Attract mode (Cycle through user collection)

[checkist84]

Appreciate your great work!

I suggest that adding 'attract mode' feature to the program, that is,

1. Randomly pick a game
2. Play the corresponding video, if any. Then return to 1, if the playback is finished
3. If there are no corresponding video, wait for N seconds (this may be adjusted through option), then return to 1.

So basically, it is the 'attract mode' for the 'attract-mode' frontend :)

Possible options would be :
(1) Start / End random-cycling : In the control key setup
(2) Display time for non-videos(sec) :
(3) Jump to next game if video ends : Yes/No
If No, then use (2) (jump to next game, regardless of video status)
(4) Jump to another list : Yes/No
(5) Jump to another filter : Yes/No

Again, thanks for your effort! This is one of the best software I have used so far.

[nblondiau]

Are you aware that Attract-Mode already has a screensaver feature? :-)

From Layouts and Plug-ins Reference:

The Attract-Mode screen saver is really just a special case layout that is loaded after a user-configured period of inactivity. The screen saver script is located in the "screensaver.nut" file stored in the "layouts" subdirectory.

The default screensaver.nut supports movies.

[checkist84]

Great! I didn't know about configurable screensavers. Thanks for the information.

The screensaver function seems to serve almost everything I needed.
Yet, still it would be nice to have functionalities that:
(1) A key that manually starts screensaver mode (which can be adjusted in control key setup)
(2) A method to know whether the movie has finished playback. (or the method of getting the length of movie file in .nut script)

Anyway, a fully configurable screensaver! This program never cease to impress me. Guess I'll enjoy several weekends of tweaking it :-)

[checkist84]

Well, it turned out that screensaver mechanism itself was slightly different than what I expected....
However, the default screensaver.nut gave useful insights, which solved most of the needed functionalities...

---

fe.add_ticks_callback( "saver_tick" );

local user_interval = 60;
// similar to screensaver timer, resets to this value if user selects something

local saver_interval = 30;
// displays this amount of time, then switch to next game

preview_counter.msg = count;
// preview_counter is just a text, used for on-screen timer

local previous_select = fe.list.index;
local count = 0;
local last_time = 0;
function saver_tick( stime )
{
// 'User' selected something, reset the counter to screensaver value.
if ( previous_select != fe.list.index) {
last_time = stime;
count = user_interval;
previous_select = fe.list.index;
return;
}
// Update on-screen timer every 1 seconds
if ( stime - last_time > 1000) {
count--;
preview_counter.msg = count;
last_time = stime;
}
// If timer expired, change to next random game
if ( count <= 0 ) {
fe.list.index = rand();
previous_select = fe.list.index;
count = saver_interval;
preview_counter.msg = count;
}
}

---

Having a pair of .nut files with/without this screensaver-like function, and switching between them by using 'Toggle Layout' key, it removed the need for separate screen saver controlling key.

It would be still nice to have :
(1) Movie length information
: -1, if there are no movies for this game?
(2) Set current filter/file (currently, only 'get' is supported)
: allows to use something like 'fe.list.filter = rand()' ?

[mickelson]

Hi, good timing on this request as I was just in the process of reworking how video works. I have added a 'video_playing' property to allow layouts to check if a video is playing and to start or stop it if it is. I'll also add a mappable command to launch the screen saver... thanks for the suggestions