Starting MAME games with Attract-Mode

[TheNorminator]

Hello all, I am rather new to the arcade scene and found Attract-Mode after a few days of research.
I have got it installed on Xununtu at the moment, imported my rom list

However, when I select a rom from the rom list, it opens Mame in it's game menu, instead of starting the game within mame,

Is there any arguments I have to add or any other changes to the configuration that I should have made but didn't

[raygun]

Can you post the mame.cfg file from your attractmode config directory?

[jelliott]

First, I want to say that Attract Mode looks really, really good and well designed. Thank you.

I got it compiled and running just fine on Linux Mint 17.1 (64-bit), along with SDL MAME 0.158.

But I'm having the same issue: Attract mode launches and displays the art work just fine for MAME but then after I select a game MAME is launched and it just displays the menu list of games instead of starting the game.

Here's what my mame.cfg file looks like:

# Generated by Attract-Mode 1.4.0
#
executable           $HOME/Desktop/AttractMode/EmulatorsData/mame/bin/mame
rompath              $HOME/Desktop/AttractMode/EmulatorsData/mame/roms
romext               .zip;.7z
info_source          mame
artwork    flyer           $HOME/Desktop/AttractMode/EmulatorsData/mame/flyers
artwork    marquee         $HOME/Desktop/AttractMode/EmulatorsData/mame/marquees
artwork    snap            $HOME/Desktop/AttractMode/EmulatorsData/mame/snap
artwork    wheel           

Any suggestions or ideas? I'm all ears and appreciate the help!

[jelliott]

Figured it out after reviewing the other emulator presets.

The Fix: In the MAME Emulator editing mode enter in this in the Command Arguments field (include the brackets):

[romfilename]

I wanted to post this here in case someone else new to Attract Mode ran across the same issue. (I didn't see the solution for this issue on the forum elsewhere.)

[akafox]

Sorry that i didn't get to your post sooner jelliott. I use linux myself. Yes you will need the brackes on every emulator. however some of the arguments go out side the brackets. Example for mess to start neogeo would be aes -cart [name]. The brackets are there to hold variable data (thus your game name) but it is passed in that format. Remember if you have spaces in your games names you need quotes "[text]" Remember once you know the command line format to start and launch a game that is what Attract Mode uses.  Good job figuring it out on your own though

  That does bring up a question though raygun...What are the options for the text in Attract Mode? I ask because I used to use MameWah on my windows machine and it had a lot of options to add or delete info on launch. Or {name] and [romfilename] all we need? MameWah was like this sometimes:
c:\mame\mame.exe [name] (thus c:\mame pacman same as attract mode but you had

c:\fusion\fusion.exe "[rompath]\[name].[romext]" which would load the rom path..with a name and extension (eg C:\games\sega\sonic.zip

[raygun]

The options for text variables in the emulator configuration should be described in the little help blurb at the bottom of the config screen.

They are mostly the same as for wahcade:

[name]
[rompath]
[romext]
[romfilename]
[emulator]

[romfilename] is the same as doing: [rompath]/[name][romext]

[akafox]

Ahh ok..I've never seen that on the bottom of the page... Oh well how about that..must be the only thing i haven't read  thanks. By the way do you need a man page written up? I might be able to find time to do that..maybe.
 

[raygun]

Any help is greatly appreciated, if you want to do a man page that would be great!