MiSTer Super Attract Mode (SAM)

MiSTer SAM puts all your games on display to enjoy whenever your MiSTer is idle!

What is it?

Like a screen saver, MiSTer SAM comes on when your MiSTer is idle. Then SAM will launch a random game from your library every few minutes. If you like a game that's currently playing, just pick up your controller and push a button, press a key, or move the mouse. SAM will wait until your MiSTer goes idle again. Then the gaming tour begins again!

Installation

Copy MiSTer_SAM_on.sh to your MiSTer's /media/fat/Scripts directory - that's it!
From the main MiSTer menu open the OSD (F12 or your controller's menu button).
Navigate to Scripts and select MiSTer_SAM_on.sh.
NOTE: Additional files will be downloaded automatically the first time you run MiSTer_SAM_on.sh.

Offline Installation

If your MiSTer is not connected to the internet, click on "Code" -> "Download Zip" and download the project package.

Copy MiSTer_SAM_on.sh and MiSTer_SAM.ini to /media/fat/Scripts on your MiSTer.
Additionally copy the entire MiSTer_SAM directory to /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM on your MiSTer.
Make sure you don't forget about adding the . in front of the MiSTer_SAM directory

Usage

Simply wait at the main MiSTer menu for 2 minutes (default setting) without touching the mouse, keyboard, or controller and SAM will start.

Don't want to wait? You can start SAM instantly with the MiSTer_SAM_now.sh script in your MiSTer's Scripts folder! Just be sure to run MiSTer_SAM_on.sh at least once.

Features

Autoplay - MiSTer SAM autostarts by default when your MiSTer is idle in the main menu. You can change SAM's behaviour by changing "menuonly" setting in the ini.
Controller Detection - MiSTer SAM will only start when no input has been received from your controllers for the amount of time set in MiSTer_SAM.ini
Options Menu - All options of SAM can be configured from a menu when launching MiSTer_SAM_on.sh. NOTE The menu does not work out of the box on CRT's . Please try adding the following settings to your /media/fat/MiSTer.ini and see if it will make the menu work for your CRT setup:

[Menu]
vga_scaler=0
fb_terminal=0
vsync_adjust=1
video_mode=512,38,66,64,224,12,20,6,10689

Exclusion Lists - You can exclude any amount of games in the ini that you don't want to have displayed.

Updates

MiSTer_SAM_on.sh is not only enabling the script on your MiSTer but is also updating all your files to the latest release. It will overwrite all MiSTer_SAM files except your MiSTer_SAM.ini.

From the main MiSTer menu open the OSD (F12 or your controller's menu button).
Navigate to Scripts and select MiSTer_SAM_on.sh.
Backup MiSTer_SAM.ini and delete (recommended). Since we constantly add new features, it is advised to backup your custom settings and start with a fresh MiSTer_SAM.ini.

Reset to Defaults

This process can be used if you want to return MiSTer SAM to default settings or ensure you have the latest files.

From the main MiSTer menu open the terminal (F9).
Login (default user: root default password: 1).
rm -fr /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM /media/fat/MiSTer_SAM /media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM.ini
Open the OSD (F12 or your controller's menu button).
Navigate to Scripts and select MiSTer_SAM_on.sh.

Configuration

The script is highly customizable through the included ini file MiSTer_SAM.ini (details below).

Supported Systems

Currently supported MiSTer cores:

Arcade
Game Boy Advance
Genesis
MegaCD AKA SegaCD
NeoGeo
NES
SNES
TurboGrafx-16 AKA PC Engine
TurboGrafx-16 CD AKA PC Engine CD

MiSTer Setup

The Update-all script works great for putting system files in the right places.

Attract Mode Configuration

Arcade Horizontal or Vertical Only

Change the "orientation" setting in the MiSTer_SAM.ini file to choose from only horizontal or vertical arcade games.

Exclude

Want to exclude certain arcade games? Just add them to mraexclude in the MiSTer_SAM.ini file.

FAQs

How does it work?

A Linux startup daemon runs in the background of your MiSTer's ARM CPU. It looks for any keyboard activity, mouse movement, or controller button presses via Linux. This is being achieved by monitoring the hardware devices on your MiSTer while using minimal resources - with only native tools (CPU load of >1%). When SAM sees you are at the main menu and aren't using the MiSTer for several minutes, it launches random games.

MiSTer arcade cores are launched via a MiSTer command. For console games there is no official way to load individual games programmatically. SUper Attract Mode automates the process by sending simulated button presses to the MiSTer. This is done with a modified version of pocomane's MiSTer Batch Control.

Do you support SNAC?

SNAC is not handled by the Linux kernel so unfortunately we wont be able to support SNAC devices.

I don't like how SAM does something!

MiSTer SAM is designed to be highly configurable. Please check the /media/fat/Scripts/MiSTer_SAM.ini file to see if the behavior you want is configurable. If not, please open an issue! We love feedback and feature requests.

Will this break my MiSTer? Will attract mode reduce the life of the MiSTer cycling between cores if left on long term?

Short answer is no. FPGAs don't have a limited number of writes. They are solid state devices that are configured at boot up or - in the case of MiSTer - when a core is loaded. There is no wear from this configuration step.

How do I know what game is on?

If you would like to know what game is currently playing, you can check the file /tmp/SAM_Game.txt. Some folks even use this with OBS to automatically change the game name for their Twitch stream!

Where'd this come from? What happened to the other attract mode projects?

The great work began with MrChrisster building a MiSTer Attract feature for the NES core. This begat Attract_Arcade after Mellified ~~kept opening issues~~ started helping. Once MrChrisster worked with mbc it unlocked the power to load ROMs for more MiSTer cores, resulting in Attract_Mode. We wanted to bring the project to the next level by automating the process. From this collaboration and passion was born SAM - Super Attract Mode! Since MiSTer SAM does everything the old projects did - and lots more! - we wanted to create a new name appropriate for its new superpowers.

Troubleshooting

- When I try to launch the script, it fails and says something about Document Type
You most likely didn't download the "raw" file.
When downloading a file from github, click on the file, then click on "raw".
Now push Ctrl+S to save

- Core is loaded but just hangs on the menu
Sometimes this happens (even on our test setups) and it could be for a variety of reasons.

Neogeo and GBA seem to have the most issues while SNES, NES and Genesis work pretty reliably.
We noticed that some MegaCD games that the script is trying to load also won't work when loaded through the MiSTer interface.
Make sure you are using the recommended folder structure, such as /media/fat/Games/SNES/.
The script supports zipped Everdrive packs or unzipped folders. For MegaCD and Turbografx16 CD games must be in CHD format.

If you are still having trouble it could simply be that the rom failed to load, it seems to happen every now and then.

- Sometimes NeoGeo doesn't load a rom and hangs on the menu.
Still investigating why this is happening. It sometimes loads a game successfully but then shows corrupted sprites. It has something to do with the bios but so far we don't know why. The NeoGeo core is special in a lot of ways and we haven't unlocked all it's mysteries yet.

- Turbografx16 CD and MegaCD just showing Run/Start button but not starting into the game
Make sure you use a bios that auto launches the game.

- USB Storage
/media/usb0 currently is not supported. You can set the game path in the ini but it will cause mbc to fail loading the rom if the folder structure is different from /media/fat/games

- Can I use a CIFS mount for my games?
CIFS is supported. Here is an example of some values in cifs_mount.sh that should get you started. The idea is to mount The SMB Games folder over the MiSTer SD card Games folder:

SERVER="192.168.1.10"  
SHARE="Games/Mister/Games"  
LOCAL_DIR="*"  
BASE_PATH="/media/fat/Games"

Advanced Usage

For technical users here are a few handy tricks to observe and debug SAM.

To update the daemon from local files: cp /media/fat/Scripts/.MiSTer_SAM/MiSTer_SAM_init /etc/init.d/S93mistersam && /etc/init.d/S93mistersam start &
To disable the daemon startup delay add to your INI: startupsleep="No"
To enable more console messages: samquiet="No"

Release History

28 Apr 2021 - Test branch support, added reboot to on to improve reliability, fixed confusing messages in on, fixed monitoring with no js devices
24 Apr 2021 - Controller detection and removal, launch SAM only from the main menu (configurable), allow controller/keyboard/mouse interrupts (configurable), fixed INI parsing, added SAM now to launch instantly, more bugs squashed.
23 Apr 2021 - Updated INI and data directory - Reset to defaults recommended!
21 Apr 2021 - Initial version

MickGyver / MiSTer_SAM