ARpiCADE Forums

Hi guys,
One more question.

In my game selection menu I get a lot of flicker. Especially the three little arcade cabinet graphical pics area. But not once the games start.

What's the best way to fix this?

Also, are there alternate menus available?

Thanks so much.

PS. I believe I'm on 4.3 on a pi 4 8gb in vertical mode.

Assuming you're on the stock boot in 480i config, booting in 240p should make the menus appear more stable. The only problem using 240p to boot is you have less lines available so depending on your menu theme it can be harder to read. Also if you run rotated games they may not look as good as in 480i due to there being less real estate for a rotated picture. Everything else should be the same as most games will run in 240p (or other non interlaced resolution) either way.

You can change the boot res in /boot/config.txt - only use the options in the file to avoid any unexpected results.

I'm pretty sure I set my arpicade to use 240 or 240p mode as the games were absolutely stellar in this mode compared to everything else.

I did that adjustment in the arpicade menu when pushing the button on the power supply to get to the menu I believe originally.

Not sure if it's possible to have a different mode for the selection menu vs the games?

Here's my config.txt in the root of the sdcard. (Vert games image). Not seeing a boot folder though.

What would I adjust in here? Thanks.



# For more options and information see
# http://rpf.io/configtxt
# Some settings may impact device functionality. See link above for details

# disable Rpi rainbow splash
disable_splash=1

# ignore EDID as we dont have one
hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080

# use full spectrum RGB over HDMI
hdmi_pixel_encoding=2

# not sure if this should be 1 or 0 on Pi4 # it may have no effect
disable_overscan=0

# use the following to adjust edge of screen overscan
# will be broken on Pi4 if you set console size in cmdline.txt - so don't
overscan_left=16
overscan_right=36

# force hdmi output
hdmi_force_hotplug=1

# force a specific HDMI mode
# only use 1 of these 3 options
# deviating from these options can have unintended effects
# 1920x240p@60
#hdmi_timings=1920 1 52 208 260 240 1 6 10 6 0 0 0 60 0 38400000 1

# 960x480i
hdmi_timings=1920 1 48 192 240 480 1 6 3 16 0 0 2 60 1 37560000 1

# 640x480p@60 (high res)
#hdmi_timings=640 1 56 66 70 480 1 6 9 30 0 0 0 60 0 26208000 1

# DO NOT USE GROUP 1! - You have been warned
hdmi_group=2
# custom timings mode - only use this mode
hdmi_mode=87
## 2nd monitor - experimental
#hdmi_group:1=2
#hdmi_mode:1=87

# uncomment to force a HDMI mode rather than DVI. This can make audio work in
# DMT (computer monitor) modes
#hdmi_drive=2

# uncomment to increase signal to HDMI, if you have interference, blanking, or
# no display
config_hdmi_boost=4

# Enable audio (loads snd_bcm2835)
dtparam=audio=on

[pi4]
# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver on top of the dispmanx display stack
dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d
max_framebuffers=2

## pi4 overclocking - experimental - make sure your Pi4 firmware is up to date & you will want a heatsink
## big OC
#over_voltage=6
#arm_freq=2100
#gpu_freq=600

## small OC
#over_voltage=2
#arm_freq=1750

[all]
#dtoverlay=vc4-fkms-v3d
gpu_mem=256

Well, I just checked it and set it to 240p mode in the arpicade menu. Zero flicker now in the game selection menu and within games.

BUT, the font is crazy looking. Missing like every other vertical line. Makes it hard to read the game names. How can I fix the font?

Yeah, essentially the font will be missing every other line, you've cut down from 480 lines to 240 lines. I'm not sure on changing the font, it may be possible (almost definately possible in one way or another). In my experience changing to another Attract-Mode layout (the menu theme) can help as each theme can have it's own fonts/size/screen setup depending on how they were made.

If you don't have too many games some of the themes also support using game logos (wheel images) instead of text which can be a lot nicer to look at. Bit of a pain to setup if you have several thousand games though, particularly if you like having different versions of the same game etc...