Basic questions and some loss of focus with Attract Mode

[knob]

Hi.

I've installed Groovyarcade in my arcade and after some minutes, I got it running. Great Linux distribution and a lot of hard work inside to make the 15Khz just so easy to the user. Congratulations. 

Just to notice, my 28'' Hantarex Polo FS seemed to have troubles with the Groovy's Hantarex Polo Profile in most of the usual and most known games (donkey kong, i.e.). Choosing the Generic 15Khz solved the problem and now all the Mame games run perfectly. My system is an Asus fanless 5450 with the Atom-15 firmware, 8Gb Ram and a Quad q8200 with SSD. Mame roms list is around 250.

There are some basic questions I would like to ask (or at least, a link to a howto) because although I read a huge amount of posts, I'm still trying to figurate out how to deal with some errors and doubts:

- Using the Attract Mode in Windowed mode (normal, not borderless) and with attractmode layout (the moving pacman) it freezes randomly and the Pacman stops moving until I reboot. Sometimes I feel it's just out of focus because if I change focus (Alt-Tab), then going to another terminal (tty1, i.e), and going back to tty0, Attract Mode comes responsive again. But sometimes just freeze until I reboot (Alt-F4 doesn't work) and even killing the PID from another terminal and re-launching it doesn't work either.

Questions:

1. Focus related: is there any way to move the focus to Attract via a script? I really would like not to use the keyboard in the arcade, just buttons.
2. In Archlinux, how I disable the Sleep Monitor time? I will try to add a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ with 'Option "BlankTime" "30"'. The problem, again, is the loss of focus once Attract Mode returns from that blank time.

3. I know how to add roms, but I can't figurate out how to Refresh Game List to import the game without creating again the XML. If I add just 1 rom I don't want to create again the whole list, I need just to append it to the existing one.

4 As a newbie in Groovyarcade and arcade in general, I missed a wiki with a tree of the most important folders/files. Most of you know exactly how every frontend / mame works, but there are a lot of people like me without enough expertise but with the will to learn. Attrack mode cfg, Groovyarcade cfgs... just to know how to tune those files and where to do it (sometimes in Mame, sometimes in the frontend, sometimes in Groovy... you know).

5. I would like to know how to update mame and the frontends. Would I break something if I update Archlinux? (sudo pacman -Syy)

Great, great experience with groovyarcade out of the box. 

[Doozer]

Questions:

1. Focus related: is there any way to move the focus to Attract via a script? I really would like not to use the keyboard in the arcade, just buttons.

You have to install a window manager to ensure proper handling of the focus. "openbox" is light and perfect. Install it and add the following command to your .xinitrc right before launching the attract binary:

Code: [Select]

openbox &

2. In Archlinux, how I disable the Sleep Monitor time? I will try to add a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ with 'Option "BlankTime" "30"'. The problem, again, is the loss of focus once Attract Mode returns from that blank time.

This is normally done in .xinitrc. Check if this line is present:

Code: [Select]

xset s off

3. I know how to add roms, but I can't figurate out how to Refresh Game List to import the game without creating again the XML. If I add just 1 rom I don't want to create again the whole list, I need just to append it to the existing one.

When using AM, the whole list must be re-generated to show the new rom(s).

4 As a newbie in Groovyarcade and arcade in general, I missed a wiki with a tree of the most important folders/files. Most of you know exactly how every frontend / mame works, but there are a lot of people like me without enough expertise but with the will to learn. Attrack mode cfg, Groovyarcade cfgs... just to know how to tune those files and where to do it (sometimes in Mame, sometimes in the frontend, sometimes in Groovy... you know).

I know about a wiki link being posted on the forum somewhere but I cannot find it back. @someone_else....

5. I would like to know how to update mame and the frontends. Would I break something if I update Archlinux? (sudo pacman -Syy)

Upgrading using pacman is fine if you have no kernel package or it you have added it to the ignore list. GM can be updated with the binary provided on the google drive or from your own build. Wrt AM, I do not know how it has been added to the distro (own build, pkg, official, ...).

Cheers!