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Testing cabinets assets

May 16, 2024, 5 min read

Once your cabinet is complete, you can begin testing it. Normally, it should not work; some adjustments may be required, this happens a lot.

The workshop

There are a special room the workshop where you can see and test the new cabinet. To deploy the cabinet there name it test.zip and copy to the /sdcard/Android/data/com.curif.AgeOfJoy/cabinets folder (as usual, but with that special name). AGE of Joy will reload the cabinet immediately (this only happens in the workshop with that cabinet, but not in the rest of the rooms). Repeat the process until you are confident with the result.

At the end, rename the final cabinet with a unique name, two different cabinets can’t have the same name. As a rule, I use the name of the ROM as the name of the cabinet, so your cabinet will be unique in the gallery and in the cabinet assets universe too.

You can, of course, publish your cabinet.

Read the CDL troubleshooting guide for a more detailed information about how to check a cabinet issue.

Step by step

This is a step by step guide to craft a new cabinet for a ROM.

In this example, we will use the Galaga cabinet to craft a new Galaxian cabinet for the Galaxian ROM

1- Check the ROM

In theory any ROM that works in Libretro MAME 2003+ should work, BUT there are some issues that must be managed in AGE of Joy to use some ROMs. One of them, for example, is the image format because not all ROMS uses the same image format, and if you ROM uses one that is not supported, then the game don’t run or may be it shows weird colors, or loss frames, etc.

Tested ROMs are registered in this site and a lot of them in the Discord server

if your ROM is not in the list, the only way is to craft a new cabinet for that ROM and test it in the game.

2- Craft a new cabinet for testing purposes

This method uses a previously saved model (bundled in the game) and reuse it. Starting with a cabinet asset and modifying it. A good start point is the Galaga cabinet, in this example we will modify the cabinet and we will create a new one.

2.1 Decompress an existing cabinet asset in your PC

  • Create a new folder in your PC with the name of the cabinet you want to create, for example galaxian
  • Copy a cabinet asset to your PC, for example galaga.zip and extract all the files to your new folder galaxian. Warning: its easy to confuse a cabinet asset with a ROM, usually the have the same file name.
  • Now you should have a lot of files, some pngs, a mkv, and the most important description.yaml in the recently created galaxian folder

2.2 change the description file

  • With a text editor open the description.yaml file
  • Edit the cabinet name and rom filename:

Previously:

name: galaga
rom: galaga.zip

After your changes:

name: galaxian
rom: galaxian.zip
  • Save the file.

2.3 Compress to a new zip file

Depending on you operative system there are diferent ways to compress files. This example is for ubuntu.

  • Select all files in the galaxian folder
  • Mouse right button opens a menu, then Compress...
  • Create a new zip file with the name test.zip in any place in your disk.

The test.zip file is a special cabinet asset name for testing purposes only.

3- Test the cabinet

To test the cabinet you need to copy the test.zip cabinet asset to the headset, using Sidequest for example. Remember: test.zip is for testing purposes, we should rename the zip file later after the testing phase.

  • Follow How to get and deploy cabinets assets instructions to know how to copy the test.zip file to the /sdcard/Android/data/com.curif.AgeOfJoy/cabinets folder.
  • Copy the ROM file to /sdcard/Android/data/com.curif.AgeOfJoy/downloads, in this example our ROM file name is ‘galaxian.zip’.
  • Go to the workshop in the game (the door at your left with the wet floor sign in front), if all is ok the new cabinet should spawn in the middle of the Room. If not, or shows something weird like a mutant cabinet, or one cabinet inside the other, then something failed.
  • Walk to the cabinet, insert a coin and look what is happening.

If the game didn’t start or the cabinet didn’t spawn correctly, check the description.yaml file in search of errors. But if you didn’t find any issue, then probably you ROM is not compatible. Ask for help in forums and GitHub.

If you find the issue (may be a typo) repeat all from the step 2.3. The corrected cabinet will replace the actual without need to restart AGE of Joy. Also read the CDL Debug mode information

4- Deploy the new cabinet

If your game is running without any noticeable issue, then you can deploy the new cabinet:

  • Rename the file in your PC from test.zip to a file name that represents the game in the cabinet, in our example should be galaxian.zip
  • Copy the file to the /sdcard/Android/data/com.curif.AgeOfJoy/cabinets folder.
  • Start AGE of Joy again, the program will find the new cabinet and move it to the Cabinets database storage. The game will delete the original zip file from /sdcard/Android/data/com.curif.AgeOfJoy/cabinets
  • After register the new cabinet, it will be deployed in an empty slot inside a Room in the game, replacing an “out of order” cabinet.

Enjoy your new cabinet!

#cabinet/artists

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