GrappleHat

I've seen it asked (on Reddit) how to play custom background music while playing games on ArkOS. I wanted to share how I do it, in case others want to try it as well. I'm sure these instructions could be modified slightly for other Linux handhelds.

• Gain terminal access (via SSH or directly on the device)
• With your device connected to wifi run sudo apt install mpg123 to install the CLI-based music player
• Transfer your desired music mp3s to a folder on the sd card
  • I use /roms2/Music/
• Create the file start_music.sh in your ports folder which contains the line nohup mpg123 -z /<path>/<to>/<my>/<music>/<folder>/*.mp3 >/dev/null 2>&1 &
  • For me that line was nohup mpg123 -z /roms2/Music/*.mp3 >/dev/null 2>&1 & and the file was at /roms2/ports/start_music.sh
• Create the file stop_music.sh in your ports folder which contains the line pkill mpg123
  • For me that file was at /roms2/ports/stop_music.sh
• Log out of the terminal and restart EmulationStation

Now start_music and stop_music options are available in the 'Ports' section of EmulationStation. Running start_music starts a shuffled playlist of everything you put in that music folder. stop_music stops the music. Of course, you'll want to turn off the native background music in whatever game your playing too :)

EDIT: Updated the nohup line to dump outputs to the null output rather than to file (which could eventually grow to be large).

I like text-based games (like from ifdb), but I don't like sitting at attention in front of my computer like I do all day at work. Any ideas for how to play these effectively without being on a computer?

• I've hacked a Kindle Paperwhite & used an on-screen virtual keyboard to play these games. That worked OK, but the virtual keyboard is very imprecise and frustrating.

• I've similarly hacked a Kindle 3 (the last model to include a physical keyboard). I hoped the physical keyboard would do the trick. Unfortunately, the key buttons are convex & very stiff - which hurt my fingertips after even short play sessions.

Any other ideas? Or is this a fool's errand?

Super Metroid's color palette and lanky sprite were always a turn off for me. But I'm finally giving it a chance on SNES (MSU-1 version) & I'm really enjoying it!

Vibes are: Quake + the movie Alien + Nine Inch Nails' album The Downward Spiral. Pretty cool aesthetic after all!

I've noticed that some apps sometimes don't start from the GUI. I've seen it on several computers (all running Ubuntu 22.04). That includes double-clicking an appimage icon from an explorer window, or launching an app through a launcher shortcut. But if I open them manually from a terminal window they never fail to start.

The terminal workaround is fine... But any ideas what could be wrong with the GUI? Is there a service I can restart to try to get the functionality back?

EDIT: I'll add that the issue is sporadic. Steam will open fine from the GUI today, but tomorrow it won't, etc. (It's not as simple as a bad path in a shortcut)

In many games there are a lot of stupid filler items that you don't know what they do and they don't matter. (i.e. crafting ingredients). They are so ubiquitous across games that there ought to be a word for them. Sort of like a "MacGuffin" (except a MacGuffin moves the plot along, and these filler items don't).

Is there a name for these filler items? If not, got any ideas?

I just hit 10 hours in Earthbound on my Anbernic RG280V. I'm looking forward to trying some more SNES games once I'm finished (Super Mario World, Street Fighter Turbo II, Zelda: Link to the Past, etc.).

Interested to hear what you all are playing? Or, what retro games are on your "to do" list?

I'm seeing programs freeze when I start any operation that would open a 'save as' dialogue box. The behavior is happening with all programs and started suddenly last week.

I've been able to trace the problem to a mounted SMB network drive that I access through a VPN. I have the mount specified in /etc/fstab. If I manually unmount (sudo umount -l /path/to/mount/) then all of these 'save as' freezes go away, and programs which appeared frozen suddenly come back to life. But if I remount (sudo mount -a) then the freezes return when I try to save anything.

So I have a workaround solution (unmount whenever saving, remount to continue working), but I'm at a loss for how to fix this more permanently. Weird that it began all of a sudden like this, everything used to be fine. I've tried updating and that hasn't helped. Any thoughts are much appreciated!

OS: Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS x86_64

Kernel: 6.2.0-36-generic

DE: GNOME 42.9

WM: Mutter

Wine works really well on popular games. But when I want to run a more obscure program I have spotty luck.

On a few of occasions I was able to get a few programs to run via Wine, but after an OS wipe I was unable to get them to work again. In those circumstances I know the programs CAN work, & I realize how terrible I am at troubleshooting Wine problems. Internet searches turn up very little advice for how to go about troubleshooting.

Do any of you have any procedures, rules of thumb, advice etc for troubleshooting Wine issues?

Other than Mario Paint were there any other art games for the old consoles? I tried some internet searches but came up empty handed.

I've read a few books about simple living/minimalism but I just finished 'Walden' and wow... it's beautiful. Many patient observations of simple natural phenomenon are wonderful meditations and potent lessons. It seemed just as relevant to present times as to when it was written. I finished feeling like there's so much more to extract from that book, definitely going to read again!

Maybe you were aware, but if not I wanted to share with you fine folks in case you've missed this gem like I had. It is in the public domain in the US (published 1854) so you can get the ebook or audiobook for free from Project Gutenberg!

Were there any card games like Magic: The Gathering for retro systems? I expect not, because the digital card game genre didn't really "click" until later. But I thought I'd ask.