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!

[dcninja]

the front end runs at a snails pace for me on my p4 mame box... all my games run flawless though... any idea as to why it does this? Currently it is unusable for my cab

[dcninja]

maybe it's the animated background because it seemed to get a bit faster when i went to screenshots instead of video previews but still not really usable... are there any simpler skins for this front end that are just still images? If so, how do I use them? I really like this front end and want to make it work. Thanks!

[raygun]

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!

Hi, thanks

It should work with retroarch but i haven't tryed it myself.  You would just need to create an emulator configuration for each core you want to use.

[raygun]

the front end runs at a snails pace for me on my p4 mame box... all my games run flawless though... any idea as to why it does this? Currently it is unusable for my cab

hi dcninja, what OS are you using?  Graphics card?  Are you able to confirm if other programs using OpenGL are working ?

[dcninja]

Is opengl something that I have to install? I am using windows 7 on a pentium 4 with onboard video. runs mame fine.

[raygun]

Is opengl something that I have to install? I am using windows 7 on a pentium 4 with onboard video. runs mame fine.

You might be defaulting to a software version of opengl.  Installing the latest video drivers for your graphic hardware might help.  See:  http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Getting_Started

[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!

Hi, thanks

It should work with retroarch but i haven't tryed it myself.  You would just need to create an emulator configuration for each core you want to use.

Awesome. Thank you. I will give it a shot this weekend when I have time.

And also, I really dig the layout screenshot you posted about a month ago, cools. Would you be willing to update us with what you're working with now?

Thanks to you both!

[cools]

Mine hasn't really changed since I posted that screen. Some tweaks for colour and fades but pretty much the same (I've binned alpha text and used random pastels as the code for making objects fade to a loading screen was getting hideous). If I remember next time I'm at the cab I'll take a copy.

[dcninja]

latest drivers were installed already. i wiped and reinstalled to be sure. same issue.

[crawlingpeter]

As I was going through and setting up some MAME filters tonite, attract.exe crashed and closed. Here is the error in the Event Viewer in case it helps you at all!

Faulting application name: attract.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x52da1b32
Faulting module name: attract.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x52da1b32
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00071edb
Faulting process id: 0x2208
Faulting application start time: 0x01cf32a87c3a44ad
Faulting application path: C:\attract-1.1.1\attract.exe
Faulting module path: C:\attract-1.1.1\attract.exe
Report Id: 2b0559ec-9e9c-11e3-beac-5404a6c23fcd
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Regardless, I still love this front-end and am very much looking forward to the next build.

[raygun]

Hi crawlingpeter,

yes the crash when creating filters is a known bug that will be fixed in the next version (which is almost ready!)

details here:
https://github.com/mickelson/attract/issues/11

thanks !

[cools]

Reminds me, it crashes when you press the PC power button as well. Logged.

[dcninja]

new fix did not work. still very slow even on options menu switching front end controls and stuff.

[crawlingpeter]

cools, I went through and added your newest layout and it's awesome! I also used a lot of the same filters you did... but I have another question. Is there a way to filter out clones? Like a wildcard character you can put in a rule to signify you want to hide every clone?

EDIT: Oh, and while we are talking of filters, I was also wondering if there was a way to hide CHD games.

Thanks to everyone! I can't wait for the new release!

[raygun]

Reminds me, it crashes when you press the PC power button as well. Logged.

Duoh! Thanks for the report.

new fix did not work. still very slow even on options menu switching front end controls and stuff.

Bummer DC.  Just so I'm clear, is this only happening to you on your one system?  Are you able to get attract-mode working well on another computer?  What happens when you switch to the "basic" layout and toggle movies off? Is it still unusable then?

cools, I went through and added your newest layout and it's awesome! I also used a lot of the same filters you did... but I have another question. Is there a way to filter out clones? Like a wildcard character you can put in a rule to signify you want to hide every clone?

EDIT: Oh, and while we are talking of filters, I was also wondering if there was a way to hide CHD games.

Thanks to everyone! I can't wait for the new release!

The filters work using regular expressions, so there are probably a few ways to do it... ".+" will match any combination of one or more characters, so if you filter the romof field to not contain ".+" it should filter out anything that indicates it is a clone.

I don't think there is a way to filter out CHD games at the moment...

[crawlingpeter]

Thanks! That did work to filter out clones, it seems... and I will just acquire the CHD set I suppose because I'd prefer even a broken game starting than nothing at all. 

[cools]

To get rid of clones I seem to remember I just did an equals for a blank field on clones...

[raygun]

Hey everyone,

Version 1.2 is now up on the website.  Thanks for all the great feedback and suggestions.

Here's what's new:

- Favourites added. Favourites can now be marked, filtered and navigated through for each romlist
- Added a French localization (thanks Nolan!)
- Improved gamepad and analog joystick support
- Added GLSL shader support to layouts
- Import from Hyperspin and Mamewah/Wahcade! romlists
- Support proper multi-user install on Linux and OS X
- Added ability to filter based on display type and number of displays
- Fixed crash when creating filters
- Added 'relaunch last game' and an option to auto-relaunch on startup
- Option to hide bracketed text in game titles
- You can now configure layout-specific options from the configure menu
- New included layout (thanks cools!)
- many other bug fixes and improvements

Download link: http://attractmode.org/download.html

[crawlingpeter]

Amazing work! This really is my favorite of all the front-ends already and that's just based on what I saw from the last version. Keep it up forever and ever!

EDIT: So far the new version is great! However, is it just me or are others getting some slowdown in their MAME videos after a second or two?

[dcninja]

there's no basic layout option. it works fine on my i5 nvidia system but not my p4 onboard system.

[nitrogen_widget]

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.

I was able to install all the dependencies & compile it (eventually) on a debian testing distro.
I havn't played with it too much yet though.

My plan is to create a live image for booting off USB or compact flash eventually.
I'd prefer using something tiny like Slitaz linux but SFML needs to be compiled for that distro since it's not available as a package.

[raygun]

Just released version 1.2.1.  It is a bugfix release addressing many of the bugs reported in 1.2.

[keilmillerjr]

This front end is amazing! I was playing with it last night. I hope to start on a theme for it tonight to match my neo geo mvs theme.

I haven't spent a huge amount of time with it yet, so forgive me if I ask a question where I may have overlooked the answer.

Is there a way to change the looks or color of the menus?
Any way I can load settings from a yaml/ini/cfg file to use in my theme to make it easy to apply different colors and images? I'm not familiar with squirrel (ruby dev).

Thank you!

[bleargh]

raygun, can themes show a movie in the background, and then overlay that with images?

I'm thinking along the lines of what cools has w/his layout, but w/video background instead of just the snap.  Alternatively, instead of doing it as a movie, maybe an MNG?  (don't know if that's supported by SFML though).

Regardless, attract-mode is AWESOME.  Compiling it on my Fedora-20 machine was pretty simple (RPM available on request to those who want it), and once I realized that I had to copy the files out of /usr/local/share/attract/config/layouts into ~/.attract/layouts/ to get them to work things went much faster.

Lov'n it!

[raygun]

This front end is amazing! I was playing with it last night. I hope to start on a theme for it tonight to match my neo geo mvs theme.

I haven't spent a huge amount of time with it yet, so forgive me if I ask a question where I may have overlooked the answer.

Is there a way to change the looks or color of the menus?
Is there a way to shut down computer on exit? Or can I run a script/exe on exit to accomplish the same task?
Any way I can load settings from a yaml/ini/cfg file to use in my theme? I'm not familiar with squirrel (ruby dev).

Thank you!

Hey there, glad you like it.

The themes/layouts are completely configurable, so you can change the look/colours/font etc of the menus by editing the associated layout script file.  The "Layout.md" file included in the distribution describes how the layouts work in detail.

If you go to the "General" menu in configuration mode, one of the options is to specify an Exit command that gets run whenever you exit the frontend.  If you are on linux you would put in something like "sudo shutdown" as the exit command, on windows I think it is "shutdown /s" that you want.

There isn't really a way to load layout settings from a yaml/ini/cfg file for a theme, at least not the way I think you mean.  The idea is that the squirrel script file for the theme will contain all the settings...

raygun, can themes show a movie in the background, and then overlay that with images?

I'm thinking along the lines of what cools has w/his layout, but w/video background instead of just the snap.  Alternatively, instead of doing it as a movie, maybe an MNG?  (don't know if that's supported by SFML though).

Regardless, attract-mode is AWESOME.  Compiling it on my Fedora-20 machine was pretty simple (RPM available on request to those who want it), and once I realized that I had to copy the files out of /usr/local/share/attract/config/layouts into ~/.attract/layouts/ to get them to work things went much faster.

Lov'n it!

Thanks! good to hear you can get it going on Fedora without too much pain.

And yes you can do video in the background and overlay that with images.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that's how cools has his layout running now, there's even a rough video of it in action:

The video and audio decoding for the frontend is done by FFmpeg, I'm not sure if it supports MNG.

The fact your layout files wound up in /usr/local/share/attract/config/layouts is a bit of a concern, they should have been installed into /usr/local/share/attract/layouts (i.e. without the "config" subdir).  Did you use "make install" to copy the files over originally or some other method?

[bleargh]

Thanks! good to hear you can get it going on Fedora without too much pain.

And yes you can do video in the background and overlay that with images.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that's how cools has his layout running now, there's even a rough video of it in action:

The video and audio decoding for the frontend is done by FFmpeg, I'm not sure if it supports MNG.

The fact your layout files wound up in /usr/local/share/attract/config/layouts is a bit of a concern, they should have been installed into /usr/local/share/attract/layouts (i.e. without the "config" subdir).  Did you use "make install" to copy the files over originally or some other method?

Was minimal pain getting it running on Fedora.  On second glance, though I see that the problem with my layout files not showing up is my bad... when doing the install when building an RPM package, I installed them one level too far down.  My bad.  I had to install the files manually as I didn't see an easy way in your Makefile to specify an install root (e.g. "install everything just like it would on a real box, but instead of doing it under '/', do it under '/var/tmp/rpm-123456'").  Thankfully, there aren't that many files here to install, so it wasn't that hard.  Sure enough, though, I still managed to botch that up.     

As for the videos, IIRC that was the one I saw before and which made me want to know if it was possible.  Looks awesome with the video playing, and I've been tweaking the cools theme to fit within the bezel I've got on the cocktail cabinet I'm building this into. 

[keilmillerjr]

Heres a video of my progress on the theme from last night.



Thanks for the reply raygun. I'll just use variables in squirrel to allow users to change things.

I'm running the theme in native 1920x1080 and it looks beautiful. However, the video is glitchy. I'm running an i3 3.1 HD2500. Is it due to my processor, video card, or something else?

Also, any idea of how I could add steam games?

When all is done, I'll upload it to github and then work on making other colors and resolutions.

[cools]

Yep, video already done https://github.com/rogalian/attract-extra/blob/master/layouts/cools/layout.nut

Note, just use the video/snap substitution within the frontend and control it like I do. If a video is missing you'll get the snap instead. I don't see any reason to have the video as a separate artwork in the emulator config because of this behaviour.

However, the video is glitchy. I'm running an i3 3.1 HD2500. Is it due to my processor, video card, or something else?

I've not had smooth video yet on anything, an old P4 (w/4350), an newer E8400 (w/4350), and a brand new i7 (w/Nvidia mobile something). The audio is fine but the video is choppy - but not on all videos, some are perfectly smooth. Reducing screen resolution does help, but not a huge amount. Note that in the example vid on youtube Boogie Wings is choppy, the others are all okay.

[keilmillerjr]

Thanks cools! That shows me some good ideas and code practices. What's odd is that one of the videos that was glitchy in the front end played just fine in windows media player. I'll have to investigate this more.

[cools]

Not sure about good code, there are bound to be easier and slicker ways of doing various things (highrand is nasty but works). I'd hope it's at least readable without massive comments though.

I'm really looking forward to the next release although I'll likely do a git compile tonight and mess about with that. Pinch and skew I've wanted since day one, and I know exactly how I'm going to be using them.

[raygun]

Hey could you send me one of the choppy videos so I can try and see what is going on? ...

[nitrogen_widget]

Was minimal pain getting it running on Fedora.  On second glance, though I see that the problem with my layout files not showing up is my bad... when doing the install when building an RPM package, I installed them one level too far down.  My bad.  I had to install the files manually as I didn't see an easy way in your Makefile to specify an install root (e.g. "install everything just like it would on a real box, but instead of doing it under '/', do it under '/var/tmp/rpm-123456'").  Thankfully, there aren't that many files here to install, so it wasn't that hard.  Sure enough, though, I still managed to botch that up.     

As for the videos, IIRC that was the one I saw before and which made me want to know if it was possible.  Looks awesome with the video playing, and I've been tweaking the cools theme to fit within the bezel I've got on the cocktail cabinet I'm building this into. 

My issue was SFML 2.
My distro doesn't have it in the repositories.
It only has an older version and the website for SFML is a mix between "I don't use linux" & "RTFM!" responses for people asking how to install on linux.

But I found this site.
http://sfmlcoder.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/building-sfml-2-0-with-make-for-gcc/

Which worked marvelous.

[raygun]

Also, any idea of how I could add steam games?

I haven't tried steam myself, but if I understand https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Command_Line_Options correctly you can run games from the command line with something like "steam.exe -applaunch 100" where 100 is an AppID.

So you can create a new emulator configuration in attract-mode with steam.exe as the executable and "-applaunch [name]" as the "Command Arguments".  I don't know how you get these AppIDs but you could create entries by hand in a romlist and just put the appids in instead of romnames...

Romlists are simple semicolon delimited text files with one game per line.  The format is as follows:

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

You only really need the first three to get going, the rest of the entries can be left out, so something like "100;Awesome Steam Game;steam;" should work as a romlist entry...

But I found this site.
http://sfmlcoder.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/building-sfml-2-0-with-make-for-gcc/

Which worked marvelous.

Great find! I'll have to add a reference to this in the documentation.  Thanks

[keilmillerjr]

Hey could you send me one of the choppy videos so I can try and see what is going on? ...

It's slow on every video, using every theme shipped with attract-mode 1.2.1, and my own theme I'm working on. They are the 480p name videos from emumovies. Plays fine in windows media player on the same machine. Runing windows 8.1.

Thanks for the info on adding steam games! Seems easy enough as there is only a handful of games I purchased to play on this machine.

My theme is coming out awesome! I'm super excited!

[cools]

raygun: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxaCVgxhLwHFQWxJX040ZkV6U1U/edit?usp=sharing

That one is choppy here.

[raygun]

raygun: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxaCVgxhLwHFQWxJX040ZkV6U1U/edit?usp=sharing

That one is choppy here.

Thanks cools, that one was choppy for me as well.  So I think I've got it sorted out now and have made a test release, cools and keilmillerjr do you mind checking it out and letting me know if it fixes things for you:  https://github.com/mickelson/attract/releases/tag/v1.2.2

[cools]

Perfect. Tried with ~30 videos. Only problem I had was with Vs Super Mario Bros, as it was clipping due to the volume being at 100. Dropped it to 80 and fine.

[keilmillerjr]

Woohoo! Thanks ray gun! I tested a few games, and it looks like it's fixed.

[bleargh]

Ok, so someone explain to me... how do you get the videos showing up in your theme?

I've been trying here using "fe.add_artwork()", but can't get it to play any of the videos I've got here (which I know play fine w/ffmpeg as I use that to convert them to other things).

Am I missing something?  (probably) (and it's probably something really simple, I just don't have it right).

[keilmillerjr]

Ok, so someone explain to me... how do you get the videos showing up in your theme?

I've been trying here using "fe.add_artwork()", but can't get it to play any of the videos I've got here (which I know play fine w/ffmpeg as I use that to convert them to other things).

Am I missing something?  (probably) (and it's probably something really simple, I just don't have it right).

https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/master/Layouts.md

fe.add_artwork()

fe.add_artwork( label )
fe.add_artwork( label, x, y )   
fe.add_artwork( label, x, y, w, h )

You need to add a label for what kind of artwork you want to add. It's probably "snap". Check your config files.

[bleargh]

I've been trying here using "fe.add_artwork()", but can't get it to play any of the videos I've got here (which I know play fine w/ffmpeg as I use that to convert them to other things).

https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/master/Layouts.md

fe.add_artwork()

fe.add_artwork( label )
fe.add_artwork( label, x, y )   
fe.add_artwork( label, x, y, w, h )

You need to add a label for what kind of artwork you want to add. It's probably "snap". Check your config files.

That's what I'd been doing... using it as fe.add_artwork(label,x,y,w,h).

I created a "movies" artwork setup in my Emulator Config, and have been trying to pull ".mpg" files from there to show as background videos.

I was wondering, though, if its limited to just a select number of extensions; when I look in "fe_settings.cpp" I see that there's a hard-coded list of file extensions that get used for pulling artwork (png, jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp, and tga).  Could that be limiting me to just those extensions, and would prevent me from having it pull up a ".../movies/romname.mpg" video?

[nitrogen_widget]

Silly newb question.
After I get Attract-mode compiled & running or any app I compile for my tiny distro, I can remove the dev packages of the dependencies correct?
I'm fairly certain the answer is yes but I just wanted to make sure.

My plan is to roll my own image, install on target PC then remove the extra stuff then re-roll as a live image I can install on CF to ide adaptor & I want to save as much space as possible.

[cools]

Bleargh: try .mp4 as an extension. That definitely works.

Nitrogen_widget: yup.

The smooth video is great. Works well in the collage screensaver too, which makes me wonder how long before someone comes up with an advancement style tiled layout (use the wheel images and video snaps, and have a configurable number of columns/rows!)

[raygun]

I've been trying here using "fe.add_artwork()", but can't get it to play any of the videos I've got here (which I know play fine w/ffmpeg as I use that to convert them to other things).

https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/master/Layouts.md

fe.add_artwork()

fe.add_artwork( label )
fe.add_artwork( label, x, y )   
fe.add_artwork( label, x, y, w, h )

You need to add a label for what kind of artwork you want to add. It's probably "snap". Check your config files.

That's what I'd been doing... using it as fe.add_artwork(label,x,y,w,h).

I created a "movies" artwork setup in my Emulator Config, and have been trying to pull ".mpg" files from there to show as background videos.

I was wondering, though, if its limited to just a select number of extensions; when I look in "fe_settings.cpp" I see that there's a hard-coded list of file extensions that get used for pulling artwork (png, jpg, jpeg, gif, bmp, and tga).  Could that be limiting me to just those extensions, and would prevent me from having it pull up a ".../movies/romname.mpg" video?

Hi Bleargh, video extensions aren't hardcoded by attractmode, its set up to handle any extension recognized by FFmpeg.  Image extensions are hardcoded as you found since they aren't sent through ffmpeg.

I suspect you are running up against a rather arbitrary limit that I intend to get rid of in the next version. Right now you can only have one movie artwork configured per emulator.  The path to your videos has to go in the "Movie Path" entry in the emulator configuration.  You also have to fill in the "Movie Artwork" entry with the name of the artwork you want to play the videos in.  So if you put in "snap" for example, the frontend will play your videos where the snap artwork is meant to go.

in the future i want it to work as expected, if there are videos in a specified artwork path then play the video, if not then look for images

[bleargh]

Ah-ha!  That's gotta be the piece I've been missing here.  I'll give it a run through over the weekend and see if I can get it working.  I hadn't set it up as the Movie Path, so thats gotta be what I'm missing.

[cools]

in the future i want it to work as expected, if there are videos in a specified artwork path then play the video, if not then look for images

 

[dcninja]

how do i change the layout on attract mode?

I want to give this another go.

I read about a toggle layout command but I flat out do not see this anywhere. thanks!

[keilmillerjr]

how do i change the layout on attract mode?

I want to give this another go.

I read about a toggle layout command but I flat out do not see this anywhere. thanks!

• Press tab to enter Configure menu
• Navigate to Lists
• Navigate to "list name"
• Navigate to Layout

[dcninja]

thanks!
emu randomly works now.
i did remove the select key tho... LOL i'm just going to reinstall it. thanks!

[dcninja]

omg - next issue - i feel soooo inept. lol

I was trying to rebind the select key to my arcade buttons and somehow bound it to NOTHING.
I copied attract mode back on again and the controls did not reset to default.

How can i edit the controls in notepad or something? where is the file located? thanks!

[keilmillerjr]

omg - next issue - i feel soooo inept. lol

I was trying to rebind the select key to my arcade buttons and somehow bound it to NOTHING.
I copied attract mode back on again and the controls did not reset to default.

How can i edit the controls in notepad or something? where is the file located? thanks!

Open attract.cfg in your favorite text editor and change the settings under input_map.

[dcninja]

you're a lifesaver! thanks!

[dcninja]

2 more stupid questions...

1. I HAD videos playing fine. Now they don't and I'm not sure what I changed. I notice that their are two video paths. One for videos and one for video artwork or something? how do I configure the vids? I know they play because I just had them working before I mucked around in the config some more. My snaps and marquees pick up fine. I think the path is correct to my videos, but there's two video options in the config... not sure what goes where with that? Am I making sense? It's downstairs and I don't have it in front of me right now.

2. I got the favorites working but is there a secondary favs list that you can go to, or is it just press a button and have it cycle through your favs while keeping it on the main list?

I really appreciate everyone's help with this front end, It's an amazing front end and I've just been having issue after issue and they probably are so stupid and small to you guys. lol

[keilmillerjr]

1. I HAD videos playing fine. Now they don't and I'm not sure what I changed. I notice that their are two video paths. One for videos and one for video artwork or something? how do I configure the vids? I know they play because I just had them working before I mucked around in the config some more. My snaps and marquees pick up fine. I think the path is correct to my videos, but there's two video options in the config... not sure what goes where with that? Am I making sense? It's downstairs and I don't have it in front of me right now.

The menu has explanations of what each this does. However, maybe me rephrasing will clarify it for you.

Movie Path: Path to your videos.
Movie Artwork: Description used in a theme to represent the videos. If it is the same description as something else, the videos will hold precedence. Default option is "snap". This means that videos will show up in the "snap" area of the theme, and if no video is present, it will fall back to the snap picture.

2. I got the favorites working but is there a secondary favs list that you can go to, or is it just press a button and have it cycle through your favs while keeping it on the main list?

I'm not sure I understand. You can configure a button to add or remove a rom from the favorites list. The list is just like a filter. You should have two default filters, "all" and "favourites". Not sure why you would want two favorites lists.

[keilmillerjr]

Here's a second update on how I'm making out with creating my theme. It's getting closer to completion for 1920x1080 resolution!

[dcninja]

so once you add a favorite, there is a different favs list from the main list?

[keilmillerjr]

so once you add a favorite, there is a different favs list from the main list?

Yes. These lists are called filters in AttractMode, since they are not actually separate lists. Be sure you have keys set in the config for previous and next filters.

[dcninja]

so if my movies are located in C:\mame\video\

what should I have listed in the two video path options?

I had it working and it won't now. They are in AVI format.

[keilmillerjr]

so if my movies are located in C:\mame\video\

what should I have listed in the two video path options?

I had it working and it won't now. They are in AVI format.

Movie Path: C:\mame\video\
Movie Artwork: snap

Side note:

I really wish the squirrel language used hashes like ruby. My theme is getting ridiculous with declaring local variables, and then later setting them. It would be nice to have them grouped into single variables such as options = { 'theme' => 'red' }. Maybe I'm just used to ruby. But my file is growing in size and complexity. I also found that I can not compare results such as if ( options == ( 'red' || 'green' ) ), but if ( ( options == 'red') || (options == 'green' ) ) works.

[raygun]

Here's a second update on how I'm making out with creating my theme. It's getting closer to completion for 1920x1080 resolution!

Very nice!  Can't wait to see the finished product.

Side note:

I really wish the squirrel language used hashes like ruby. My theme is getting ridiculous with declaring local variables, and then later setting them. It would be nice to have them grouped into single variables such as options = { 'theme' => 'red' }. Maybe I'm just used to ruby. But my file is growing in size and complexity. I also found that I can not compare results such as if ( options == ( 'red' || 'green' ) ), but if ( ( options == 'red') || (options == 'green' ) ) works.

It does do hashes (associative arrays), they're called tables in squirrel.  see: http://www.squirrel-lang.org/doc/squirrel3.html#d0e1216

[cools]

Here's a second update on how I'm making out with creating my theme. It's getting closer to completion for 1920x1080 resolution!

Mind sharing the script so I can see if there's any tricks I can borrow?

Also I really like those button/stick images - any chance I can get a copy of them - I've been meaning to do an instructions panel for mine as well.

[dcninja]

just want to chime in that this front end is perfect now. best thing since mamewah... i've made other cabs using that way way back in early 2000's and this one takes the cake. simple, looks clean, has everything I need.
I'm going to be backing up my system soon to a second hard drive in case but I have a favs list and I was wondering where that file is so I don't have to manually add all 600 games back. Is it stored where the other lists of emu's are or is it in something goofy like the documents folder in windows? thanks!

[raygun]

just want to chime in that this front end is perfect now. best thing since mamewah... i've made other cabs using that way way back in early 2000's and this one takes the cake. simple, looks clean, has everything I need.
I'm going to be backing up my system soon to a second hard drive in case but I have a favs list and I was wondering where that file is so I don't have to manually add all 600 games back. Is it stored where the other lists of emu's are or is it in something goofy like the documents folder in windows? thanks!

Hey that's great that its working for you now.  All the configuration files are kept in the same place (nothing in the documents folder or the registry or anything).  The favs lists are stored in the "romlists" subdirectory, they are the files with the ".tag" extension...

[liquid8]

Just been playing around with this, and I completely agree this has great potential.

I've always stuck with Mamewah for configuration and flexibility but there's a number of things I wish it had:

A more flexible theming engine (check)
Plugins (check)
Configuration menu builtin (check)
Image and video transparency/masking (check)
Lists using Filters and Rules (check)
Speedy on low end system (check)

Some other frontends have these, but I've never gotten to a point where I could switch. I think this frontend could cater to anyone running Mamewah, Mala or AtomicFE.

What sold me was the list filtering and rules specifically - instead of generating different lists with outside utilities or clunky text editing, you simply add filters with rules to the master list and can easily switch between them. The fact that it has a scripting engine for plugins and themes means I can customize and enhance it down the road.

What will keep people from switching now is the lack of layouts and plugins, maybe a few unique configurations - but once some people get ahold of the layout scripting and plugins the sky is the limit.

I will have a bunch of feedback soon. Briefly looking at the scripting engine, is there a list of the transition states that are available to it? (ToNewSelection, StartLayout, EndLayout, ToGame, FromGame, etc..) - NM - figured that out, but is it possible to load/write files with Squirrel? I see the Math and String libraries are available, what about input/output?

 

[raygun]

I will have a bunch of feedback soon. Briefly looking at the scripting engine, is there a list of the transition states that are available to it? (ToNewSelection, StartLayout, EndLayout, ToGame, FromGame, etc..) - NM - figured that out, but is it possible to load/write files with Squirrel? I see the Math and String libraries are available, what about input/output?

 

Hi liquid8,

The standard input/output library provided by Squirrel is not loaded currently.  I found it too low level and unfriendly to include at this point.  so no direct file io currently, other than loading other scripts.

Instead the focus has been on supporting communication between the scripts and the plugin commands, so you can do all your file io in a separate program and feed the info back and forth to the script since  layout and plugin  scripts can read the stdout output from the programs they execute...

[dcninja]

ty raygun for the amazing front end. I currently use that simple black and white list. it's clean, clear, and easy to understand for everyone. I've got a favs list of 600 games marked off for quick play, and the full list if i want to discover something new. and of course a random game button. going to make a little index card cheat sheet for randoms that come to play it. haha works fantastic.

[liquid8]

The standard input/output library provided by Squirrel is not loaded currently.  I found it too low level and unfriendly to include at this point.  so no direct file io currently, other than loading other scripts.

Instead the focus has been on supporting communication between the scripts and the plugin commands, so you can do all your file io in a separate program and feed the info back and forth to the script since  layout and plugin  scripts can read the stdout output from the programs they execute...

Understandable, but it would be nice to be able to handle xml or standard files for plugins without having to write a separate utility.

Another question:

What is your expectation when using add_image from a plugin (not a layout)?

I was writing a plugin that would display an image on keypress, but the add_image function only loads images from the current layout folder. This might be nice if you want different images for different layouts, but I might expect my plugin to store the images independent of the layout folder - perhaps a custom directory or a directory for the plugin itself. One solution might be to give a plugin its own folder just like a layout, if you don't want plugins to be able to load files from just anywhere.

FYI, I reported a bug and a request on github, I'm not sure if they were removed for some reason as they aren't showing up now?

Bug:
When switching out (alt-tab) in windows, when you try to switch back it doesn't redraw the screen until you press a button. This happens to me on both Windows XP and Windows 8.

Feature Request:
Windowed mode (as opposed to fullscreen), and ideally a choice between windowed, fullscreen windowed, and exclusive fullscreen.

[keilmillerjr]

I took a break from creating my layout for a while. I finally have some time coming up to continue working on it.

Is it possible to use fe.add_image() and fe.do_nut() with subdirectories? It would be very helpful as my layout allows for many options and resolutions.

[raygun]

Understandable, but it would be nice to be able to handle xml or standard files for plugins without having to write a separate utility.

Another question:

What is your expectation when using add_image from a plugin (not a layout)?

I was writing a plugin that would display an image on keypress, but the add_image function only loads images from the current layout folder. This might be nice if you want different images for different layouts, but I might expect my plugin to store the images independent of the layout folder - perhaps a custom directory or a directory for the plugin itself. One solution might be to give a plugin its own folder just like a layout, if you don't want plugins to be able to load files from just anywhere.

Ha it's so cool to see the different ideas for scripting this.  To be honest I hadn't really thought about loading images from a plugin but it makes complete sense.   As you note the current version assumes all image paths are relative to the current layout folder.  That will change in the next version with absolute paths being supported as well.  I think adding support for each plugin having its own folder just like a layout would be a good idea, with the add_image command loading from there if a relative path is given when it is called from a plugin.  I'll look into that and will think about how to best support reading files...

FYI, I reported a bug and a request on github, I'm not sure if they were removed for some reason as they aren't showing up now?

Bug:
When switching out (alt-tab) in windows, when you try to switch back it doesn't redraw the screen until you press a button. This happens to me on both Windows XP and Windows 8.

Feature Request:
Windowed mode (as opposed to fullscreen), and ideally a choice between windowed, fullscreen windowed, and exclusive fullscreen.

Got them, they're showing up for me ok over at github.  I've been playing around with windowed mode a bit already, it should be ready to check in soon.

Is it possible to use fe.add_image() and fe.do_nut() with subdirectories? It would be very helpful as my layout allows for many options and resolutions.

I think so, you should be able to make a subdirectory in your layout and then do something like fe.do_nut( "subdirectory/file.nut" ) or fe.add_image("subdirectory/hello.jpg")...

[liquid8]

I realized I had filtering on at github which is why I didn't see my issue reports.. thanks for fixing them! I need to get it setup to compile from github so I can check that out.

I've been putting a bunch of time into playing with this. Cools code helped me a ton, so thank you  Squirrel has some nice little benefits.

As I checked out Cools code, I noticed a library of sorts would be extremely helpful. So I started working on one (a .nut file) which will not only make things a bit simpler in dealing with layout objects, but also adds animation handling!

It looks something like this for a layout:

Code: [Select]

fe.do_nut("simplelayout.nut");
local layout = SimpleLayout();
local snap = layout.addArtwork("artSnap", "snap", 100, fe.layout.height / 2, 262, 200);
    snap.enableShadow(true);
    snap.addAnimation("translate", { when = Transition.FromOldSelection, path = [ [ fe.layout.width / 2, -200], [fe.layout.width / 2 , 300 ]], easing = "out", tween = "quad", reverse = true} );
    snap.addAnimation("property", { when = Transition.FromOldSelection, property = "alpha", reverse = true } );
    snap.addAnimation("translate", { when = Transition.ToNewSelection, path = [ [ fe.layout.width / 2, -200], [fe.layout.width / 2 , 300 ]], easing = "out", tween = "quad"} );
    snap.addAnimation("property", { when = Transition.ToNewSelection, property = "alpha" } );

I have added property animator (like alpha, x, y, width, height, rotation, etc..) and a translate animator which is basically just an x, y at the same time but contains some other abilities. You can see when you do addAnimation, you can provide a config of sorts with various options. I'll probably make this a lot easier with some predefined configurations that non-coders would find easier.

In the library, I actually wrapped the objects in a new class because not only does it extend functionality of the original objects but each object can include multiple objects. Right now, I just have an extra object that duplicates the original for a shadow but this could be expanded later to have full fledged objects like a marquee wheel or something similar.

This could be something that you may want to include via code or just a .nut file that is available as an extra library. Once I have more I can let you or someone else play with it.

Another question: when I do this, I want my included .nut file to attach to the transition and tick functions.. but as it stands, it doesn't seem like I can point those functions to a function in the included .nut file. For now,  I just have a transition and tick function in my main layout.nut and it redirects them to the functions in the class of the included file.

[cools]

Looks excellent, the one thing I was dreading doing with mine was animation. Making the routines external to the layout makes a whole load of sense. It's one of the reasons I stayed away from using any sort of alpha blending, it was beyond my motivation to maintain those during fades.

[liquid8]

Thanks! I can't tell you how much fun I had with math until I found Penner's Easing functions

I did a TON of work to simplify things. There is now three include files: extended.nut, animate.nut, debug.nut

ExtendedObjects (extended.nut) is used instead of the standard fe.add_XXXXX.
Animate (animate.nut) requires the ExtendedObjects library, but if included you can add the animations as shown below
Debug (debug.nut)  is really cool. It also requires the ExtendedObjects library, but if included adds a debugger that puts text objects ontop of all your objects and gives some feedback while you are modifying the layout

Code: [Select]

//load required files
fe.do_nut("extended.nut");
fe.do_nut("animate.nut");
fe.do_nut("debug.nut");

//add objects
ExtendedObjects.add_image("bg", "bg.jpg", 0, 0, fe.layout.width, fe.layout.height);
ExtendedObjects.add_image("logo", "logo.png", 50, 50, 262, 72);
ExtendedObjects.add_artwork("snap", "snap", 150, 150, 360, 320);
ExtendedObjects.add_text("title", "[Title]", 0, 0, fe.layout.width, 100);

//add animations
ExtendedObjects.getObject("snap").addAnimation("translate");
ExtendedObjects.getObject("logo").addAnimation("translate", { duration = 1500, when = Transition.FromOldSelection, easing = "out", tween = "back", from = "offscreenbottom", to = "bottom" });
//add debugger
Debug.start();
Debug.disableDuringAnimations(false);
Debug.getObject("snap").setText("hi snap!");

I still want to simplify the animation configs, but it's really pretty cool I'll try to get a video together soon. I still have some kinks to work out, but it is coming along!

Any interest in help testing?

Here is a really good resource if any wants some learning for squirrel:
http://electricimp.com/docs/resources/squirrelcrib/

[liquid8]

Here is a quick preview:



Note the animations are actually smooth, need to figure out why my capture is dropping frames.

Here's one with the debug library turned on:

[raygun]

I still want to simplify the animation configs, but it's really pretty cool I'll try to get a video together soon. I still have some kinks to work out, but it is coming along!

Any interest in help testing?

Just watched the videos liquid8, looks great!  I'd be happy to help out with testing...

Another question: when I do this, I want my included .nut file to attach to the transition and tick functions.. but as it stands, it doesn't seem like I can point those functions to a function in the included .nut file. For now,  I just have a transition and tick function in my main layout.nut and it redirects them to the functions in the class of the included file.

I just tried it out and I was able to add a tick function from an included .nut file, so it can be done... one thing to watch out for is that the name of the tick function you add isn't the same as any other in your layout or the plugins you have enabled...

[liquid8]

I actually figured it out, although I have no idea what it was at the time (maybe I was trying to point it to a function in a class or something)

So I added my initial version of this.. yep, broke out my github and got all official I was actually doing a bit of rewrite the last few days and it's much more customizable now.

You will be able to create additional objects or animations via an extended class in a .nut file. You hook into some of the ExtendedObjects abilities to do this, which makes handling animations or custom objects much easier. I've already played around with converting the orbit marquee wheel and starfield layouts into objects 

The instructions and src are at:

https://github.com/liquid8d/attract-extra/tree/master/layouts/extended

Keep in mind I'm still in development stages, but it should be fun to play with. Functions or conventions will probably change a bit earlier on until it's more user friendly.

Here's the example layout that is included in github:

[cools]

Pretty cool! Now I've got a vertical cab set up I'm not messing with configuration much, rather playing some games for a change. Have been quietly converting my layout to work in horizontal as well as vertical, all positioning in percentages instead of absolutes.

All the new bits will be a lot of fun to mess with in future.

[liquid8]

With ExtendedObjects you can have positions to set objects to left, right, top, bottom, center, topleft, bottomright, etc and animations can run from positions like offleft to offright (offscreen left to right) or object start position to bottomright, etc..

Percentages would be a nice addition and/or maybe even some mid-points. If those existed, it might only be one-offs that need specific screen positioning.

One thing I'll have to keep in mind is how to handle positioning and animation duration for horizontal or vertical. I don't have a vertical setup so it's good to hear that Since the animations are currently done by distance over time - an animation from screen left to screen right would go faster? on a horizontal setup than a vertical.

Right now, this version is stuck with transition only animations that don't allow input until animation(s) complete so I'm focusing on fixing that by creating different animation types like forcedtransition, continuous, looping, repeating, etc.. that can run at anytime and not block input

[keilmillerjr]

I have begun to work on my theme again. Revising it to be easier to work with.

I created a test layout. I was able to successfully use subdirectories.

Using fe.do_nut(), I am able to execute another script. That script is able to modify the layout. However, variables are not carried over. Is there a way to import a nut file? Possibly have fe.do_nut() and fe.import_nut()? This will greatly allow me to organize my code. I'm very much used to DRY methods.

[liquid8]

I have begun to work on my theme again. Revising it to be easier to work with.

I created a test layout. I was able to successfully use subdirectories.

Using fe.do_nut(), I am able to execute another script. That script is able to modify the layout. However, variables are not carried over. Is there a way to import a nut file? Possibly have fe.do_nut() and fe.import_nut()? This will greatly allow me to organize my code. I'm very much used to DRY methods.

Squirrel can be a little confusing with that at first.. but check out this:
http://electricimp.com/docs/resources/squirrelcrib/#globaltable

Basically what that means is you create the variable with NO local declaration, and use the <- symbol. That adds a variable to the "root" table, and it can be accessed from your other .nut file:

Code: [Select]

my_global_variable <- true;

The better way if you are going to have a bunch of variables is to create your own table and put it in the root the same way:

Code: [Select]

my_global_config <-  {
   first_key = "Max Normal",
   second_key = 42,
   third_key = true
};

So layout.nut:

Code: [Select]

fe.do_nut("config.nut");
fe.add_text(my_global_config.first_key, 0, 0, 100, 20);

and config.nut:

Code: [Select]

my_global_config <-  {
   first_key = "Max Normal",
   second_key = 42,
   third_key = true
};


You could also use classes... I'd really recommend at least perusing this link: http://electricimp.com/docs/resources/squirrelcrib/ - I've worked in a lot of languages but a couple things Squirrel does through me for a loop.

[keilmillerjr]

@liquid8 Thank you very much for that link. I fully understand now. Recreated about half of my theme so far using good practices. I can't wait to release a working layout on github.

[cools]

Liquid8: I position by multiplying fe.layout.width by 0.x something. Should really put that in a shorter variable name now I think of it. Same for the vertical positioning

[liquid8]

Thanks cools, I added a function to my extendedobjects for percentages, so it will be available

keilmillerjr: when you get some time, you should try playing around with this addon I am putting together. It's still a WIP, but I think you'll like it Plus, I could use some coders that will be able to create some new objects or animations.

So I did mention that you'll be able to make your own animations with this thing, it will be pretty flexible

If you aren't a developer, you can play around with adding multiple animations with different effects, delays and timings  through configuration options to get what you want. You will even be able to just choose from some preset animation "sets" - which will do some things you would expect like fade a snap out when leaving the game and fade it in when entering it.

If you are a developer, you can create classes that extend the base Animation class, and easily make it available for others to use. To have a sample available, I created this ParticleAnimation with stars:



Once the animation .nut file, a user that downloads it will be able to put something like this in their layout:

Code: [Select]

fe.do_nut("extended/extended.nut");
fe.do_nut("extended/animate.nut");
fe.do_nut("extended/animations/particles/particles.nut");

ExtendedObjects.animate("particles", { when = Transition.FromOldSelection });


[keilmillerjr]

@liquid8 will do. I'm not looking to make a hyper spin theme, but simple animations could definately spruce up a theme. Like you said, fading a snap. Or possibly sprucing up fe.Listbox so it's more smooth and moves the text instead of jumping it.

 

[nitrogen_widget]

So, even though it seems to compile fine on a couple of minimal linux distributions (slitaz and crunchbang, sidebang) i'll get a segmentation fault when I run it?
it complains about a missing config file first.
On some distro's the screen flashes before it segments.
If I manually create the file it just segments.

Edit:

Actually, if I run it with sudo I don't get the segmentation fault.
just the screen flashes & it looks like it wants to run.
But, i have gotten it to run on sparky linux openbox which is based on unstable.

Is there a logging option to see what is going on?
Either SFML didn't compile right ( though in sidebang it was a package) or something else needs to be installed.
I am running the opensource nvidia drivers with a geforce 2 & a p3.

[liquid8]

nitrogen... wish I could tell you, i haven't tried it on Linux.


For anyone interested, I pushed out a new update for the ExtendedObjects and Animate library. You  can get it here:
https://github.com/liquid8d/attract-extra/tree/master/layouts/extended

The example layout looks basically the same, but some new options are in the animation configs:

Code: [Select]

local anim = {
    which = "translate",     //which animation to use - others can be created, but for now just translate and property
    when = When.FromOldSelection,   //When mirrors Transition.TYPE except there is also a When.Always for always running animations
    restart = true,     //whether to restart an already running animation if the same transition occurs again
    delay = 0,     //delay of course delays an animation
    duration = 500,     //the duration in ms
    kind = "loop",     //kind of animation - you can "loop" it or "yoyo" (forward, then reverse, then forward)
    repeat = 0,     //how many times to repeat (loop or yoyo)
    from = "center",  //position or location to start
    to = "bottom",     //position or location to end
    tween = "elastic",     //the type of animation such as elastic, bounce or back (this adjust the speed or effects from one point to the other)
    easing = "out",     //the easing type (can be in, out, inout, or outin) which gives a different effect for the tween
    reverse = false,     //run the animation in reverse
    wait = false     // whether or not to wait for the transition to finish (usually you don't want to, but sometimes you will)
}

local object = ExtendedObjects.add_artwork("art", "snap", 0, 0, 480, 360);
object.animate(anim);


I also added animation sets, which are a group of animations that can work together.. I'm hoping to start playing creating some different pre-made sets that people might like.

I also moved the animations and WIP objects into their own folder, and if anyone is interested in making their own, they can use those as examples.

I'd like to get some feedback, so if anyone tests it out or is trying to create a layout with it please let me know! Also if you have any ideas or things you would like to be able to do - remember, it doesn't have to be all hyperspin-flashy, but subtle things are nice too

There is likely still some bugs to work out, but I've had a lot of fun playing around with it

[raygun]

So, even though it seems to compile fine on a couple of minimal linux distributions (slitaz and crunchbang, sidebang) i'll get a segmentation fault when I run it?
it complains about a missing config file first.
On some distro's the screen flashes before it segments.
If I manually create the file it just segments.

Edit:

Actually, if I run it with sudo I don't get the segmentation fault.
just the screen flashes & it looks like it wants to run.
But, i have gotten it to run on sparky linux openbox which is based on unstable.

Is there a logging option to see what is going on?
Either SFML didn't compile right ( though in sidebang it was a package) or something else needs to be installed.
I am running the opensource nvidia drivers with a geforce 2 & a p3.

hmmm nothing is jumping out at me as the potential cause. 
Unfortunately there isn't much of s logging option currently.  Since you are compiling yourself you can build the debug version with:

make FE_DEBUG=1

this will give you more console logging output that might help track the problem down.  If you dont mind getting into the weeds a bit more you could also enable core dumps on your system and then after the crash you could load everything into gdb and get a backtrace:

attract
<core dump>
gdb attract core
bt

that would show exactly what was going on at the time of the crash.  hope that helps.

liquid8 i hope to get a chance to try out your layouts work this weekend... i'll let you know how it goes

[nitrogen_widget]

I successfully compiled this and ran it on debian-testing no problem.
But, SFML is part of the repository.
I have to compile for mine.
So I will compare the two & try to figure out what is different.

If I make no headway that way i'll try your suggestions.
Thanks.

So, even though it seems to compile fine on a couple of minimal linux distributions (slitaz and crunchbang, sidebang) i'll get a segmentation fault when I run it?
it complains about a missing config file first.
On some distro's the screen flashes before it segments.
If I manually create the file it just segments.

Edit:

Actually, if I run it with sudo I don't get the segmentation fault.
just the screen flashes & it looks like it wants to run.
But, i have gotten it to run on sparky linux openbox which is based on unstable.

Is there a logging option to see what is going on?
Either SFML didn't compile right ( though in sidebang it was a package) or something else needs to be installed.
I am running the opensource nvidia drivers with a geforce 2 & a p3.

hmmm nothing is jumping out at me as the potential cause. 
Unfortunately there isn't much of s logging option currently.  Since you are compiling yourself you can build the debug version with:

make FE_DEBUG=1

this will give you more console logging output that might help track the problem down.  If you dont mind getting into the weeds a bit more you could also enable core dumps on your system and then after the crash you could load everything into gdb and get a backtrace:

attract
<core dump>
gdb attract core
bt

that would show exactly what was going on at the time of the crash.  hope that helps.

liquid8 i hope to get a chance to try out your layouts work this weekend... i'll let you know how it goes

[nitrogen_widget]

Got it!
Sfml was installing to the wrong directory on my distro after I compiled it.
I was also missing some dependencies that my distro doesn't have that Debian does in the base.

Now I can work on a vertical layout. :-)

[liquid8]

So I had fun putting together my particle example I did before... and I really like HyperTheme... so now this is happening



If you have messed with the hypertheme particle system, it might look familiar. I took a look at the hypertheme files and most of it I should be able to do. I'm not great with all this particle stuff but it's a lot of fun learning it (except the math)...

This will be of course an animation extension so my extendedobjects and animate library will be required.

Comments or suggestions, let me know.

[raygun]

Version 1.3 has now been released.  Here are the release notes:

General

* Added the ability to mark and filter games using custom tags.
* Multiple rom paths can now be specified in each emulator configuration.
* Multiple paths can now be specified for each artwork resource.
* If an artwork path contains a subdirectory that matches a rom's name, then a random video or image from that subdirectory is loaded.
* Added support for setups where each rom is stored in a separate subdirectory.
* The frontend can now run in windowed, fullscreen, or the default "fill screen" mode
* There is no longer a special "movie" artwork. Any artwork or static image can now contain images or videos. Videos are given preference if found.
* Added commands to add/remove custom tags, jump to the next letter, jump to the previous letter, and to launch the screensaver.
* Fixed image flipping on scaled images
* Fixed text scaling
* Fixed video crash
* Various small improvements to the overlay menus
* Improved screensaver

Layouts and Plug-ins

* Added "Surface" objects for layouts, which are offscreen textures that other images, videos, texts and surfaces can be drawn onto. The surface itself is treated like any other image and can have effects such as skew, pinch, shaders, etc. applied to it.
* Improved layout control over video playback (see the "video_flags" and "video_playing" attributes)
* Added a file_name attribute so that scripts can directly get/set the image/video filename for any artwork or static image
* Layout and plugin scripts now have access to squirrel's standard "blob", "io", and "system" libraries.
* Reworked and simplified the interface for how plug-ins can access to external commands (the "fe.plugin_command()" functions).
* Added initial support for script library modules.

Notes for those upgrading

This update will likely break existing plug-ins (any plug-in that interfaces with an external program using the fe.plugin_command() functions)..

[liquid8]

This looks great, thanks! Glad to see you added the io library  The only thing I have noticed is there still doesn't seem to be a way to remove anything on the fly - it doesn't seem like fe.objs exists - I may submit a bug for that soon.

So with the new add_surface, it sounds like you can technically add "layers" (a feature I was looking for) and then draw objects to those layers? Can't wait to play around with it

I'll be pushing my particle system animation pretty soon which mirrors the HyperTheme particle effects. It's not complete but it's getting close.

[keilmillerjr]

Love the addition of jumping to a new letter! Time to revise the "controls" for my theme a bit. Just when I thought I was almost done. lol

[BrianAg95]

Cool front end.. I like it so far. 

I have a pure vertical cabinet, I had told windows to rotate my desktop so that when I go into windows it displays windows in the long vertical format.   Attract-mode HATES this!  My system crawled..  I was freaking out at first wondering what in the world was going on as on my main computer it ran perfectly...   Then when I ran a rom through the front end it it rotated the game so now the game was playing sideways on my vertical screen.   

I exited out.. rotated my screen in windows back to "normal" (IE the windows screen was now facing sideways) and everything ran regular speed.  And the rom played in the correct vertical rotation through the front end.

Note: with windows rotating the screen the front end's default horizontal layout screen was squished/stretched to fit on vertical view.  (It didnt look half bad, and was the correct orientation)

I figure the horrible performance issue was related to the front end trying to resize/display its layout in the vertical format, since the front end was expecting horizontal, but windows was telling it to display vertical resolution.   

Anyway something to maybe keep in mind.. look at.

A question:   The docs say keyboard/joystick/spinner for control..  Will trackball work?   (mine is currently down, so I can't test with it at the moment)   

[cools]

You need to check your settings there, the frontend doesn't control the way the emulator rotates. Is performance in other things okay with Windows rotated? I remember having problems with performance and a rotated desktop in with certain chipsets.

I have no problems here with A-M and a rotated desktop, although I don't use the rotated desktop except for admin on the machine because GroovyMAME doesn't work with it.

The aspect ratio being odd is normal.

[BrianAg95]

Yeah I thought that was a little odd as well....

I am currently running atomicfe, and I was running it with the desktop rotated and had a vertical setup in atomicfe, and had told mame to rotate games.  This all was working fine, no slowdowns, screen showing up in correct orientation both in atomicfe and mame.   Perhaps since atomicfe was handling launching games it was resetting the windows rotation and keeping the rotate setting in mame from over rotating the screen. Because I did some more testing, and with the windows layout in vertical mode, when I launched mame from a cmd window, it overrotated the games as well. 

I did a straight install of attract-mode and fired it up and immediately saw these issues, no changes nothing.  The menus in the first config were terribly slow, then when it loaded the layout it was even slower (i figured the animations and extra graphics were killing it).  Then when I launched a test game it was rotated a further 90'.   Yes all very strange.   

This is an old dell dimension with built in video, so it doesnt have much processing power to deal with video, which is fine for all the verticals I want to run.

As mentioned when I went back to default screen orientation everything was fine, attract worked flawlessly and quickly, and games launched fine and in the correct orientation.  I just need to create a vertical layout, and It seems like it will work fine.   As long as I can use a trackball to control it I will probably be switching to it.  AtomicFe makes you choose what controls its menus, and I have 3 control panels, One with only a trackball and 3 buttons, One with dual 8ways and buttons, and a dedicated single 4 way panel, So I dont want to have to setup a different front end for each control panel.  Especially since I can hot swap my control panels.  now to get my trackball fixed.. dang old green happ control board died on me.

[nitrogen_widget]

Brian,
I experienced the same thing with an older Nvidia card on both Linux & XP.
Its an older system & I wound up using advmame & menu on linux with standard screen orientation & rotating the front end & mame.

works good.

What you and I need is a rotated vertical layout for Attract Mode.
But I need a guide on how to actually do this because i just don't understand how it's done and can't make heads or tails out of the layout structure or directories.
I mean there is the default folder along with 3 other folders but those other folders don't have as much in them as the default.

[BrianAg95]

So did some more testing today.  The base attract mode layout has a second layout you can swap to which is rotated left.  I changed the .nut file so it rotated right since that's what I use, and it all functioned fine.  It's not as perfectly clear as the horizontal layout, but it certainly functions.  (also note you can go into controls and setup hotkeys to swap layouts or rotate the current layout. )   With these rotations, the screens are stretched/squished to fit, but it doesn't look bad at all.  So no need to custom design a layout unless you just really want to.

[cools]

How to permanently rotate a layout is in the first example in the layout documentation:  fe.layout.orient = RotateScreen.Right;

http://attractmode.org/docs/1.3/Layouts.html#binding

The aspect ratio weirdness shown in earlier versions is now fixed, so just wrap your head around the dimensioning and it's fine.

[BrianAg95]

I've been getting to know the front end better and created my own layout now. 

Really like the simplicity of the front end, Plus I was using atomicfe, and for the briefest moment you would see windows when wapping out of games...  I never see Windows with attract mode!

I'm still tweaking my layout, and this does NOT have animated dot muncher like the default skin, but i wanted a pacman esque theme...

The title is built into the graphic, I'm using Marquees to show control panels.. but right now they are too small to read and not aligned well... so still working on that bit.

[jimmer]

Downloaded it just 15mins ago and already loving it. So easy and just what I want(I think).

Only one problem I have no games in my list!
Where do you get your first ROM list from ?
I'll probably work it out before I get an answer, but it would help if this was more obvious from the start.

>>>>>>> Generate ROM list option at the bottom


Next step, how to get more info into the ROM list so I can create my list filters.
I have swappable controls panels, so I want a filter for each panel.

Can you can tell I'm excited.     

[keilmillerjr]

Downloaded it just 15mins ago and already loving it. So easy and just what I want(I think).

Only one problem I have no games in my list!
Where do you get your first ROM list from ?
I'll probably work it out before I get an answer, but it would help if this was more obvious from the start.

>>>>>>> Generate ROM list option at the bottom


Next step, how to get more info into the ROM list so I can create my list filters.
I have swappable controls panels, so I want a filter for each panel.

Can you can tell I'm excited.     

I'm not at home at the moment, but you need attract-more to point to your mame.xml file.

[jimmer]

I spent a few hours hacking around with ROMlister and excel to create a text file with the fields in it that AttractMode wants.
But then I realised my problem was that I didn't have a mame.xml file, that was why I got an unpopulated mame.txt list.

So I made a mame.xml
Generated my ROMlist (in attractmode).
Then set up basic filters to produce lists for 8way, 4way, 2way and the same again for favourites.

It works great like that. If I add more ROMs I just have to regenerate the mame ROM list.
All done inside attractMode

The only possible problem is that I need more control information to tailor my list to my panels. The sort of info that ROMlister gives you access to. Actually it's really only the number of buttons that I'm missing, I can probably hack it for now by stuffing that info into displaycount field.

[liquid8]

The only possible problem is that I need more control information to tailor my list to my panels. The sort of info that ROMlister gives you access to. Actually it's really only the number of buttons that I'm missing, I can probably hack it for now by stuffing that info into displaycount field.

If you generate the list in Romlister for another frontend, AM can import them:

Code: [Select]

You can also import romlists from MameWah/Wahcade! (.lst), Attract-Mode (.txt) and HyperSpin (.xml) using the following command:

attract --import-romlist <file> [emulator name]

The --build-romlist and --import-romlist options can be chained together in all sorts of strange and wonderful ways to generate combined Attract-Mode romlists. So:

attract --import-romlist mame.lst --import-romlist nintendo.lst nestopia


[raygun]

Hey guys,

I just released a new version of Attract-Mode.  This is primarily a bug fix release, here's what's new:

- fixes favourites and tags so they are no longer lost when entries are filtered out by the current filter
- slight change to the artwork selection order: matched clone videos are now preferred over matched name images
- [Linux] fix for emulator launching when running in "Fullscreen Mode"
- video playback now keeps going during transition effects
- fixed video stutter when using more recent versions of FFmpeg
- updated the Windows binaries to use FFmpeg 2.2.4
- layouts can now get and set the user-toggled rotation status
- various screensaver improvements: added a mute option, added an option to overlay wheel artwork on the video and 2x2 video modes
- various other small fixes and improvements

Downloads are available here: http://attractmode.org/download.html
Support Forum: http://forum.attractmode.org

Thanks for all the feedback, Enjoy!

(p.s. Brian I hope you don't mind but I swiped your photo to put up on the website!)

[raygun]

Version 1.4 of Attract-Mode has now been released!  What's new:

• Added Steam support
• Added optional tracking of usage statistics (number of times played, total time played per game)
• Added thegamesdb.net metadata scraper
• Added history.dat viewer
• Added plugin to play basic audio playlists
• Filters can now optionally sort and limit the size of game lists
• Improvements to various layout animations
• Various new and improved plugins and layouts
• Many other bug fixes and improvements

Downloads are available here: http://attractmode.org/download.html
Support Forum: http://forum.attractmode.org

[keilmillerjr]

All amazing updates! I'm curious as to how the steam integration goes. I'm away from my computer for a while as I'm trying to move.

[lettuce]

How do you remove the mechanical and screenless games from the MAME rom list?

[raygun]

All amazing updates! I'm curious as to how the steam integration goes. I'm away from my computer for a while as I'm trying to move.

The steam integration is pretty basic I think.  Attract-Mode will at least read your local installation when generating a game list to get the installed games, and has had some changes so that the steam game launching works... I'm not using the steam stuff myself yet so I'm curious how it works for people.

How do you remove the mechanical and screenless games from the MAME rom list?

Hi lettuce,

You can create a filter rule that will filter mechanical games out from a list.  Do this in the list configuration, add a filter if you don't have one already for the list in question and then add a rule that "Category" not contain Electromechanical

      rule                 Category not_contains Electromechanical|Fruit Machines

You need to use catver.ini for this to work.  Another way of course is to organize your roms so that the electromechanical ones don't show up in the directory that attract-mode searches when generating a list...
 

[chris2922]

Modified:

Found out the answer to my own question so thought I'd modify the post.

I've been looking at videos of Cools layout with logo/title artwork for each game and have been unable to find the source to get my own.  I now realise they're HyperSpin wheels!



So my new question is - do I have to download that massive beast and configure its myriad options just to get my hands on the mame wheel set?  I can't find them in the HyperSpin download section but moderator posts on the HS forum suggest they're there somewhere.

My layout won't be complete without them!

[keilmillerjr]

Modified:

Found out the answer to my own question so thought I'd modify the post.

I've been looking at videos of Cools layout with logo/title artwork for each game and have been unable to find the source to get my own.  I now realise they're HyperSpin wheels!



So my new question is - do I have to download that massive beast and configure its myriad options just to get my hands on the mame wheel set?  I can't find them in the HyperSpin download section but moderator posts on the HS forum suggest they're there somewhere.

My layout won't be complete without them!

Hyper spin wheel art is only on the FTP and available to supporting members.

[cools]

I wish it was on the FTP. Well, it is but its massively out of date. You need to be a member and use HyperSync to get the assets.

[keilmillerjr]

I wish it was on the FTP. Well, it is but its massively out of date. You need to be a member and use HyperSync to get the assets.

It is on the FTP. Yes, it is massively out of date. You do need to be a member, but you do not need to use HyperSync to get the assets.

Here is the ftp link to the mame wheel art: ftp://files.hyperspin-fe.com:221/Gold%20Member%20Downloads/MAME/Wheel/MAME%20(Wheel%20Standard)%20(HS%20Minted)%20(v.144).zip

[chris2922]

That's great news, thank you for the link.  I really didn't want to install and configure HyperSpin and HyperSync just to get the wheel assets - especially on my clean-ish windows 7 PC when my cab runs xp64.

Also sorry if anyone thinks I'm going off topic, but AttractMode really lends itself to these wheel assets and its useful for new users (or pre Hyperspin users like me) to know what they are and where to get them.  Admittedly I've spent a few hours trying to work out where to pinch them from (old habits!) but I don't mind paying £16 to get them from the site.  I'm sure a lot of work went into their creation - even if they are ripped off from original assets!

Also looks like an emumovies subscription will save lots of time.  Attract Mode layouts are really impressive with these two and possibly the Flyers.  Really happy it has been released just when I build a mame machine for first time in 8 years!

[cools]

but you do not need to use HyperSync to get the assets.

The up-to-date assets, you do. And there's a huge chunk out of date - my last count was about 1500 missing from the MAME FTP set compared to HyperSync.

[chris2922]

I have AM running great on my cab now with EmuMovies, Wheel-Art and Flyers. It looks really good and more importantly it works great too.  Fast, responsive and simple to use.  Thanks for creating this awesome FrontEnd 

I'd like to use the GroovyUME build to add some console games to the cab.  AM supports a few emulators out the box with config and lists set up for them, but no UME.

Can we set up UME in AM so it works as the others do?  I'll figure it out myself sooner or later but if anyone knows the 'right way' to do it can you help please?

[cools]

Yes, just set it up as MESS

[Cisek]

Hi

I have two problems with this great soft:

1. I am trying to configure attract mode with retroarch but command line from Gameex frontend doesn't work with this. I type:
retroarch.exe "[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]" -c mame_libretro.dll.cfg -f

But it loads only retroarch gui. What parameters should I change to fix it?

2. I would like to use two type of mame - mame32plus for vector games and the retroarch with mame core for rest of games. Can someone tell me in details how can I make roms list for retroarch mame core to show gamename instead of rom name (for example: "Killer Instinct 2", instead of "kinst2"). I would like also to remove clones, mahjongs, casinos, adultery. How can I do that (by selecting .xml lists? If this is the solution, than where can I get them and how to load them? I am using mame 154 core).

[nitrogen_widget]

Hi

I have two problems with this great soft:

1. I am trying to configure attract mode with retroarch but command line from Gameex frontend doesn't work with this. I type:
retroarch.exe "[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]" -c mame_libretro.dll.cfg -f

But it loads only retroarch gui. What parameters should I change to fix it?

2. I would like to use two type of mame - mame32plus for vector games and the retroarch with mame core for rest of games. Can someone tell me in details how can I make roms list for retroarch mame core to show gamename instead of rom name (for example: "Killer Instinct 2", instead of "kinst2"). I would like also to remove clones, mahjongs, casinos, adultery. How can I do that (by selecting .xml lists? If this is the solution, than where can I get them and how to load them? I am using mame 154 core).

1. I don't use retroarch but you might ask on the attract mode forum.

2. i've been playing around with mameuifx for it's vector stuff and it's very cool. What I do is use MAWLER, an app up top in the stickies, grab all the needed info files off the web for my version of mame then simply sort for the games I want to actually play & just put those on my mame PC.

no reason to copy 20+GB's of stuff i'll never play onto a cab then spend time filtering.
Also once you create your list in attract mode it will go out & pull those game names down & insert them in the front end.
providing it has internet access & you give it some time.
A larger rom collection will take longer to populate with full names.

[Cisek]

Thank you now I almost got it. I can't register on attract mode forum as the registration is now closed, so the only thing that i need is extra command line for gameex to launch mame core, anybody knows what exactly should I type?

[nitrogen_widget]

Thank you now I almost got it. I can't register on attract mode forum as the registration is now closed, so the only thing that i need is extra command line for gameex to launch mame core, anybody knows what exactly should I type?

I'm not familiar with gameex but it's site says it's both a front end & emulator.
If you don't want to use the front end part, why not just pick straight mame ?

[raygun]

1. I am trying to configure attract mode with retroarch but command line from Gameex frontend doesn't work with this. I type:
retroarch.exe "[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]" -c mame_libretro.dll.cfg -f

Hi Cisek, I think it will work if you replace the "[ROMPATH]\[ROMFILE]" part with "[romfilename]".  It looks like attractmode's magic tags are a bit different from what gameex uses.

cheers

[Cisek]

It helped, thanks a lot. Now I have to say just WOW! Animations, really easy gamelist editor and overall quality! Its just the easiest and most versatile frontend I ever got. I was waiting for gameex evolve, but now I am switching to attract mode, I am really happy with this masterpiece of software 

[Cisek]

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.

I use this settings, but I don't know why they don't show vector games. Any way to do that?

[Cisek]

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.

I use this settings, but I don't know why they don't show vector games. Any way to show them?

[raygun]

I use this settings, but I don't know why they don't show vector games. Any way to do that?

Are you sure the vector games are in the MAME romlist?  Try creating another filter with no rules (so that it will show everything). Check that to be sure your vector games are in there

[Cisek]

When I set no rules, it will show vector games. But if I use code:
list   Arcade
   layout               attracman
   romlist              MAME
   filter               "All Games"
      rule                 Title not_contains bootleg|prototype|Trivia|Quiz|Mahjong
      rule                 Year not_contains ?
      rule                 Manufacturer not_contains bootleg
      rule                 Status equals good|imperfect
      rule                 Control contains 2-way|4-way|8-way
      rule                 Category not_contains Mature|Quiz|Mahjong|Casino

Than it doesn't show. Maybe in control contains or bootleg?

[raygun]

When I set no rules, it will show vector games. But if I use code:
list   Arcade
   layout               attracman
   romlist              MAME
   filter               "All Games"
      rule                 Title not_contains bootleg|prototype|Trivia|Quiz|Mahjong
      rule                 Year not_contains ?
      rule                 Manufacturer not_contains bootleg
      rule                 Status equals good|imperfect
      rule                 Control contains 2-way|4-way|8-way
      rule                 Category not_contains Mature|Quiz|Mahjong|Casino

Than it doesn't show. Maybe in control contains or bootleg?

Yes try taking out the control rule from your filter, I think you can get different values in there depending on the mame version ... (joy2way etc or something like that).

[Cisek]

Works, thank you 

[cools]

Most (all?) of the vector games were not joystick controlled, that's why they are filtered out.

[drunkatuw]

Is there a way to change the background based on the emulator or list name? Instead of having a different layout for each list, I'd like to set an image like fe.add_image "[ListTitle].png", 0, 0, 1024, 768); but when I do this, I get an error that [ListTitle].png is not found, but what I'm really looking for is MAME.png.

Otherwise, I was able to configure attract mode to almost exactly how I like it and the setup was 10x easier than any other frontend that I have tried to setup.

[andrewsgxs]

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.

[keilmillerjr]

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.

There is.

http://forum.attractmode.org/

[raygun]

Is there a way to change the background based on the emulator or list name? Instead of having a different layout for each list, I'd like to set an image like fe.add_image "[ListTitle].png", 0, 0, 1024, 768); but when I do this, I get an error that [ListTitle].png is not found, but what I'm really looking for is MAME.png.

Otherwise, I was able to configure attract mode to almost exactly how I like it and the setup was 10x easier than any other frontend that I have tried to setup.

Hi Drunkatuw,

Try using fe.add_artwork( "bg", 0, 0, 1024, 768 ) instead and put files called [emulator]-bg.png in your layout's directory.  It's described a bit more in the readme file but that should allow you to have different bg images or videos even for each emulator.

cheers

[tony.silveira]

just discovering this FE, its looking amazing!

i have a mame list generated but its listing the actual file name for the rom.  i'm at a loss of how to get it to display real world name.

can anyone help an idiot? 

[nitrogen_widget]

just discovering this FE, its looking amazing!

i have a mame list generated but its listing the actual file name for the rom.  i'm at a loss of how to get it to display real world name.

can anyone help an idiot? 

Leave the front end running on a PC hooked up to the internet & it will populate those game names for you as it downloads the meta data.

[markc74]

Gotta say I only started playing around with this frontend yesterday and already I love it. It's ridiculously powerful once you get your head around the layout designer.  I've got this far with it so far:



I have two questions though (and sorry if these have already been answered):

1. Can I control the volume of individual videos? I have 5 running at a time and want the main selected one to be 100% but the others to be on less, say 50% for ambience.

2. Is is possible to have more than 1 favourites list for an emulator? I tend to have a large list (around 500) of all the games I play, and then a much smaller one (of about 50) which I use more often.

Many thanks!

[tony.silveira]

just discovering this FE, its looking amazing!

i have a mame list generated but its listing the actual file name for the rom.  i'm at a loss of how to get it to display real world name.

can anyone help an idiot? 

Leave the front end running on a PC hooked up to the internet & it will populate those game names for you as it downloads the meta data.

you mean once the list has been generated, it still works in the back ground to flesh out those names?  i have it running now with the attractman layout and all my moms have the file name.  i'll leave it on and see if this works.

[drunkatuw]

Is there a way to change the background based on the emulator or list name? Instead of having a different layout for each list, I'd like to set an image like fe.add_image "[ListTitle].png", 0, 0, 1024, 768); but when I do this, I get an error that [ListTitle].png is not found, but what I'm really looking for is MAME.png.

Otherwise, I was able to configure attract mode to almost exactly how I like it and the setup was 10x easier than any other frontend that I have tried to setup.

Hi Drunkatuw,

Try using fe.add_artwork( "bg", 0, 0, 1024, 768 ) instead and put files called [emulator]-bg.png in your layout's directory.  It's described a bit more in the readme file but that should allow you to have different bg images or videos even for each emulator.

cheers

Thanks raygun, that worked exactly as expected! Now I have a unique background for each emulator. My only other request/suggestion would be to have a text fallback option when an image is not available. For example, I have a wheel configured which shows the marquee of the game, but I don't have marquees for every game. It'd be nice if there was an option to display [Name] or [Title] if no artwork is available for a certain game instead of having a blank space in my wheel. My current workaround is to put a default Wheel.png in my layout directory, so at least I have a box so the wheel doesn't look broken.

Overall, I'm really happy I stumbled upon this frontend, I love how easy it is to configure and customize. Thanks a lot!

[raygun]

I have two questions though (and sorry if these have already been answered):

1. Can I control the volume of individual videos? I have 5 running at a time and want the main selected one to be 100% but the others to be on less, say 50% for ambience.

2. Is is possible to have more than 1 favourites list for an emulator? I tend to have a large list (around 500) of all the games I play, and then a much smaller one (of about 50) which I use more often.

Many thanks!

Great work on the layout!  To answer your questions: 1 - all the videos are mapped to the same volume control.  So all you can do with the current version is to disable sound completely for a video or have it play at the "video" volume.

Layouts can create their own sounds (look up add_sound in the documentation) and those get played at a separate volume... so you could try doing that to create some ambient sound with your background videos.  If you feed a video file to the add_sound command it should be able to load and play just the audio track.

For #2, the favourites lists are saved by romlist, so you could have a setup with two identical romlists with the favourites for the first being the large list and the favs for the second being the small list.  The frontend also allows you to assign custom "tags" to individual games and filter based on those tags, so you could do one of your lists using tags...

you mean once the list has been generated, it still works in the back ground to flesh out those names?  i have it running now with the attractman layout and all my moms have the file name.  i'll leave it on and see if this works.

Hi Tony, the frontend doesn't do any background work to try and get names, so nothing is going to happen.  The only time it will try to populate the list is when you run the "generate romlist" option for an emulator.  With mame, it doesn't try to use the net but rather runs the -listxml command.  You should double check that you have the path to your copy of mame configured correctly and that mame is returning xml info when you run "mame -listxml" from the command line.  If it is then try re-generating the romlist in attract-mode.

Thanks raygun, that worked exactly as expected! Now I have a unique background for each emulator. My only other request/suggestion would be to have a text fallback option when an image is not available. For example, I have a wheel configured which shows the marquee of the game, but I don't have marquees for every game. It'd be nice if there was an option to display [Name] or [Title] if no artwork is available for a certain game instead of having a blank space in my wheel. My current workaround is to put a default Wheel.png in my layout directory, so at least I have a box so the wheel doesn't look broken.

You could try something like this:

Code: [Select]

fe.add_text( "[Title]", 10, 10, 100, 50 );
fe.add_artwork( "marquee", 10, 10, 100, 50 );

which should add the game title to the same spot as the marquee artwork.  The game title should only show up if a marquee image isn't drawn over top of it...

[tony.silveira]

all better on this end.  for some odd reason, mame 144 64bit was hanging when trying to generate the rom list.  so I used mame 144 32bit to generate the list.

I do have a crash to report.  if I delete my last game list in attract so that there are no game lists, attract crashes.  I have done this a few times and it crashes every time.

I am LOVING this FE, keep up the great work

[nitrogen_widget]

my bad on the game name vs rom name thing.
but good to know how it actually works.

[raygun]

Hi everyone, I just released a new version of Attract-Mode.  Here's what is new in version 1.5:

• Added ability to display MaLa layouts (vertical and horizontal). beta
• Various filter improvements (global filters, filter based on file availability, filter mechanical and CHD games)
• Added ability to display artwork and game information from multiple filters at the same time. Added a filter-grid layout with filters organized into separate grid columns.
• Added Ctrl-V clipboard pasting to config mode (Windows and OS X only).
• Added ability to configure an exit hotkey that forces an emulator to exit.
• Added liquid8d's ExtendedObject, Animate and SpriteSheet modules.
• Improved importing of Steam information.
• Fixed artifacts when scaling videos at low resolution.
• Added ability to specify filter rules when generating/importing rom lists from the command line.
• Various improvements to the included screensaver and layouts, including configurable controls for Blinky in the Attrac-Man minigame.
• Scripting improvement: added "EndNavigation" transitions.
• Many, many other bug fixes and improvements.

Enjoy!! The download is available at: http://attractmode.org/download.html

[keilmillerjr]

Awesome update! Thank you for the hard work.

[DudeRegular]

Thanks raygun. I have been slowly getting attractmode setup for my mame cab. Look forward to trying out the latest.

[Admiral688]

I just installed this and it looks great! How could I get it set up with the mini arcade cabs like the video shows?

[markc74]

Download this file and unrar it into your layouts folder. Then you need to set it up in the frontend by tabbing into the menu, selecting Lists and then layout. Press up or down until you find 'Arcade Row'.

You might need to setup a couple of paths in the menu. Make sure your videos/marquees/snaps all point to folders on your computer with the appropriate files and you should be good to go...

[bulbousbeard]

raygun, do you have any interest in supporting multi-monitors in Attract Mode? I'd love to see that feature in this frontend.

[wp34]

raygun, do you have any interest in supporting multi-monitors in Attract Mode? I'd love to see that feature in this frontend.

I'd love too see that as well.

[raygun]

raygun, do you have any interest in supporting multi-monitors in Attract Mode? I'd love to see that feature in this frontend.

Hey BB, sure I'll add this to the list and look into what changes would be needed for multi-monitor support.

cheers

[markc74]

That would be sweet. Id love to be able to switch marquees whilst using the frontend on my cab.

I'm noticing a problem at the moment using multi monitors as when exiting out of mame the frontend loses focus. Is this a known issue or something to do with multi monitors?

[nitrogen_widget]

That would be sweet. Id love to be able to switch marquees whilst using the frontend on my cab.

I'm noticing a problem at the moment using multi monitors as when exiting out of mame the frontend loses focus. Is this a known issue or something to do with multi monitors?

what would be sweeter in your set-up is when the screen saver runs and cycles through games the marquee cycles through also.

[markc74]

what would be sweeter in your set-up is when the screen saver runs and cycles through games the marquee cycles through also.

Ooooh I like that idea. That's what I call in my industry 'feature creep' 

[nitrogen_widget]

what would be sweeter in your set-up is when the screen saver runs and cycles through games the marquee cycles through also.

Ooooh I like that idea. That's what I call in my industry 'feature creep' 

I have feature creep in my industry also.
It just doesn't result in something useful.

[bulbousbeard]

That would be sweet. Id love to be able to switch marquees whilst using the frontend on my cab.

I'm noticing a problem at the moment using multi monitors as when exiting out of mame the frontend loses focus. Is this a known issue or something to do with multi monitors?

I think it might be the version of MAME that you're using. TypeFighter was seeing this issue, too, and I sent him my MAME build, and the problem went away.

[bulbousbeard]

Something else I noticed when doing testing: in Windows, put a shortcut to Attract Mode in your startup folder. Reboot Windows. While Windows is booting up, just hammer "alksdjklasdjlkasdjlk" or whatever on your keyboard. When Attract Mode launches, its window won't have focus because the desktop got it instead.

I solved this in Big Blue by using SetForegroundWindow after the window was created and displayed. I'm not sure whether this is even an issue in Linux or MacOS. It would be nice if this was fixed in Attract Mode for Windows uers.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms633539%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

[cools]

https://github.com/mickelson/attract/issues/new

There are a couple of glitches that happen when it's run from Startup rather than shelled - the mouse pointer will sometimes appear, there's the mash the joystick bug you've mentioned as well.

Win 7 doesn't require it to run from Startup, it's only XP that needs it.

[nitrogen_widget]

Something else I noticed when doing testing: in Windows, put a shortcut to Attract Mode in your startup folder. Reboot Windows. While Windows is booting up, just hammer "alksdjklasdjlkasdjlk" or whatever on your keyboard. When Attract Mode launches, its window won't have focus because the desktop got it instead.

I solved this in Big Blue by using SetForegroundWindow after the window was created and displayed. I'm not sure whether this is even an issue in Linux or MacOS. It would be nice if this was fixed in Attract Mode for Windows uers.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms633539%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

this is why i tell my kids "controller's down!" whenever I boot up the steam machine.
When I get a running cabinet it will be booted up long before anyone goes near it.

[millercentral]

I built my first mame cabinet more than 10 years ago, and this is the frontend I always dreamed about. The possibilities are boundless.

One request: Any chance you would be willing to implement the gameswf library to enable playing swf animations within a theme? While I don't want to recreate Hyperspin, there are some aspects of some of their themes that I would love to be able to take advantage of in AttractMode (and they do have an incredibly active theming community).

Also, Andrew do you have a donation option? Since I'm not artistic enough, or a strong enough coder to contribute directly to the project, I would like to be able to contribute to all of your hard work on this.

Thanks!

[two40]

Loving this front end. Thanks for all your work.

Any chance for flv video support?

[raygun]

Hey guys, I'm back!  A new version of Attract-Mode has been released (1.5.2) and posted on the website

BB and wp24: I was able to add multi monitor support to the windows and linux versions... to get it going you have to use the included "MultiMon" plugin.  It can be used to display marquees or other artworks fullscreen on any additional monitors that you have (at least that is the hope anyways!).

I also put in code to deal with the "mashing keys on startup" issue where you would lose focus.

The other stuff this release adds is:

• Raspberry Pi support (thanks to nitrogen_widget!)
• An artwork scraper for missing artwork
• Improved support for different image formats
• A Spanish transation (thanks Seru!)
• Better fade effects for layouts

I built my first mame cabinet more than 10 years ago, and this is the frontend I always dreamed about. The possibilities are boundless.

One request: Any chance you would be willing to implement the gameswf library to enable playing swf animations within a theme? While I don't want to recreate Hyperspin, there are some aspects of some of their themes that I would love to be able to take advantage of in AttractMode (and they do have an incredibly active theming community).

Also, Andrew do you have a donation option? Since I'm not artistic enough, or a strong enough coder to contribute directly to the project, I would like to be able to contribute to all of your hard work on this.

Thanks!

Hey millercentral, thanks for the note and for pointing out the gameswf library... I'll take a look.  I haven't got a donation option, I'm not looking for any money out of this, but I'm definitely open to any other type of contribution to the project you might want to make if there is anything you think you want to try out (fix the website? fix the documentation? testing? etc)...

Loving this front end. Thanks for all your work.

Any chance for flv video support?

FLV videos should work already.  Are you using one of the pre-built windows binaries?  I might have messed something up when I was building them, but in theory Attract-Mode should handle any video format supported by FFmpeg and I'm pretty sure that includes FLV...

[two40]

FLV videos should work already.  Are you using one of the pre-built windows binaries?  I might have messed something up when I was building them, but in theory Attract-Mode should handle any video format supported by FFmpeg and I'm pretty sure that includes FLV...

Yes, Windows 64 bit. The first frame displays actually.


Great to see Raspberry Pi support.

[dlaventu]

Thanks! I really like your FE. I'm playing with it and I hope to get something working for my cabinet using the examples.

[markc74]

Hi Raygun - thanks for the update.

I was excited to hear about multi monitor support but having played around with it for a couple of hours I'm still no further on in working out how to get it to work!

When setting it up on my cabinet, my normal layout simply stretches across both monitors making it really difficult to navigate the menus. I've changed the settings to enable the plugin, set marquee as the artwork but it makes no difference. Is there something I need to do to my layout file? I'm running Windows xp64 and have set windows display properties to extend onto Monitor 2 (my marquee display).

Any help would be much appreciated!

Code: [Select]

//
// Attract-Mode Front-End - MarkC's marquee test Layout
//

fe.layout.width=640; fe.layout.height=480;

fe.add_image( "background.png", 0, 0, 640, 480 );

fe.add_image( "panel_unselected.png", -250, 90, 380, 300 );
fe.add_image( "panel.png", 130, 90, 380, 300 );
fe.add_image( "panel_unselected.png", 510, 90, 380, 300 );

local snap_prev = fe.add_artwork( "snap", -220, 120, 320, 240 ); snap_prev.alpha = 50; snap_prev.index_offset = -1;
local snap = fe.add_artwork( "video", 160, 120, 320, 240 );
local snap_next = fe.add_artwork( "snap", 540, 120, 320, 240 ); snap_next.alpha = 50; snap_next.index_offset = 1;

local wheel = fe.add_artwork( "wheel", 160, 20, 320, 80 ); wheel.preserve_aspect_ratio = true;

local title = fe.add_text( "[Title]", 0, 380, 640, 60 );
title.charsize = 36;

local subtitle = fe.add_text( "[Year] [Manufacturer]", 0, 420, 640, 40 );
subtitle.charsize = 16;



[CapnBry]

I was excited to hear about multi monitor support but having played around with it for a couple of hours I'm still no further on in working out how to get it to work!

When setting it up on my cabinet, my normal layout simply stretches across both monitors making it really difficult to navigate the menus.

I've got the same thing going on, everything stretches across both monitors. I can mess with the layout to sort of get it to scale down to one monitor, but the menus all span both monitors regardless of the multimon plugin being on or off. I put some debugging in to dump the monitor size and it says my monitor #0 is 1920x1200 and monitor #1 is 1024x600 but the screen is always 2944 wide and my selected art never shows on the second monitor.

[raygun]

Hey there, sorry it turns out I screwed up the multiple monitor support on Windows.  It isn't behaving as intended and I hope to get this fixed asap.

[markc74]

No worries  thanks for the update - I thought I was doing something stupid!

[Slippyblade]

As a heads up, it looks like multi-monitor is fixed in the new build, 1.5.3.  Oddly enough it's only fixed in the 32bit build though, not the 64bit.

[haynor666]

Since sourceforge is right now offline, now question - how to run attract mode without dos window?

[gregor7777]

Two big issues for me with the current stable build:

1) After exiting mame, I'm getting a blank window in attract mode. I think its losing focus as mentioned earlier.

2) with a multi monitor config, the attract mode setup spans both monitors making it quite difficult to use.

Win7 64

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

[haynor666]

I can confirm both issues. The first one is only with static layouts.
Second one is already reported and known by author.

[gregor7777]

I can confirm both issues. The first one is only with static layouts.
Second one is already reported and known by author.

Hi, what does "static layout" mean? For reference I'm using attractman or whatever the pacman theme is (the one that ships with the program).

[haynor666]

static - no movement on frontend unless I press arrows, buttons etc. Pac-man layout is active.

[raygun]

Version 1.6 has been released.  Noteworthy changes:

* SWF file support (experimental)
* Layouts and plugins can now be contained in zip files
* OS X packaging improvements
* Added ability to set filter exceptions
* Added intro mode to optionally show intro video
* Added German, Japanese and Korean translations
* Added mame video scraping (progettosnaps.net)
* Many many bug fixes (including FLV videos not playing, resolution dependent pinch/skew effects, and multimonitor not working on 64-bit windows).

This version should finally fix the problems with multiple monitors on 64-bit windows and other bugs reported earlier in this thread.... enjoy!

Detailed changelog and downloads available at http://attractmode.org

[DudeRegular]

Thanks Raygun. I will be giving this one a shot.

[keilmillerjr]

After messing around with my mvs and 161 cart, I decided to try the pc/jpac route with the computer I already built for abandoned diy build. So I got a jpac and the highly recommended HD4350. Freshly installed windows 7. Graphics card instantly worked with my lcd I am using for setting it up.

Hyper spin played my mp4's nice and smooth. Attract mode stuttered, and menu response was slow. Thought this was odd. Installed drivers from website and attract mode is nice and smooth now! Figured this post might help others who come across the same issue.

Hopefully it doesn't mess things up my planned install of crt_emudriver and atom-15. The installer does have an uninstall feature.

XFX Radeon HD 4350 600M 1GB DDR2 DVI TV PCI-E Graphics card HD-435X-ZAHR

Drivers for Windows 7 64-bit
http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop/legacy?product=legacy2&os=Windows%207%20-%2064

[beaches]

very nice frontend.

[ArcadeBliss]

This is a wonderful frontend. Going from Mamewah to Hyperspin and now migrating everything to AttractMode, it is such a joy to be able to create game lists using filters and everything can be configured from the frontend OR on the command-line if needed. I even made my own layout:

If you are looking for a Frontend definitely give this a try.

[markc74]

Very nice layout ArcadeBliss. Looks like you've done a few things I was trying to do with mine but never worked out how to do. Is it available for download?

[ArcadeBliss]

Very nice layout ArcadeBliss. Looks like you've done a few things I was trying to do with mine but never worked out how to do. Is it available for download?

Yes,  it is on the attractmode forum in the themes section.  forum.attractmode.org

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[ArcadeBliss]

New theme created:

Forum Post with the download: http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=741.0