MiSTer Super Attract Mode (SAM) is now available - the first game screensaver for your MiSTer!

[LamerDeluxe]

Looks like we're close to merging test branch with main.

@LamerDeluxe PSX is integrated with this version of SAM. I guess not having PSX installed will throw the error then. Got to do more testing on Monday when I'm back at the office.

Thanks for all your help guys.

I have had PSX updates installed since the core worked with one memory module. Starting a single core from the SAM menu didn't work for any of the cores, they all threw the rbf not found error.

I'll do some more testing.

EDIT: PSX is working here. Started it from ssh to test it (MiSTer_SAM_on.sh start psx). And Neo Geo is working as well. This is fantastic.

I'll create a pull request for a more recent, better looking, version of the TTY2OLED support.

EDIT2: Pull request made

For some reason the SAM script doesn't work if I copy it to MiSTer directly, using FileZilla (binary mode), I get a file not found error when trying to run it. Editing the existing script with FileZilla does work.

[mrchrister]

I haven't looked at the menu yet. Good catch, I'll fix that! Thanks for your updates to ttyoled. I commented on the PR before reading this, so just ignore what I said there Thanks for working on this, I will merge on Monday when I'm back at the office.

[Sigismond0]

IGNORE THIS POST. LOTS OF TESTING YIELDED NOTHING. POST WITH MEANINGFUL FINDINGS INCOMING!

Alright, boatload more testing here. Highlights in the post, SAM files and more detailed note sin attachments.

• Wiping SAM (leaving tmp), reinstalling main branch worked as expected. I set arcade only, then updated to test, it shuffled those OK. But when I then shuffled all cores, the first time it tried to load an arcade, it failed.
• Wiping SAM, reinstalling straight to test branch freezes immediately on first arcade core, even when shuffling arcade only.
• Trying to replicate the first bullet point, I did a wipe, install main branch, test, switch to test branch with arcade shuffling only. This time it just failed to ever launch a game. Monitor says it tried to launch an arcade game and failed.
• This time I wiped SAM, deleted _arcade, ran update_all to rebuild my structure. Install main branch, shuffle all cores. Now I'm on stable and it failed to switch to an arcade and just froze. (This one really threw me for a loop. WTF.)
• Wipe SAM, reinstall main. Make following changes to fresh ini: Reduce timers, enable TTY, set USB0 for CD cores. Hard reboot. Shuffle everything. Arcade fails to launch.

Every time an arcade game fails to launch, it's the same thing when watching from Monitor mode. It shows something like this, but MiSTer just stays on the same core. Monitor does not show a countdown for next game like it should.

Code: Select all

 Starting now on the MiSTer Arcade: Gyruss
Setting up watches.
Watches established.

At this point, I'm pretty baffled. At first the stable branch worked and test failed, and that was 100% consistent. But now both fail after doing the update_all reset. I'm clearing out the .MIsterSam folder in Scripts, deleting the SAM related files in tmp, etc. Arcade cores all launch just fine from the menu, and now we're even on a 100% fresh update_all build.

Any other ideas on temp files or something that might be clogging things up. At this point the only next step I see is a complete re-image.

[Sigismond0]

After that big mess, I did one more try before deciding I just have to wipe everything. Only thing I could think of is that I was making several ini changes at a time (timers, TTY, USB0 paths for CD cores, adding PSX). This time I took it exactly one step at a time. Full step by step notes below:

• Wipe SAM
• Cold reboot
• Copy freshly download MiSTer_SAM-ON.sh
• Install main SAM branch
• Edit the new .ini, only changing the timers to 5/15 (note that this means CD cores will be skipped)
• Cold reboot
• Shuffling works fine, hit several arcade games over the course of a few minutes
• Edit ini to set test branch
• Cold reboot
• Run SAM from scripts menu, let it update
• Cold reboot
• Shuffling works fine (Core menu always stayed showing on NES core. Didn't happen in other cores.). Waited for at least three arcade games to successfully load. They did. Arcade is now working in test branch.
• Edit ini to set USB0 for CD cores.
• Cold reboot
• Shuffling works fine. Waited for at least three arcade games to successfully load. They did. Both CD consoles now show as well. (Vindicator arcade seemed to be missing a file, and I got a popup showing that. But after the appropriate timeout it then shuffled to Gyruss arcade with no issue.) Arcade still working on test branch.
• Edit ini to enable PSX core and USB0 path for its games.
• Cold reboot.
• Shuffling works fine. Waited for at least three arcade games to successfully load. They did. PSX now shows as well. (Fantasy Zone II arcade left core menu on screen.) Arcade still working on test branch.
• Edit ini to enable TTY2OLED.
• Cold reboot.
• SHUFFLING NOW FAILS ON ARCADE CORES AS BEFORE.
• Edit ini to disale TTY2OLED.
• Cold reboot.
• Shuffling works on arcade again. (Tetris arcade left core menu on.)

What a rollercoaster. Sorry it took so long to nail this one down, but I think we finally got there. TTY2OLED being enabled was to blame.

That leaves us with three outstanding issues now:

• TTY2OLED seems to interfere with arcade shuffling for some reason. In retrospect, this now matches up with my testing ysterday as well--I usually left TTY2OLED off in the main branch since it was broken and enabled as soon as I updated to test branch. This morning I left on TTY2OLED on the main branch, and that's where arcade started failing there as well in the post above. My understanding is that SAM shouldn't do anything to TTY2OLED for arcade cores, as they already pull up game-specific graphics when loaded. Is there a chance the script is getting hung up on trying to send a core/file name to TTY2OLED for arcade, and failing because there is no such thing as a game name? The fact that SAM doesn't even appear to move on to the point of restarting the next game timer, I thing we're likely looking at something like this. And note that we can SKIP when it hangs like this and then show the previously-failing arcade core so I'm guessing the script somehow handles that differently.
• NES games left the core menu up. I did not see that yesterday, or even first thing this morning. Copied out the MGL, and it did the same when loading from menu. If i edit the MGL to delay=2, it does not show the menu. Recommend that change for NES MGLs. Sample MGLs attached. Some arcade games did the same, but I assume that's a MRA issue, and outside the scope of this.
• Directory filters don't appear to work. I had at least one scenario where it loaded a game from a folder with "unsupported" in the name (which is in the default directory filters). This was something in the SNES Satellaview zip, but I wasn't able to grab details before it switched away. I'd seen this yesterday as well, but just now made the connection that this is what was going wrong. Don't know if it's only a ZIP issue, or also on normal folders.

[LamerDeluxe]

[*] Edit ini to enable TTY2OLED.
[*] Cold reboot.
[*] SHUFFLING NOW FAILS ON ARCADE CORES AS BEFORE.
[*] Edit ini to disale TTY2OLED.
[*] Cold reboot.
[*] Shuffling works on arcade again. (Tetris arcade left core menu on.)
[/list]

What a rollercoaster. Sorry it took so long to nail this one down, but I think we finally got there. TTY2OLED being enabled was to blame.

That leaves us with three outstanding issues now:

• TTY2OLED seems to interfere with arcade shuffling for some reason. In retrospect, this now matches up with my testing ysterday as well--I usually left TTY2OLED off in the main branch since it was broken and enabled as soon as I updated to test branch. This morning I left on TTY2OLED on the main branch, and that's where arcade started failing there as well in the post above. My understanding is that SAM shouldn't do anything to TTY2OLED for arcade cores, as they already pull up game-specific graphics when loaded. Is there a chance the script is getting hung up on trying to send a core/file name to TTY2OLED for arcade, and failing because there is no such thing as a game name? The fact that SAM doesn't even appear to move on to the point of restarting the next game timer, I thing we're likely looking at something like this. And note that we can SKIP when it hangs like this and then show the previously-failing arcade core so I'm guessing the script somehow handles that differently.

Hopefully my pull request with the latest updates from Venice will help with this, it waits for the TTY2OLED device to finish before issuing new commands, that might be the problem. I have the exact same experience here of arcade games freezing SAM.

And if not, Venice might be able to figure out what is going wrong.

[mrchrister]

Oh wow, thanks for the thorough test! That should make it easy to fix those remaining issues.

Btw, I added your name to the Thanks section. Really appreciate your work on this!

[Sigismond0]

Super glad to be able to help out. SAM is one of my favorite things about MiSTer right now. I work from home full time, and Twitch/music make for fine backround but get old after long enough exposure. Anything else like Youtube or Netflix is too distracting. I often just leave SAM running all day, and it always shows me something interesting and new whenever I need a breather.

[mrchrister]

Great to hear you are enjoying it
It's similar for me, I have a CRT here in my office displaying random games through SAM. I love looking at pixel art and TV would be too distracting to have on in the background while I'm working.

I changed the delay for NES and updated ttyoled code with LamerDeluxe's changes. I'll look at why the filters are not being applied now.

Edit: Zip so far doesn't have an exclude function, only unpacked roms do... shouldn't be too hard to implement.

All updates from today:

- Changed NES delay to 2
- Added new ttyoled code from LamerDeluxe
- Fixed menu single core selection
- You can now reset SAM from the menu. It deletes all SAM files for you.
- Added zip exclude function
- Merged to main branch

[Sigismond0]

Just at a quick test, and TTY2OLED is giving me some grief after the update. SAM shuffling appears to work great at this point and I don't see anything that stands out (though the exclusion list is hit or miss as to whether it even randomly decides to show).

This update basically breaks TTY2OLED support entirely while SAM is running. If SAM is disabled (or TTY2OLED is turned of in its ini), TTY2OLED works as expected just showing the core graphic. But if I enable it in the SAM ini, TTY2OLED is broken at all times even when SAM is not running. TTY2OLED never even boots into the main MiSTer logo on a system boot if SAM is enabled. Disable SAM and reboot, and everything is OK on the display.

If I boot with SAM disabled and launch it from a monitor, the TTY display immediately clears instead of showing "Welcome to super attract mode". And then nothing ever shuffles. If I issue a skip form terminal, the TTY now says "CMDCLS" but nothing else happens.

Additionally, as far as I'm able to tell I just can't get SAM to even do anything while TTY is enabled in the .ini. It never starts shuffling from the menu, never begins when I try to trigger it manually, etc. As soon as I turn off TTY in the ini, it starts right up.

[mrchrister]

Yeah SAM wasn't working for me either when turning on ttyoled support. I assumed it was because I don't have the device.
I guess we have to wait for @LamerDeluxe to fix the code...

Can you expand a bit on the issue with the exclusion list?

[Sigismond0]

Oh, sorry, no shuffler issue. There was an issue with the exclusion list before on zips, but it sounds like you fixed it. Without going in and doctoring my folder structure, I don't have an easy way of telling whether it's pulling from an excluded folder or not--just wait around long enough and the shuffler will black screen on a game if it hits a bad folder. So it's probably OK, I just need to go rename some folders sometime and see what happens.

[mrchrister]

I tested the exclusion function pretty thoroughly so hopefully it will work without a hitch.

Looks like we have everything working now except ttyoled. I have all parts to put a ttyoled setup together, but i haven't been able to get it working yet. I'll try next week and hopefully can fix the ttyoled code then.

[Xzarian]

How I remove sam? Just delete Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM ?

Also, I noticed it's now creating temporary MGL files to load the game. But could we actually add support for using already created MGL files? For example I have a _Favorites folder with a few hundred files, it would be nice to just point to this folder and load random mgl files from that folder.

[LamerDeluxe]

Also, I noticed it's now creating temporary MGL files to load the game. But could we actually add support for using already created MGL files? For example I have a _Favorites folder with a few hundred files, it would be nice to just point to this folder and load random mgl files from that folder.

Sounds like a good idea, also to limit wearing out the SD card by not writing to it a lot.

[mrchrister]

Very important and should probably be stated on the GH page: SAM does not write ANYTHING to SD! Everything is written to /tmp which is RAM mounted storage, so you don't need to worry about that.

To delete SAM, go to the menu (Launching MiSTer_SAM_on.sh from ssh and pressing Up) and select reset. It will delete all files except MiSTer_SAM_on.sh.

Adding games to favorites through the menu has crossed my mind. It's a great idea and will be added in the future.

@sigismond - Please update your ttyoled to the newest version. After that it should work fine.

[mrchrister]

I just added a feature in test branch that I wanted to work on for quite a while.

Nintendo Disk System support!

The problem with FDS support is that you need to manually skip past the bios screen to see the attract mode. With the help of MBC i believe I found a way.

It would be great if someone could test this feature by using the test branch and then run "MiSTer_SAM_on.sh fds".

If this works for you, I will add this feature to GBA core to skip past the safety warning screen that some games have.

[neogeo81]

i am still having issues with starting one core with NeoGeo. It shows some error messages and skips to arcade cores for some reason.
I use all .neo roms for the Neo Geo core, i don't know if that matters. Does anyone know what the issue could be?

[mrchrister]

Does NeoGeo work when launched directly?
Do you have the following files in the folder?
000-lo.lo
sfix.sfix
sp-s2.sp1 (MVS)
neo-epo.sp1 (AES)
uni-bios.rom

[neogeo81]

What do you mean by directly? Start the console core? Of course, runs like warm butter.

Maybe because i use a lot of folders? see screenshot

[mrchrister]

Lecker, warme Butter

Ok, this is looking like my test setup so using different folders shouldn't be the issue here... Are your roms in /media/fat/Games/NeoGeo ?
Also, have you updated Mister Main to latest version?

Another thing to check is the generated mgl file. After launching Neogeo through SAM, please post the contents of /tmp/SAM_game.mgl so we can see what SAM is trying to launch.

Alternatively, if you update MiSTer_SAM_on.sh, you can use

Code: Select all

MiSTer_SAM_on.sh favorite

to copy the current game playing to your _Favorites folder.

[Sigismond0]

Any required changes to the .ini file for FDS testing? Gave it a quick try, but I'm guessing I need to set up a ROM path or something. If I run with "mister_sam_on.sh fds" it says "Nintendo Disk System Selected!" but then runs other cores.

I tried setting a few different things for "fdspath" assuming that's what we need to do. I tried pointing it to the NES folder, the FDS zip file, and the FDS file without extension. The first two do nothing, and the third just says file doesn't exist when monitoring. I then tried creating a directory with some loose ROMs rather than a zip, and it also does nothing.

Edit: OK so "fds" being in the exclusion list is my issue. Duh. So now launches the core, but I just get a grey screen and no indication that the core is actually trying to load a file. Tested with just a raw MGL for a bit, and can't get FDS to load from an MGL at all so I imagine it's a matter of figuring out the delay/type/index again.

One more quick edit: "mister_sam_on.sh favorite" says it's an invalid command.

[mrchrister]

Strange, fds is excluded for me as well but it still works. My roms are unpacked so it seems like the exclusions are being ignored for unpacked roms. Thanks for the test!
Favorite should work after updating... are you on the latest SAM build (not test branch, just main)?

[Sigismond0]

Yup, updated well after your post.

After the zips failed, I put some unpacked ROMs in /media/fat/games/NES/fds, and it failed. After changing to /media/fat/games/NES/famidis and updating the ini it worked. So at least in my test, it seems like at least for me the "fds" exclusion did cause it to be ignored for unpacked files. I couldn't figure out how to set up a .ini entry that would cause it to work with a .zip at all. Once it could find the folder, that's when it started just doing grey screen after loading the MGL. And the MGL does the same when loaded manually.

[mrchrister]

Ok, thanks for your feedback!
The exclusion filter behaves slightly different depending if your roms are packed or unpacked.

UNPACKED - It excludes folders but not file endings. We're using the linux tool find here. The folder was called Famicom Disk System in my case, that's why it worked despite the exclusion filter.
PACKED - It excludes any pattern matching fds. This is how partun works.

I updated the ini and removed the fds filter since it's not needed anymore. I checked with unpacked and packed games and it seems to work now.
So currently it's not working for you with zipped games? Maybe reset by using "MiSTer_SAM_on.sh reset" and then update so you have a fresh ini?

[Sigismond0]

OK, so after wiping to a fresh ini, it seems to be OK with my zipped folders! Still just getting a grey screen and no gameplay though, so MGL file is loading and just not going anywhere.

MGL looks like this:

Code: Select all

<mistergamedescription>
<rbf>_console/nes</rbf>
<file delay=2 type=f index=2 path="../../../../media/fat/games/NES/3 Famicom Disk System.zip/1 FDS Licensed/Esper Dream (Japan) [b].fds"/>
</mistergamedescription>

Loading the same .fds file from the core menu works just fine. Loading the same MGL through the main menu fails the same way. Other cores still shuffle fine and create good MGL files.

[mrchrister]

Ok, what else can we try? Maybe it has something to do with the zip.
Just to rule it out, can you google "htgdb gamepacks" and get the pack from over there?

Edit:
That's the only thing I can think of that's left to try since the mgl looks good. Definitely a strange error...

The other thing to try would be another index, but looking through the cores .SV file, index 2 should be correct for FDS files. Also, it wouldn't load unpacked roms for you if it was the wrong value...

[neogeo81]

Lecker, warme Butter

Ok, this is looking like my test setup so using different folders shouldn't be the issue here... Are your roms in /media/fat/Games/NeoGeo ?
Also, have you updated Mister Main to latest version?

Another thing to check is the generated mgl file. After launching Neogeo through SAM, please post the contents of /tmp/SAM_game.mgl so we can see what SAM is trying to launch.

Alternatively, if you update MiSTer_SAM_on.sh, you can use

Code: Select all

MiSTer_SAM_on.sh favorite

to copy the current game playing to your _Favorites folder.

Maybe that's the problem, my roms are on usb0. Does that work?

[mrchrister]

Yes, it should work. I believe Sigismund has NeoGeo running from USB... Did you change the NeoGeo path to /media/usb0/games/NeoGeo in MiSTer_SAM.ini?

[venice]

HowTo start SAM to see the full output (echos)?
Option Monitor?

[Sigismond0]

Ok, what else can we try? Maybe it has something to do with the zip.
Just to rule it out, can you google "htgdb gamepacks" and get the pack from over there?

Edit:
That's the only thing I can think of that's left to try since the mgl looks good. Definitely a strange error...

The other thing to try would be another index, but looking through the cores .SV file, index 2 should be correct for FDS files. Also, it wouldn't load unpacked roms for you if it was the wrong value...

Yeah, I tried different indexes and delays as well just to see what happens. But I can't get an FDS MGL to work at all. I currently use an old SmokeMonster EverDrive pack from a few years back. Tried pulling down the HTGDB pack for FDS, and I get the same results there. MGL file looks like this:

Code: Select all

<mistergamedescription>
<rbf>_console/nes</rbf>
<file delay=2 type=f index=2 path="../../../../media/fat/games/NES/Famicom Disk System/1 Japan A-Z/Dig Dug (Japan) (Disk Writer).fds"/>
</mistergamedescription>

ROMs work just fine from both packs when selected manually through the core menu. MGL just kicks to a grey screen whether loaded through SAM or if I use the favorite command (working now!) and launch it manually. I've tried both packs zipped and unzipped. Also deleted BIOS and had Update_All pull it down fresh, and no change.