syn-arcade

A game assistant: an overlay with frame rate and temperatures, controller setup and testing, and the shortcuts that make a desktop usable while a game has the screen.

The overlay

syn-arcade hud              # what it is set to right now
syn-arcade hud toggle       # works INSIDE a running game
syn-arcade hud cycle        # move it to the next corner
syn-arcade hud set font_size 20
syn-arcade hud path         # which config is in effect, and who outranks it

The overlay is MangoHud, so any MangoHud setting works with hud set. hud path exists because MangoHud reads several files in a fixed order and "my setting did nothing" is nearly always a file further down the list winning — the command says which one is actually being used.

⚠ The overlay is not session-wide by default. It is turned on for a game by launching through syn game, because loading the MangoHud Vulkan layer into everything segfaulted unrelated Vulkan clients. syn-arcade hud on restores it everywhere for anyone who wants that back.

Controllers

syn-arcade pads                    # every controller attached
syn-arcade pads info <pad>         # buttons, axes, deadzones, live sticks
syn-arcade pads test <pad>         # watch it as you press things
syn-arcade pads rumble <pad>       # check the motors

⚠ An Xbox controller that pairs and then fails with a GATT error is nearly always a stale bond rather than a driver problem — remove the pairing and pair it again.

Big screen mode

A ten-foot interface for a television and a controller — syn-arcade big start, or Super+F10. Full documentation is in the wiki; two things it does that are easy to miss:

syn-arcade big disc              # a Blu-ray, DVD or audio CD in the drive
syn-arcade big disc play         # play it, full screen, through mpv
syn-arcade big transport forward # thirty seconds on, on whatever is playing

A disc in the drive appears as a tile named after the disc and disappears when you take it out — while mpv is installed, which on SynapseOS is a choice rather than a given. A commercial DVD also needs libdvdcss and a Blu-ray needs libaacs; big disc names whichever is missing.

A Media Center remote works as a remote: its buttons drive the interface, and the five that reach no application at all — OK, ⏭, ⏮, Guide and Power — keep working with a film or a browser in front of it.

Requires

mangohud for the overlay and projectm-pulseaudio for the music visualiser. Nothing here requires the SynapseOS compositor; it is a Wayland program and the controller half needs no display at all.

Install

git clone https://github.com/velle999/syn-arcade
cd syn-arcade && makepkg -si

makepkg fetches the source for this PKGBUILD's exact version from this repository's releases, so a clone can only ever build the source it was written against. .SRCINFO lists what it needs.

Where this comes from

Developed in the SynapseOS monorepo, in syn-arcade/. This repository is generated from it — the PKGBUILD, a generated .SRCINFO and this README — so issues and patches belong there.

syn-arcade 0.1.0-59 · GPL-2.0-or-later