I miss MAME Random Of the Week

[thelostsoul]

Any chance bringing https://retropie.org.uk/forum/category/16/mame-random-of-the-week back to life? I loved the concept of it and the little chats and challenges we had, the discovery and read ups about the games.

A while ago I put up a little (very veeeery basic) website as a hommage to MAME ROW and named it GAME ROW: https://thingsiplay.eu.pythonanywhere.com/game-random-of-the-week It randomly chooses a game per system each week, without interaction and puts it up. That is all it does. One can use the text only output to make use of it with external applications or read the html page. I am not suggesting to make a connection to the page or anything, just wanted show it as a fan of the concept.

But this is not the same without a community and without the interaction. I wasn't very active lately and lot of things changes for me. So I did not see why it died off. I can only assume of multiple reasons, but that is actually not what I want discuss here. I'm just interested into bringing it back if anyone wants it. And what would it take to do so?

[sleve_mcdichael]

@thelostsoul I'm down. I think I came around just as the MAME ROW activity was winding down.

[pjft]

@thelostsoul This was super fun indeed. I imagine that it just lost traction because people moved on to other things because, unfortunately, life gets in the way, at least in my case.

BUT, this is actually a surprisingly, nifty input for something completely unrelated that I'm trying to solve. I'll tag you in a new thread I'll be picking up in the coming weeks, and I look forward to your inputs there.

On a related note, though I know that a lot of this was about the actual discussions and chats rather than the games, I also have a script (on my RetroPie installation) that randomly creates a collection when I run it with some new games for me to try out. Here's the code in case it helps - I have it added to the RetroPie system scripts in ~/RetroPie/retropiemenu/

sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/*.zip | shuf -n 2 >  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls -d /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/daphne/*.daphne /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/*.uae | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gba/*.zip /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gba/*.gba /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gba/*.GBA | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-advmame/*.zip | shuf -n 2 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro/*.zip | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mastersystem/*.zip | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/megadrive/*.zip | shuf -n 2 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/*.zip | shuf -n 2 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/neogeo/*.zip | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pcengine/*.chd /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pcengine/*.zip | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/psx/*.PBP /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/psx/*.cue | shuf -n 2 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/sega32x/*.bin /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/sega32x/*.zip /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/segacd/*.chd | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes/*.smc /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes/*.sfc /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/snes/*.zip | shuf -n 2 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zxspectrum/*.z80 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zxspectrum/*.Z80 /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zxspectrum/*.TAP /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zxspectrum/*.tap /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/zxspectrum/*.tzx | shuf -n 2 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gb/*.zip /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gb/*.gb /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gbc/*.zip /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gameandwatch/*.mgw | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/dreamcast/*.chd /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/dreamcast/*.cdi | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nds/*.zip /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gamegear/*.zip /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ngpc/*.zip /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/c64/*.crt /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/*.sh /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/pc/*.sh /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/wonderswancolor/*.zip /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/psp/*.cso | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo ls /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amiga/*.lha | shuf -n 1 >>  ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-+today\ selection.cfg
sudo killall omxplayer.bin;sudo killall emulationstation;bash /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh

[thelostsoul]

@pjft I no longer use RetroPie on a Raspberry Pi, which may come to a surprise as someone asks for revival of the sub-community. In fact, it shows why it was valuable to me, because it does not matter much where I play. The rules of MAME ROW states that we could play on other platforms too. :-) I now play on RetroArch on a Linux PC and Steam Deck. But to be honest, I would have loved to mess around with RetroPie just for the fun sake again. Is the Raspberry Pi 3 still a viable option? Because that's the last one I purchased.^^

Which also means that I cannot use your little script at the moment, but I can see exactly what it is doing. Looking through it, I wonder if you really need sudo (admin rights) to list folder and create the .cfg files?

[pjft]

@thelostsoul yes, you and @mitu can all make me feel bad for the liberal use of sudo when I shouldn't :) You're right, I don't need sudo. I might have originally saved the collection files in a folder where the pi user didn't have write permissions, so that was that! Or I might have just been lazy about it - also likely.

Yeah, there's no issue with the platform you use, by all means - though you can install RetroPie on a Linux machine as well! A Pi3 is certainly a viable option, though with the Pi4 and the Pi5 - and especially with you playing on a Linux PC and a Steam Deck - the systems it supported are slightly self-contained by now.

No worries, I'm thinking of some developments on the EmulationStation front and this was a fun input that I had not considered. When I get around to it and publish them here I'll tag you.

Cheers, have a great weekend!