Can't play any ROMs; only goes to Raspbian Desktop
  • koinuchan
    Hi! New here; I successfully got ROMs uploaded to my emulators via FTB web upload. I've done Mortal Kombat in Mame4all and AdvMame, and both initially started by saying they were missing files (like other people had trouble with here)

    But on top of that, when I try to select those games, a message appears saying "some files have changed" "would you like to scrape this folder for new roms?" If I say no, it takes me to the terminal. If I say Yes, it simply brings me to the Raspbian desktop.

    I then uploaded a Duck Tales NES rom, and first time of opening it, it started taking me to Raspbian as well. WHat's going on here?
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    There is most likely something wrong with your files. If you say no, it should take you to the rom list. If you say "Yes", it should kick you to terminal with a series of input prompts asking things like "Do you want to download missing images?"

    There are a couple things you should try.
    1) try running PiPlay like this LxTerminal -> sudo python /home/pi/pimame/pimame-menu/launchmenu.py

    2) if 1 doesn't work, try exiting X and running piplay in console mode
  • koinuchan
    I might have confused myself as to whether I was pressing "no" or "yes" It was hard to tell which was actually highlighted. And when I was on terminal, I have trouble reading the text from my couch (its on my TV), so I simply typed "startx" everytime it went to terminal. I'll give it a look again either tommorow or day after. Thanks!
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    yeah, I was worried about that (the highlighting). For the console, it has a countdown (3 second delay) before it auto starts the scraper. I really recommend running the scraper (even if you bypass downloading images). It doesn't take that long, it will get the actual names for your roms, plus it will build a cache file for your roms, so that piplay startup and rom listing runs a lot faster.
  • koinuchan
    Ok, I started looking at it again today. Assuming that I was mixing up what was highlighted, then hitting yes did take me to terminal. It didn't seem to give me any prompts. What it did say is a bit much for me to type; hope you don't mind if I just show a picture.
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/jessycp8y7vfmjs/IMG_20140714_133831.jpg

    At this point, I typed in sudo python /home/pi/pimame/pimame-menu/launchmenu.py
    And it just restarted, with nothing acting different.
    I went back to the terminal by pressing "yes" again, and even though it wasn't asking anything, I tried pressing "y" for yes, it didn't recognize the command. I typed the word "yes" and it immediately started giving me a bunch of "y"s vertically, like so:

    y
    y
    y
    y
    y
    y
    And it kept going down like that. Is that what it does when scraping? I wasn't sure so I unplugged-replugged the pi. I went back to the emulator, but pressed "no" at the message this time, which did give me a rom list as you said, but selecting a rom just brought me to the raspbian desktop.

    Anywho, you mentioned running piplay in console mode. How do I do that?
  • koinuchan
    (accidental duplicate message; srry!)
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    ok, so that error means that the Levenshtein module isn't loaded for some reason. In terminal type 
    sudo apt-get install python-Levenshtein
    (make sure the 'L' is capitalized)

    Then just re-run the scraper. It should work for you then.

    the multiple 'Y' doesn't mean that it's scraping. I'm not sure what that is about. When it's scraping (depending on the arguments passed to it) it should only ask you about 2-3 questions, then it will run through and display the names of your roms along with any matches that it finds. you'll know when it's running :)

    click the lxde button (lower left, like the windows start orb), then choose logout. You can also press ctrl+alt+f1. Then in console you need to run 
    python ~/pimame/pimame-menu/launchmenu.py
    Normally, you can just type 'exit' but since you have X running on startup, that might kick you back into X
  • koinuchan
    I did what you suggested; now when I select a system, it no longer asks to do Rom-scrapping. The scrapping must have worked. :D

    But now when I select the Ducktales rom, it takes me to the console/terminal where it says

    cant load image: themes/default/
    cant load image: themes/default/
    cant load image: themes/default/
    cant load image: themes/default/
    have a nice day ;)
    sh: 1: /home/pi/pimame/emulators/fceux/fceux: not found

    Sometimes the "have a nice day" part isn't there.

    I think selecting the rom might sometimes take me to the Raspbian desktop.

    In AdvMame and Mame4all, I have the rom for Mortal Kombat(rev 5.0 T-Unit 03/19/93)

    When I select it in AdvMame, it'll kinda play. But I have no sound coming from the HDMI or the Pi's audio jack. It's also really slow and choppy.

    When I select Mortal Kombat for Mame4All It starts with some static and goes to this black screen saying "CHECKING SCRATCH RAMS" and has various black boxes labeled as UE13, UG17, or UJ7 and many others. After they all turn yellow (it might have been green, I forget) the game starts. Still no sound. The input settings when I try to designate buttons will not recognize my logitech controller (the AdvMame did)
    The game is still slow and choppy as well.

    Sorry to keep bugging you like this. But has anyone gotten any games to play yet? If so, what can I be doing differently? We all have the same Raspberry Pi, right? As well as the same Piplay OS I'm assuming. I got piplay-0.8-beta3.img from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pimame/files/?source=navbar

    If I DL one of the Pimames that doesn't have "BETA" on it, is that more likely to work without errors? Or are they out-of-date?
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    no worries. ok, so the "can't load image" things can be ignored. Those are part of the theme, it's just to let people know that it's not a valid image file (in this case, a blank image) It auto loads a valid blank image in it's place.

    the 'fceux not found' error is a problem though. fceux is the NES emulator, so if it's not found, then you won't be able to run any NES games.

    Don't test your system with Mortal Kombat, as far as I know, no one has gotten that working well.

    piplay .8beta3 is pretty stable, just really slow. Can you tell me how you are installing your piplay image though? You shouldn't be auto loading into the desktop. So I'm wondering if you are doing something different and it's messing with your file structure.

    You can also use Piplay .7.10, which is ugly, but very fast and pretty stable (NES has some wonky sound)

    Don't feel bad about asking questions on the forums. That's what they are here for!
  • Imgpoz
    First off I've truly got to hand it to you guys for assembling a beautiful masterpiece! What a visual improvement over v7!

    I'm having the same problem, that it doesn't matter which emulator I select from the PiPlay menu, it says emulator not found. The errors I receive are:

    sh: 1: advmame: not found
    sh: 1: /home/pi/pimame/emulators/dgen-sdl-1.32/dgen: not found
    sh: 1: /home/pi/pimame/emulators/mame4all-pi/mame: not found

    Oddly enough, the NES emulator works and that's the one that after scrapping all the ROMS for all emulators it still asks me if I want to scrap it each time I go into there.

    I donwloaded the fresh .8 Beta 4 and did a clean image install on a reformatted SD card via Win32 Disk Imager. I also expanded the file system during the first boot up.

    Let me know if you've any ideas what could be causing this. I'm dying to really test out .8 v4 and can't wait to resolve these issues.

    Keep up the hard work; it's really appreciated by everyone!
  • mholgatemmholgatem
    @Imgpoz - It sounds like your permissions are messed up. Try this: Exit to command line and then launch with 
    sudo python /home/pi/pimame/pimame-menu/launchmenu.py
    and then try running an emulator or the scraper.
  • Imgpoz
    Thx for the quick response. I tried your suggestion and I received the same result as before; it dumps me to the desktop saying file not found. Do you think my SD card somehow got a glitch and it corrupted a file/the permissions? I'm not very Linux savvy so I'm not sure how permissions work with PiPlay. Any other suggestions? Thanks!
  • koinuchan
    @mholgatem - I installed the image to my SD card using win32 disk imager. Although I didn't format the card beforehand. I kinda thought the imager would format it before installing. Could that be a problem?
  • bramdbramd
    @koinuchan - You should always format your SD card before using it. Use this tool https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/ But I don't think this is the cause of your problems. (if you card was empty)
  • Chad
    Agreed, I format it using the "Format Size Adjustment" = ON too.
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