openMenu Alpha 1

[mrneo240]

Hi there, I have a question about using this nifty little menu version on an arcade cabinet...

I installed openmenu (using the instructions referred to here) and I can get the Dreamcast to boot to the "Licensed by Sega" screen, but once the system loads past that, I get a black screen that blips every few seconds.

Now - to be clear, this is not running on a standard TV, nor an HDTV. This is running on what is called an MGCD. It looks like there are a couple of threads on this forum about it.

Quick rundown: The MGCD allows a Dreamcast to run in an arcade cabinet (15khz monitor) without any modification to the console what-so-ever. Its quite literally plug and play.

Running GDMenu (vanilla) works just fine and loads the GDMenu and Game X or Y, but trying to run OpenMenu results in the black screen I mentioned before. I have a feeling the arcade cabinet being in the mix might be the issue, but I just want to make sure. To clarify, I did indeed grab the .GDI version of GDMenu from the site, and I've ensured the appropriate files are in the appropriate folder/root/etc after using GDMenuCardManager.

Is OpenMenu not friendly with 15khz 4x3 displays? I hope that doesn't sound like a dumb question, I just want to make sure that I'm not missing something in the set up. I did do a rudimentary search in this thread for 'arcade' and only came across some mentions of Atomiswave games and another Dreamcast game with the word Arcade in it. No really - I did a Ctrl-F on all 42 pages of this thread for 'arcade' and other than those few hits I came up with bupkis lol.

If OpenMenu is not friendly with 15khz monitors then there we go - question answered and I wont be able to use it, sadly. At least not on the arcade.

Sadly I'm not able to test it on a regular TV at the moment because I don't currently have my HDMI adapter, nor a Composite capable TV in the house.

Thanks for any help!

I can try to debug but without hardware to verify it's very difficult for me. Should be back soon with a desk and space to setup dev again

[ItalianGrandma]

Looks awesome! I'll definitely have to give it a try once CDI support is there

[ChuChu]

I can try to debug but without hardware to verify it's very difficult for me. Should be back soon with a desk and space to setup dev again

When you get a chance, there seems to be a bug with multi-disc selection (when using the "hidden" setting) in the GDMenu theme.

When you click the title for a multi-disc game, rather than the disc selection menu popping up, it goes to a black screen and then returns to the main menu. The workaround for this is to first open and then dismiss the settings menu after open menu loads, which will then allow a disc to be selected from the submenu.

(Once you have clicked on a multi-disc title and triggered the bug, opening the settings menu will no longer fix the issue and will lead to a frozen black screen after subsequently selecting a multi-disc title)

[mrneo240]

That doesn't sound good. Noted for my list to fix when I get a desk

[HornHeaDD]

I can try to debug but without hardware to verify it's very difficult for me. Should be back soon with a desk and space to setup dev again

Hey man it's all good, thanks. I ended up selling that MGCD so I dont use it on a cab anylonger. But I just got my Dreamcast back from getting DCDigital 2! I tried installing OpenMenu and it worked like a champ.

I did see a black screen with a yellow line blip only once, and then the menu came up just fine. It must have been something I did wrong, thats the only explanation.

Only thing Ive found is that the menu doesn't really behave as stated on the GIthub page:

A - Launch
START - Open preferences menu
Y - return to bios

Launch works as expected, obviously. But hitting Y will change the orientation of the menu from the side-by-side to a Grid style (looks cool tho). Hitting B will change between the 3 available themes, and I think L/R do move up or down a certain amount of games. But hitting start does not bring up the preferences menu for me. It just sort of rearranges the available games. Its kinda weird.

Am I doing something incorrectly when trying it?

[Larsenv]

Does Open Menu work on DreamShell?

[TheSegaGuy]

Are there any updated asset packs, mainly for Japanese titles (Capcom vs SNK 2) and Indie games (Sturmwind), etc? Absolutely love OpenMenu, such a polished front end for GDEMU users.

[ItalianGrandma]

Does Open Menu work on DreamShell?

I may be wrong on this so someone can correct me, but I'd imagine that it'd have to be a custom version of the Open Menu "disc" that can specifically read from the SD card plugged in to the serial adapter. I'm not sure whether Open Menu or GDMenu can do that currently.

[deluxux]

I would love to see keyboard support in the menu one day!

[Wombat]

Finally got around to installing openMenu and I must say, WOW WOW WOW!
Really impressive and very nice menu. Haven't figured out all the ins and outs yet, experimenting as we speak

For newcomers, I will save you some time as the 1st post is no longer up to date. Get the latest BOX.DAT and ICON.DAT from here: https://github.com/mrneo240/openMenu_imagedb/releases and the latest META.DAT from here: https://github.com/mrneo240/openMenu_metadb/releases/

update 1:
I notice quite a few games are missing meta data (e.g. PAL version of Sonic Adventure and Sega Bass Fishing) and for some reason the PAL version of Crazy Taxi shows US artwork. Thanks to the tool posted here: https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/vi ... 22&t=15253 I'm able to get the meta situation sorted, but not Crazy Taxi.

As it would be a waste to keep the improvements just to myself, is there anyone here with more Github experience that can point me into the right direction in how to submit my updates to https://github.com/mrneo240/openMenu_metadb ?