Introducing arcadeEIP

[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)