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

[mrchrister]

You must have had an old script version of update_MiSTer_SAM.sh. We changed the defaultb variable early March I believe. If you had rerun update_all it should have updated to the newest SAM version for you. Anyways, glad you figured it out!

[HerrBerzerk]

Hi,

I'm still trying to figure out while SAM is not working for me.

First, I had this error message while game list creation, is this critical?

"Looking for games in /media/fat/Games/C64.../media/fat/Scripts/MiSter_SAM_on.sh: line 2779: /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/partun: No such file or directory
/media/fat/Scripts/MiSter_SAM_on.sh: line 2779: /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/partun: No such file or directory"

Second, when SAM selects a C64 game, it is always Hover bovver, though in the SSH Monitor, it tries to select another game.

Third, at some point SAM always get stuck in the Gameboy folder and nothing will happen anymore. There is also some strange behavior with gameboy while the game list is beeing created. See pictures.

Bildschirmfoto 2022-06-22 um 22.16.45.png (462.83 KiB) Viewed 6648 times

The folliwing message is endless scrolling at some point:

Bildschirmfoto 2022-06-22 um 22.26.39.png (99.53 KiB) Viewed 6648 times

Fourth, I have many games on USB0 HD and not on SD Card, these games are not getting found, is there a way to include them?

Thank you very much!

[mrchrister]

Please update SAM. At least one of these errors (the Gameboy one) was fixed a while ago. For some reason you're also missing partun which is important for SAMs operation. An update should fix all that. I'm curious how this could have happened.. did you do an offline install?

You can set your paths in the MiSTer_SAM.ini file. Instead of setting up your paths, you can set usedefaultpaths=yes in the ini which should auto discover your USB games. The reason it's disabled by default is it makes SAM a bit slower.

[HerrBerzerk]

Hi, no, I did an script based online install. I also did update several times, but I will do a delete and reinstall then for testing.

[Captain FPGA]

You must have had an old script version of update_MiSTer_SAM.sh. We changed the defaultb variable early March I believe. If you had rerun update_all it should have updated to the newest SAM version for you. Anyways, glad you figured it out!

When the issue first surfaced, I ran and reran update all several times over the course of a few months before finally posting the issue here. I just didn't get around to posting about the issue until recently. Yeah, that defaultb needed updating. Kept seeing it in my error logs, I update my mister in general in bursts of frequently, but then if I'm busy with other projects sometimes I'll wait anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks. Would explain why my Sam was so old.

Anyway, glad it's dealt with.

[mrchrister]

Hi, no, I did an script based online install. I also did update several times, but I will do a delete and reinstall then for testing.

Very strange! Good luck, hopefully it works after reinstall!

[Malor]

Hi, no, I did an script based online install. I also did update several times, but I will do a delete and reinstall then for testing.

Update_all.sh is a different script from regular Update. It's here:

https://github.com/theypsilon/Update_All_MiSTer

They seem a bit to be a bit inconsistent between themselves, I seem to need to run both scripts to keep fully up to date.

[HerrBerzerk]

Hi, no, I did an script based online install. I also did update several times, but I will do a delete and reinstall then for testing.

Update_all.sh is a different script from regular Update. It's here:

https://github.com/theypsilon/Update_All_MiSTer

They seem a bit to be a bit inconsistent between themselves, I seem to need to run both scripts to keep fully up to date.

Now that is strange. Can someone explain the difference between these two scripts? One older, one newer?

[Malor]

Update_all goes and gets ROMs for you; it's officially not part of the main distro. But, despite its name and being written by the same persion (theypsilon) it doesn't seem to fully cover everything that update does, which took me by surprise recently. I'd been using update_all routinely, but running regular update resulted in a ton of files being changed, including the main MiSTer binary.

Splitting the ROM downloader away was deliberate. I'm not sure if the other stuff is.

[jca]

What exactly is this update script you are referring to?

[Malor]

The one that comes with your Mister? It's called "update.sh"?

[jca]

So it is the old updater, not the new downloader script. Until a few months ago I was still using it because I did not like the new downloader when it came out. I was also using the update all script configured to use the old updater but doing so removed several options in the update all script. I finally switched to the new downloader. Since then I did not use the old updater and would not trust it. This does not mean that the new downloader is perfect. But the fact that the old updater "resulted in a ton of files being changed, including the main MiSTer binary" seems strange to me.

[Malor]

Yeah, I rather thought so, too, which is why I mentioned it.

[jca]

Also, do not forget: at the end of the year the old updater is out.
When I said that I did not use thye old updater since then it is not correct: once I just wanted to do a regular update and instead of using the new downloader I used the old update script as I used to do. Strange things happened and since then I deleted the update.sh in order to avoid the mistake.
viewtopic.php?p=50967#p50967

[LamerDeluxe]

I updated MiSTer SAM and all the added cores are a really cool addition! I love being able to disable certain categories as well.

The only problem I noticed is that the Amiga games don't update the TTY2OLED display at all, no logo and no text, the information of the previous game stays on the display.

[mrchrister]

The only problem I noticed is that the Amiga games don't update the TTY2OLED display at all, no logo and no text, the information of the previous game stays on the display.

For tty2oled Amiga support, you will need the newest MegaAGS build which is not out yet. AFAIK, the plan is for the new MegaAGS release with SAM support in mid July. This will launch Amiga games directly without booting to the menu first and will support tty2oled. The code is already implemented in SAM so once the new pack is available and you installed all the files in the right place, you should be good to go.

[LamerDeluxe]

The only problem I noticed is that the Amiga games don't update the TTY2OLED display at all, no logo and no text, the information of the previous game stays on the display.

For tty2oled Amiga support, you will need the newest MegaAGS build which is not out yet. AFAIK, the plan is for the new MegaAGS release with SAM support in mid July. This will launch Amiga games directly without booting to the menu first and will support tty2oled. The code is already implemented in SAM so once the new pack is available and you installed all the files in the right place, you should be good to go.

Ah, I see, thanks for the information! I thought SAM was now completely controlling tty2oled while active.

[mrchrister]

Yeah it is, you're right!
The problem is MegaAGS is an image of a hard drive instead of individual roms, so SAM has no way of knowing what game will be played. The team behind MegaAGS put some work in to make it possible for SAM to communicate with MegaAGS.

[mrchrister]

Lots of updates for SAM:

- @Paradox has been busy creating an awesome tty2oled script for SAM:

tty_ani.gif (1.16 MiB) Viewed 5602 times

Shoutout as well to @venice who has added SAM support to tty2oled officially now

Be sure to update tty2oled to enjoy the new tty2oled display.

- @wizzo (author of such awesome scripts as background music player, favorites finder and game searcher) has created samindex which will browse through all your folders and auto-detect where games are stored. This way you won't need to set any paths anymore in SAM if you use USB hard drives. It's also a lot faster than our old method.

- BUGFIX: Some people had issues with SAM's config mount method. Let me explain, when mute was used (for example in conjunction with BGM), SAM would mount over the config folder (/media/fat/config) to create volume files and mute the cores. The reason for this is to prevent writes to the SD card.
When you push a button on your joystick or keyboard, this will unmount everything SAM has mounted, but apparently sometimes when SAM doesn't exit cleanly, config will stay mounted.. This obviously leads to frustration since no settings you make will survive a reboot. I'm sorry if it has caused any of you any trouble.

The new version of SAM does not mount over the config folder anymore , it uses the setname feature of mgl instead to create a SAM core and mute the volume for it

- Probably the biggest update is the blacklist feature. I have captured every game listed in the Everdrive packs for a lot of cores now with a HDMI capture card. I then used a custom script to determine if the particular mp4 file of a game shows a static screen or shows an actual attract screen.
It's not perfect but it should weed out most "bad" games for the following cores: "Arcade, FDS, Genesis, MegaCD, NEOGEO, NES, PSX, S32X, SNES, TGFX16cd)
SNES has taken about 2 weeks of non stop capturing for example of it's 8000 something games so it's been long in the making
Next blacklists are planned for SMS (half way done), TGFX16 and Amiga

- BTW, MegaAGS Amiga with SAM support has not been released yet but @optiroc is on it.


Just run SAM's update to install and if you are new to it, just enable it in update_all under misc and run MiSTer_SAM_on.sh from scripts folder.
Please let me know if there are any bugs you guys encounter

[LamerDeluxe]

Wow, that sounds incredible! Thanks for the hard work to everyone involved! Really looking forward to checking this new version out.

[LamerDeluxe]

Just tried the new update and for some reason it just shows the SAM logo on the TTY2OLED display, nothing else. The script does shuffle different games like normal. Used the Reset function from SAM's menu and same result.

EDIT: Non-quiet monitoring output doesn't give any useful information, other than zero games remaining after blacklisting. TTY2OLED is on the latest version and I ran update_all as well.
EDIT 2: Reset function used and deleted every SAM file left by hand. Added SAM with update_all. Still the same result.

[mrchrister]

Hey @LamerDeluxe thanks for checking!
I have 2 Mister setups with 2x tty2oled displays and did a reset to ensure everything works from scratch. I haven't encountered this issue.

Do you happen to know what board is driving your tty2oled display? Mine is a devkit v4 but maybe there is problems with other tty boards?

After reset, did you re-enable tty2oled in the ini? Also, make sure to reboot in case the old tty2oled daemon is still running.
Does tty2oled show the SAM logo or just the words SAM?

[LamerDeluxe]

Hey @LamerDeluxe thanks for checking!
I have 2 Mister setups with 2x tty2oled displays and did a reset to ensure everything works from scratch. I haven't encountered this issue.

Do you happen to know what board is driving your tty2oled display? Mine is a devkit v4 but maybe there is problems with other tty boards?

After reset, did you re-enable tty2oled in the ini? Also, make sure to reboot in case the old tty2oled daemon is still running.
Does tty2oled show the SAM logo or just the words SAM?

I have a TTGO T8 1.7.1, as it seemed to be the most common and best supported. It identifies as device ttyACM0, instead of ttyUSB0, which I have set in TTY2OLED's user ini file. This is because it uses a different serial chip, caused by the chip shortage. It might have slightly different timing than the regular ones.
The previous version of SAM worked fine with the TTY2OLED though, although some of the countdown numbers overlapped instead of clearing the previous number.

I did re-enable tty2oled in the ini file. Without it, it will only show the logo's of the running cores.

I always do a cold-reboot to be sure.

It shows the SAM logo graphic on the TTY2OLED.

At the moment it has stopped shuffling and is just continuing the current game, even though I didn't interrupt it (which would make it go to MiSTer main).

[mrchrister]

Ah thanks that's good to know. tty2oled is based on paradox's submodule so I have to check if ttyUSB0 is the culprit here.
Any info in ssh monitor as to why it stopped shuffling?

[mrchrister]

It looks like the line ttydevice="/dev/ttyUSB0" was missing in the ini. I added it now. Can you update and change this to your device name?

Hopefully it's as simple as that

Edit: Hmm, looking further into it, it should grab the right device from the tty user ini, so this can't be it. Interesting that it worked with the older version.

Edit2: Just did some further updates. No need to change ttydevice in the ini, it should now read it from the tty user ini.

[LamerDeluxe]

It looks like the line ttydevice="/dev/ttyUSB0" was missing in the ini. I added it now. Can you update and change this to your device name?

Hopefully it's as simple as that

Edit: Hmm, looking further into it, it should grab the right device from the tty user ini, so this can't be it. Interesting that it worked with the older version.

Edit2: Just did some further updates. No need to change ttydevice in the ini, it should now read it from the tty user ini.

Awesome, it works fine now, really cool! Thanks for the quick help.

I don't know why it stopped shuffling, I didn't have SSH attached anymore. I'll keep an eye on it, if it does so again I can monitor it to see what is happening.

[mrchrister]

Awesome, glad it works now

[SmaMan]

Ever since the big new update, the BGM no longer stops when I press a button. (The usual core reboot does happen, however, so I know it tried to stop the script.) The only way it will is by rebooting back to the menu and running the Mister_SAM_off script or launching another core manually.

I also seem to be having a problem with games not actually starting while SAM is running. It just gets stuck on a blank screen until the time triggers again and *then* it starts.

The core name on the side menu says "SAM" all the time now too. Don't know if that's supposed to be happening.

EDIT: Did some more testing this morning. I turned the BGM feature off in the settings menu. The core audio still stays silent, even once a button is pressed. You can, at least, raise the volume back up though.

EDIT 2: Did even more testing tonight. The black screen issue seems to be happening with Famicom Disk System, Neo Geo, Sega CD and Playstation games. The games load... and then nothing. Something to do with finding the BIOS I guess. I poked around in the modified SAM version of the menu for the Famicom Disk System (since it isn't getting unloaded when it's trying to exit SAM) and found where you can load a BIOS, but it's pointing to its own "SAM" folder, and even when I try to navigate over to where the BIOS actually is, it can't find it.

[mrchrister]

Hey SmaMan,
Thanks for the feedback!

The reason it now says SAM for all cores is that this way we can set the volume to low without ever affecting values of the cores itself.
Big Pro: None of the user configs will get affected this way. Users have had issues with the old method which simply mounted the config folder to /tmp dir.
Big Con: This means we still need a SAM folder with all BIOS files in it and another mounting solution. SAM should autodetect where you have your roms and then mount the directory of a core (eg /media/fat/Games/MegaCD to /media/fat/Games/SAM). This way all BIOS files should be found. Somehow you seem to have issues with it which might be related to samindex's folder detection. Do you have all your files on usb drives by chance?

I disabled BGM's stop feature when returning to the menu since I assumed most people using BGM would want it to play in the menu. I can add this back in and make it an option if you would like to have BGM turn off together with SAM.
When turning BGM off, the core's audio should return to normal, which it currently doesn't. I'll change this no worries.

Edit: Ok, added "bgmstop" to ini and now when disabling bgm it should also restore the volume of cores. Now we just need to figure out why the SAM folder stays empty for you

[SmaMan]

Only the Sega CD's and the PSX's BIOS files are on a connected USB drive (and that's where the CHDs are too.) The TG16CD's BIOS are on the same drive and not having any issues.

All the rest are on the main SD card.

I definitely appreciate the core volume thing, especially since BGM plays at such drastically different levels than the core, usually. Only other problem is my display settings won't get carried over as well, but alas.
I'll download your latest update and give it a shot.