Attract-Mode Frontend version 1.6 released

[raygun]

Attract-Mode emulator frontend: http://attractmode.org

Latest release: Version 1.6 - September 25, 2015

[raygun]

Version 1.1 released.  What's new:

    • list filters greatly improved
    • plug-in support added
    • much faster MAME romlist creation
    • fixed behaviour when holding down keys to navigate
    • fixed movie audio
    • hide menu bar on OS X
    • many other bug fixes and improvements

[cools]

Only v1.1 and it already destroys everything else out there for cab MAME/MESS use. I'm a big fan.

[dcninja]

i'll try this tomorrow on my cab pc and see if I can't get it going.

[dcninja]

I LOVE IT! random question tho - how do I change resolution? are there any other layouts available currently? and finally most importantly, is there support or will there be support for a favorites list so I can hit a button and the game is added to favs, and I can switch to that list and see the games i've added? It's nice to be able to do this within the cab if a friend sees something that they want to play later instead of going through the list. I absolutely love this front end and am instantly switching to it. It's simple to set up, looks good, and just plain old works. THANK YOU for all your hard work!

[offset]

Is there a video of this working?  I looked at the webpage, but no screenshots or videos.

[cools]

I LOVE IT! random question tho - how do I change resolution? are there any other layouts available currently? and finally most importantly, is there support or will there be support for a favorites list so I can hit a button and the game is added to favs, and I can switch to that list and see the games i've added? It's nice to be able to do this within the cab if a friend sees something that they want to play later instead of going through the list. I absolutely love this front end and am instantly switching to it. It's simple to set up, looks good, and just plain old works. THANK YOU for all your hard work!

It stretches to fullscreen whatever your desktop resolution is.

The layouts are extremely simple to make with a bit of experimentation and reading the manual - here's my current one:

Code: [Select]

fe.layout.width=640;
fe.layout.height=480;
fe.layout.font="COOLVETI";

local bg = fe.add_image( "bg.jpg", -214, 0, 854, 480 );
bg.set_rgb ( 128, 128, 128 );

local zoom = fe.add_artwork( "screen", -80, -60, 800, 600);
zoom.set_rgb ( 128, 128, 128);

local title = fe.add_text( "[ListTitle]", 0, 300, 640, 25 );
title.set_rgb( 255, 255, 255 );
title.align = Align.Right;
title.style = Style.Regular;
title.alpha = 64;

local year = fe.add_text( "[Year]", 30, 310, 640, 80 );
year.set_rgb( 255, 255, 255 );
year.align = Align.Right;
year.style = Style.Bold;
year.alpha = 96;

local list = fe.add_listbox( 0, 300, 640, 90 );
list.rows = 1;
list.charsize = 24;
list.alpha = 64;
list.align = Align.Left;
list.set_rgb ( 255, 255, 255 );
list.set_sel_rgb( 255, 255, 255 );
list.set_selbg_rgb( 0, 0, 0 );
list.selbg_alpha = 128;
list.sel_style = Style.Bold;

local man = fe.add_text( "© [Manufacturer]", 30, 355, 320, 20 );
man.set_rgb( 255, 255, 255 );
man.align = Align.Left;
man.alpha = 196;

local entries = fe.add_text( "[ListEntry]/[ListSize]", 0, 456, 640, 24 );
entries.set_rgb( 0, 0, 0 );
entries.align = Align.Right;
entries.alpha = 64;
entries.style = Style.Bold;

local cat = fe.add_text( "[Category]", 0, 456, 640, 24 );
cat.set_rgb( 0, 0, 0 );
cat.align = Align.Left;
cat.alpha = 64;
cat.style = Style.Bold;

local marquee = fe.add_artwork( "marquee", 120, 130, 400, 0);

As for favourites, they can't be done as you describe (yet?) but you can do it easily enough by creating a ROMlist text file (copying the structure of one of the existing ones but only including the stuff you don't want). The nice thing with this is the author has included "emulator" as one of the fields already, so a favourites list can display cross-system favourites.

[raygun]

I LOVE IT! random question tho - how do I change resolution? are there any other layouts available currently? and finally most importantly, is there support or will there be support for a favorites list so I can hit a button and the game is added to favs, and I can switch to that list and see the games i've added? It's nice to be able to do this within the cab if a friend sees something that they want to play later instead of going through the list. I absolutely love this front end and am instantly switching to it. It's simple to set up, looks good, and just plain old works. THANK YOU for all your hard work!

Hey there, glad you like it.  There are a couple of other layouts linked here: https://github.com/mickelson/attract/wiki/Additional-Layouts but its pretty sparse at the moment ...

There is no favourites list currently but that is something I'd like to put in... I'm leading towards it working exactly as you describe, a button to toggle fav status for the selected game, and the ability to filter lists based on favourite status. 

Is there a video of this working?  I looked at the webpage, but no screenshots or videos.

Sorry I haven't done a video and I really need to put some decent screenshots on the website...

The layouts are extremely simple to make with a bit of experimentation and reading the manual - here's my current one:

Nice layout!

[DaveMMR]

Looks interesting and I'll try it out when I have a moment.

Any particular features of this FE that makes it stand-out from the current crop of regulars (e.g. MaLa)? 

[cools]

It works with clrmame audited MESS ROMs and parses MESS -listsoftware, that's what sold it for me.

I'm still tweaking my layout. Did have some fade transitions going on but couldn't quite figure out how to manage the arrays yet (and multiple different alpha levels made them awkward anyway).

Code: [Select]

fe.layout.width=640;
fe.layout.height=480;
fe.layout.font="COOLVETI";

local offset = 8;

local bg = fe.add_image( "bg.jpg", -214, 0, 854, 480 );
bg.set_rgb ( 160, 160, 160 );

local snap = fe.add_artwork( "snap", -80, -60, 800, 600);

local flyershadow = fe.add_artwork( "flyer", 370, 20, 300, 400);
flyershadow.rotation = 10;
local flyer = fe.add_clone( flyershadow );
flyershadow.x = flyershadow.x + offset / 2;
flyershadow.y = flyershadow.y + offset / 2 ;
flyershadow.width = flyershadow.width - offset;
//flyershadow.height = flyershadow.height + offset;
flyershadow.set_rgb (0,0,0);
flyershadow.alpha = 192;

local list = fe.add_listbox( 0, 390, 640, 90 );
list.rows = 1;
list.charsize = 24;
list.align = Align.Left;
list.set_rgb ( 255, 255, 255 );
list.set_sel_rgb( 255, 255, 255 );
list.set_selbg_rgb( 0, 0, 0 );
list.sel_style = Style.Bold;
list.selbg_alpha = 192;
list.alpha = 64;

local title = fe.add_text( "[ListTitle]", 0, 390, 640, 25 );
title.set_rgb( 255, 255, 255 );
title.align = Align.Right;
title.style = Style.Regular;
title.alpha = 96;

local year = fe.add_text( "[Year]", 30, 400, 640, 80 );
year.set_rgb( 255, 255, 255 );
year.align = Align.Right;
year.style = Style.Bold;
year.alpha = 96;

local man = fe.add_text( "© [Manufacturer]", 30, 445, 320, 20 );
man.set_rgb( 255, 255, 255 );
man.align = Align.Left;
man.alpha = 196;

local entries = fe.add_text( "[ListEntry]/[ListSize]", 0, 10, 640, 24 );
entries.set_rgb( 0, 0, 0 );
entries.align = Align.Left;
entries.style = Style.Bold;
entries.alpha = 96;

local cat = fe.add_text( "[Category]", 0, 10, 640, 24 );
cat.set_rgb( 0, 0, 0 );
cat.align = Align.Right;
cat.style = Style.Bold;
cat.alpha = 96;

local wheelshadow = fe.add_artwork( "wheel", 20, 240, 400, 0);
local wheel = fe.add_clone( wheelshadow);
wheelshadow.x = wheelshadow.x + offset / 2;
wheelshadow.y = wheelshadow.y + offset / 2 ;
wheelshadow.width = wheelshadow.width - offset;
//wheelshadow.height = wheelshadow.height + offset;
wheelshadow.set_rgb (0,0,0);
wheelshadow.alpha = 192;
wheel.set_rgb (255,255,255);
wheel.alpha = 255;

[Le Chuck]

Can you do a horizontal wheel of marquees to select the game?  Something that driving cabs are in good need of?

[cools]

Yes. That's beyond my skills though.

[lettuce]

Looks great!, always nice to have choices. Shame that there is no way to add favourites via a button press and confirmation I would have thought such a big feature would of made it into the first release?. Now all we need is a easy GUI layout creator program, great start though and is always nice to have another choice in the FE department.

On a side not I wounded if this FE could be implemented in GroovyArcade and the LiveCD??

[lettuce]

Question about using RomLister to create a rom list, what format do i need to save the list as within Romlister an xml type file?, as i notice that Attract-Mode FE uses .txt files doesnt it? as i have save my filtered list within RomLister as 'Rom descrioptions only' which gives me a txt file, i then rename this to mame.txt and place it in the romlist folder within Attract-Mode Fe but when l load A-M FE i get all the correctly names roms (actual names) but no snap shots are showing! Any ideas?

Also how do i setup the default list that A-M FE generates to remove the brackets, ie (set 1) etc?

[jLid]

This FE has real potential, a theme creator would blow all the other FE's out of the park!  Keep up the great work, i'm messing around with the layouts at the moment.

[raygun]

On a side not I wounded if this FE could be implemented in GroovyArcade and the LiveCD??

It should work.  Attract-Mode runs on Linux.  However I haven't tried it yet with GroovyArcade.

Question about using RomLister to create a rom list, what format do i need to save the list as within Romlister an xml type file?, as i notice that Attract-Mode FE uses .txt files doesnt it? as i have save my filtered list within RomLister as 'Rom descrioptions only' which gives me a txt file, i then rename this to mame.txt and place it in the romlist folder within Attract-Mode Fe but when l load A-M FE i get all the correctly names roms (actual names) but no snap shots are showing! Any ideas?

Also how do i setup the default list that A-M FE generates to remove the brackets, ie (set 1) etc?

Attract-Mode's romlists are plain text files with one game per line.  The format per line is as follows:

Name;Title;Emulator;CloneOf;Year;Manufacturer;Category;Players;Rotation;Control;Status

I don't know if Romlister can output in this format, or some other format that could be easily converted to this format, but this is what the current version of the frontend expects in a romlist.

With respect to removing brackets from the default list that the frontend generates, there is no easy way to do that currently.  It can be done with some manual layout editing, or of course editing the romlist itself.  I will look at having a setting in the configuration menu for this in a future version...

[lettuce]

Thanks for the reply raygun. Any chance of the program using xml file in the future for romlists so it works with programs like romlister?

[cools]

Hopefully not, text is way easier to work with. The built in filtering allows for 99% of what can be done with ROMLister anyway.

[lettuce]

Hopefully not, text is way easier to work with. The built in filtering allows for 99% of what can be done with ROMLister anyway.

Does it??......can it remove,

mechanical,
non working,
casino, clones,
mature,
fruit machine,
mahjong,
rhythm,
quiz
Pinball

roms?.

I doubt it seeing as there is no easy option to remove the brackets form game names atm. If you cant do any of this then im not going to start to use this over something like say Mala as thats vastly more customisable. I know this program is still new but these sort of options are bread and butter for a FE these days surely!?. For a frontend not to include options to filter lists easily and remove games without having to go into a text document and editing a massive list of 8000+ roms then its just time consuming and not worth the trouble. Least if xml is give as an option to create a rom lists then this program can be used with progams like romlister etc

[cools]

Yes, it can. I have filters set up to do just that.

The author provided a workaround in his github issues page for the brackets issue. Its fine for me being as I absolutely despise list front ends, but I expect the next version will have an option for it.

Tomorrow I'll post what I've come up with so far. There are a few rough edges and a small bit of polish I'd like to see (filters don't always take effect immediately, sometimes they'll crash it when being created, and image rotation doesn't seem to have anti aliasing), but its otherwise perfect if you're willing to get your hands dirty. There's nothing else that can do what this one can.

Hyperspin has a whole range of 3rd party tools to fix its shortcomings, I'd rather the author of AM focus on problems with his software than make compatibility layers with others.

Bug the ROM Lister author for changes to his app, not raygun

[cools]

Sorry, feels like I'm getting a bit aggressive there.

Realise I've been waiting since the ArcadeOS days for a frontend that can do what this one can. If it wasn't for Calamity sorting out scrolling and input lag with GroovyMAME I'd not be too bothered, but for the first time in whats likely 15 years it actually seems I can get a MAME setup that works flawlessly and doesn't look like a dogs dinner when it's running. I've spent weeks, nah - months - messing around with all this, inevitably ending up disappointed each time.

Attract Mode requires very little manual work except for the display layout. All of the others require a similar amount of effort in setup, require a bunch of extra tools to achieve the same result, and cannot be customised to anywhere near the same extent.

It's better than all the rest, I assure you.

[Le Chuck]

Somebody get me when it can do this:



Only with as many wire frame titles as I feel like designing. 

[cools]

Couple of example filter sets. Just filtering out non-joystick games gets rid of most of the chaff.

Code: [Select]

list Arcade
layout               list
romlist              MAME
filter               "Horizontal Games"
rule                 Title not_contains bootleg|prototype|Sports|Trivia|Quiz|Mahjong
rule                 Year not_contains ?
rule                 Manufacturer not_contains bootleg
rule                 Rotation equals 0|180
rule                 Status equals good|imperfect
rule                 Control contains joystick
rule                 Control contains 2-way|4-way|8-way
rule                 Players contains 2
rule                 Category not_contains Mature|Quiz|Sports|Mahjong|Casino
filter               "Vertical Games"
rule                 Title not_contains bootleg|prototype|Sports|Trivia|Quiz|Mahjong
rule                 Year not_contains ?
rule                 Manufacturer not_contains bootleg
rule                 Rotation equals 90|270
rule                 Status equals good|imperfect
rule                 Control contains joystick
rule                 Control contains 2-way|4-way|8-way
rule                 Players contains 2
rule                 Category not_contains Mature|Quiz|Sports|Mahjong|Casino
filter               "Maze Games"
rule                 Title not_contains bootleg|prototype|Sports|Trivia|Quiz|Mahjong
rule                 Year not_contains ?
rule                 Manufacturer not_contains bootleg
rule                 Rotation equals 0|180
rule                 Status equals good
rule                 Control contains joystick
rule                 Control contains 2-way|4-way|8-way
rule                 Players contains 2
rule                 Category equals Maze

Being able to nest filter sets would be nice but isn't essential, as would being able to create them within the frontend without a keyboard (based on found keywords) - again not essential since they can just be copied and pasted in the cfg file.

[lettuce]

Where did u find out you could use filters like that abd the commands needed?, I was trying to add filters via the actual FE.

What's the different between 'title not_contains' and 'category not_contains' ?

[cools]

Those are created inside the FE, which is self documenting!

Pro-tip - in the filter menu you hit enter to change something, then up and down to cycle through possible values. When there's text that can be input, you'll need a keyboard. I.e. title and not_contains are cycled, the filtername and criteria selection are typed.

Name is the ROM name
Title is the game name
Category is from catver.ini
Players uses MAME details unless nplayers.ini is imported, in which case it uses the latter instead

Each rule is an "AND", so my horizontal one:
excludes bootlegs/protos/anything with Sports/Trivia/Quiz in the title (this is more useful for console stuff which hasn't been genrefied by the catver.ini people, but I like it in the MAME one anyway)
excludes stuff where the release year is unknown (usually total rubbish)
excludes known bootlegs (I don't see the point)
includes only horizontally oriented games
includes only good/imperfect games
includes only joystick games, and only those played on a normal digital stick (not analog or double sticks etc)
includes only 2 player games - simultaneously or alternately played.
excludes Mature etc catver.ini stuff.

The values are directly taken from what MAME / catver / nplayers holds. You can see what to use by checking the romlist text file that Attract Mode creates.

It might not be on-screen-click-a-button-easy initially, but the advantage is when a new version of MAME comes out or you add/delete some ROMs all you have to do is regenerate that emulator ROM list and the filters will automatically take effect. There's no manual picking required at all, you simply create a bunch of filters. Maintenance pain is gone

[jLid]

I think you guys should add a forums to the main site, it'd be nice to have a small community and be able to report any bugs/suggestions and what not.

[cools]

and be able to report any bugs/suggestions and what not.

Open a github account. https://github.com/mickelson/attract/issues?state=open

[cools]

Plugin to shutdown Windows when exiting the frontend: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxaCVgxhLwHFSG53NW13bzEyUmc/edit?usp=sharing

Dead easy to modify to run anything you could possibly want when exiting. No need for a built in function

[eds1275]

Someone post some screenshots!

[blontic]

Anyone keen on creating a linux compile guide with step by step instructions? I can't get it to work but just saying this should be installed isn't enough for a linux noob like me

[welash]

What distribution are you running?  It was really easy to compile on my mame cabinet which is running Debian unstable, just installed the development packages for a few libraries, and followed the compile instructions.  On my Ubuntu  13.10 laptop, it was a PITA, because the version of SFML packaged for it was old, so I first had to get the latest version of that and compile it, and even then there were a few things I had to fix by hand (a few of the dynamic libraries that it created didn't have proper links to other libraies).  I've not tried it on anything else. 

[blontic]

What distribution are you running?  It was really easy to compile on my mame cabinet which is running Debian unstable, just installed the development packages for a few libraries, and followed the compile instructions.  On my Ubuntu  13.10 laptop, it was a PITA, because the version of SFML packaged for it was old, so I first had to get the latest version of that and compile it, and even then there were a few things I had to fix by hand (a few of the dynamic libraries that it created didn't have proper links to other libraies).  I've not tried it on anything else.

On my cab I am running groovyarcade which is a custom Arch version. But I only have tried so far on my ubuntu laptop and got some errors. I'll see if I can find them.

Would be great to get a guide for groovyarcade with video support. Only thing I don't like about most of the linux fe's are no video support.

EDIT: Pretty sure it was the broken links in ubuntu I was getting that you mentioned. I was only testing it hoping to get it working in Arch.

[blontic]

It works with clrmame audited MESS ROMs and parses MESS -listsoftware, that's what sold it for me.

I'm still tweaking my layout. Did have some fade transitions going on but couldn't quite figure out how to manage the arrays yet (and multiple different alpha levels made them awkward anyway).

Your layout looks great. I would love something like this but with moving video in the background that defaults to snap if it can't be found. Hope to see lots of great layouts getting created for AM.

[cools]

It supports that kind of behaviour natively.

[Warborg]

Without using some external app like Joy2Key, is there any way to get this front end to actually recognize all the buttons/sticks on a 360 gamepad?  I was tinkering with the front end and really it only seems to let me map the left thumbstick, select/start, the shoulder and A/B/X/Y buttons.  I can't get the right thumbstick, the plus pad, or the triggers to be recognized in it, and the plus pad would be pretty handy for navigation (better, I think, than a thumbstick).

[raygun]

Without using some external app like Joy2Key, is there any way to get this front end to actually recognize all the buttons/sticks on a 360 gamepad?  I was tinkering with the front end and really it only seems to let me map the left thumbstick, select/start, the shoulder and A/B/X/Y buttons.  I can't get the right thumbstick, the plus pad, or the triggers to be recognized in it, and the plus pad would be pretty handy for navigation (better, I think, than a thumbstick).

Hi warbog, this is a limitation currently that should be fixed in the next version of the frontend.  there is an update going in to support up to 32 buttons and 8 axes per joystick.

[Warborg]

Without using some external app like Joy2Key, is there any way to get this front end to actually recognize all the buttons/sticks on a 360 gamepad?  I was tinkering with the front end and really it only seems to let me map the left thumbstick, select/start, the shoulder and A/B/X/Y buttons.  I can't get the right thumbstick, the plus pad, or the triggers to be recognized in it, and the plus pad would be pretty handy for navigation (better, I think, than a thumbstick).

Hi warbog, this is a limitation currently that should be fixed in the next version of the frontend.  there is an update going in to support up to 32 buttons and 8 axes per joystick.

Nice!  Thanks for the update...  Any rough ETA on that?

[raygun]

the joystick fix should be in the guthub repository soon (next day or so). 

There are a few more issues I'd like to address before the next version so I'd guess it could be ready by the end of the month...

[blontic]

Can't wait to see what sort of layout's people come up with. Would love some quality vertical ones I had a play at making one but I really have no artistic skills

[crawlingpeter]

I love the idea of this front-end! Is it mostly for MAME/arcades or can it be configured to run RetroArch with its abundance of console cores as well?

Great work!