Installing OS

Thinking about getting a RaspberryJAMMA, or have just purchased one and have a newbie question? Walls here are padded, come on in and bounce your question off of them!

Moderator: dee2eR

bkeez
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Re: Installing OS

Post by bkeez » Fri Oct 26, 2018 11:02 pm

dee2eR wrote:
Thu Oct 25, 2018 11:20 pm
What games arn't flipping? It sounds like you have the settings for cocktail mode already so I may need to check it out. I know some games that originally came as a cocktail machine don't have a cocktail mode in MAME, Asteroids comes to mind as the original had a unique harness for cocktail mode instead of switch settings. Some others may have different ways of selecting cocktail made eg. from their test menus.
I haven't been able to replicate this issue on the new OS. I'll let you know, but I've tried about 30 games and couldn't recreate it, so I guess we're good on this one.
dee2eR wrote:
Thu Oct 25, 2018 11:20 pm
Which game/s are you struggling with starting 2 players on? Assuming they're two player games I would like to check it out.
There's a few with this issue, and I'm not sure if they *should* be able to play 2 player or not. It looks like they should be able to. That's all I have as of right now, but I haven't played through a ton of games.
Ajax
Alibaba
Joust
dee2eR wrote:
Thu Oct 25, 2018 11:20 pm
I can understand the hassle, I have twin 4 year olds and they can definitely find some odd reasons to get upset at each other... Attract-Mode can be set up with multiple lists and a button to switch between them. You could make a list of only the 2 player games in there own display, although offhand I don't have a way to automate that for you.
No way!! That must mean you were inventing this rig with newborns or at least very young kids. That's an even more impressive feat! I have twin 5 year olds. :D That sounds like a great option and I'm fine with manual. How do I go about setting one up? I haven't had any luck with the seperate display I created.

I think actually the biggest issue is not being able to setup a 2 player game from the get go. So with our default token hotkeys (p1 start and button 1), the game automatically starts as a player 1 game. Then once that session is over, I can set up a 2 player game, but as you can imagine that is not ideal with little kids and having to be patient. How can I get around this so that upon selecting a game, I can hit the ground running with 2 players?

dee2eR
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Re: Installing OS

Post by dee2eR » Sat Oct 27, 2018 12:10 am

In the case of Joust while it had a cocktail version of the game it did not have screen flipping, both players sat next to each other and it played much the same as a normal upright 2 player simultaneous game.
If you're running Joust in 172 there should be an option in the video menu to display it with the screen mirrored so both players can see a half sized full screen for simultaneous play. The same tricks works well on a few games that didn't have cocktail modes but are fun for 2 players, Bubble Bobble comes to mind. If you're a purist regarding the games this mirrored cocktail mode probably won't interest you as the original boards could not be played that way.

On the credits side of things you can change up the shortcut for coins so it doesn't use P1 start. Depending on what games you run and the available buttons on your panel it can be tricky to figure out a combo that works with the games without effecting gameplay. At the moment only p1 buttons are supported in the hotkey system. Hotkeys can be changed in /boot/hotkeys.ini and will be applied to every emulator.
You could also (via MAME menus instead of the hotkey system) make P2 start into a credit button as well, on some games it may still have the wrong-type-of-game starts issue but it would probably be much less frequently. Using the MAME menus you can make combos not supported by the hotkey system work, although non MAME emulators won't be able to use them (in a cocktail cab MAME may be all that is in use so maybe this would work for you).
Another option some people like for credits is a dedicated credit button, there's even a very thin product designed to do this without drilling any holes or anything called Easy CoinUp ( https://www.highscoresaves.com/easy-coi ... hines.html ).
Personally I modified my coin return button to give credits but my main JAMMA cab is home made so I don't have to worry about the cabs originality.
You could also set the games to freeplay but doing that can cause them to stop showing attract modes and instead just show a message like 'Press Start'. Also not all games have a freeplay mode - maybe all the ones you use do...

I will write you up a quick guide on making new Attract-Mode lists, I want to do it with a machine running so I don't miss a step or something though.
bkeez wrote:
Fri Oct 26, 2018 11:02 pm
No way!! That must mean you were inventing this rig with newborns or at least very young kids. That's an even more impressive feat! I have twin 5 year olds. :D
I started a few months before they were born... lots of late nights. Huge respect for another parent of twins.

bkeez
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Re: Installing OS

Post by bkeez » Sat Oct 27, 2018 12:48 am

dee2eR wrote:
Sat Oct 27, 2018 12:10 am
In the case of Joust while it had a cocktail version of the game it did not have screen flipping, both players sat next to each other and it played much the same as a normal upright 2 player simultaneous game.
If you're running Joust in 172 there should be an option in the video menu to display it with the screen mirrored so both players can see a half sized full screen for simultaneous play. The same tricks works well on a few games that didn't have cocktail modes but are fun for 2 players, Bubble Bobble comes to mind. If you're a purist regarding the games this mirrored cocktail mode probably won't interest you as the original boards could not be played that way.
So with Joust, I tried to set up the mirrored cocktail and was able to do so, but still could only get one player to play. Bubble Bobble is a new favorite at our house and same with Alex Kidd.
dee2eR wrote:
Sat Oct 27, 2018 12:10 am
On the credits side of things you can change up the shortcut for coins so it doesn't use P1 start. Depending on what games you run and the available buttons on your panel it can be tricky to figure out a combo that works with the games without effecting gameplay. At the moment only p1 buttons are supported in the hotkey system. Hotkeys can be changed in /boot/hotkeys.ini and will be applied to every emulator.
You could also (via MAME menus instead of the hotkey system) make P2 start into a credit button as well, on some games it may still have the wrong-type-of-game starts issue but it would probably be much less frequently. Using the MAME menus you can make combos not supported by the hotkey system work, although non MAME emulators won't be able to use them (in a cocktail cab MAME may be all that is in use so maybe this would work for you).
Another option some people like for credits is a dedicated credit button, there's even a very thin product designed to do this without drilling any holes or anything called Easy CoinUp ( https://www.highscoresaves.com/easy-coi ... hines.html ).
Personally I modified my coin return button to give credits but my main JAMMA cab is home made so I don't have to worry about the cabs originality.
You could also set the games to freeplay but doing that can cause them to stop showing attract modes and instead just show a message like 'Press Start'. Also not all games have a freeplay mode - maybe all the ones you use do...
Okay thanks!!! I'll mess around with it some more and see what I can do. Haven't had luck yet, but I've got a few possible ideas. If not, I really like that coin up idea. Thanks for sharing.
dee2eR wrote:
Sat Oct 27, 2018 12:10 am
I will write you up a quick guide on making new Attract-Mode lists, I want to do it with a machine running so I don't miss a step or something though.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.
dee2eR wrote:
Sat Oct 27, 2018 12:10 am
I started a few months before they were born... lots of late nights. Huge respect for another parent of twins.
Hats off to you. I think inventing this setup is super impressive, but it takes it to another level to know you did it with little ones.

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Re: Installing OS

Post by dee2eR » Sat Oct 27, 2018 5:48 am

I didn't have any trouble starting a 2 player Joust game. I used a credit button, when I tried with the credit shortcut a 1 player game would start before I could try to start a 2 player game. Needs 2 credits to start a 2 player game, player 2 cannot join into a 1 player game. Maybe that's what is happening to you?

Now onto adding a 2 player only game list... You need a keyboard so before powering up plug one in.
Start by copying the file /home/pi/.attract/romlists/allGames.txt the easiest way to do this on the Pi is to exit the game select menu, then exit the service menu (F4) and you will be on the Linux command line. Type 'cd .attract/romlists' (no quotes) & press enter. Now type 'cp allGames.txt 2player.txt' (no quotes) & press enter.
If you want to directly edit this file now type 'nano 2player.txt' (no quotes) + press enter, delete whatever lines you don't want - careful not to edit anything you want to keep. In Nano you can use the shortcut ctrl+k to cut whole lines (the current line is cut). When finished exit Nanao with ctrl+x and press 'y' and then enter to save the file when prompted.
Type 'sudo reboot' (no qu...+ enter to reboot
Get into the Attract-Mode menu then select Displays -> Add New Display . It asks for a name, in this example I'm naming the new list '2 Player' but you can call it whatever you need. The display edit window will load goto Collection/Rom List and change it to 2player. If you like while you're here select a layout (the menu theme) for this list. You're done here now, select back in the menu as many times as needed to return to the game lists.
To edit which button changes the current list go into the menu select Controls and change the one listed as Right (Next Display) to whatever you need.
At this point you should be finished but I would recommend exiting to the service menu and rebooting to make sure the changes you have made are written to the SD card, alternately select shutdown in the service menu prior to powering off your cab to make sure the changes are written.

Hope that helps.

bkeez
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Re: Installing OS

Post by bkeez » Sat Oct 27, 2018 7:21 pm

So far I've been able to get all games set up in 2 player mode using the 2 player start button as a token button. Thank you for that trick!!

And I got the separate playlist set up which is so amazing and helpful. The only question I had on this is how do I go in a remove games after the list is built? I went back to the command line a few hours later to remove some more roms from their list and wasn't able to get back in to edit.

Other than that I think I'm actually squared away. This thing is so amazing and so much better than I ever imagined it would be. All the kinks are worked out and this thing is working so smoothly.
Thank you so much!!!!!!!

dee2eR
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Re: Installing OS

Post by dee2eR » Mon Oct 29, 2018 3:25 am

bkeez wrote:
Sat Oct 27, 2018 7:21 pm
And I got the separate playlist set up which is so amazing and helpful. The only question I had on this is how do I go in a remove games after the list is built? I went back to the command line a few hours later to remove some more roms from their list and wasn't able to get back in to edit.
You may have been in the wrong folder when you went back to edit it again later. The 2 relevant commands from the previous instructions are:
cd .attract/romlists (this command navigates to the correct folder assuming you are starting in /home/pi/)
nano 2player.txt (this launches the text editor and opens the file but you need to be in the right directory)

You can do it as one command from any folder by typing:
nano ~/.attract/romlists/2player.txt (this command will open the right file no matter which directory you're starting from)

Hopefully that helps.

bkeez
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Re: Installing OS

Post by bkeez » Mon Oct 29, 2018 11:12 pm

It did thank you!!

One last weird thing. For Burning Rubber and Frogger, can I turn off the sound when in the attract menu? I have sound turned off while you are selecting a game across the board for every other rom, but these two seem to override that setting making them the only two making noise in the menu.

bkeez
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Re: Installing OS

Post by bkeez » Wed Nov 07, 2018 7:58 pm

So to fix the random sound playing in the menu, I turned the movie sound setting in the main menu to zero. For anyone needing help with this in the future. :)

TheFullMetalChicken
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Re: Installing OS

Post by TheFullMetalChicken » Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:07 pm

Good Morning,

Windows 10 user trying to create a fresh SD card. I've downloaded the 3.8 img and am using Etcher to create the image on a 16gb SD card but the Etcher verification keeps failing. Is this common?

I have also tried using Win32DiskImager but I also not able to validate the image. But I'm guessing this is due the dual partitions that are created.

I have completely formatted 2 separate SD cards and will try them out tonight one is 3.7 the other is 3.8 both fresh images downloaded off the site. But both fail during validation using Etcher.

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Re: Installing OS

Post by TheFullMetalChicken » Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:19 pm

I tried the 2 fresh installs last night neither came up with anything. Just the lighting bolt on the screen.

Light on the unit flashed red 4 times fast than 4 times slow. I left the SD card in and unit on for 10 minutes to see if there was something that was happening on the first time boot that I was missing but nothing else happened.

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