Introducing arcadeEIP

[gildahl]

Current Release:  arcadeEIP latest release (v0.4.2.0 beta)

arcadeEIP is a custom front-end and launcher I wrote for my arcade machine over a period of several years due to nothing else like it being available. The main reason for writing it was to reduce the amount of "friction" that conventional front ends can add to playing a game. Thus, rather than make a user *always* have to navigate a menu, choose a game, and wait for it to load, I wanted to make the arcade machine *always* immediately playable--more like the way a real arcade machine works--while still supporting game switching as desired.
 
The answer to this was two-fold:  First, make the operation "game-first" rather than "menu-first". Thus, in arcadeEIP there is always a live game running in its *native* attract mode while in standby, This game can be made to change periodically, but the key is that whatever game you see on the screen is always immediately playable by just dropping in a token and/or pressing the start button, just like real arcade machines.

Second, when a user "exits" a game, rather than having to wait for the game to literally exit and then enter another menuing environment, a game selection menu is instead *immediately* shown as an overlay over the current game.  When the user selects a new game from this menu, arcadeEIP then exits the current game and loads the new one in a single step, making the game switching experience more like changing channels than changing a DVD.  In fact, one does not even need to use this menu to switch games since games can also be hot-switched directly by using an Elgato Streamdeck, dedicated control panel buttons, or even a phone.

arcadeEIP can be used stand-alone; however, it also has integrated support for LaunchBox, enabling you to use LB as a scraper/content manager for its game lists, images, and metadata. You can also pair it with a conventional Front End like BigBox so that arcadeEIP's hot game switching, game-first standby, AND access to a conventional graphical front end can be integrated together to get the best of all worlds (that's actually the way I use it).

A short overview of arcadeEIP's fuller list of features includes:

• Instant gameplay in standby;
• Direct hot game switching via an overlay menu or button device;
• A launcher for all your games in most emulators;
• Standard front end features including run before/after apps, support for loading custom control panel profiles, etc.
• Support for custom lists,metadata, favorites, and star-ratings;
• Display of images such as control panel maps and mame history/mameinfo text on pause;
• Game startup and exit screens;
• Native support for multiple parallel versions of emulators such as MAME;
• Dynamic marquee monitor support with display of high scores on the marquee;
• A custom rules engine;
• Easy command line game launcher.
• All coded in AHK 2.0 and published on GitHub for easy customizability.

Lastly, although arcadeEIP isn't technically open source, the source code is available upon request for personal/hobbyist (non-commercial) use and modification.

Here's a general introduction video (a bit long and a very early build, but you'll get the idea  ):



See MAME Quick Start.txt in the download to get up and running with MAME, then see the documentation for configuring other emulators.

MAME Quick Start (Tutorial #1)



Updated 12/14/2021 - (v.0.3.0.1) Added dynamic marquee feature.
Updated 12/17/2021 - (v.0.3.0.2) Basic support has been added for hi2txt.
Updated 1/4/2022 - (v.0.3.1.0) Big update.  Added formal BigBox support and several important bug fixes.
Updated 1/11/2022 - (v.0.3.1.1) Small update with bug fixes for BigBox and an enhancement for high scores.
Updated 1/13/2022 - (v.0.3.1.2) Important update with support for images (like control maps) on pause, fix for missing icons in game menu, etc.
Updated 2/09/2022 - (v.0.3.2.0) Major update with support for more information on pause, and critical bug fixes.
Updated 2/16/2022 - (v0.3.2.1)  Important update with full support for the Elgato Stream Deck.  See the following video demonstration.
Updated 5/17/2022 - (v0.3.3.0)  Major update. Please do full/from scratch re-install since much has changed.  See update.txt for details.
Updated 7/04/2022 - (v0.3.3.1)  Hotfix. Fixed discrete menu toggle feature (= and - now work again).
Updated 2/16/2023 - (v0.3.3.2)  Hotfix. A couple minor bugs fixed (re-posted 2/27).
Updated 2/28/2023 - (v0.3.3.3)  Small feature update. Added discrete quit_key= setting for improved Stream Deck support.
Updated 5/19/2023 - (v0.4.0.0)  Ported AHK code from 1.1 to 2.0. Moved source to GitHub (new release location).
Updated 5/24/2023 - (v0.4.0.1)  Hotfix: Added missing icon files to ..\Resources\Icons needed for marking favorites and star ratings.
Updated 7/11/2023 - (v0.4.0.2)  Feature and Documentation update. Added volume normalization, game lock, better LEDBlinky support, bug/doc fixes.
Updated 1/28/2024 - (v0.4.1.0)  Major update with many bug and stability fixes, the additon of manual high score entry, better hot switching, many quality of life changes, etc.
Updated 3/19/2024 - (v0.4.2.0)  Major release. Stability fixes, XInput, Scorecard improvements, MAME pre-filtering, Favorites/Star-Ratings import.




Current Release:  https://github.com/gildahl/arcadeEIP/releases
Documentation:  https://github.com/gildahl/arcadeEIP/wiki
Discussion: Here on ArcadeControls.com, LaunchBox forums or GitHub

[Raktageno]

This looks really well done. I'm wondering if it would work for my current project whose focus is minimalism. That is to say a small list of only MAME titles, one simple frontend, minimal buttons on control panel (joystick, trackball, three main buttons, pause/exit button, and p1 and p2 buttons), and a dynamic marquee. Without having done more research, I would assume that the dynamic marquee is part of the frontend. Would EIP support this?

Additionally, this appears to require command line entry. For an end user experience, is this necessary? I would not want players requiring keyboard access.

[gildahl]

It sounds like a potentially good use case for arcadeEIP, since it does take a decidedly minimalistic approach--and if it is just mame, it should be quite simple to configure.  By a dynamic marquee, I'm assuming that you mean you'll have a separate screen in the marquee area of the cabinet.  I didn't test anything like that, but I suspect you could do this using a runapps configuration.  I could certainly help you out to see how best to handle that.

Regarding command-line entry, that's just how you start it up (like any app really).  You can either start it with a specific game from a command prompt, windows shortcut, or from any other piece of software that can run a command-line; or you can launch it with no game specified in which case it will launch with a "seed" game.  From there it will run and remain resident for as long as you like, auto-switching your game list (if you have that turned on) or allowing users to switch games on-demand using either hot keys on your control panel or via the quick-switch game menu--which is essentially, a very minimalistic front-end (or perhaps "back-end" would be a better term for EIP).  There is absolutely no requirement for users to have keyboard access since all essential functions can be mapped to a control panel.

[Raktageno]

Now I am enticed. You are correct about the dynamic marquee. I have done no research on it, but my current project is essentially copying this one. The creator of that project notes Attract Mode, HyperSpin, or BigBox all have that ability, and I believe they ended up using BigBox. My current progress will require determining how to make that marquee happen and the dimensions of the display to allow me to complete cutting and assembly.

I would like simplicity in startup, meaning when the machine is powered, it would load directly to either frontend or the seed in attract mode, which sounds doable with your architecture. I really like your focus on attract mode.

[gildahl]

Yup, I see.  Cool.  So no support for dynamic marquee specifically at the moment, but would be a nice feature to add--I can think of a couple ways I could probably integrate that capability.

[Raktageno]

Consider me on board. Depending on your timeline, I could find myself using your software solely. I'd be interested in helping test as well. Since my current project is waiting on software to move forward, I may go with an existing frontend with that support, but I already feel like this isn't my last.

[gildahl]

Try setting up the software as-is, and if you're able to get that working, let me know and we can see what to do about the dynamic marquee.  I just wrote a proof-of-concept function that can display and switch marquees, so it makes me think this will be fairly straightforward.

[Phreakwars]

This looks really nice. I can absolutely see myself using it in a countercade project I'm currently working on as I am using multiple versions of mame that I switch between. Currently doing this in attract mode which works absolutely perfect, but I like the transitioning going on here that I'm seeing. Would make easy work of v1 Pacman countercade where I'm only using 1 fire button and just the 1 and 2 player start, coin and exit. My minimalist approach that I'm taking on this project could have expanded functionality with this. Good work. One thing though, I'm using Mame 0.111, is that too old? Some significance in the versions? Could you explain that.

[gildahl]

MAME versions less than .172 should work fine.  The main reason for advising MAME 172+ is that it supports the -keyboardprovider dinput parameter, which permits sending the preferred exit and pause commands to MAME (and possible future enhancements).  For earlier versions, in arcadeEIP.ini, you'd need to remove the -keyboardprovider dinput switch and set map_exit={EndProc} which terminates the process to exit and map_pause={PauseProc}, which does a synthetic pause--which are slightly less elegant.

If you mix versions below .172 and above, then the recommended way to handle this is to leave the main arcadeEIP.ini folder with the default settings (i.e. with the settings for .172+), and create a partial arcadeEIP.ini file that you drop in in your (lower than .172) MAME root folder(s).  The partial .ini file will specify settings to override when running games from that rev.  An example of the contents of a partial arcadeEIP.ini file would be:

[System_mame]
param_list=[rom_name] -nowindow -joy -skip_gameinfo -autosave -nosleep -priority 1
map_exit={EndProc}
map_pause={PauseProc}

[Phreakwars]

Oddly enough, I understood exactly 100% what you are saying, and thank you. I'll play around with it sometime when I'm not busy.

EDIT: I guess I do have 1 question. How does the software differentiate between a paused game and one that is over or say.. I'm using the pacman hiding spot to take a bathroom break, will the software think the game is over?

[gildahl]

If you pause a game, then the scheduler will be suspended until you un-pause, so no game switching will occur while you're paused.  However, if you want to suspend the scheduler without pausing the game, you can just do a short press of the exit key to bring-up the quick-switch overlay menu.  When you do this, the game continues to run normally behind the menu; so that's what you would do if you parked Pac-Man in his safe spot and didn't want game-switching to occur while you were taking a break.  When you return, you'd just do another short press of the exit key to dismiss the menu, then continue your game.

[Edit] As a preferred solution, as of version 0.4.0.2-beta, you may now temporarily pause the attract timer by pressing Ctrl-Alt-l, effectively locking your arcade game to the current game and preventing game switching until you press Ctrl-Alt-l again to resume the timer.

[Phreakwars]

Can that be set on a per game basis? Or would doing so affect the attract screen's game demo transitions? I mean if you have say just the pac man games which have this set to not go back to the demo when in the hiding spot, will the software use that game's settings during the demo and lock itself on that game rather then switch to a game that doesn't utilize this? Obscure question I'm sure, but better to ask about bugs or bring them up to be worked out before stepping to far into it, thanks.. great work BTW!!

[gildahl]

This behavior is not game specific.  If auto-switching is turned on, then game switching will always occur unless (a) the game is currently paused, or (b) the overlay menu is displayed, or (c) controller input was detected within a specified amount of time prior to the next scheduled switch time (a period called the delay time).  You can always increase the timer/delay values to tolerate longer periods of inactivity while a game in session.

You can find a detailed description of how this works if you look at pages 9 and 10 of the Configuration Reference Guide in the \Docs folder; specifically, read how the delay= and timer= settings work. Making these settings game-specific could probably be added, but its not a feature at the moment.

[gildahl]

Consider me on board. Depending on your timeline, I could find myself using your software solely. I'd be interested in helping test as well. Since my current project is waiting on software to move forward, I may go with an existing frontend with that support, but I already feel like this isn't my last.

Well, turns out I had about 80% of the infrastructure for dynamic marquees already, so I was able to add this feature today.  It seems to work quite well.  If you would like to test, let me know and I'll do a release build that includes it.  The way it works is that you specify a path to your marquees in the [Global_Assets] section of the ini file.  Then, prior to launching eip.exe, you run a separate executable called marquee.exe that binds itself to a monitor that you choose.  From that point it just works, with marquees being automatically displayed on the marquee monitor as each game is run (if a marquee is not found for a game, it will look for one named for the system, like mame.png; and if that is not found, it will look for one called default.png).  You may also adjust certain values such as position/size on screen, interpolation mode, etc.

[Raktageno]

Well goodness that is amazing! I'll see about testing this weekend. I've spent the last several hours fighting media server issues.

[Raktageno]

I'm finally to a point of being able to start setting this up, but the GDrive link isn't cooperating. I'm getting a ToS error on my PC and a connection error on mobile.

[gildahl]

I just updated the link to use OnDrive.  Try that.  Let me know if it works.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArCGq1gvf0jkhckGqjeOlXs2W3u4Iw?e=PjfKtO

[Raktageno]

Okay, three days and two machine rebuilds later, I've got arcadeEIP running. It seeds to Ms. Pacman for me since I've got room cleaning to do.

I've hit a bug. The period key doesn't move to the picker, but does exit on hold. Changing the magic key in the .ini file to something else (in my case, p) impacted pause, but I still can't get to the picker. I did notice the picker would flash as it was exiting. I'll be happy to provide any system details you like.

Edit: my fault there. Reading through the verbose ini, I see setting pause to "p" could confuse things. Still, no go on the magic key.

[gildahl]

Just sent you a pm.

[Raktageno]

Note to all: I have been working directly with gildahl to troubleshoot my issues which appear to be primarily user error. I can attest that this program is simple to operate and lightweight. There is a slight learning curve, but if you can configure MAME you can do this. I recommend it.

[gildahl]

Added a new dynamic marquee feature.  See original post for video demonstration and new download link.

[gildahl]

Last night I decided that it would be nice to be able to see high scores on the marquee, so I added support for hi2txt. 

See the original post for details (v.0.3.0.2 beta).

[Raktageno]

Awesome updates! I hope to have this implemented for functional testing soon.

[gildahl]

Over the last few weeks I've added/tested support for BigBox integration to arcadeEIP.  I've also created a new short video on how to do the integration. This version also sees a lot of bug fixes.  See the original post for updated videos and link to the download.

[SORHP]

Following

I use hyperspin in several builds, I haven’t read through this whole thread yet , I’m guessing it would work just fine with HS?

[gildahl]

In theory it should...however, I haven't tested it with HS; just GameEx and BigBox so far (and standalone, of course).  If you try it with HS, let me know how it works out.

[gildahl]

Just released:  arcadeEIP v.0.3.2.0 beta (see original post at top for link).

This is a fairly major update that adds support for multiple images types (including custom types) and display of history.xml/mameinfo.dat text on pause. Beyond this there are critical bug fixes (some long standing), some polishing activity on existing features, and the addition of hotstring support for direct-launch making integration with (for example) Stream Deck much easier.  If you happen to have tried out this software previously, it is highly recommended to do a complete fresh install at this point, and let me know if you find any issues or have any suggestions.

I've also added a new video for first time users that walks through the installation process documented in "MAME Quick Start.txt", which happens to also demonstrate some of the newest features.

[pbj]

I did this in 2005 with DOS and AdvanceMenu.  Sort of.  It plays 10-20 second videos of the games playing.  If you press start during the video, it fires up that game.  If you press anything else, you're taken to the menu.  It's actually a very nice way to have the machine idle.  The menu looks fairly similar to the 60 in 1 boards, but predated them. 

Nice to see the concept being brought to more modern platforms.  That cabinet is using all of 80MB on a solid state hard drive now, but I know the day will eventually come...

[gildahl]

Thanks!

Yeah, one of my frustrations with conventional front-end screensavers is that you can't just walk-up, drop in a token, and start playing the displayed game ("like a real arcade machine").  This fully addresses that since this is not a screensaver.  Just start playing the game you see, switch games like changing channels (rather than exit, pick, restart), and walk away when you're done. Basically, never lose the context of being effectively "in a game" at all times. It's quite a different experience.

Yes, the menu here is optimized to be 100% fast and functional--one screen to access every system, favorites list, custom list, and game in your collection.  However, since arcadeEIP can optionally integrate as a launcher for graphical front-ends like BigBox and GameEx, just pressing exit can put you right back into the graphical environment of its host if you want.  So best of both worlds. 

[dankykang]

Thanks!

Yeah, one of my frustrations with conventional front-end screensavers is that you can't just walk-up, drop in a token, and start playing the displayed game ("like a real arcade machine").  This fully addresses that since this is not a screensaver.  Just start playing the game you see, switch games like changing channels (rather than exit, pick, restart), and walk away when you're done. Basically, never lose the context of being effectively "in a game" at all times. It's quite a different experience.

Yes, the menu here is optimized to be 100% fast and functional--one screen to access every system, favorites list, custom list, and game in your collection.  However, since arcadeEIP can optionally integrate as a launcher for graphical front-ends like BigBox and GameEx, just pressing exit can put you right back into the graphical environment of its host if you want.  So best of both worlds.

I like the idea of the walk up and play like a real arcade machines. Is there is a demo video of this?

[gildahl]

Yup, just look at the original post in this thread for several...

...but the first minute or two of this video will at least show you the basic principle, then you can then jump to the ten-minute mark for a somewhat deeper look.

[gildahl]

Another fairly substantial update. This one is focused on bringing full practical support for the Elgato Stream Deck to arcadeEIP.  This has been done through the addition of hot strings, discrete menu control hotkeys, better stability to the direct-switch code, and updates to the documentation specific to configuring arcadeEIP to work with the Stream Deck.  This includes both USB hardware versions (recommended) and mobile versions.

tl;dr version: If you want to be able to choose games without ever visiting an on-screen menu, this will do that. 

Here's a video demonstration.  See the docs for more information on how to configure.

[gildahl]

New version recently released (0.3.3.0) -- see original post for link. IMPORTANT: A clean install is required with this new version due to new features and substantial changes to many configuration items. See update.txt for details.  Here's a short list of improvements.

* Added support for interface sound (see sound.txt).
* Overhauled list management. Added favorites, star ratings, and additional metadata.
* Tighter integration with LaunchBox making it simple to use LB as a content manager for arcadeEIP.
* Some graphical improvements.

[Mobhit265]

Awesome is all I can say, just found this last week. I have this up and running on a test pc working with a stream deck. After many trials and errors (User errors) I am up and running.

One issue now is when I Change games through menu I get the "Exiting Game" but not the "Loading Game"

[gildahl]

Sorry about that. I just duplicated your issue and it looks like it was because the last update I posted was not a final build (argh!).  I just posted a revised zip file above and over on the LaunchBox forums labeled arcadeEIP v.0.3.3.2a beta.zip.  Just replace the eip.exe and marquee.exe with the updated ones from the new zip.  Let me know if that fixes the problem.

[Mobhit265]

Yes that solved it! Thank you!!

[gildahl]

Yes that solved it! Thank you!!

Excellent!

[Mobhit265]

I mapped a button on my stream deck for menu. It will work for awhile and then when I push it the screen just dims. I made a hotkey for toggle menu, the " ' " key. Sometimes after a bit it will start working again. If i remap the hotkey it will work again. I will be testing for some time so I will let you know if it is intermittent or not.

EDIT: It seems to be intermittent, don't know if its on my side or not.

[gildahl]

I just tried duplicating this.  I also have the " ' " key mapped to toggle the menu.  So far, using either the keyboard or a StreamDeck hotkey toggle, I haven't been able to get it to do what you describe.  With that said, I *have* seen rare instances where the menu doesn't toggle as expected and I had to restart--but always associated this with the machine coming out of a sleep state, and wondering if that had anything to do with it.

Anyway, if you can manage to duplicate this reliably, I'd be happy to try to do the same.  Start by seeing if you can make it happen using the keyboard only.  Only then try with the Stream Deck, and pay attention to any other activities you may be doing (moving or clicking a mouse, use of alt-tab, triggering any other events with the Stream Deck, only after switching games or systems, etc.).  Also, are you using arcadeEIP in combination with any other front-ends, launchers or overlays?  That would be important to know.

[Mobhit265]

I will spend more time with it this evening. I am using this with Launchbox/Bigbox but also starting it stand alone to quickly test things. I will keep track of combinations before this happens.

I also could not get the "." to even work when mapped to stream deck but using keyboard works perfectly. I used hotkey and hotkey switch in stream deck, neither worked...kind of weird.

[Mobhit265]

I will spend more time with it this evening. I am using this with Launchbox/Bigbox but also starting it stand alone to quickly test things. I will keep track of combinations before this happens.

I also could not get the "." to even work when mapped to stream deck but using keyboard works perfectly. I used hotkey and hotkey switch in stream deck, neither worked...kind of weird.

[gildahl]

Yes, it would be good to isolate whether this happens stand-alone, or only when in combination with LB/BB.

Regarding the "." key, there are a few things to keep in mind.  If your arcadeEIP.ini file is in its default state, then the period is assigned as both the "magic_key" and the "exit_key".  So assuming kiosk_mode=0 (the default), then the operation is that a short press of the period key will exit, and a long press (by default, 2 seconds) will show the menu (or to reverse this, you would set kiosk_mode=1).  This ability to use one button for two functions is achieved using a hardware strobe, so it requires a real keyboard or a hardware board acting as one (such as an ipac) to work.  It will not work using the hotkeys sent by the Stream Deck, unfortunately.

The good news though is that this should only be an issue if you wanted to, say, exit a game using a button on the Stream Deck rather than using your control panel (or keyboard). If you want to do this, one way is to assign the magic_key to a value that isn't used, like magic_key=? (or alternately, assign the exit_key to a value different than the magic_key).  Doing this will effectively disable the "magic key" function, and revert to strictly discrete key operation (for example, " . " to exit and " ' " to display the menu), and both of these should now work with the Stream Deck's hotkey macro. 

If you really wanted to have both a discrete exit function that worked with the Stream Deck, while also preserving the magic_key function for your control panel, let me know and I could consider adding an independent discrete exit key.

[Edit] I just went ahead and added a new discrete quit_key setting to arcadeEIP.ini.  If you download the newest version (0.3.3.3) and just replace the executables and add quit_key=~ to the [Key Map] section, you should now be able to program a Stream Deck hotkey button as "~" to exit without messing with the magic_key/exit_key functionality (so you can probably mostly ignore the information above if you want).  I'm not sure if that's what you were looking for, but it seemed like a good thing to add regardless.

[Mobhit265]

Here is what I have discovered. If I map a game to the stream deck and launch ArcadeEIP the menu button just dims the screen, as soon as I exit EIP and come back everything works fine. It only occurs after mapping a game to stream deck, and only before I exit EIP.

EDIT: I was unable to repeat this just now. It happened twice before. I was launching standalone each time.

EDIT: It did it again....it seems to happen randomly but only after I map a game to stream deck. This is not a big deal just thought you might want to know.

[gildahl]

First off, what do you have your StreamDeck buttons programmed to do (give me an example of the script)? 

If you are using arcadeEIP standalone, the way it should work is that you would first start arcadeEIP so that a game is running.  The Stream Deck's buttons, which would each be pre-programmed with macros to trigger the hot-string file associated with each game, will then allow you to switch to the games you want to play (you would not normally use the Stream Deck to actually launch arcadeEIP or exit it--you only use it to tell arcadeEIP what game to switch to).

There is a file in the ..\Docs\[Front_End] examples folder of arcadeEIP called StreamDeck.txt that explains how this works in a bit more detail.  Did you happen to setup your StreamDeck according to the directions in that file?

Dave

[Mobhit265]

I set up my streamdeck through the docs. I have set it up to change games and other commands in EIP such as menu, last game, pause etc.

I am not using it to launch eip or exit it. I set up the "." before I realised the other ways of bringing up menu.

When my cabinet is finished I will be using Launchbox/Bigbox

[gildahl]

Ok, sounds like it should be configured right then. Seems odd it would mainly happen when a new button is added.  Still haven't been able to reproduce, but will bang on it a bit more...and if you find any other clues let me know.

[Mobhit265]

I set up my streamdeck through the docs. I have set it up to change games and other commands in EIP such as menu, last game, pause etc.

I am not using it to launch eip or exit it. I set up the "." before I realised the other ways of bringing up menu.

When my cabinet is finished I will be using Launchbox/Bigbox

[Mobhit265]

When I start an arcade game from Bigbox which uses EIP as emulator the menu button on streamdeck and keyboard shows the border of the menu but nothing else. Your going to get sick of me Dave.

EDIT: When I start the games through Launchbox is works fine.

[gildahl]

When I start an arcade game from Bigbox which uses EIP as emulator the menu button on streamdeck and keyboard shows the border of the menu but nothing else. Your going to get sick of me Dave.

EDIT: When I start the games through Launchbox is works fine.

I'm not following one thing.  You say when launching from BB there is an issue with "the menu button on the streamdeck and keyboard showing the border...".  I was presuming the problem was with the on-screen menu in arcadeEIP.  But is this actually a problem with the StreamDeck's button displays or is it with arcadeEIP's on-screen menu display?  Sorry, just wasn't perfectly clear.

[Mobhit265]

sorry,  when i start eip stand alone it works fine (except for problem earlier which is really not a problem to me) when i start a game from Lauchbox every thing is fine. When i start a game fom BB it only shows gray borders and not the games, or anythings else, except the gray borders. This is when i try to access the menu through streamdeck and keyboard.

[gildahl]

Ah, ok.  I'm going to need to sign-off for today shortly, but I was at least able to run a few games out of BigBox using the latest arcadeEIP, and all seemed to work ok, so I'm hoping its just a configuration issue.  If you could possibly send me your arcadeEIP.ini file, I could try to see if there is anything in there that might be suspect.  There's an email address at the bottom of the license.txt file you could send it to.

[Mobhit265]

Will do that.

[gildahl]

[solved]

The menu issue in arcadeEIP when using BigBox turned out to be a conflict with the "Loading Game" and "Startup Screen” options in the "Game Startup" section of BigBox's "Theme Specific Options".  These need to be turned off when arcadeEIP is being used.  Since arcadeEIP effectively duplicates these features anyway, there should be little if any shortcoming to turning these features off.  I have added a comment about this to the docs.

[gildahl]

Just a note to anyone who might be following this project, I just recently moved the source and binary releases for arcadeEIP to GitHub, and a new release (v.0.4.0.0-beta) has been posted.

https://github.com/gildahl/arcadeEIP/releases

[UPDATE: 5/24/2023 - Just released 0.4.0.1 beta hotfix. Previous version was missing some icons in the ..\Resources\Icons folder needed for marking favorites and star ratings with the "m" and "s" keys.]

[gildahl]

New release just posted.

https://github.com/gildahl/arcadeEIP/releases/tag/v0.4.0.2-beta

[bobbyb13]

I just stumbled onto your work here and it is fantastic.
Front ends and game management have always flustered me so I need to get my machine set up to utilize your efforts.

Would you recommend one front end over another?
I recall not liking some portion of setup for GameEx a few years ago but it is probable that I was doing something wrong.
LB/BB seemed appealing but I never bought rights to try it out.

Thanks for offering this to us all!
Bobby

[gildahl]

I had standardized on GameEx for many years, but at a certain point found it getting harder to maintain my game lists the way I wanted.  I think LaunchBox is better in that department, but as far as whether GameEx or BigBox is a better front-end, I consider it a wash. GameEx (IMO) offers better/deeper customization options, while BigBox is generally prettier and easier to use. 

With all that said though, these days I use LaunchBox (which is free) as my content manager and arcadeEIP (which is able to read the LaunchBox database) as my sole "front-end".  I don't use BigBox or GameEx on the arcade machine at all anymore.  90% of the time when I walk into the game room, I'm happy to play whatever arcadeEIP has up at the moment, and if I really want to play something specific, I can just press a button on the StreamDeck or pull up the menu to switch to a different game.  It sounds stupid, but simply eliminating the requirement to choose a game before you play has made me actually play the machine more; and this goes for guests too.

[Fursphere]

Is there a way to get ArcadeEIP to just pick any MAME game at random, instead of having to play the games first to populate the 'arcadeeip favorites' list that it uses to pick games for attract mode?

this was the biggest reason I didn't get into arcadeEIP.  felt really tedious trying to populate the list.

[gildahl]

Absolutely.  The Auto-Switch list can be manually populated.  Just bring up the game selection menu and navigate all the way to the left so that the Auto-Switch list is selected. To put the list into edit mode press the Left-Shift key.  You may now go to any other list (such as your MAME list) and use the spacebar to add any selected game from any list to the Auto-Switch list.  If you want to add all of your MAME games to the Auto-Switch list, just press the "a" key while in the MAME list and watch the blue progress bar (this may take a while if your list is big). Press Left-Shift again when complete.  If you never want the list to be automatically populated, just set auto=0 in the [Auto_Switch] section of arcadeEIP.ini.

Note that you can also manually remove games from the Auto-Switch list by selecting it while in edit mode and using the spacebar on any games you want to remove (in this case, pressing "a" will clear the whole list). Or you could just delete files as desired from the ..\Lists\autoswitch folder if find it easier/quicker to work in the file system.

[gildahl]

New release just posted. This is a pretty major one. See release notes at first link below.

Current Release:  arcadeEIP latest release (v0.4.1.0 beta)
Documentation:  GitHub Wiki for arcadeEIP
Discussion: Here on ArcadeControls.com, LaunchBox forums or GitHub

[gildahl]

Another new release just posted:

Current Release:  arcadeEIP latest release (v0.4.2.0 beta)