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

[mrchrister]

Btw, there is also a downloader and updater available for 0mhz
https://twitter.com/chrisshelms/status/ ... RgvfA&s=19

[jeremania]

How can I set up SAM to start back up after I interrupt it to play a game, then leave the core inactive for some amount of time?

[dickhardpill]

How can I set up SAM to start back up after I interrupt it to play a game, then leave the core inactive for some amount of time?

Start SAM only from MiSTer main menu
If you change this to menuonly is set to "No", SAM will always start after you put down the controller.

I think that’s what menuonly does in MiSTer_SAM.ini
Try changing

Code: Select all

menuonly="Yes"

to

Code: Select all

menuonly="No"

[MrConkin]

Hey really enjoying SAM so far. I'm wondering if it's possible to have SAM on by default when you turn on the MiSTer? I have autoplay enabled after 60 seconds of idle in the menu, but when I power my MiSTer on it doesn't start unless I manually run the MiSTer_SAM script.

[dickhardpill]

It takes a little longer than 60 seconds but it works for me.

I had to run the script and let it auto configure. Not sure if that helps you.

[MrConkin]

It takes a little longer than 60 seconds but it works for me.

I had to run the script and let it auto configure. Not sure if that helps you.

Yeah turns out I'm just impatient. Took longer than 60 but started eventually. Thanks!

[mrchrister]

It's 60s plus whatever time it takes for your MiSTer to update the Real Time Clock (RTC). It times out after 60s so you wait a maximum of 2 mins if your MiSTer does not update RTC

[MrConkin]

Ok back with another conundrum. So close to getting it where I want.

Right now I can press Start when a game is being displayed by SAM and play it. That's cool. However, I'd love to be able to just jump in my inserting a coin into my cab. When I do this, it registers the coin but it also seems to skip the current game and go to the next. Anyone know what would cause that?

[mrchrister]

Select button skips the current game. Just go to setup controller in SAM's menu and pick different buttons

[MrConkin]

Select button skips the current game. Just go to setup controller in SAM's menu and pick different buttons

Thanks. Didn't realize the coin drop would count as select but playing with that worked out.

[rhester72]

Has anyone else noticed that SAM doesn't mute the new Nuked Genesis core?

[mrchrister]

I can confirm the issue. it's because the core is looking for a megadrive file to mute while SAM still creates a genesis file. I'll fix this now

Edit:
Easy fix
https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_S ... 2e1c9da73b

Should be working correctly now!

[rhester72]

Thank you very much!

[rhester72]

New problem - when running MiSTer_SAM_on.sh and pressing up to open the menu, I get this:

/tmp/.SAM_tmp/.SAMmenu: No such file or directory

Any ideas what could be causing this? I've updated MiSTer_SAM (via MiSTer_SAM_on.sh update), I've temporarily deleted MiSTer_SAM.ini, and I've temporarily deleted the .MiSTer_SAM directory to no avail.

EDIT: Manually creating /tmp/.SAM_tmp worked as a workaround, but that shouldn't be necessary, should it?

EDIT2: After manual creation and getting the menu to come up, even rebooting still recreates it properly. I have no idea what happened. Sorry for the noise.

[dickhardpill]

New problem - when running MiSTer_SAM_on.sh and pressing up to open the menu, I get this:

/tmp/.SAM_tmp/.SAMmenu: No such file or directory

Any ideas what could be causing this? I've updated MiSTer_SAM (via MiSTer_SAM_on.sh update), I've temporarily deleted MiSTer_SAM.ini, and I've temporarily deleted the .MiSTer_SAM directory to no avail.

EDIT: Manually creating /tmp/.SAM_tmp worked as a workaround, but that shouldn't be necessary, should it?

EDIT2: After manual creation and getting the menu to come up, even rebooting still recreates it properly. I have no idea what happened. Sorry for the noise.

I don’t think it creates the /tmp file structure until you successfully run the “on” script. So I don’t think you can go straight into settings. IIRC the script has never worked for me on the initial run if I attempt to go into settings. I always had to run the script and let it go and after that I could go into the settings as intended.

[rhester72]

I don’t think it creates the /tmp file structure until you successfully run the “on” script. So I don’t think you can go straight into settings. IIRC the script has never worked for me on the initial run if I attempt to go into settings. I always had to run the script and let it go and after that I could go into the settings as intended.

Ah...that should probably be fixed. You're right - on all subsequent reboots, I'd set the script to autostart. Good call!

[holaplaneta]

Hi, first of all, I absolutely love the video player feature that plays commercials before every game. I have my MiSTer connected to a CRT TV with component cables and they tend to look very accurate for the era. However, for some reason, all the videos appear stretched and half of the image (the right side) appears out of screen.

Of course the MiSTer games play fine in 4:3 but the videos have this weird Pan and Scan aspect ratio formatting that I was wondering if I can get rid of to make them display properly in 4:3 instead of 16:9 (or whatever aspect ratio they appear to play on).

I navigated and tried most of the SAM features but I can´t see how to fix this. Any ideas?

Thank you and congrats on such a great script. Also, unrelated, but I hope that a DVD .ISO and video media player core is integrated with MiSTer one day. That would be so awesome.

[dickhardpill]

Are you using the analog io board or direct video?

[holaplaneta]

The latest version of the Analog I/O board from Mister Addons. TY.

[mrchrister]

Could you post your Mister_SAM.ini samvideo settings? I have only tried with a PVM and HDMI setup myself

[holaplaneta]

Sure thing! Thanks for your help.

[mrchrister]

Looks correct for your setup. We can try to see if the menu would display properly with the settings you find in SAMs options menu description:
https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_S ... e#features

If those settings display your menu similarly to how the videos are displayed, you can try out other CRT settings from this thread
viewtopic.php?t=2574

Copy the settings that work for you to samvideo_crtmode640 in the Mister_SAM.ini

[holaplaneta]

Thank you. Menu works well. It is just the commercial ad videos that look stretched, like let´s say they are 16:9 but only the left two thirds of the image are displayed within the CRT´s 4:3 aspect ratio. I will check these settings and get back, thank you!

[mrchrister]

Does the menu work well when being put through the scaler like the settings suggest? There is a difference on CRTs between displaying the menu and displaying the menu through the scaler. You can check by trying to open SAMs menu (pushing up when launching)
The way video playback works is by pushing f9 in the menu which enters Linux terminal. If the text there is displayed correctly then the video shouldn't be weirdly stretched.

CRT settings can be finicky to get it to work right for different setups, I just supplied the settings that work on my particular setup

[dickhardpill]

I'm went back to the older analog IO until cores get updated. On my setup using VGA > component it looks perfect.

MiSTer_SAM_on.sh appended

Code: Select all

[menu]
video_mode=640,16,64,80,240,1,3,14,12380
fb_terminal=1
vga_scaler=1

I'm using a Sony consumer CRT. Sorry if this is just noise.

[holaplaneta]

Does the menu work well when being put through the scaler like the settings suggest?
The way video playback works is by pushing f9 in the menu which enters Linux terminal. If the text there is displayed correctly then the video shouldn't be weirdly stretched.

Hi!
Menu works well, it displays correctly but when I press F9, there´s just a black bar (like a line of text) that flashes for less than a second and then disappears. Nothing else happens. I am going to try these different resolutions on samvideo_crtmode640="video_mode= and see what happens. Thanks.

640,8,58,78,240,1,3,18,12324
640,0,58,86,240,1,3,18,12350
640,65,60,108,224,16,0,26,13919
640,54,56,106,224,16,0,28,13764

[mrchrister]

What happens when you launch SAM from the Scripts menu and push up to go to SAM's menu?

[holaplaneta]

What happens when you launch SAM from the Scripts menu and push up to go to SAM's menu?

The SAM menu appears. It displays normally in 4:3 full screen. You can see a picture of it at the bottom.

Here are also some pics of how a video commercial for a Hulk game appears. As you can notice, the text on the right side gets cut out.

[holaplaneta]

I am going to try these different resolutions on samvideo_crtmode640="video_mode= and see what happens. Thanks.

640,8,58,78,240,1,3,18,12324
640,0,58,86,240,1,3,18,12350
640,65,60,108,224,16,0,26,13919
640,54,56,106,224,16,0,28,13764

I tried all these and noticed zero change on the commercial's aspect ratio. I suspect that something in my MiSTer.ini file may be overwriting this parameter since I saw no change with any of those values.

I have attached this here just in case someone may be able to pinpoint the culprit.

Thank you.

[mrchrister]

Check the [menu] section in mister.ini. delete all entries so it only reads

Code: Select all

[Menu]
video_mode=640,16,64,80,240,1,3,14,12380
fb_terminal=1
vga_scaler=1

When trying out other settings just change the video mode here instead of in MiSTer_SAM.ini.
Seems like there is a bug where it doesn't delete any entries