Show Control Panel Layout before game starts in RetroPie, just like Arcade1UP does.

Texacate

@janderclander14 said in Show Control Panel Layout before game starts in RetroPie, just like Arcade1UP does.:

In FBalpha (which I use more often for arcade games) it is:

456
123

I use that arrangement too. I've updated the script to handle it. Try the latest version on github, and append the switch"-fba" to the command line. Default is still:
123
456

But button_map.sh <game> -fba gives you:
456
123

Also added button_map.sh <game> -8btn which gives you:
1237
4568

janderclander14

@Texacate Thanks a lot! This adds quite a lot of flexibility across emulators and control layouts.

Regarding the frame buffer, the RPi only supports two framebuffers if the second one corresponds to a LCD screen connected to the GPIO via SPI. These are usually small screens that plug like a HAT and that, because of the serial connection, offer poor refresh rates. However, they are fine for displaying static images like the panel layout or the marquee.

Here you can see the build of a user that employed one of these small screens to display the title of the game in a snes cartridge while using the HDMI output as the main display:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3376/pi-in-a-super-famicom-build

He also provides a runcommand script to detect the running game and display the artwork, similarly to your project.

As far as using two framebuffers in general, for example, combining the HDMI and DSI outputs, I'm only aware of a beta kernel that seems to support this but does not seem to be included in the public distribution yet:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=216399

Texacate

@janderclander14
Thanks for the pointers! I noticed that post #177 of the Super Famicom project included the runcommand_onstart.sh code, to display the image on the SPI based LCD. Very cool. I'd say go with that versus what's in my simpleServer.py script. It seems to follow very similar "fall-back rules" when the desired image isn't found.

Let us know how your build goes! Do let me know if you find errors in the primary and secondary database files. The secondary one especially was a whole lot of copy-n-paste.

Kjarkur

Hey, thanks a lot for this project. I adapted the source code and put game snaps as background, new buttons and instead of rom file name the game name. Second I modified it to use a crt friendly resolution of 320 x 240 for my arcade cab via pi2jamma.

Here's a little video.

Cheers

BJRetro

@Kjarkur wow guys this video is like what everyone envisioned for this project - great teamwork. Is there some way to incorporate this easily into retropie setup some day? This project is a huge advancement for the retropie user interface for people with arcade setups.

Kjarkur

@BJRetro the video shows my own regamebox distribution. I can make a fork on github.com. Of course it can be done with retropie easily. General steps are this

create the button mapping pictures in advance
put a picture viewer in runcommand-onstart.sh

I have used here a own picture viewer based on SDL. Reason was that I wanted to use something like quit on all keys and quit after 10 seconds.

Texacate

@Kjarkur I like what you did with the code. Using a game-specific background is a great idea!

janderclander14

@Texacate It took a longer than expected but I managed to setup up everything. First, I used a Waveshare 4inch SPI LCD connected to the GPIO, as explained here.

After that, I configured the lcd screen by using the overlays available here. It was quite straightforward. Just need to activate SPI in /boot/config.txt and add the overlay file corresponding to the screen. You may even use parameters to increase the refresh rate or rotate the screen (it uses a vertical orientation by default). The lcd is detected as a secondary framebuffer in /dev/fb1

Finally, as you suggested, I modified the script proposed here to call for the images generated by your button_map.sh tool once the emulator runs.

I post here the code that looks for the button image or falls-back to title or generic system images if not found.

# /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh
# get the full path filename of the ROM
rom=$3
# get the system name
system=$1
# get rom filename without folder
rom_bn=$(basename "$rom")
#get rom filename without extension
rom_bn="${rom_bn%.*}"
# escape square brackets in rom filename
rom_bn="${rom_bn//[/\[}"
rom_bn="${rom_bn//]/\]}"
# Set a TFT-specific image if there is one
img="$(find "/home/pi/button_images/${system}" -type f -name "${rom_bn}.*" -print -quit)"
# If a TFT-specific image was not found, look in the images folder in the ROMs directory for that system
if [[ -z "${img}" ]];
then
   img="$(find "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/${system}/media/cover" -type f -name "${rom_bn}.*" -print -quit)"
fi
# If cover is not found, look for the title
if [[ -z "${img}" ]];
then
   img="$(find "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/${system}/media/title" -type f -name "${rom_bn}.*" -print -quit)"
fi
# If no game images are found, display one for the system being emulated
if [[ -z "${img}" ]];
then
   img="$(find "/home/pi/button_images/systems" -type f -name "${system}.*" -print -quit)"
fi
# If no system image is found, default back to the Picade logo
if [[ -z "${img}" ]];
then
   img="/home/pi/button_images/systems/picade.png"
fi
# run the script to display the image
sudo fbv -c -u -i -e -k /home/pi/button_images/systems/black.png > /dev/null 2>&1 &
sudo fbv -c -u -i -e -k "${img}" > /dev/null 2>&1 &

I used the fbv tool to display static images in the secondary framebuffer, but the more common fbi tool can also be used.

TheRealSmilebit

@Texacate Finally had an opportunity to look at your code. Looks good.

For myself, I just need static images as I showed in my video. So I think what I need to do is the following:

1 - Create XML file with gaming information. I would convert the work you have done and convert to XML. Do not have to do this, but would like to practice manipulating XML files.

2- Will also add to this what recommended controller to use. Joystick, spinner, trackball or lightgun.

3- If Joystick, what type (2-way, 4-way, etc.):

4- A note added stating if certain controller is not available, which one to use. This would be static on every image file.

5- When building the image, have the user select which button layout they want to use(6 button, 8 button, etc.)

I am going to program this in Windows for now, but use ImageMagic to create the image to eventually port over to the Pi. Basically would program similar to what you have (if it is ok to reference your code) and just create the images, but add the additional data.

Once the static image is create, will re-visit my code to have it come up before the game starts. Also thinking about just creating the image and putting the snapshots in the Screenshots or Covers folder. I have downloaded video snapshots and marquees, so the gamelist.xml file would already have a path to get the Screenshots or Covers and can just place the image on the theme instead. Would be less programming and just create the images.

In any case, will start on this over the weekend. Hopefully will have something functional by the end of the weekend.

Texacate

@janderclander14 and @TheRealSmilebit,

Sorry for the late replies. I'm not getting much hobby time these days... Feel free to reference/reuse any of my code in your projects. I'm always interested in seeing what folks do to improve it.

ImALegendKiller

The work everyone is doing in this thread is impressive! I am working on my first RetroPie build and currently just going through trying to figure out how to get games running. One problem I've noticed is that I have no idea what the buttons do! In MAME I know I can just hit TAB and change the controls, but for FBA the controls seem to be all over the place, and the controls in the FBA retroarch core and the pifba are not matching up, so games I run with the pi version are hard to play.

This is all to say, I hope you all will make your results available once you finish, as it'd be sweet to get a quick glance at what the default controls were just before I jumped into a game so I'd at least have an idea of what to press and hopefully remap it if I needed to. Keep up the good work!

paffley

Interesting read this! thanks!

Just a quick question...

Is there anyway to edit runcommand so it freezes and then you have an option of 'A to load game' and 'B to cancel and return to gamelist' please?

TheRealSmilebit

@Texacate Thanks...I kinda hit a brick wall and walked away for this particular project for a while. Just overthinking and making it too complicated.

I did, however, use your code to make LCD Marquee. Found a 14.9" stretched monitor and added to my Arcade1up mod.

But I will get back to the original idea in the New Year. Have some other projects I need to finish up and will revisit this one.

fishman

@Kjarkur
Did ever complete it?

fishman

@Kjarkur said in Show Control Panel Layout before game starts in RetroPie, just like Arcade1UP does.:

@BJRetro the video shows my own regamebox distribution. I can make a fork on github.com. Of course it can be done with retropie easily. General steps are this

create the button mapping pictures in advance

put a picture viewer in runcommand-onstart.sh

I have used here a own picture viewer based on SDL. Reason was that I wanted to use something like quit on all keys and quit after 10 seconds.

Sorry I meant to quote. Did you ever make a fork of this on gethub? And how do you set this up? And have been looking for something like this for my raspberry pi retropie.

MISTERHOLLYW00D

I had to edit the Joy2Key.py file to allow the user of the Start button so the player could exit the screen using the Player 1 button.

What line would you have to edit

johnodon

Apologies for digging up an old topic...

@TheRealSmilebit If you are still around, can you detail what changes you made to joy2key.py that allowed you to map a single button to close the launch image and start the game? There are a few of us that would love to have this functionality!

TIA!

John

johnodon

@BJRetro said in Show Control Panel Layout before game starts in RetroPie, just like Arcade1UP does.:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/20030/controller-info-overlay-in-the-game

@BJRetro I actually went this route and it works. I use 2 copies of my game specific bezels...one with a transparent background (gameplay) and one with the black background with controls. This makes the transition seamless. However, there are 2 things that make it non-optimal:

1: Requires the use of a hotkey combination to change overlays. A single button solution would be preferred.
2. The game is not paused when you display the controls bezel. I was thinking of adding a 'pause_toggle' command before the 'overlay_next' command but haven't found any instances of success. See this thread as an example: https://forums.libretro.com/t/overlay-format-documentation/230

ronbo85

@mitu Any progress on this? I'm in the process of generating all my channel screens (per @Texacate ). His work is great, but I want joysticks, and spinners, and... ;)

mitu

@ronbo85 Not sure what you mean ?