Attract Mode with RetroPie - Alternative to EmulationStation

Rion

@Finhead said in Attract Mode with RetroPie - Alternative to EmulationStation:

@senkun said:

@Rion said:

Sorry to ask this again..

With this setup can you have both emulation station and Attract on the same image.

Attract started from Emulationstation,
Emulationstation started from Attract?

Something like Attract Mode on the homescreen in Emulation station and in Attract Mode?

Yes, Floob built this image with Retropie as base, so it contains both ES and AM.

As it is now, when you boot up you log in to terminal. Then you can choose either to start ES by entering emulationstation from the command line, or start AM by entering xinit attract.

I believe you can have AM started from within ES as an sub-menu item under Ports, if you set it up that way. And with the new changes from Retropie 3.5^ it might be possible to have AM as a custom menu.

I have not played with this yet but I do believe you can start ES from within AM. AM provides an exit option where you can set a command, so perhaps it could be as simple as setting exit command to "emulationstation"

So yes, I think it would be entirely possible to autoboot into either AM or ES, and then launch into the other frontend from within each other.

Have a look here for more info;
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/issues/1071

IT's not as easy as "emulationstation" , I tried that. It needs to have a script writen I believe to take it to the command prompt and then "emulationstation" I have no idea how to do this so that's where I have stopped my search.
I wanted to exit to ES to run Daphne games since you can set them all up in one emulator, on AM you need to setup individual emulators for each game.

BTW AM should boot direct if you change your profile.d/10-emulationsation.sh to xinit attract

Hopeful that some bin/bash guru can solve this. I don't mind if it drops to the console with a few lines and then starts attract mode from within Emulationstation and the other way around.

Then you can choose what you want to starts first with profile.d/10-emulationsation.sh or 10-default-frontend.sh

zerojay

https://github.com/zerojay/RetroPie-Extra/tree/master/scriptmodules/supplementary

Shakz

Gui method of switching to and from emulationstation and attract mode:
I came up with a solution for this a few days ago.
I wrote a quick and dirty script to help you setup the same thing on your pi.
This will create a "scripts" section on attract mode. In there it will give you a script to reset the default front end and reboot.
"Launch EmulationStation to Configure Controllers"
This will put you in emulationstation after the reboot.
Under RetroPie I added a script to put you back into attract mode.
" Switch To Attract Mode"

To install just run the following on your pi. It only takes a second. Feel free to look at the code. Its nothing fancy.

cd
wget http://eazyhax.com/downloads/attract/installswitchAM.sh
chmod 755 installswitchAM.sh
./installswitchAM.sh

Hope this helps yall!

Finhead

@Shakz said in Attract Mode with RetroPie - Alternative to EmulationStation:

Gui method of switching to and from emulationstation and attract mode:
I came up with a solution for this a few days ago.
I wrote a quick and dirty script to help you setup the same thing on your pi.
This will create a "scripts" section on attract mode. In there it will give you a script to reset the default front end and reboot.
"Launch EmulationStation to Configure Controllers"
This will put you in emulationstation after the reboot.
Under RetroPie I added a script to put you back into attract mode.
" Switch To Attract Mode"

To install just run the following on your pi. It only takes a second. Feel free to look at the code. Its nothing fancy.

cd
wget http://eazyhax.com/downloads/attract/installswitchAM.sh
chmod 755 installswitchAM.sh
./installswitchAM.sh

Hope this helps yall!

Just tried this out, it works great for a one click solution. But it's much faster to just exit to command line and type "xinit attract" or "emulationstaion" no need for a full reboot.
Is there a way to make the script run from command line rather than a full reboot?

Rion

@Shakz

Great job man!

This is exactly what i needed.
The less i have to pull up the keyboard the better.

Great for my son to :)

robertybob

@Shakz Thanks, I'll give this a go. Just installed it via RetroPie-Extra but forgot to install X ! Whoops!

Floob

@robertybob
Have you run Attract Mode at least once before installing the script?

@Shakz Is it ok if I include your script in my next image?

Shakz

@Floob Absolutly man. Thanks for all you contribute to this project. I use your stuff all the time. Glad you can use some of mine.

Thanks everyone else. Glad the script is working out.

Shakz

@Finhead Well the problem is that if you call a script from x then kill x....the script dies. Attract runs in X.....I dont see any issues from the emulationstation side.....its nice and clean. Gotta figure a way around it. Perhaps calling it with nohup would work?

Finhead

@Shakz said in Attract Mode with RetroPie - Alternative to EmulationStation:

@Finhead Well the problem is that if you call a script from x then kill x....the script dies. Attract runs in X.....I dont see any issues from the emulationstation side.....its nice and clean. Gotta figure a way around it. Perhaps calling it with nohup would work?

Ah makes sense I never thought of that, that's too bad would cut the switch time in half or less. Regarless works great, it'll be super handy for setup on a new install for sure.

Floob

@Shakz
Thanks very much, I'll add credit in the readme. Should have an image this weekend with a lot more tweaks.

Floob

New version released v0.2
Download: http://smartretro.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8277
Video:

Version History
10th April 2016 - v0.1

First Version

16th April 2016 - v0.2

RetroPie 3.7
Attract Mode 2.0.0 - 15th April 2016
Shaders configured for RetroArch emulators
AM configs pre-configured to match most RetroPie emulators
Artwork directories created in the roms directories of the systems
Extra AM layouts/themes pre-installed
Exit to from AM to ES and vice versa
Fixed keyboard hang (hacked boot delay)
Added boot script by Shakz (to flip between ES and AM)
Hide motd and raspberry logo appearing
Stop white screen with X boot info showing
Selected new version of Robospin as default theme

To Do

Auto resize image partitions
Remove X console output for clean boot
Work out if runcommand from RetroPie will play nicely with AM
Other Stuff

Finhead

@Floob said in Attract Mode with RetroPie - Alternative to EmulationStation:

New version released v0.2
http://smartretro.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8277

Version History
10th April 2016 - v0.1

First Version

16th April 2016 - v0.2

RetroPie 3.7

Attract Mode 2.0.0 - 15th April 2016

Shaders configured for RetroArch emulators

AM configs pre-configured to match most RetroPie emulators

Artwork directories created in the roms directories of the systems

Extra AM layouts/themes pre-installed

Exit to from AM to ES and vice versa

Fixed keyboard hang (hacked boot delay)

Added boot script by Shakz (to flip between ES and AM)

Hide motd and raspberry logo appearing

Stop white screen with X boot info showing

Selected new version of Robospin as default theme

To Do

Auto resize image partitions

Remove X console output for clean boot

Work out if runcommand from RetroPie will play nicely with AM

Other Stuff

Nice! This should make it super slick for new installs. Is Daphne one of the emulators pre-configured ?

senkun

@Floob Thanks for v2! Looks very polished with all the updates incorporated, gonna put this in another new Pi3 incoming. but I'm sticking to the v1 I have on the current Pi, weeding out MAME and have spent ages matching wheels and vidsnaps. It's running really well now.

I made some dirty hacks to suppress X white screen/boot info, but I'm sure you have way more elegant solutions done. And I never did fix the keyboard hang. I would like to incorporate your fixes into my v1 build, could you please share the steps you made to fix them?:

Fixed keyboard hang (hacked boot delay)

Hide motd and raspberry logo appearing

Stop white screen with X boot info showing

Edit: Just watched your video, you mentioned a 10 sec boot delay, would it be as simple as boot_delay=10 in config.txt? That would fix the keyboard hang?

Edit2: Well I just got round to trying boot_delay and of course, no such luck didn't think it would be that easy... so what was the fix?

Edit3: I don't know what you did @Floob but couldn't wait and messed around, added a sleep to /etc/rcS.d/S03keyboard-setup which seems to have fixed it. Just seems so kludgy, but I guess it'd do for now.

robertybob

@Floob Brilliant work!!

zerojay

It would be cool to incorporate some of these changes directly into the installation script I have in my repo. I was planning on doing it manually but if we can save time, all the better.

Floob

@senkun Sorry about the delay, I've tried to fish out most of my notes.

I 'fixed' the keyboard hang with a sleep delay in here: /etc/profile.d/10-emulationstation.sh
Although I think the waitusb value in cmdline.txt may be helpful here, I've not tried it out.

The motd can be removed by blanking out /etc/motd, the logo can be removed with logo.nologo in the cmdline.txt
Also change console=tty1 to console=tty2 in there.

I'm afraid my 'fix' for the X white screen showing is the same as yours with the bg values. I'm still trying to do that in a better way.

Floob

@robertybob Thanks very much. If you get a chance to test it I'll happily try to incorporate changes.

Floob

@zerojay said in Attract Mode with RetroPie - Alternative to EmulationStation:

It would be cool to incorporate some of these changes directly into the installation script I have in my repo. I was planning on doing it manually but if we can save time, all the better.

The main ones are in the ~/.attract directory, so that could be copied across wholesale. Its usually not generated until AM first run. Besides the points I've put above to senkun its just edits to the system specific retroarch.cfg files - but you wouldnt want to overwrite users existing ones.
Plus I've added and edited Shaks script from above.
I've also used davejs latest version of the shader he wrote, and I'm tempted to add curvature by default, so thats now hooked up to the retroarch emulators by default. The Retroarch emulators I've configured in AM have also had the artwork directories created in ~/RetroPie/roms/{systemname}.
There have also been various AM themes pre-installed and the robospin beta added by default.
Hmm, now I write it down there is a fair bit. I'll try a write a more formal change doc to make it easier to monitor.

Cheers,

Floob.

Floob

@Finhead said in Attract Mode with RetroPie - Alternative to EmulationStation:

Nice! This should make it super slick for new installs. Is Daphne one of the emulators pre-configured ?

Sorry, no, but it should be quick to add in as a new emulator in AM, I'll get that in the next image.