will allow the art to be refreshed or redrawn on the next display transition etc. I could be wrong though because I'm a little rusty. It helps regardless, without having to use a transition_callback for each case.
I've already done this on an updated robospin that I'm working on. It's a simpler way relying more on efficient design. And, its great just needing to use one layout for all the displays, including the displays menu. It's late so this might all just be gibberish at this point.
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General / Re: Retroach Windows Setup (cannot launch games)
« on: May 17, 2017, 06:43:17 PM »
Here try this:
executable C:\attract\EMU\RetroArch\retroarch.exe -L C:\attract\EMU\RetroArch\cores\snes9x_libretro.dll
args "[romfilename]"
executable C:\attract\EMU\RetroArch\retroarch.exe -L C:\attract\EMU\RetroArch\cores\snes9x_libretro.dll
args "[romfilename]"
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Themes / Re: ArcadeSD layout?
« on: May 17, 2017, 06:19:44 PM »
You can try this in the layout.nut then use you're flx* and fly* coords for carrierposx, and y etc...
local flx = fe.layout.width=800;
local fly = fe.layout.height=600;
local flw = fe.layout.width;
local flh = fe.layout.height;
local flx = fe.layout.width=800;
local fly = fe.layout.height=600;
local flw = fe.layout.width;
local flh = fe.layout.height;