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

[retrossauro]

how to disable mister SAM? running mister sam off script wont do, still doing its thing no matter how many times i run the mister sam off =/

[LamerDeluxe]

how to disable mister SAM? running mister sam off script wont do, still doing its thing no matter how many times i run the mister sam off =/

You need to turn off the autorun option in the MiSTer SAM menu.

[LamerDeluxe]

Also, it looks like if you don't stop the script before you turn the MiSTer off, the script will automatically run again next time you power on the MiSTer.

[rayman147]

I am LOVING Mister SAM + tty2oled as a set-top decoration for my CRT and 'curator' for this little museum of classic gaming and computing. Feature request – would it be possible to have an option/flag in MiSTer_SAM.ini to cycle between the tty2oled core .XBM pic and the Mister SAM text descriptors/countdown, and perhaps specify how often in seconds? I love how some of the cores show the core pic first, but it might be cool to see the core graphic pop up once or twice more during the default 120 second window.

Another question I have is... would it be possible to scroll the same game info in a single line, with larger text that utilizes the entire height of the screen? Not sure if that's feasible or not, but as my unit sits on top of a larger CRT (about 10' away) it would be easier to read if so and make it a bit more visually arresting. AMAZING work and a huge THANK YOU to everyone making this possible!

[mrchrister]

Thanks for the ideas, do you mind opening a GitHub issue for a feature request? It's easier to track for us

[mrchrister]

New MegaAGS image is finally available. This release has built in SAM support:
viewtopic.php?p=64186#p64186

[mrchrister]

I am LOVING Mister SAM + tty2oled as a set-top decoration for my CRT and 'curator' for this little museum of classic gaming and computing. Feature request – would it be possible to have an option/flag in MiSTer_SAM.ini to cycle between the tty2oled core .XBM pic and the Mister SAM text descriptors/countdown, and perhaps specify how often in seconds? I love how some of the cores show the core pic first, but it might be cool to see the core graphic pop up once or twice more during the default 120 second window.

Another question I have is... would it be possible to scroll the same game info in a single line, with larger text that utilizes the entire height of the screen? Not sure if that's feasible or not, but as my unit sits on top of a larger CRT (about 10' away) it would be easier to read if so and make it a bit more visually arresting. AMAZING work and a huge THANK YOU to everyone making this possible!

Just added those features. New MiSTer_SAM.ini options for tty2oled are:

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# How long to show the core logo for in seconds
ttycoresleep="10"
# How many seconds until core logo is shown again (default is "gametimer / 3")
ttycoreshow=""
# How often to show the core logo
ttydisplayswitch="2"
# Display scrolling text with bigger font
ttybig="no"

[Tritopher]

I can't figure out how to get autoplay to work. Same for the BGM script. I felt like I had them both working after following all the guides but now I'm stuck and a little confused. Neither start up automatically after rebooting the Mister. I suppose I'll try uninstalling/resetting both scripts and start fresh with SAM, I think I saw an earlier post in this thread detailing how to do that. Seemed like the issues arose when I started tweaking the settings. My end goal would be to have an mp3 play when it starts up then automatically go to attract mode after a minute and switch between arcade cores and a few of the consoles. I'll mess with it some more tonight.

[mrchrister]

Autostart is determined by /media/fat/Linux/user-startup.sh.
Take a look in there, not sure what could be wrong...

[Tritopher]

Thanks I think everything is perhaps setup ok. I guess the issue is it won't start automatically when I plug the MiSTer in and it boots up from a power off state. Do I need to add it to to the init.d folder or something along those line so it starts everytime MiSTer powers up?

[ninteteenletterslong]

Just FYI,

MiSTer_SAM_off.sh calls MiSTer_SAM_on.sh with the "off" switch but there is no such switch. There is however, "disable" which will turn it off.

Reboot and there will be no instances of SAM when you ps aux

[mrchrister]

MiSTer_SAM_off.sh calls

Code: Select all

/media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM_on.sh stop

which disables SAM for the current session. It doesn't disable autostart, that's correct. You can change this setting in the menu.

[Tritopher]

So I had bought a preconfigured MiSTer, I decided to try just doing a fresh install on a new SD card with the newest versions of everything and it worked no problem. Thanks for the replies, still wondering what the issue was but happy to have it working as expected.

[rhester72]

Is there any way to get SAM to use a specific video mode?

For example, my C64 defaults (being in the US and what I was used to back in the day) to NTSC, but I'd prefer to use the OneLoad 64 images for SAM (because they seem best suited to it). Of course, OneLoad images are PAL - so ideally, I'd have SAM use only those (which is an easy setting in SAM, thank you!) and force PAL (which I see no means of doing).

Is this even possible?

[mrchrister]

I personally don't use C64 core, sorry if I'm not much help here... You should be able to configure the core to your liking and save settings. SAM uses the settings of your core so if you can force video mode in the core, SAM should also observe these settings.

[pbsk8]

I put all roms in .zip and some .rar (from no-intro) inside internal microsd on mister in games folder for each respective core system,

how can I configure SAM to run only neogeo (darksoft roms), snes, genesis games?

[mrchrister]

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Either use SAM's menu through SSH (or keyboard through HDMI) or set your cores in MiSTer_SAM.ini
RARs are not supported btw. Google htgdb to find compatible gamepacks.

[pbsk8]

mister sam .ini is set with genesis, nes and snes, but only my mega drive and nes roms in .zip are running in SAM

none snes roms (also in .zip) are running, I get a black screen.

Any way to solve this?

Also, everytime I run 'mister sam on' from scripts menu it shows online version cant be loaded, so it starts downloading again and then starts, is this normal or there is a way to do that?

PHOTO-20221210-100948.jpg (2.11 MiB) Viewed 9265 times

[mrchrister]

On CRT you can't access SAMs menu so yes, this is the recommended way to start SAM in this case.

You can also start SAM by just idling in main menu for 2 minutes or using menu through ssh.
Are you using Everdrive packs for SNES? Best to use Everdrive since that's what I use for testing.

[pbsk8]

On CRT you can't access SAMs menu so yes, this is the recommended way to start SAM in this case.

You can also start SAM by just idling in main menu for 2 minutes or using menu through ssh.
Are you using Everdrive packs for SNES? Best to use Everdrive since that's what I use for testing.

so, no way to fix snes situation?

I have no-intro roms for my romset, same for genesis and nes, they work fine, i dont know why only snes get black screen.

[mrchrister]

They should work, yes. I won't be able to help you any further with your rom pack though.

Two things to try:
1 During game list creation something might have gone wrong with snes. In the menu go to reset -> delete gamelist and try SNES again
2 You can try unpacking them into the SNES folder.

[rhester72]

Two small SAM issues I've noticed recently:

• SMS doesn't work at all because it pops up the configuration menu when the core starts and then just sits there...any way to prevent this? [Edit: This behavior has changed slightly, see below...it now starts the specified random game, but plays underneath the OSD popup]

• PC Engine CD-ROM used to auto-start by pressing the Run key virtually at the appropriate time, but hasn't worked properly in maybe a week or so...did something there change? [Edit: This affects more than just TFGX16-CD. Nintendo Disk System now sits forever at "PLEASE SET DISK CARD" but used to work previously...MegaCD works properly, but I think the BIOS itself times out and starts the game without SAM intervention.] [Edit2: This behavior has self-resolved, details below.]

UPDATE: Both problems have changed somewhat in nature. I did a full reset of the config (by removing /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM entirely), which didn't help either problem at all. I then set ttyenable to No to see if it had anything to do with the issues, and the problems persisted. Finally, I questioned whether some recent additions I've made to the gamelist had anything to do with it, so I enabled ONLY tgfx16cd...which worked. I then methodically re-enabled every system, one by one, testing after each, and now that they are all restored...everything still works (except for the annoying SMS OSD popup, which is a core issue). I can't explain it, but hooray!

[pbsk8]

They should work, yes. I won't be able to help you any further with your rom pack though.

Two things to try:
1 During game list creation something might have gone wrong with snes. In the menu go to reset -> delete gamelist and try SNES again
2 You can try unpacking them into the SNES folder.

Using the reset option worked! First I set to snes only, then tested, worked. Then I checked snes and genesis, new test, ok. Then I checked genesis, snes and nes.

All working fine now.

Thanks for the help.

[Mr. Encyclopedia]

Related to the discussion earlier about SAM autoplay not stopping when you run MiSTer_SAM_off.sh, I perpetually have a problem with SAM starting while I'm in the middle of running Update All. Running Mister_SAM_off doesn't solve this for me, I usually have to uninstall SAM to make sure Update_All completes successfully.

[rhester72]

Related to the discussion earlier about SAM autoplay not stopping when you run MiSTer_SAM_off.sh, I perpetually have a problem with SAM starting while I'm in the middle of running Update All. Running Mister_SAM_off doesn't solve this for me, I usually have to uninstall SAM to make sure Update_All completes successfully.

Please paste your /media/fat/linux/user-startup.sh script.

[mrchrister]

SAM should not be starting when update all is running.
Here is the code preventing SAM from starting when update all is detected:
https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_S ... AM_MCP#L62

I'll look into it after the holidays. You could help me fix it by starting update all and pasting the following code in a mister ssh session:

Code: Select all

ps aux | grep -ice [u]pdate

[mrchrister]

Two small SAM issues I've noticed recently:

• SMS doesn't work at all because it pops up the configuration menu when the core starts and then just sits there...any way to prevent this? [Edit: This behavior has changed slightly, see below...it now starts the specified random game, but plays underneath the OSD popup]

• PC Engine CD-ROM used to auto-start by pressing the Run key virtually at the appropriate time, but hasn't worked properly in maybe a week or so...did something there change? [Edit: This affects more than just TFGX16-CD. Nintendo Disk System now sits forever at "PLEASE SET DISK CARD" but used to work previously...MegaCD works properly, but I think the BIOS itself times out and starts the game without SAM intervention.] [Edit2: This behavior has self-resolved, details below.]

UPDATE: Both problems have changed somewhat in nature. I did a full reset of the config (by removing /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM entirely), which didn't help either problem at all. I then set ttyenable to No to see if it had anything to do with the issues, and the problems persisted. Finally, I questioned whether some recent additions I've made to the gamelist had anything to do with it, so I enabled ONLY tgfx16cd...which worked. I then methodically re-enabled every system, one by one, testing after each, and now that they are all restored...everything still works (except for the annoying SMS OSD popup, which is a core issue). I can't explain it, but hooray!

I haven't experienced the OSD popup with SMS. Glad you got it working otherwise!

[CartoonDonkey]

Is there a way to simply interrupt the attract mode script and play the game it's showing? Or an on screen overlay that shows the core / game without going tty2oled?

[mrchrister]

Yes, you can change this in the menu under settings -> enable play current game (make sure you update since the menu structure has changed).
This is also standard behavior when you do a fresh install of SAM.

Screenshot-9.png (40.77 KiB) Viewed 8841 times

You can view the game playing through ssh as well. No way to do onscreen display besides tty2oled currently, sorry.

In other news:
SAM now preloads blacklists when you turn on the Mister. Advantage is right when Attract Mode starts it will have all lists updated with all duds filtered out.
This needed quite some changes so hopefully the newest version works well for everyone, please let me know.

[mrchrister]

Fixed something that was long overdue:
Bootsleep. Let me explain, on boot SAM would wait a hard coded 60s to wait for a network to become available. The reason is that the files SAM creates will have a date stamp of January 1st, 1970 (if you don't have rtc addon) right after boot. Once network connection becomes available the date will change to today's date and SAM will think you waited the predefined time of "samtimeout" and get triggered immediately. In some cases that means SAM will trigger after 15s of the Mister being booted up.
SAM now checks for the date on boot up and if it is older than the year 2020, it will wait up to a minute before launching samtimeout (which by default is 1min). In total with my wifi setup this means Sam now waits around 80s instead of 120s after boot to launch.