Attractmode on OSX 13.6 Intel i7 shows black screen when loading MAME

[PatrickLewisdotNet]

I was able to get Attract mode setup and fixed the game names to be Names and not filenames. I can start the Mame emulator separately and play the games just fine.

Now with Attract Mode it acts like it is going to start the games (blacks the screen), but never starts the game. I have to reboot my computer to get out of the black screen.

All I see is a black screen and a cursor. Escape, Command Q, nothing gets me out of this.

Here is the config for Mame:

Generated by Attract-Mode v2.6.1

executable $HOME/Mame/mame
args [name]
rompath $HOME/Mame/roms
romext .zip;.7z
system Arcade
info_source listxml
pause_hotkey $HOME/Mame/marquee/
artwork marquee $HOME/Mame/marquee/
artwork snap $HOME/Mame/video/;$HOME/Mame/snapshots
« Last Edit: January 18, 2024, 08:41:08 PM by patricklewis.net »

[PatrickLewisdotNet]

I was able to get Attract and Mame to load as windows to see more of what is going on. Mame launches and starts to load the correct rom, but freezes. I turned on -log, but it is empty.

Attract-Mame.mov

[PatrickLewisdotNet]

Found a fix. I set the Non-Blocking Mode Wait to 1.
Attract seemed to retake focus otherwise and locked up mame.

[PatrickLewisdotNet]

Now, when I quit the game in mame (Escape), the game closes, but Attract does not come back. It just goes to my desktop in the finder.

[cressie176]

I had exactly the same issue - reported http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=4503.0.

I believe the problem is that AM has a bug which causes it to incorrectly sett the pause_hotkey value to the marquee path. When you launch the game it automatically pauses the application. If you enable debug logging you see output similar to

 - Pause Hotkey pressed, sending SIGSTOP signal to process 5448

[cressie176]

Looks like this was fixed in #615 and released in v2.6.2, however the latest available mac build is v2.6.1

[cressie176]

I tried compiling v2.6.2, but it failed with errors. v2.7.0 compiled but the video was scaled incorrectly. Instead I've installed AttractMode Plus