SUGGESTION: attact-mode front-end as an alternative to emulationstation

[dankcushions]

emulationstation development seems to be in hiatus at the moment, but check this out: http://attractmode.org/ – a themeable umulator frontend, that works on the pi!

it seems somewhat more ‘busy’ than emulation station (more like hyperspin), so probably better for more curated systems, so i wouldn’t want to do completely get rid of emulation station. but it would be awesome to get this system as an alternative! I think it would slot in quite well with the rest of the architecture, plus it’s still in development!

[petrockblog]

Would make a nice alternative for sure – please could you add the suggestion to our github issue tracker and I’ll take a look when I get some time.

[dankcushions]

cheers :) added! https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/issues/1071

it has its own github also: https://github.com/mickelson/attract

[redhalo]

I dicked around with attract-mode about a year ago when I was trying to get a streamlined emulation setup on my PC. Back then at least, making themes was not for the faint of heart, but was super powerful to do some cool stuff once you dug into the scripting. Retropie is actually what took my interest away from attract-mode. It would be cool to get it added to Retropie.

[nitrogenwidget]

I’ve actually compiled this with the authors help on my rpi 1 with 256mb of ram and it runs surprisingly well.

However, it requires X so advanced mame is out unless you use overlay mode because of the lack of SDL hardware acceleration.

Mame4all-pi works fine in X though.

Retroarch mame 2003 (.70) should also run in X since it doesn’t use SDL I believe.

[robertybob]

Fresh RetroPie 3.5 image

Configure Xbox Controller

Enable SSH

sudo passwd root – can’t SSH in as ‘root’, access denied (despite entering correct password?)

Quit Emulationstation

SSH as pi

cd ~
mkdir develop

sudo apt-get install cmake libx11-dev libx11-xcb-dev libflac-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libopenal-dev libjpeg62-turbo-dev libfreetype6-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libxcb-image0-dev libxcb-util0-dev libxcb-ewmh-dev libxcb-keysyms1-dev libxcb-icccm4-dev libudev-dev libavutil-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavfilter-dev libswscale-dev libavresample-dev libfontconfig1-dev libxrandr2 libxrandr-dev

Attract requires X so we need to install it (took a while! =( )

sudo apt-get update (installation of lxde will fail otherwise)

sudo apt-get install xinit

sudo apt-get install lxde

Back to the instructions from the Wiki:

cd ~/develop

git clone -b rpi https://github.com/mickelson/SFML sfml-pi

mkdir sfml-pi/build;cd sfml-pi/build

cmake -DEGL_INCLUDE_DIR=/opt/vc/include -DEGL_LIBRARY=/opt/vc/lib/libEGL.so -DFREETYPE_INCLUDE_DIR_freetype2=/usr/include -DFREETYPE_INCLUDE_DIR_ft2build=/usr/include/freetype2 -DGLES_INCLUDE_DIR=/opt/vc/include -DGLES_LIBRARY=/opt/vc/lib/libGLESv1_CM.so -DSFML_BCMHOST=1 -DSFML_OPENGL_ES=1 ..

sudo make install

sudo ldconfig

cd ~/develop
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mickelson/attract attract

cd attract

make USE_GLES=1

sudo make install

sudo raspi-config – Overclock to Turbo, change memory split to 256mb.

Restarted

First time, I got the X log-in screen for Debian 8, keyboard and mouse wouldn’t work. Couldn’t SSH into it so had to pull plug.

Plugged it back in and this time the RetroPie splash screen appeared but wouldn’t go further, couldn’t SSH so had to pull plug again.

Plugged it again and a whole screen of messages has appeared including stuff about systenmd-fsck[72] , Started LSB, Starting Avahi and Starting D-Bus. Frozen. Can’t SSH into the Pi, have to pull plug.

Fourth time, RetroPie splash screen loads, disappears and left with blank screen. Can’t SSH into Pi so now giving up..

[robertybob]

Right, so I’ve just tried again, this time using a Jessie image (not RetroPie) and I’m stuck at

pi@raspberrypi:~/develop/attract $ make USE_GLES=1

Where I get the error:

fatal: No names found, cannot describe anything.

and everything seems to build, but then when I do

sudo make install

I get the error

pi@raspberrypi:~/develop/attract $ sudo make install
fatal: No names found, cannot describe anything.
install -D -t /usr/local/bin attract
mkdir -p /usr/local/share/attract/
cp -r config/* /usr/local/share/attract/

Could someone please please upload their image? I really don’t want to have to use the one in their forums which is nearly a year old :(

Trying to get this to build is really stressing me out and I’m desperate for some kind of help.

[ronoh55]

@Robertybob The thread with the outdated image does say the guy that created it will be updating his image in the next couple weeks. Until then, it shouldn’t be super hard to take the old image and update attract mode manually.

[robertybob]

[quote=117655] @Robertybob The thread with the outdated image does say the guy that created it will be updating his image in the next couple weeks. Until then, it shouldn’t be super hard to take the old image and update attract mode manually.

[/quote]

Do you think it would be as simple as:

‘cd ~/develop
git clone –depth 1 https://github.com/mickelson/attract attract
cd attract

make USE_GLES=1

sudo make install’

?

[robertybob]

just to add to my post from the 19th Feb:

then when I run “Attract” it says:

Starting Attract-Mode v2.0.0 (Linux)
Config file not found: /home/pi/.attract/attract.cfg, performing initial setup.
Failed to open X11 display; make sure the DISPLAY environment variable is set correctly
Aborted

I have tried compiling on both Wheezy and Jessie and yet I get the same errors.

[robertybob]

[quote=117655] @Robertybob The thread with the outdated image does say the guy that created it will be updating his image in the next couple weeks. Until then, it shouldn’t be super hard to take the old image and update attract mode manually.

[/quote]

The guys image is my only hope TBH, unless Herb shares his compiled image (pretty please?). The guy you mention uses Diet-Pi which is an extremely restricted Raspbian. So much so, that during the initial setup you’re asked if you wish to use an external hard drive, if you say no then you cannot go back and change this. The guy uses network shares so there’s no way I can use my external hard disk – I’m therefore limited to the size of my
SD card :(

[herbfargus]

I’ve ammended the wiki (jessie page) added a few dependencies, and some notes at the end for RetroPie specific installs.

see here:

https://github.com/mickelson/attract/wiki/Compiling-on-the-Raspberry-Pi-(Raspbian-Jessie)#notes-for-retropie

I don’t like that it needs x so I don’t know how likely it will be to be included as part of retropie but its at least there to play with.

[robertybob]

Thanks Herb! I think the main attraction with Attract is the ability to use video snaps / video previews, so I wondered if you’d like to take on the challenge of successfully compiling FFmpeg (or equivilant) on Jessie too :D

[herbfargus]

tried it last night and failed miserably. its not worth the effort to me atm

[robertybob]

[quote=118388]tried it last night and failed miserably. its not worth the effort to me atm

[/quote]

Don’t worry about it, I have actually had some success getting Attract to work. Tried it with some video snaps and they work fine with just the normal FFmpeg binaries installed (no mmal).

I’ve just figured out how to run GB games using Mednafen (non-Libretro), no idea how to force it full screen though.

By the way I had to actually be on the desktop in order to run Attract. Maybe I messed something up or its because I’m using Wheezy, but
Xinit Attract didn’t work. Start X then Attract (at the terminal) worked fine though.

[shoothere]

WOW this looks amazing!

But wouldn’t this pretty much deck the raspberry pi as far as vram goes?

Also: where are the movies for the games stored? I take it locally when scraped? Won’t that require insane amounts of storage?

[robertybob]

[quote=118403]WOW this looks amazing!

But wouldn’t this pretty much deck the raspberry pi as far as vram goes?

Also: where are the movies for the games stored? I take it locally when scraped? Won’t that require insane amounts of storage?

[/quote]

The “Layouts” seem surprisingly fine so far as VRAM goes. The movies I got from emumovies.com (they have their own scraper , or you can download as a complete pack) are only 240p so are less than 800kb in size each, so storing them on a 32gb+ card probably won’t be an issue.

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