Front-end that will go into "screensaver mode"?

[romid]

Is there a front end that will do the following:

1) act like a standard front-end
2) when joysticks/buttons/trackball has not been used for certain period of time, start up a random game, quit the game after 5 mins, start another game, so on and so forth
3) during this "screensaver mode" when a button is pushed, it will stay in that game (so say you are passing by the mame box and see a game that looks interesting, you want to play it)

Ive looked around a lot!  A couple of people have told me this feature exists in some front-ends, but I have been unable to find it.

Any suggestions or guidance is appreciated!

[)p(]

Is there a front end that will do the following:

1) act like a standard front-end
2) when joysticks/buttons/trackball has not been used for certain period of time, start up a random game, quit the game after 5 mins, start another game, so on and so forth
3) during this "screensaver mode" when a button is pushed, it will stay in that game (so say you are passing by the mame box and see a game that looks interesting, you want to play it)

Ive looked around a lot!  A couple of people have told me this feature exists in some front-ends, but I have been unable to find it.

Any suggestions or guidance is appreciated!

As far as I know only my fe does this in combination with advance mame. It is currently disabled in the latest version of the fe but will be enabled again in the next release.

And yes it is a very cool feature...I would like to see it also in all fe's!

And Howard maybe you can add this to your wrapper's...ie exit when no keys is pressed for x times..so we can use this feature with the normal mame instead of advance mame.


peter

[Howard_Casto]

I can add it but as I use standard resolution timers (to keep resources low) it would be terribly inaccurate as to the time specified.  

[)p(]

I can add it but as I use standard resolution timers (to keep resources low) it would be terribly inaccurate as to the time specified.  

how inaccurate? if it is accurate within a minute or even a few minutes it would work fine for this purpose  

[romid]

I can add it but as I use standard resolution timers (to keep resources low) it would be terribly inaccurate as to the time specified.  

I think its even better if its inaccurate!!  That just makes it more "random" which is the effect I think most people would be interested in.  One game lasts 2 minutes, the next game lasts 6 minutes-- thats fun!

If you could implement something like this, i think it would be really awesome!  I think a lot of people would appreciate it very much and find it very usefull  

[Howard_Casto]

Well here's how it would work.... first of all the inaccuracy is multiplied the longer you want it to wait.....  In other words if you want ti to play for a couple of minutes then it'll be farily dead on, but if you go 10 or longer then it'll get pretty shaky.  Also it is dependant upon how much resources the game in quesiton uses, as I make my wrappers fairly passive and they only get data when there is a free process to use for the most part.  

Long story short if you mean like every 5 minutes or so change then it'll be ok... if you mean more like every 20-30 then it won't work as that 20 or 30 minutes could be drawn out to as much as 40 or 50 if the circumstances were bad enough.  (and of you have a sucky pc then they often might be)    

Just for the heck of it I stuck a timer in it and tested.... it indeed works on mame.  I will most likely add the option soon just incase anybody wants to use it.  

[romid]

Thanks so very much!  I cant tell you how much I appreciate it  

[Minwah]

That does sounds like a cool idea, it'd be great if you do get to add it to a wrapper Howard  

BTW Howard thanks alot for the wrappers generally - it's really helped me run a couple of emulators lately as I'm trying to prepare everything for my cab.  

[Luxury]

This is one option that I was REALLY surpised didn't exist.  To me it just seems like common sense. (or at least as "common" as my sense is  )  I'm really looking forward to seeing it in the future!

[Minwah]

This is one option that I was REALLY surpised didn't exist.  To me it just seems like common sense. (or at least as "common" as my sense is  )  I'm really looking forward to seeing it in the future!

It sounds easier than it is tho.  Generally when MAME (or whatever emulator) is run, the FE looses focus - ie can't do anything.  And Since MAME (and afaik all other emulators) do not have a 'stop running after x minutes' switch it is quite difficult to do it...Howard can do it with his wrappers but how he does that I've no idea  

[Howard_Casto]

well that's exactly how i do it... as the wrapper exe is what the fe launches then the front-end does indeed "lock up" but the wrapper it laucnehd does not... i don't do the "wait until finished" call that you would do inthe front-end itself, instead i have the wrapper constantly checking in the background.  When the "escape" key is pressed then the wrapper closes the handle of the app it launched and thus it safely shut it's down. (with some noteable exceptions due to bad coding in the emulators themselves, with all due respect to their authors.)  To quit after x number of seconds is a simple as adding a timer inside the wrapper.  And the timer is stopped if any key is pressed.    

[)p(]

And Since MAME (and afaik all other emulators) do not have a 'stop running after x minutes' switch it is quite difficult to do it

Actually I think there is or was a stop after x number of frames in the normal mame. But this won't help  because we need something like the exit when idle for x seconds of advance mame. Maybe we should ask the people who build mame32 plus to add this as they allready have added some filter code of advancemame to their build  


peter