Attract screen blank after exit from game

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JohnnyArcade
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Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by JohnnyArcade » Sun Oct 13, 2019 3:14 am

Starts up fine. Go into game fine.
When I exit a game to AM screen, it is blank. I can hear it still and can go back into the game and game is fine. But exit to AM via Button or keyboard, AM screen is blank/black.

I can even ESC from AM to the setup menu and I can see it fine.

I copied over all files to SD card that I can via windows, from backup. No change.

I’m using a crt.

Any Ideas how to fix?

I‘m hoping I don’t have to reimage the SD card as I’ll lose all highscores and config preferences...

dee2eR
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Re: Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by dee2eR » Sun Oct 13, 2019 3:19 pm

Not sure what is happening there. The odd thing is the 'service menu' is another instance of Attract-Mode so I imagine it's attract config related. If it is config it should be fixable without loosing your high scores, if you haven't made a recent backup you probably should just in case though, that way if anything goes wrong there are ways to get your high scores back.

A couple of questions to help narrow down what is happening. Does it happen with all emulators or just one? (If you only use one emulator which is it?) When it happens if you press button 2 to go to the system selection menu does it fix it at all?

JohnnyArcade
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Re: Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by JohnnyArcade » Mon Oct 14, 2019 2:15 am

dee2eR wrote:
Sun Oct 13, 2019 3:19 pm
A couple of questions to help narrow down what is happening. Does it happen with all emulators or just one? (If you only use one emulator which is it?) When it happens if you press button 2 to go to the system selection menu does it fix it at all?
Which button is “button 2”? Do you mean player 1, button 2?

I am running only 2 versions of mame, mainly dk, Pac-Man, 1942 etc. vertical setup. I think the roms are in only 2 mame folders. I’ll check which versions exactly when home in a few days. I did confirm it did it to games in both mame folders

Do you mean back up the SD card?

Also, where are high scores saved?

Thanks.

dee2eR
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Re: Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by dee2eR » Mon Oct 14, 2019 3:32 am

Yeah player 1 button 2. Depending on what version of ARpiCADE you have it may not actually do anything.

It's always a pretty good idea to have a backup image of the whole SD card (as in both partitions), particularly if you customise it a bit from the defaults.

High scores are kept in the various emulators folders in /home/pi/[emulator] (or .[emulator]) for the most part. Eg. for MAME 0.172 they're in /home/pi/mame172/hi/

JohnnyArcade
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Re: Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by JohnnyArcade » Wed Oct 16, 2019 2:54 am

Just trying again tonight.
I only have roms in mame 106 & 172 folders (no other rom folders exist). I've tried games from both and same happens with either.

I've tried a few different attract screens. Was using SDarcadeMod_v4 when it happened, but have tried others and the same problem stays.

If it helps... this all started from a friend pressing P2 Start button which changed the AM screen and a combination of other buttons...then restarted and the AM screen was different, changed back via settings and then exiting game always goes to blank AM screen.

Using ARpiCADE version 3.83.

P1, Button 2 does not do anything. Well, it does something I think, but I can't see what it is doing.

Any ideas? Or is a complete rebuild needed...

Thanks.

dee2eR
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Re: Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by dee2eR » Wed Oct 16, 2019 2:59 am

I'm not really sure what to suggest unfortunately. I don't think pressing P2 start in the menu should have done anything odd but sometimes just the right button mashing can have unforeseen results.

Seeing you're on 3.83 and 3.84 has been out for a while you could use it as an opportunity to update. Sorry I don't have a fix for this otherwise, not knowing the actual cause of the problem makes it hard to suggest the fix..

gt7766c
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Re: Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by gt7766c » Wed Oct 23, 2019 1:25 am

I’m running 3.84 and have the same problem occasionally on my horizontal setup. I have not tried troubleshooting.

I have 3 different microSD cards I rotate in and out and it’s only on one that’s for general family games. No filters and only one AttractMode menu (can’t remember which one but I use it on the other micro SDs without issue).

It started after one of my kids held down the start button too long one time to exit out of a game. Screen was blank (I’m running CRT) and I could hear sounds. I enter into a game and then exit back out and the menu always returns so I haven’t bothered troubleshooting.

My guess it something got corrupted and a clean install will clear it.
Kris

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dalplanedriver
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Re: Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by dalplanedriver » Sun Feb 14, 2021 5:30 am

Did you guys ever figure this out? I am having the same problem except the screen isn't blank, it's all scrunched up on the left side of the screen. I haven't messed with my Arpicade in a while. I was running 3.9 where it happened. I decided to do a clean install of 3.x and the same thing is occurring. I running horizontal games also.

Thanks,
LJ

dee2eR
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Re: Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by dee2eR » Sun Feb 14, 2021 5:54 am

That's a new one, haven't seen the menu scrunched to the side before as far as I remember. I don't think it's the same issue as reported in this thread. What monitor settings are you running?

Also thanks for bumping this old thread, this issue had come up again recently and there may be a clue in here...

dalplanedriver
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Re: Attract screen blank after exit from game

Post by dalplanedriver » Sun Feb 14, 2021 6:58 pm

I'm running low res to a 19" Vision Pro LCD LED Monitor. It can display CGA, VGA, SVGA or XGA resolutions at 4:3 aspect ratio auto adjusting as needed.

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