Linux School Build Recommendations

[jammin0]

Howdy All,
I've taken a short break from any arcade related projects but I have a new gig at work and I think I have a chance to introduce some kids to the wonderful world of arcade building.  I'm a middle school teacher and in addition to teaching technology to kids, I also am heading up a makerspace in our library.  Building arcade cabinets and control systems satisfies the making aspect I'm looking to achieve and the electronics/computing side of things satisfies what I'm trying to accomplish in terms of technology use so I figure it is a win win situation.  Anyway, as always, I'm on a super tight budget but time is not an issue.  I would rather I have several small groups of kids working slowly on the project over the course of the school year and learn some valuable skills than try and involve myself too much in the project in an effort to meet a time crunch.  It's all about the process anyway right?  Here are my questions for anyone who might have more insight.

Any recommendations for a good Linux frontend?  I've tested out and compiled mame on my linux test machine which would be a great intro project for the kids but I also don't really want to delve into the world of roms and emulators because of the legality issues.  I would much rather see them running some opensource/freeware style arcade style games on linux, I would even love to see them write up some basic arcade games themselves for the cabinet, I think it would be awesome.  So far I haven't been able to find a frontend that will easily interface with anything but emulators.  They are looking for rompaths in order to display anything.  I'm used to working with Hyperspin and Mala where you can easily point the frontend to anything and make it run, my intial poking around is leading me to believe that Linux will be a different beast.

I'm hoping I can find a good front end and we don't end up having to create our own.  Any recommendations for free or cheap linux arcade style games that are school appropriate (no blood and guns type violence).  So far I've found a few gems on https://itch.io/ but would love any suggestions if you have them.  I'll hopefully be starting a thread in the project announcements come January.

[mahuti]

EmulationStation runs on Debian. It has a "ports" category which will basically launch apps. I've never run EmulationStation outside of Retropie, so I don't have a lot of info to share. I've taken the following from Retropie's docs and modified them slightly to make them more neutral to any game:

How to adapt to other games/software

There are only 2 parts to having software appear in the ports menu and have it work. The first is that you must have installed the software, however it gets done. You need to make sure it runs from the command-line before the next part. The second part is simply making a shell script that does the command line arguments to start the game/software. EmulationStation will launch it and then wait for it to exit.

Linking the Game

Now that we have installed YOURGAME, it is time to link the game to EmulationStation. Go to the home directory with cd ~ and then cd into the roms/ports folder. We are now going to make a shell script that will tell EmulationStation how to start the game.

Code: [Select]

touch YOURGAME.sh  #this creates the shell script
chmod a+rwx YOURGAME.sh  #makes it executable for any user
nano YOURGAME.sh  #opens the script to be edited

Information to put in the file:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash
sudo YOURGAME -YOURARGUMENTS -basedir /PATH/TO/YOUR/GAME/DIRECTORY/


I haven't tried this specific thing myself. Your mileage may vary. Might be a good one to try though

There's also Retropie flavors for other versions of Linux that make it so the whole Retropie (Not just EmulationStation) package can run on stuff other than the Pi.

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/RetroPie-Ubuntu-16.04-LTS-x86-Flavor
https://github.com/retropie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/RetroPie-Arch-Linux-Flavor

[Locke141]

This is something I have wanted to do for a while. I'm a teacher my self but do to a recent move for my wife's job, I'm currently with out a school.

Attractmode is a good looking Open source FE thats primarily developed for LINUX but has ports for MacOS and Windows as well. I have never tried to do it my self, but apparently you can use MALA and hyperspin themes in it as well.

I plan to one day build a Vigolix stile cab to run Tuxmath using square arcade buttons set in a number pad as controls. I used TuxMath last year as a second grade teacher, but replace the back ground art assets to photos I took around the school, swiping out stock art assets for custom ones is a really nice way to personalize a simple game. My class of 7-8 year olds loved saving the school from a meteor shower.

If your planning on having the students build cabs in small groups, having them build dedicated ones around simple educational games for elementary school kids may not be a bad idea. You could probably arrange a class trip to an Elementary school for your classes to do feel testing.   

[yotsuya]

Good luck on the project. I'm a business technology teacher at the high school level.  In my PC101 class (exactly what it sounds like), I used Sploder.com to talk about game design and theory. It's all Web-based, so you don't have to install anything.  It's a good start to teach the creative process.

[jammin0]

EmulationStation runs on Debian. It has a "ports" category which will basically launch apps. I've never run EmulationStation outside of Retropie, so I don't have a lot of info to share. I've taken the following from Retropie's docs and modified them slightly to make them more neutral to any game:

Thanks for the tip, this looks like exactly what I need.  I just tried it on a different build of linux that I already have running and it looks like it is using some older dependencies than what I have and won't install.  Definitely worth playing around with though.  I'll have to check it out more.

[jammin0]

This is something I have wanted to do for a while. I'm a teacher my self but do to a recent move for my wife's job, I'm currently with out a school.

Attractmode is a good looking Open source FE thats primarily developed for LINUX but has ports for MacOS and Windows as well. I have never tried to do it my self, but apparently you can use MALA and hyperspin themes in it as well.

I plan to one day build a Vigolix stile cab to run Tuxmath using square arcade buttons set in a number pad as controls. I used TuxMath last year as a second grade teacher, but replace the back ground art assets to photos I took around the school, swiping out stock art assets for custom ones is a really nice way to personalize a simple game. My class of 7-8 year olds loved saving the school from a meteor shower.

If your planning on having the students build cabs in small groups, having them build dedicated ones around simple educational games for elementary school kids may not be a bad idea. You could probably arrange a class trip to an Elementary school for your classes to do feel testing.

Sounds like an awesome project you're doing with the little guys. I've given Attract Mode a whirl but I can't find any way to get it to point to anything other than roms and emulators.  I'll have to keep playing around with it and see if I can overcome that hurdle because otherwise it looks great and I think the kids will be able to figure it out without too much difficulty.

[jammin0]

Good luck on the project. I'm a business technology teacher at the high school level.  In my PC101 class (exactly what it sounds like), I used Sploder.com to talk about game design and theory. It's all Web-based, so you don't have to install anything.  It's a good start to teach the creative process.

Hey Yotsuya, I didn't know you were a teacher.  Good on ya. I taught an 8th grade technology class last year and we did some game design and theory.  It culminated with them working with partners to develop a game in scratch.  They actually came up with some pretty awesome stuff.  The game had to be educational in nature but that could mean almost anything.  Two that stood out were a recreation of frogger, when you got your frog to the end you had to answer a math problem to continue to the next level.  The other one was a breakaway style game that had trivia question blocks that you would hit sporadically and have to answer a question.  Pretty amazing what kids can come up with if they have just a few resources and some time.  I'm checking out Sploder right now.  I had them start in gamestarmechanic.com when we talked theory and level design.

[keilmillerjr]

Here's my idea:

Get some raspberry pis. Kids can output their projects to a tv via hdmi or a crt with composite. This opens up some creative projects. Attractmode is a good front end for Linux and can launch games. Or just have the pi directly launch your project. Gpio means the kids can have inputs and outputs without buying anything extra. Build your demo and ask the kids what they need. Have them use a pi to accomplish their need.

[slickam]

Koules is a fun, four player, arcade style linux game, but I don't know if it still works on newer versions of linux. I think I last played it about 15 years ago.

[Locke141]

Sounds like an awesome project you're doing with the little guys. I've given Attract Mode a whirl but I can't find any way to get it to point to anything other than roms and emulators.  I'll have to keep playing around with it and see if I can overcome that hurdle because otherwise it looks great and I think the kids will be able to figure it out without too much difficulty.

I'll take a look attract mode on my Mac, in Bangkok with my family for the birth of our second so no LINUX PC with me. The attract mode forums are great, you may want to ask for help there.

[jammin0]

Sounds like an awesome project you're doing with the little guys. I've given Attract Mode a whirl but I can't find any way to get it to point to anything other than roms and emulators.  I'll have to keep playing around with it and see if I can overcome that hurdle because otherwise it looks great and I think the kids will be able to figure it out without too much difficulty.

I'll take a look attract mode on my Mac, in Bangkok with my family for the birth of our second so no LINUX PC with me. The attract mode forums are great, you may want to ask for help there.

Good call, I actually got wise after a few people here were mentioning Attract Mode and got a quick question in on their forum.  Documentation was scarce but I could find mention of people running jukeboxes and the likes with Attract Mode so it seemed like it has to be possible. 

Someone got right back to me on the forum with a solution.  The idea is basically to write a shell script for each game and then have it point to the ".sh" extensions and they will theoretically show up in the menu.  I'll give it a whirl and report back.  Thanks for being willing to take a look and congrats on the newborn.

[jammin0]

Koules is a fun, four player, arcade style linux game, but I don't know if it still works on newer versions of linux. I think I last played it about 15 years ago.

Still works great! I just installed the X11 version on Linux Mint.  That website is hilarious.  It is straight from 1995 and I find the guys jokes to be a riot.  Some of his humor is almost lost in translation to English but I appreciate his delivery.  Thanks for the recommendation.  Looks like a neat sumo wrestling type game and I can see how more players would just make it that much more fun.

[nitrogen_widget]

Sounds like an awesome project you're doing with the little guys. I've given Attract Mode a whirl but I can't find any way to get it to point to anything other than roms and emulators.  I'll have to keep playing around with it and see if I can overcome that hurdle because otherwise it looks great and I think the kids will be able to figure it out without too much difficulty.

Have you posted on the forum?
Attractmode will launch steam titles and other applications.
you just need to configure it.
I've never used it for anything but emulators.

Other options:

Kodi has plugin's for launching games.
Steam client on linux will allow you to add non-steam games to it's menu.
advanced menu is very basic but it will let you open apps also.

[Locke141]

Just to conferm that I was able to launch apps by pointing to shell scrips in attract mode on Mac. I forgot that's how I launched SDL Mame to I looked.

[keilmillerjr]

Just to conferm that I was able to launch apps by pointing to shell scrips in attract mode on Mac. I forgot that's how I launched SDL Mame to I looked.

You should be able to use the windows_games emulator config and modify it a bit. You can create a folder with alias’s to your apps. You can create an alias by control clicking or command + L. Macs are smart and will retain the app location regardless of alias location being moved. Give them an extension of .alias. The command arguments should only need „[romfilename]“ and add the Rom Extensions of .alias. Try it and let me know if it works. You shouldn’t have to create shell scripts.