Demo mode (random starting of games) for ES/Retropie-menu
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I always wanted a ES demo mode (auto and random starting of games) within Emulationstation. After some searching I found a script (https://github.com/comac2k/NoGui) which didn't work out of the box, and not the way I wanted it to work.
I debugged, converted the script from Python2 to 3 and made it work as a menu item in the retropie- menu. When a game is randomly started, controller or keyboard input gives you control (and terminates the demo mode script).
https://github.com/mth75/retropie-demomode
Have fun!!!
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@mth75 Thanks a lot! Where should I put the files so that they appear in the Retropie menu?
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@janderclander14 said in Demo mode (random starting of games) for ES/Retropie-menu:
@mth75 Thanks a lot! Where should I put the files so that they appear in the Retropie menu?
copy:
- rungames.py to /usr/share/pyshared
(Copy the file first to your home folder (pi/temp for example) and then to /usr/share/pyshared with sudo mc (midnight commander).)
- demomode.sh to /home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu
- demomode.png to /home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/icons
and copy the content of the gamelist.xml into the existing gamelist.xml in /home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu
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@mth75 When I try to copy rungames.py to pyshared folder WinSCP gives me an error "Permission denied" what am I doing wrong?
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Copy the file first to your home folder (pi/temp for example) and then to /usr/share/pyshared with sudo mc (midnight commander).
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hi, i love this "plugin" or whatever you call it (i'm not a coder ;-))
is there any way to increase the time for the games?
thanks for making this awesome demo-mode!
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i would assume just simply editing the
INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT = 60
in the rungames.py file should do the trick
if that's not it ... there's numerous "time" comments in the rungames.py file you could edit. Just backup the file first, make some edits and see what changes take effect.
P.S. i'm not a coder either ... but editing stuff, and observing the changes is simple enough to do :)
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thanks for the tip
P.S. i'm not a coder either ... but editing stuff, and observing the changes is simple enough to do :)
that is ALWAYS my approach ;-)
i'll try this tonite and will give feedback
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Very thanks
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I need some help if possible.. I installed this and it loads a random game but it doesn't change game after 60 seconds. It just stays on the game till I exit out. Anyone know why this happens? I have not altered the files in any way and they are placed in the correct location.
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@mth75 Huge thanks for this! It works perfectly and I've wanted this feature on my pi for a long time now.
I just have a small issue that I hope is an easy fix. I've scraped all my games, so inside each of my rom folders is a folder named "media" which houses all relative images/videos and it's corresponding gamelist.xml. Your script will sometimes try to open "media" or "gamelist.xml" as a rom, which will load a black screen for 60 seconds before launching the next game.
Is there a way to prevent it from loading folders/files that aren't roms? Thank you again for this awesome feature!
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@maplestory said in Demo mode (random starting of games) for ES/Retropie-menu:
mes try to open "media" or "gamelist.xml" as a rom, which will load a black screen for 60 seconds before launching the next game.
Nice to hear maplestory! Yes, this should be possible by excluding (you should even be able to do this is yourself). I will look into it!
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This sounds like it has the exact functionality I've been thinking about for a while, so I'd love to get this to work. I have tried to follow the install instructions as closely as possible but am seeing the same behavior as @pootis-spencer , namely that the Demo Mode launcher WILL load a random game but it doesn't cycle to a new game.
Perhaps of note: I did not have a gameslist.xml in my /home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu directory. I just copied the supplied gameslist.xml file to that location...All other steps in the install guide were followed to the letter.
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Thanks for making this script, it works brilliantly!
I don't suppose there's a way to trigger demo mode when the screensaver starts?
I know you can put scripts into emulationstation/scripts/screensaver-start/ but so far I can't get it to run the py.
I have a weird feeling this may not be possible due to the file location or lack of button input but I am very much a n00b... happy to be proved wrong!
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@mth75 This is a very cool option to have. However, I'm seeing the same behaviour as previously reported: never cycling to another game.
Also, right before launching the game, my screen shows a pkill failed message, stating 'operation not permitted'. Are these two issues related and is there a fix? Thanks in advance.
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@weirdh I have same issue, no game starts and i get the pkill not permitted message, i followed all the steps.
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@mth75 Please can you help me to resolve this issue? I want so hard this script towork but i get a permission error message when i run the script, then i kicked back to emulationstation. I followed instructions at letter. I use last Retropie version on Rpi4.
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The issue seems to be not within the demoscript. I noticed this behaviour a few months ago, thinking that all the joy2key changes are the culprit. I reverted back to an older image and now I tried again. I updated to the latest retropie-setup and the script works again, although with pkill error. Looking into the pkill proces id resulted in ...!
ps -Flww -p 4762 F S UID PID PPID C PRI NI ADDR SZ WCHAN RSS PSR STIME TTY TIME CMD 5 S root 4762 1 0 80 0 - 5865 - 12284 0 21:09 tty1 00:00:00 python3 /opt/retropie/admin/joy2key/joy2key_sdl.py /dev/input/jsX kcub1 kcuf1 kcuu1 kcud1 0x0a 0x20 0x1b 0x09 kpp knpThe script does not try to close Joy2Key, I think runcommand does?
Anyway: update to the latest RetroPie-Setup, I will try to iron out this annoying error message.
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