Two Thoughts: Auto-boot RetroPie into a Game / into a Slideshow

[OneSwitch]

Two things that could make RetroPie incredibly useful for people with a home arcade / exhibit would be:

1. An auto-boot into game from start-up option. How useful if running a row of arcade cabs / a show of games to have it go straight into your favourite game. I'd love this for my Space Invaders machine with a faulty PCB, running a Raspberry Pi with Pi2Scart to give a good alternative.

2. An auto-boot into a slide-show of pictures. Ideally ones you can move forwards/back and pause. Again, massively useful for people who might like to run a museum exhibit. I'd love this for something I could leave and trust it will boot straight into it and show some accessible gaming pictures.

Maybe this can be done already, but something easy for more basic users, would be an amazing update. Thanks for creating RetroPie by the way. Such a brilliant thing.

[IanDaemon]

Wouldn't both of these things be outside of RetroPie?
(1) Just mod the Raspberry Pi's boot script to launch an emulator with command line to launch the game. Which emulator are you using to run Space Invaders?
(2) This wouldn't have anything to do with RetroPie and and/or game emulation. This sounds like a "Digital Picture Frame" app. There are tons of those. You just need to put one on your Raspberry Pi.

[OneSwitch]

@IanDaemon said in Two Thoughts: Auto-boot RetroPie into a Game / into a Slideshow:

Wouldn't both of these things be outside of RetroPie?
(1) Just mod the Raspberry Pi's boot script to launch an emulator with command line to launch the game. Which emulator are you using to run Space Invaders?
(2) This wouldn't have anything to do with RetroPie and and/or game emulation. This sounds like a "Digital Picture Frame" app. There are tons of those. You just need to put one on your Raspberry Pi.

I'd say not outside of the scope of RetroPie to my eyes. RetroPie already has the facility to run a slide show (of sorts) both as a screen saver and also as part of Kodi.

1. I'm using lr-mame2003 to run Space Invaders. It's very close to the real thing. Would love to have that auto-boot up, but still have the facility to exit to the full RetroPie menus if needed. I can set RetroPie to start in a favourites folder for example. Why not have it auto-start a game. That would be superb.

2. Auto-booting Picture Frame app, not simple to me at all, so not to some others either. To me this would be a lovely addition to RetroPie. The Kodi one is very flakey, and works badly with an Xbox 360 controller I find. I like the (very basic) screen saver. Why not a little option for one that's just a bit better? I'm not knocking RetroPie, it's brilliant. Would just like to see it improved a little further one day with these two things. Worth asking.

[BJRetro]

@OneSwitch you can do (1) for sure. I have a bartop with TMNT arcade game artwork so I have it booting directly to TMNT mame arcade game (after custom retropie loading screen which is also themed TMNT). I did the setting where the whole loading script with text for retropie and the raspberry logos do not appear during the boot process. So basically I turn on the arcade, it goes to the TMNT themed loading screen then goes straight to the TMNT rom. Then it acts just like the arcade game would in the arcade but you can press the coin + start button and you exit out to emulation station, which I have set to go automatically to the “all games” list in Chicuelo theme with video previews for all the games. The concept I was thinking about was I could just have it running and people would think it was a single game arcade I had purchased but then by pressing the “secret button combo” viola you have access to a ton of other arcade games.

If you google for (1) retropie boot directly to rom (2) custom splash screen retropie (3) delete boot text retropie and (4) hide emulation station loading screen retropie then those all all of the things you need to do this.

[OneSwitch]

@BJRetro Thanks for this. Good to know it's possible, if quite involved. Would love to see it made easy for anyone, but I'll definitely investigate meanwhile.

[BJRetro]

@OneSwitch I think each thing is just editing a line of code to a file, so not too hard, it’s just that I think when I was brainstorming/doing this I had to separately find out how to do each piece. If I have time over this weekend I will try to post the directions all together. The only problem is I never upgraded emulation station the last major update so I don’t know if that will change any of the coding or locations of the files needed to do this.

[OneSwitch]

@BJRetro said in Two Thoughts: Auto-boot RetroPie into a Game / into a Slideshow:

ach thing is just editing a line of code to a file, so not too hard, it’s just that I think when I was brainstorming/doing this I had to separately find out how to do each piece. If I have time over this weekend I will try to post the directions all together. The only problem is I never upgraded emulation station the last major update so I don’t know if that will change any of the coding or locations of the files needed to do this.

It would be great to see what you did, even if it it a lot older. I'm using RetroPie 4.4 for a Pi 3+B.

[BJRetro]

@OneSwitch
boot directly to rom:

(1) Go to terminal (F4 on keyboard)
(2) Type sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh

(this is to edit the autostart file)

(3) now add the command to indicate the rom to start on:

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0_SYS_ arcade ~/RetroPie/roms/arcade/tmnt.zip --no-splash && emulationstation

You replace tmnt.zip with whatever your arcade rom is. Note where SYS appears in italics it is actually an underscore on either side of SYS but that’s just the way the forum displays this code.

(4) exit using the command at the bottom of the screen and save on exit when prompted

Delete boot text and emulation station loading screen, raspberries

(1) when back in terminal type sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

(2) make sure on the line of text that appears that you change anything that you see about console=tty1 to console=tty3 or add that whole phrase if nothing is pre-existing there and then also add logo.nologo to the line that you see, keep it all in one line

(3) exit (CTRL+X) and save when prompted

(Note the —no splash in the autostart.sh file above is what removed the emulationstation splash screen)

(4) Now back in terminal type sudo nano /boot/config.txt
Scroll to bottom of file add the following line:
disable_splash=1

If you want to also add a custom splash screen there’s are separate instructions for that - I think it may even be on the retropie menu .

[mitu]

@BJRetro said in Two Thoughts: Auto-boot RetroPie into a Game / into a Slideshow:

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0_SYS_ arcade ~/RetroPie/roms/arcade/tmnt.zip --no-splash && emulationstation

I think this should be

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0_SYS_ arcade ~/RetroPie/roms/arcade/tmnt.zip
 
emulationstation --no-splash

if you want to remove the ES splashscreen.

[BJRetro]

@mitu thanks!

[OneSwitch]

Thanks, I'll try this ASAP and will let you know how I get on with 4.4. Much appreciate your time to share this.

[OneSwitch]

@mitu No luck so far. I tried.

(1) Go to terminal (F4 on keyboard)
(2) Type sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh
(3) Edited as follows...

emulationstation #auto
/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0_SYS_ mame-libretro ~/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro/gorf.zip

(4) CTRL+X and save, then run by typing emulationstation.

But no luck. Tried restarting. No luck. I wonder if the path is wrong. Any ideas appreciated.

[mitu]

@OneSwitch The order of the commands is backwards - you're first starting ES and then your ROM - it should be the other way around, like in the command I posted.
Furthermore, running emulationstation (by typing the command) will simply do that - run Emulationstation. The script you edited is only run on boot, after start-up.

[OneSwitch]

@mitu Thanks for this clarification. I tried moving gorf.zip + configs into the Arcade folder (works fine there manually) so I could more closely mimic what you suggested. Still not working for me. Don't know if it makes any difference but my system starts up within "Collections". A possible pathway issue? Also, is it right that there are spaces in the /opt/retropie/supplementary.... line?

[mitu]

@OneSwitch There might be a typo in my 1st command. Instead of

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0_SYS_ arcade ~/RetroPie/roms/arcade/tmnt.zip

it should be

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ arcade ~/RetroPie/roms/arcade/gorf.zip

Other ES settings shouldn't affect this command, since it's run outside of Emulationstation.

[BJRetro]

Also what emulator are you running gorf with? I swear I read a thread recently and there were some kinds of issues with that game or someone was saying there were issues with that game running with standard emulators. I use Lr-mame2003 for tmnt. If it doesn’t work for you after what mitu just said maybe try with a different rom first that you run using standard lr-mame2003 so you can at least test whether it is the command or the rom/emulator combo.

[OneSwitch]

I tried a few times, using gorf with libretro mame 2003, and 2010 (2003 is the really sluggish one for Gorf).... No luck, nothing auto boots. I also find that if I edit that file too many times, I'm getting a "Error reading lock file /opt/ ... (not sure of the end as on the vertical CRT I'm getting the leftmost and rightmost sides chopped off in the terminal editing part).

Thanks for trying to help me. It would be brilliant to get this sussed for 4.4 or newer.

[mitu]

@OneSwitch In order for the 'auto-boot' to work, you first have to make the game work normally - from ES, using the Runcommand menu to choose the right emulator for the ROM. After that, using the Runcommand from the auto-start script will run the game normally - using the chosen emulator. If this part is not working, then the 'auto-boot' will not work.

[OneSwitch]

@mitu said in Two Thoughts: Auto-boot RetroPie into a Game / into a Slideshow:

you first have to make the game work normally - from ES, using the Runcommand menu to choose the right emulator for the ROM. After that, using the Runcommand from the auto-start script will run the game normally - using the chosen emulator. If this part is not working, then the 'auto-boot' will not work.

Not quite sure what you mean. The test gorf.zip rom works in Emulation Station/RetroPIe when I select it manually as I would any other game with a joypad. Works in Mame 2003 and 2010 libretro.

Do you mean starting the game after pressing F4?

[mitu]

@OneSwitch said in Two Thoughts: Auto-boot RetroPie into a Game / into a Slideshow:

Not quite sure what you mean. The test gorf.zip rom works in Emulation Station/RetroPIe when I select it manually as I would any other game with a joypad. Works in Mame 2003 and 2010 libretro.

I mean if the game doesn't run normally, it would also not run during 'auto-boot' - this is what @BJRetro was referring also (I think).

Do you mean starting the game after pressing F4?

That's something you can try with the runcommand command from the autostart.sh file, to verify that it works.