Arcade Ambience MP3

Graboid

Hi All,

It would be great that once ES has booted and you are scrollinjg through the menus, that it could pllay one of the Arcade Ambience MP3's located here Arcade Ambience Project to give that 'being in an arcade' feel.

Not sure if possible, but would be a great addition.

Brigane

@Graboid I agree with you that this could be a nice feature. Personally I think that all these mixed sounds are quite annoying. It's just static to my ears. I'm almost certain that the RetroPie building team will make it happen when the time is right :)

synack

I have something set up to play background mp3s while in the ES menus --

install mpg123 (my command line mp3 player of choice)

sudo apt-get install mpg123

make folder to store the mp3s, then copy mp3s here

mkdir /home/pi/bgm

create a script to play the music while ES is running but not retroarch/Kodi

nano /home/pi/bgm.sh

copy/paste the following

#!/bin/bash
while true; do
  RA=$(pgrep retroarch)
  ES=$(pgrep emulationstat)
  PLAYER=$(pgrep mpg123)
  KODI=$(pgrep kodi.bin)

  if [ "$RA" ] || [ ! "$ES" ] || [ "$KODI" ]; then
    pkill mpg123 &>/dev/null
  elif [ ! "$RA" ] && [ ! "$PLAYER" ] && [ ! "$KODI" ] && [ "$ES" ]; then
    SONG=$(ls /home/pi/bgm/*.mp3 | shuf -n1)
    mpg123 -q "$SONG" &
  fi

  sleep 2s
done

set the bgm.sh script to be executable

chmod a+x /home/pi/bgm.sh

Have the script called on startup. Edit your /etc/rc.local and before the exit 0 line, add the following:

/home/pi/bgm.sh &>/dev/null &

150 of my favorite NES chiptunes in (mp3 format) are available at the following location in case anyone is interested:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23611685/open/NES_bgm.zip

meleu

@synack Maybe you can improve your scheme taking advantage of runcommand-onstart and runcommand-onend scripts (avoiding the checking every 2 seconds). ;-)

synack

@meleu Thank you, I was not aware of that part of the system.

Sinistar83

@synack Couple this be setup to play certain sounds on certain sub menus? like the Arcade Ambience for MAME/FBA, and a Nintendo one for NES/SNES, or is this only play in the main ES menus?

synack

@Sinistar83 As far as I'm aware, ES doesn't provide an external indicator to tell you what menu set it's currently on, so proactively changing the mp3 is probably not possible. However, using the runcommand-onend script that @meleu mentions, you can read the the parameters passed to it and determine if you're existing MAME or something else. From there, you can set the desired tune accordingly -- but of course, only retroactively on exit of a particular emulator. If you're not hopping from system to system constantly, this could be a worthwhile solution.

I've got my current system boxed up already for a secret santa gift, but plan on building another in a few days. I'll try to revisit this thread and provide some updated instructions.

detron

@Brigane I am with you, would like to see this, and agree that the best execution of this would be by the build team, however, I do understand that there are probably higher priorities than this.

MapleStory

@synack Just tried your script and I still can't get music to play. I copied all the code line for line and pasted it via Putty. Is there a step missing or a mistake anywhere in the code itself?

backstander

@MapleStory
You also need to make the script executable:

chmod +x /home/pi/bgm.sh

MapleStory

@backstander said in Arcade Ambience MP3:

chmod +x /home/pi/bgm.sh

That did the trick, huge thanks for that! Just one last thing. Is there some way to lower music volume to say, 70%? The music comes out blasting sometimes after playing a game. haha

backstander

@MapleStory

There's an alternate RetroPie BGM python script by @Livewire that has an option to set a volume and fade out & in:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/347/background-music-continued-from-help-support

I believe all he is doing is added mixer.music.set_volume(70); to set the volume to 70%

I'm not much of a python programmer so I'm not sure if you'd need to run sudo apt-get install python-pygame first for this to work or not.

synack

It looks like @Livewire put some thought into his setup, definitely worth checking out.

However, I'm probably going to stick with what I know. Using the runcommand-onend.sh script mentioned earlier in the thread, another quick and easy method for BGM would be the following (and doesn't require checking for various processes every couple of seconds)

edit /etc/rc.local and insert the following before the "exit 0" line

(sleep 10; sudo -u pi mpg123 -Z /home/pi/bgm/*.mp3 >/dev/null 2>&1) &

change the sleep time as needed before music starts playing
2) edit/create /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh and add the following

pkill -STOP mpg123

edit/create /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onend.sh and add the following

pkill -CONT mpg123

make sure both scripts are executable

chmod a+x /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh
chmod a+x /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onend.sh

If you wanted to play music based on the system you're exiting, instead of adding the command above to runcommand-onend.sh, you can add a check like the following and then play mp3s from the desired directory

if [[ $1 == *mame* ]]; then
  pkill mpg123
  mpg123 -Z /path/to/mame/mp3s/*.mp3 >/dev/null 2>&1 &
else
  pkill -CONT mpg123
fi

df13

@synack I like your script a lot since it's just an mp3 player in the background. However, I had an idea.
Although ES doesn't detect what menu you're on, the theme should detect it right? If so, would it be possible to alter the .xml of the theme and tell it to play a certain folder of bg music?

I know very little about programming so I could be way off, but it's just an idea.
Thanks for the script by the way!

synack

@df13 Unfortunately no, it doesn't work like that since the music playing is completely external. If ES accessed the individual XML files every time a new system was selected it would be possible using the 'last accessed time' of the files, but ES loads all of the files upon startup.

kcsims

when running arcade games using pifba emulator, the music doesn't stop playing...any fix?

deadeye

@synack This is actually a really great and simple solution... But I'm not sure if I'm going crazy or not, but it doesn't seem to kill mpg123 if I boot up Kodi. Not sure why that would be.

synack

@deadeye I don't know either. Is it only with Kodi? I also use it and have confirmed it works on my side.

Make sure you're using the latest version of the runcommand script and ensure /opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh contains pkill -STOP mpg123

deadeye

@synack thanks - yeah, it works for everything else. I tried both iterations you posted. The first didn't kill when loading up n64/kodi, the latter just kodi. I'll try updating and see if that changes anything. I'll post back to confirm. Cheers.

deadeye

@synack Ah, figured it out. It's only an issue if KODI is launched as an emulator. If I launch it through the Ports, it kills the music.