MiSTer Super Attract Mode (SAM) is now available - the first game screensaver for your MiSTer!

[Mellified]

Super Attract Mode uses a third party tool to copy the selected ROM to a known location, then uses emulated keystrokes to select that ROM. It's a huge kludge because MiSTer lacks a standard method for telling a core to load a ROM. You can check out the tool we use here:
https://github.com/pocomane/MiSTer_Batch_Control

[Duffygag]

In two hours I have seen the same game I think 10 times, that randomizer needs to be changed

Also for Snes core loads up opens to load rom and remain stuck until following cycle

[Sigismond0]

Yep, I did.

This is basically what my folder looks like in fat\games\NeoGeo
EcV8Fpj.png
The ROMs are in their individual folders.

Each folder has the files like so
ZM3Sxcr.png

NeoGeo also failed for me, and I had the same setup as you. But after switching from the Darksoft format to .neo format, it works just fine. I assume this is the same limitation as why you need CHD disc games instead of bin/cue. You can just run the NeoBuilderUI tool on your current romset, or find one already in the TerraOnion format.

[ash2fpga]

In two hours I have seen the same game I think 10 times, that randomizer needs to be changed

Also for Snes core loads up opens to load rom and remain stuck until following cycle

One "weird trick" I have been able to use to get "better" (more deviating) initial RNG results, in Lua script at least, was to iterate the RNG, say, 100 times, during initialization. Not sure if anything like that would help here.

[Reg]

Mellified, thank you for this screen saver mode - finally got it running.

May I ask for a new option or at least info on what to change please for my screen. The current view is this...

Current View.png (1.54 MiB) Viewed 10108 times

As shown, the display on m7 case is actually setback a littler behind the bezel, this is fine and down to me - outside of the bezel the view is fine.

Could we please change the view to something like this ( by a manual adjustment of the code or a swithable option )...

NewView.png (1.53 MiB) Viewed 10108 times

This means that when you're sat near the MiSTer you can see the system that it's on as well by dropping that to the bottom.

Also...

...is there any chance of making it log to a text file what games it loads in attact mode ?

The purpose of this would be for those that don't have the screen or miss the title of the screen when it shows up a new game that looks interesting what the file name was, system and perhaps time and date it showed ?

Thank you !

[Mellified]

In two hours I have seen the same game I think 10 times, that randomizer needs to be changed

That can happen for a few reasons.

1. Make sure you're using the latest version - SAM will self update if you run "MiSTer_SAM_on.sh" and let it go. We added code in the last major release to improve randomization and try to account for different ROM setups. SAM was picking from the first ZIP in the directory in some cases, which might be one game ZIPped. We added logic to look for the biggest ZIP.

2. Check to see if you have a leftover MBC file in the directory for that core. If you do - delete it. That's a temp copy used during the loading process. If the MiSTer can't overwrite it for some reason then you get the same game for that core every time.

3. Are you using ZIPped ROMs? A single ZIP or multiple? The code has to go through different pathways depending on each scenario, so I'd like to understand your ROM layout and track down the issue.

Also for Snes core loads up opens to load rom and remain stuck until following cycle

It shouldn't. I assume SNES loads fine from elsewhere? If you run this command from ssh it may give you more information:

Code: Select all

/media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh snes next

This will load a single SNES ROM and quit. The output would be helpful to diagnose further.

One "weird trick" I have been able to use to get "better" (more deviating) initial RNG results, in Lua script at least, was to iterate the RNG, say, 100 times, during initialization. Not sure if anything like that would help here.

Last update changed the code to use /dev/urandom in Linux as the source of entropy. That should be well initialized by MiSTer's Linux.

May I ask for a new option or at least info on what to change please for my screen. The current view is this...

You can always ask! I was intentionally trying to use the whole screen, so I'm not sure the best way to handle this. Do you want text to use less of the display so it's easier to see with the bezel? Or is flipping the system and game names around sufficient? venice added a bunch of new graphical commands to tty2oled. I intend to explore these to do some fun visual effects when switching games so I'll likely incorporate this into that effort.

...is there any chance of making it log to a text file what games it loads in attact mode ?

This already exists at /tmp/SAM_Games.log. The current system and game is in SAM_Game.txt as well - useful for streamers.

EDIT to add: the /tmp directory is cleared on a "cold reboot". Your best bet is to access the log via ssh while SAM is running.

[Reg]

Many thanks for your quick reply and the location of that log, that's perfect.

With regards to the screen -flipping the system and games names around would be perfect. Thank you.

[Duffygag]

Thanks Mellified I think you are onto something in regards to the zip size... (Sam is latest version for sure also deleted everything and reinstalled)

I will follow your instructions as soon as I can give it some time and will report back, thanks for the moment

[Mellified]

Thanks Mellified I think you are onto something in regards to the zip size... (Sam is latest version for sure also deleted everything and reinstalled)

I will follow your instructions as soon as I can give it some time and will report back, thanks for the moment

SAM has no way to know which ZIP is the "good" one. We try to support as many configurations as we can - there seem to be almost as many as there are MiSTers though!

Worst case, you can change SAM's INI to point to a sub-folder and put just the games you want to cycle in there. Generally a single large ZIP works best.

[Duffygag]

So I have tried the Snes command it actually says Skipping to next game... Starting now on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System: Michael Jordan - Chaos in the Windy City (E) but then it does nothing or it starts the first/second rom in the list or the last one.... Something to do with the name format maybe ?

Edit: Will try with a different romset

[Duffygag]

You it was the romset

[Mellified]

Glad you got it figured out!

[Reg]

Mellified, how easy is it to add new cores in ?

I would like to add for personal use the ZX Spectrum core using .z80 snaps. I pick those as they load straight in without keyboard input.

I know it's not going to be for everybody to do this - but is it just a case of looking at the code and replicating what I see with other cores or is there something else that may need to be considered that is not obvious ?

Many thanks.

[Mellified]

Mellified, how easy is it to add new cores in ?

I would like to add for personal use the ZX Spectrum core using .z80 snaps. I pick those as they load straight in without keyboard input.

I know it's not going to be for everybody to do this - but is it just a case of looking at the code and replicating what I see with other cores or is there something else that may need to be considered that is not obvious ?

Many thanks.

You'd need to see if Pocomane' MBC utility supports it first. Then it should be as simple as adding a few bits to the arrays in SAM that define the core name and extension.
https://github.com/pocomane/MiSTer_Batch_Control

[Reg]

Thank you - I will look.

[Reg]

Thank you very much for the update here. Loving what you have done and I must call out the swap on the text positions, brilliant.

10/10

This is perfect for my system.

[Mellified]

I just uploaded an update to Super Attract Mode which requires the latest tty2oled. With that you'll get the standard tty2oled core graphics for 10 seconds, a transition, then the game and system name are displayed. Open to suggestions for further features!

To update SAM simply run MiSTer_SAM_on.sh and let it auto-update.

[PixelPeZ]

So for some reason the script glitched out for me and started switching cores and games every 2 minutes even if I was playing them... and it was super fun! Could this be an official feature with an adjustable timer like or a would it be possible to map a button or mister physical input for next random game?

[Mellified]

So for some reason the script glitched out for me and started switching cores and games every 2 minutes even if I was playing them... and it was super fun! Could this be an official feature with an adjustable timer like or a would it be possible to map a button or mister physical input for next random game?

You can disable input detection in the INI and SAM will work that way always. You can also run a command via ssh to trigger the next game automatically:

Code: Select all

/media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh next

If you want to specify a system you can do that as well:

Code: Select all

/media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh next arcade

The list of keywords for each system are only in the script at the moment, but you can scroll down a few pages to see them all.

[rhester72]

Over the past maybe week to two weeks, something's changed - the Mega CD BIOS is the same as it was, but it's no longer automatically booting into the game within a few seconds, it just sits at the BIOS screen indefinitely. Anyone else see this?

[pbsk8]

how do I configure this script to run cps and neogeo games only?

All the games are already inside the microsd in mister.

[CartoonDonkey]

This is brilliant.

[SmaMan]

2. Check to see if you have a leftover MBC file in the directory for that core. If you do - delete it. That's a temp copy used during the loading process. If the MiSTer can't overwrite it for some reason then you get the same game for that core every time.

I seem to get that a lot for SegaCD. If I delete the !MBC directory, it'll be random for a little while, but eventually get stuck on the same one or two games whenever the SegaCD core comes up, and sure enough the !MBC directory will have reappeared. My ISOs are on an external SSD and are in .CHD format. Any idea what's causing this?

EDIT: Oooohkay, as I was typing that comment it picked a totally different one after picking Time Gal three times in a row. Keeping an eye on the !MBC directory, and it looks like it has four copies of some CHDs in there right now, one of which is Time Gal.

[rhester72]

Issue reported here:

https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM/issues/84

and here:

https://github.com/pocomane/MiSTer_Batc ... /issues/16

[venice]

Hi mrchrisster and Mellified,
you got an PM from me.

We released an new Version of tty2oled which has a few changed related to text output.

CU

[UScr00ge]

MiSTer_SAM has been working fantasticaly for months until I performed a recent update of the script and an update of MiSTer. Now it seems like it the selection process of a ROM bugs out on any system other than MAME. You can actually see the script fail to make it all the way through the directory structure ... it stops midway through the menu during the process of selecting a rom. I've seen it do it for PCE, NES and several other systems. Nothing with my ROM structure has changed.

Thinking about starting troubleshooting by deleting my MiSTer_SAM.ini file and see if it goes a way. If it works I'll just migrate my exclusions to the new INI file. Anyone else having any issues like this?

edit: Deleting the ini made no difference

[UScr00ge]

I made a video showing what happens when the SAM script fails to load a game ...

9jThyY5.mp4

(2.62 MiB) Downloaded 133 times

I kicked off SAM from an SSH window on my PC to show the issue. In the terminal window, this is the log that appeared at the time of the failed load:

Code: Select all

/media/fat/Scripts#  Removing other instances of S93mistersam... Done!
 Stopping activity monitoring... Done!
 Quickstarting SAM... Done!
 Let Mortal Kombat begin!
 Removing other instances of MiSTer_SAM_MCP... Done!
 Stopping activity monitoring...find: paths must precede expression: `Update_MiSTerBIOS.sh'
find: possible unquoted pattern after predicate `-iname'?
kill: usage: kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] pid | jobspec ... or kill -l [sigspec]
 Done!
 Starting MiSTer Super Attract Mode...
 Monitoring controller /dev/input/js0...
 Monitoring controller /dev/input/js1...
 Monitoring controller /dev/input/js2...
 Monitoring mouse activity...
 Monitoring keyboard hidraw1...
 Monitoring keyboard hidraw4...
 Monitoring keyboard hidraw5...
 Done!
 Starting now on the SNK NeoGeo: Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 (Korean) (rbff2k)

[LamerDeluxe]

I made a video showing what happens when the SAM script fails to load a game ...

I kicked off SAM from an SSH window on my PC to show the issue. In the terminal window, this is the log that appeared at the time of the failed load:

Code: Select all

/media/fat/Scripts#  Removing other instances of S93mistersam... Done!
 Stopping activity monitoring... Done!
 Quickstarting SAM... Done!
 Let Mortal Kombat begin!
 Removing other instances of MiSTer_SAM_MCP... Done!
 Stopping activity monitoring...find: paths must precede expression: `Update_MiSTerBIOS.sh'
find: possible unquoted pattern after predicate `-iname'?
kill: usage: kill [-s sigspec | -n signum | -sigspec] pid | jobspec ... or kill -l [sigspec]
 Done!
 Starting MiSTer Super Attract Mode...
 Monitoring controller /dev/input/js0...
 Monitoring controller /dev/input/js1...
 Monitoring controller /dev/input/js2...
 Monitoring mouse activity...
 Monitoring keyboard hidraw1...
 Monitoring keyboard hidraw4...
 Monitoring keyboard hidraw5...
 Done!
 Starting now on the SNK NeoGeo: Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 (Korean) (rbff2k)

I'm having a similar problem. I've just converted my MegaCD images to chd and they work when loaded by hand. They are located in media/fat/games/MegaCD on the SD Card. MiSTer SAM tries to open the game but it ends with the file selector opened.
It also doesn't like it when games are individually zipped and it will fail in a similar way then. I noticed this with the Genesis and SNES cores.
EDIT: Already tried fixing things by deleting all SAM-related files and copying the latest MiSTer_SAM_on script.
EDIT2: When the MegaCD core fails to load with the file selector open, the file selector is inside the games/ZXNext directory, which is the last sub-directory in games.
EDIT3: If I select MegaCD only from the SAM menu, the first game will work and the ones after that fail with the file selector open.

[barfood]

Just curious... why print "Let Mortal Kombat begin!" to the screen at every execution? I find that confusing since the game launched is never actually Mortal Kombat

[LamerDeluxe]

Just finished building my TTY2OLED, which I mainly wanted to get because of super attract mode. I'm getting Error CMDTEXT and Error CMDGEO on the display when using the latest MiSTer SAM, which I installed manually.