rexmenu 2.0

Simple image tiling program launcher/MAME frontend using Pygame

A simple image-tiling program launcher, designed primarily as frontend for MAME but easily supporting other emulators.

Contents

• Prerequisites

• Limitations

• Install

• Usage

• Raspberry Pi

  • RetroPie

  • Extras

• Configuration

  • rexmenu Section

    • Keystroke Options

    • Image Options

    • Other Options

  • Other Sections

  • Images

  • Konami Code

• License

Prerequisites

• Python 2.7

• pygame

• python-evdev (optional, for screen blanking utility on Raspberry Pi)

Pygame has recently become installable through pip if the correct dependencies are installed. On linux it is probably available through your package manager. It is installed by default in the RetroPie distribution for the Raspberry Pi. Binaries are also available at the Pygame website.

Limitations

RexMenu does not perform any discovery of ROMs or any scraping to get metadata. Any images used have to be sourced outside this program.

Install

Install with:

pip install rexmenu

Usage

The program may be started from the command line, or autostarted by some means depending on your operating system. Either way, if you have installed rexmenu through pip, the script will be in your search path and can be started simply by:

rexmenu.py

RexMenu takes no command line arguments; it needs a configuration file that lists all of the emulators and games. An example file is in the source distribution as rexmenu.cfg.sample. See the Configuration section below for more details.

After starting the program, the display will change to a grid of thumbnail images with one highlighted. If there are more games defined in the config file than will fit on screen, up or down arrows will appear indicating that there are more games in that direction. The joystick or arrow keys can be used to move the highlight box to different games, and will scroll the list in the direction of the arrow when you attempt to move the highlight box off the screen in that direction. Pressing a predefined key will start that game. Exiting from the game will return you to the RexMenu screen.

Raspberry Pi

RexMenu works well on the Raspberry Pi because pygame works on the console graphics. You do not need to have X running.

RetroPie

The RetroPie distribution on Raspberry Pi 3 is a Raspbian- based linux distribution that provides many emulators. Its default frontend was too complicated for my small kids to use, so I designed this based on some code from a listener (I host the Player/Missile Podcast) Rex. And hence the name.

In RetroPie, you can autostart RexMenu by editing the file:

/opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh

Extras

For the RaspberryPi, I have included some extras. The program rpi-screen-blank.py will turn off the monitor after a set amount of time (default of 10 minutes) where it doesn’t detect any keyboard or mouse input. It works by using the Python evdev module to monitor keyboard events and uses some RaspberryPi- specific commands to blank the console screen, which enables the DPMS of the monitor, putting it into low power standby mode.

Configuration

The RexMenu configuration file tis in INI-style format, with one required section that sets some application options, and any number of other sections describing the available programs to launch. Here is an example of a configuration file:

[rexmenu]
title = title.png
quit = ESCAPE
image path = /home/pi/src/arcade-screenshots
thumbnail size = 250
windowed = False
window width = 1280
window height = 1024
highlight size = 8

[advmame]
digdug = Dig Dug
mappy = Mappy
mpatrol = Moon Patrol
flicky = Flicky
pacmania = Pac-Mania
pacman = Pac-Man
mspacman = Ms. Pac-Man
nrallyx = Rally X
berzerk = Berzerk

[atari800 -xl -pal]
/share/atari/yoomp.atr = Yoomp!

[python]
image path = /share/rex
/share/rex/atari/combat.py = Combat

The configuration file can be stored as .rexmenu in your home directory, or as rexmenu.cfg in the same directory as the rexmenu.py program.

rexmenu Section

The rexmenu section defines the appearance and control of the launcher.

Keystroke Options

The configuration options for keystrokes are:

run
quit
up
down
left
right
konami_a
konami_b

where each of those takes a text list of pygame keyboard identifiers without the leading K_. For example, the default set of controls for run is:

[rexmenu]
run = Z X LSHIFT LCTRL SPACE RETURN 1 2 3 4

The Konami code is available (up up down down left right left right B A) for a function, currently to exit the frontend, but in the future will be user- defined. The konami_a and konami_b config items are available to set what the program will use for the B and A keys, defaulting to 2 and 1 respectively.

Image Options

• image path (space separated list) list of paths to search for images if the image isn’t found in emulator-specific image paths. If a path has spaces within it, enclose the path in single or double quotes.

• thumbnail size (int) images will be resized to fit within the square with each side being this size in pixels

Other Options

• title (string) path to an optional title graphic displayed at the top of the screen

• windowed (boolean) if True, use window instead of full screen

• window width (int) height of window in pixels if in windowed mode

• window height (int) width of window in pixels if in windowed mode

• highlight size (int) width in pixels of the line used to draw the highlight box

• grid spacing (int) number of pixels padding between grid entries

• name spacing (int) number of pixels padding between grid image and text showing the name of the game

• clear screen (boolean) whether or not to clear the console screen before displaying the menu

• wrap menu (boolean) allow the cursor to wrap to the top or bottom when attempting to move beyond the bottom or top

• konami code (string) action to perform when the Konami code is completed (see the Konami Code section below)

Other Sections

The remaining sections of the config file describe a command line used to launch the emulator, and the list of filenames of games that use that emulator. Any number of sections may be included in the config file, and the program will display all games in alphabetical order regardless of which section of the config file they appear.

The section name is the path and command line arguments to the emulator that will run all the entries in that section. Entries for the same emulator but using different command line options are possible. For instance, to use the atari800 emulator in NTSC (60 Hz display) for some games and PAL (50 Hz display) for others, two sections could be added:

[atari800]
/opt/games/atari8bit/Jumpman.atr = Jumpman

[atari800 -pal]
/opt/games/atari8bit/Jumpman.atr = Jumpman (PAL)

This is the format of entries: the key (the left hand side, before the =) which is the path to the ROM file, and the value (the right hand side, after the =) which is the name of the game to display in the grid.

If the title is the same name as the filename, you can use the entry “title from name” and just list the paths to the games separated by whitespace (the directory portion and the file extension will be removed for display):

[atari800]
title from name = /opt/games/atari8bit/Jumpman.atr /opt/games/atari8bit/Livewire.xex

If the emulator program is not in the search path, you can use the full path to the emulator as the section title:

[/opt/games/bin/atari800 -xl]
/opt/games/atari8bit/yoomp.atr = Yoomp!

Images

Images for the grid are loaded based on the filename of the game, not the text title. PNG and JPEG files are supported. The path is stripped off of the game and the extension “.png” or “.jpg” is added to both the whole filename and the filename stripped of its extension. The first one found is used. So for /opt/games/atari8bit/Jumpman.atr, the names:

Jumpman.atr.png
Jumpman.atr.jpg
Jumpman.png
Jumpman.jpg

are searched for in that order.

They are searched for in the same directory as the game, or in one of the paths specified by the image path item in either in the individual emulator section, or the rexmenu section. The path specified in the emulator sections will be searched before the paths in the rexmenu section.

Note again that RexMenu has no metadata scraping, so you’ll have to download or create the images yourself. For MAME, a relatively complete set of screenshot images can be found at:

http://www.progettosnaps.net/snapshots/

Konami Code

When the Konami code is completed, RexMenu will perform the action defined in the konami code entry in the main configuration section. Currently, there are two types of actions:

• exit: exit the menu, back to the command line

• config file name: load an alternate configuration file and display that menu.

When the alternate configuration file is used, it can have its own Konami code action, so you can chain menus in this manner.

License

RexMenu, the MAME frontend sponsored by the Player/Missile Podcast Copyright (c) 2016-2017 Rob McMullen ([e-mail])

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.