[mythtv-users] mythgame - removing gui from emulators

[Paul Bender]

Jeff Simpson wrote:
> I currently have snes9x (SNES), fakenes (NES), stella (Atari 2600),
> and mupen64plus (N64) working in some fashion under mythgame. What I'd
> like to do is have those emulators load up and immediately load the
> rom. Then when ESC or Q or whatever is hit, have them exit completely,
> rather than exiting to their own GUI. What I'm effectively looking for
> is for a --nogui option. It would make it much easier to switch games
> with just the remote and joystick that way.
> 
> Does anybody know how to do that for snes9x, fakenes, stella, or
> mupen64? I haven't looked into it too closely yet, but if you happen
> to have a commandline syntax that does that, please share it.

If I understand what you are trying to do, then I do this in MiniMyth 
for game emulators included in MiniMyth (fceu, jzintv, mednafen, stella, 
VisualBoyAdvance ans zsnes).

The command lines can be found in the mm_game_start perl script used to 
start games: 
<http://code.google.com/p/minimyth/source/browse/trunk/gar-minimyth/script/meta/minimyth/files/source/rootfs/usr/bin/mm_game_start>. 


To stop the games I use appropriate key sequences to the appropriate 
game emulator. First, using the ratpoison window manager, I select the 
game emulator. Second, using the xmacroplay utility, I send the key 
sequence. This is done using the mm_game_exit perl script: 
<http://code.google.com/p/minimyth/source/browse/trunk/gar-minimyth/script/meta/minimyth/files/source/rootfs/usr/bin/mm_game_exit>. 
The actual work is done by the custom perl method 
MiniMyth::x_applications_exit 
<http://code.google.com/p/minimyth/source/browse/trunk/gar-minimyth/script/perl/perl-MiniMyth/files/MiniMyth.pm>.

The mm_game_exit script is called by lirc using irexec whenever 
KEY_BACK, KEY_ESC or KEY_EXIT are pressed: 
<http://code.google.com/p/minimyth/source/browse/trunk/gar-minimyth/script/meta/minimyth/files/source/rootfs/etc/lirc.d/lircrc>.

Also, the mm_game_start and mm_game_exit scripts handle keeping the 
screen saver disabled when the game emulator is running.