Hyperspin and mala themes when using attract (instead of emulation station)

[joyrider3774]

Hi Guys,

this is a recap of what's been circulating on the facebook groups for people using attract instead of emulation station.

HYPERSPIN THEMES

You see a quick example of how it looks like in a video i made here (move to minute 1 to see it) :

on the facebook groups (retropie) you can see more video's of gameboy & cps 1 & 2 examples. I'll do a bigger video's tonight perhaps as i have cps 1 2 3 already set up and fixed non working themes (due to flash swf files not begin displayed correct among other things)

This is what you need to do to get it working.... (i started of the motion blue image)

Either update attract from sources or get the hyperspin.nut file from
the official github repository for attract here: https://github.com/mickelson/attract it's located in config/loader/ folder, then click on the file then click on raw and you have the nut file.

the correct location is not /home/pi at least it's not for my install but it is /usr/local/share/attract/config/loader/hyperspin.nut the user pi does not have rights to overwrite it so you first have to ssh to pi and type sudo chmod 777 /usr/local/share/attract/config/loader/hyperspin.nu to give all rights on the file. Then you can use any file transfer method to overwrite the file.

You need to create one directory named "Hyperspin" in the layouts folder of attract (/home/pi/.attract/layouts. This folder should contain a directory "Main Menu" so "Hyperspin\Main Menu" where the subdirectory themes is located so "Hyperspin\Main Menu\Themes" in this directory you place the zipped themes for the main displays menu, you also need to be sure "enable hyperspin layout for systems menu is enabled in layout options". Then for each system (Display name) you have in your attract setup you need to create a subdirectory for example for if your display is named "MAME (Mame4all) you need a directory "Hyperspin\MAME (Mame4all)" again with a Themes subdirectory. In this subdirectory you can place a default.zip that contains the layout for each game you dont have a specific theme for as well as themes per game named as romame.zip. Then you need to set your mame4all layout to hyperspin as well as the layout for the main displays menu.
This way you keep subdirectories per system as well as can have default themes per system ( display name).
To make it more clear here's an example directory structure i'm using with the motion blue image
layouts\Hyperspin
layouts\Hyperspin\Main Menu
layouts\Hyperspin\Main Menu\Themes
layouts\Hyperspin\MAME (Mame4all)
layouts\Hyperspin\MAME (Mame4all)\Themes
layouts\Hyperspin\MAME (Mame4all)\Themes\Default.zip
layouts\Hyperspin\MAME (Mame4all)\Themes\1943.zip
layouts\Hyperspin\MAME (Mame4all)\Themes\1941.zip
layouts\Hyperspin\Arcade Classics
layouts\Hyperspin\Arcade Classics\Themes\Default.zip
layouts\Hyperspin\Arcade Classics\Themes\1942.zip
etc default.zip is always the default theme for that system you see and this can be diffrent from what you see in the main menu and 1941.zip etc is a game specific theme. so it's basically always
layouts\Hyperspin\Main Menu\Themes\<Display Name>.zip
layouts\Hyperspin<Display Name>\Themes\Default.zip
layouts\Hyperspin<Display Name>\Themes\<romname>.zip
<Romname> is the name listed in your romlist and <Display Name> your display name.

and the themes you can get from hyperspin site. Be sure to install hyperspin on a pc as well so you can use hypertheme editor as some themes contain flash swf that either slow down in attract mode or do not work correctly so you'll need to recreate those themes with it

Some themes don't load correctly when not modified it's because they have invalid XML inside the Theme.xml file have a look at the attaced screenshot it has a double endtag which is incorrect, remove the 1st one and the theme works. if you see other themes not loading do the same check Example themes that have this problem are turkey shoot (tshoot.zip), vsav2.zip vampire saviour 2 and many more

MALA THEMES

example video here (move to second 45 to see the themes)

you can get mala themes on the mala pages for example i tried this street fighter one http://malafe.net/index.php?page=layouts&subpage=custom_sf_mala_layouts (you can view other themes by clicking the letters one the lower left on that page) also google reports the site is dangerous but i could not see anything dangerous could be a false positive. when you download that zip there are actually 3 themes inside it. you need to do this to make it work :
first open the SFII-CUSTOM-RED-BKGROUND.mll file as i'm using this as a test and look for the line that has the path to the background image in that case it's "BGImage=C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Pictures\SFII_-Piper_Revised_3.jpg" change it to "BGImage=SFII-Piper_Revised_3.jpg" next check the subfolder "SFII-CUSTOM-RED-BKGROUND" which has the SFII-Piper_Revised_3.jpg background. Copy this file to the same location as your mala .mll file so we basically removed the path from it and only left the filename. Next creat a new subfolder in the layouts folder from attract on your raspberry pi for example malatest and copy "SFII-_Piper_Revised_3.jpg" and "SFII-CUSTOM-RED-BKGROUND.mll" to that new folder on the pi. then on the pi edit a display and change the layout to malatest. Next goto that display and you should see the mala theme :)

the themes are fairly basic compared to hyperspin one, but perhaps some like that in attract mode. If you repeat the steps above (removing folder names from the *.mll file and place the image in the same folder as the *.mll and copying those files to a new subfolder under layouts from attract) then most themes should work

[joyrider3774]

as promised here's a video showing more mame game themes running on my pi using attract. I took an account on the hyperspin site to be able to get the themes. Most work but about 10% don't because they either use big flash swf files or the flash swf files are not displayed correctly in attract. What i do then is create artwork from the swf files by taking screenshots when the flash file is being played in internet explorer and edit using jasc paint shop pro (7). then use hypertheme editor to recreate a(n altered version) of theme. Had to fix about 25 already but can't remember how many games i actually checked. anyway here is the video :

[Capeman]

Interesting that people can integrate 3rd party frontends into Retropie, but i would question the stability and usefulness. Those 3rd party images tend to have all kinds of band-aids to make things work and it makes support an absolute nightmare... let alone the fact that pre-made images with attractmode are the most potent noob-bait out there, and when they have a problem and see the word "retropie" they show up here (and we all know how that usually ends up, haha)...

The worst part is the new users are delving into the most complicated thing ever by starting with "Rey's Image" or "Motion Blue" instead of doing the work themselves and starting with the retropie img from the official site like they should. Raspberry pi is a learning platform afterall... people just want instant gratification. I've hung around those retropie facebook groups, but left most due to lack of real substance from the user bases.

On an opinion note: I've always thought that hyperspin and attractmode wheel themes look cluttered and confusing, they just don't have the elegance and simplicity of a good ES theme... but that is just personal opinion and up for discussion, haha.

I know i got WAYYYYYY off subject, you were just offering a how-to to get things running and here i am getting all political. Pardon me on that, haha.

[joyrider3774]

i kinda like it but you are right though not many take the time to read up on something or even take the time to do everything themselves. The thing i like about attract is that it loads faster than emulationstation (at startup). Another thing i like about attract is the Squirrel scripting for layouts you can easily add a lot of things by "programming" a layout and even extend functionality not sure if that's possible with emulation station (the hyperspin theme support is all done in squirel and the attract api / functions available for themes). About the themes some are indeed slower but i fix them and it's indeed rather busy on the screen.

I still haven't decided if i'm going to stay with them could be i use it just for the main menu and use the simulacra theme i modified (to display artwork / cartridge artwork) for selecting a game. My previous setup was using emulationstation with a very old version of retropie. I kinda have more fun getting things to work and messing around with it than actually playing games.

The reason i took the motion blue image (which does not contain any roms btw) is that it did have the romlists and display names set up just like emumovies and hyperspin names them so that was an easier starting point. I don't like the images floating around either people should just set up themsevels (that's why i documented what i had to do to get it to work for others). I was fairly active in the dingoo community once, it's an obscure handheld from china that got hacked to run linux and one could program / port things to it. I ended up quiting that scene because people did not even take the time to download the binaries and install them themselves, they started makeing prebuild images with all kind of games (not roms but actuall games) and start spreading those while it was so easy to just add whatever you liked yourselve. I have the same opinion about all the other prebuild images circulating with retropie. So it's a problem that already existed before the raspberry pi or even android for that matter become popular. I guess some people don't see the pi as a learning platform and just want to play games or use it as a media player

edit: I removed the retropie text from youtube's video title and just made it "attract - mame hyperspin theme's" in the end attract is not pi specific it can run on linux / windows pc's as well.

[Kischa]

@Capeman

Second this:

On an opinion note: I've always thought that hyperspin and attractmode wheel themes look cluttered and confusing, they just don't have the elegance and simplicity of a good ES theme... but that is just personal opinion and up for discussion, haha.