[LaunchBox Multi Monitor and BigBox +3rd monitor plugin]

1 hour ago, Retrofrogg said:

Also....could you add box - front - recontruction to the options list please?

Box - Front - Reconstructed is not specifically exposed in the API.  But if you chose Box Front, and you set your Box Front Priorities (in LaunchBox) to have Box - Front - Reconstructed at the top of the list, that's what will show.

[RetroAchievements and Nintendo 64]

7 hours ago, Aevans0001 said:

not sure how it got named wrong

Personally, I like seeing it as 007: Goldeneye.  But hey, who am I to say. lol

You'll come across other games that may not show having achievements as well.  Sometimes it happens with game titles that have "&" in it.  Also, game titles that are "The Game Title" vs. "Game Title, The".  And also "The Game Title: Part 2" vs. "Game Title, The: Part 2".  Lastly, they (Retroachievements) may also have games that have a pipe "|" in the title that can cause issues.

I've never tested it, but you may be able to alleviate these potential issues by adding or setting Sort Title and/or Alternate Names.

["object reference not set to an instance of an object"]

On 12/5/2022 at 9:06 AM, Joe35car said:

Only thing on this HDD is the Launchbox folder. Everything works but I get this annoying popup when a game is launched. When I close the game I have to close the popup. It doesn't matter which system I play.

I see you're still using Neon Deluxe.  If you switch to a different Theme, do you get the same popup message?

[RetroAchievements and Nintendo 64]

Retroachievements has it listed as "Goldeneye 007".  As a test, try renaming your game to that and see if the achievements show up.

["object reference not set to an instance of an object"]

6 hours ago, Joe35car said:

Everything works but get that pop-up before it launches a game.

 

Quote

When the error pops up can you copy/paste it's contents to this post? There are a lot of potential causes for a null reference like that and the stack trace provided in that window will be crucial in determining the cause for the error.

 

[how to separate vertical games mame games ?]

On method is to use a plugin as it's not innate to LaunchBox.  This post has an ini file for vertical [MAME] games, but it's about a year and a half old. There are instructions on how to get create your own.  Also, 2 posts below it tells how to 'fix it' if you create your own following the instructions. 😊

Then at the top of the page is the plugin that can create the playlist for you.

 

[How do I fix this ?]

Well, I have never seen this before.  Both of these games say the display is rotated 180º. lol

But when I load them here, they look fine.

Start the game (either one), press Tab, select Video Options, Screen #0, Rotate.  If it says None, you got something screwy.  Press the right arrow key until the display is right-side up.  Once it's correct, Press Tab, then Escape to exit the game.  Start the [same] game again and see if it's now showing correctly.

 

[How do I fix this ?]

1 hour ago, ericg384 said:

For the most part it’s just this one game 

If there are other games doing this, which ones?  (may help narrow things down)  

Plan "B":  Look to see if you have the file /MAME/ini/splater.ini.  (It may be in your MAME root folder instead.?.?..)  If you see one, delete it (or move it). And try again.

[How do I fix this ?]

Look for a file in your /MAME/cfg/ called splatter.cfg and delete it (or move to somewhere else).  Open the game again and see if it's still uʍop ǝpᴉsdn.

[Display names on games has EBOOT, 1.0 or region on the end of its name. How do I turn this off?]

6 hours ago, Vippy_man said:

it is the "version" of the game and that is what is going at the end of its name. Is it possible to turn this off in any way?

On the menu bar, select View, Show / Hide, Versions.  Or press Ctrl+R.

[Exit Script for xemu.exe]

Are you putting them in the Running Script section?  Can you show what you've tried?  I've never use Xemu, but this person said this one worked. 

 

[ROM File Path in AHK Script]

Another approach that's a little less 'hacky' (and possibly a little more stable/reliable) is to create an AHK script and use that as your emulator.  This way you can use %1% to get the "FULL\PATH\TO\ROM\FILE".  (actually it may be %4% because of the other parameters)   Just throwing out options.  

[Alternate standalone sega emulator]

I've never used that emulator... but are you sure?

"In addition to supporting uncompressed games, Mednafen supports loading games from several different compressed file formats. For non-CD games, Mednafen supports loading from naked gzip- and Zstandard-compressed files, and ZIP archives."

[Launching Steam Game and Launchbox thinks it's closed before it's even opened?]

24 minutes ago, vaderag said:

Just tried this but it doesn't seem to work

Sure it does. 

The top half is the Auto Execution Section and the bottom half are the HotKeys.

As soon as you start the script, the hotkeys are all active, while the top half executes in-order.  (At least it does when I changed your game and LEDBlinky to notepad and wordpad. )

Does the auto execution section seem to be working properly when you run the game with the single script?  It's just when, in-game, pressing "1" doesn't "press F"?  If instead, you press "f" directly, does that work (like it's supposed to)?  I presume 1, a, c, d, s are all used for the game (vs some LEDBlinky function)?  I've never used LED-B, so I have no idea how all it works.

Maybe put the test MsgBox back in (for testing/troubleshooting).  Also test with exaggerating the Sleep timer (10 seconds?).  Coul also try adding another WinWait, ahk_exe backtobed.exe after the Sleep timer.?.?.

But it 'should' work as one script.

 

....or just stick with the 2 scripts.  😊

[Update problem to fix]

It sounds like you un-checked Check for Updates and/or Update to Beta Releases after you clicked No on the "Do you want to install the update now? popup.

6 hours ago, tom75000 said:

Do you know why? 

When it's set to check for updates and there is an update, and you then click No (don't install), LaunchBox creates a temporary file in the /Updates/ folder called "UpdateStatus" (no file extension).  This tells LaunchBox/BigBox to [automatically] install the update next time it starts.

 

6 hours ago, tom75000 said:

I have to install it again to run it.

When you do got to install it again, 1st delete the file ../LaunchBox/Updates/UpdateStatus,  if it exists.  Run the installer and then when LaunchBox starts, go to Tools, Options and make sure the Update boxes are un-checked, and click OK.

(Just to be sure....) now exit LaunchBox normally and look in the /Updates/ folder.  If there's a file called "UpdateStatus", delete it.

You should be good-to-go.

[Launching Steam Game and Launchbox thinks it's closed before it's even opened?]

20 minutes ago, vaderag said:

I'm sure this might be doable as one file but I couldn't find a way to have them both

Nicely done.  And it shouldn't be any different when running in BB.

;One file, set to Run Before
WinWait, ahk_exe backtobed.exe                                              ; wait for the exe to load
Sleep 5000                                                                  ; wait 5 seconds to allow for the random re-opening
Run, C:\Users\Arcade\LaunchBox\LEDBlinky\LEDBlinky.exe BACK_TO_BED WINDOWS  ; Run LEDBlinky with the correct ROM
WinWaitClose, ahk_exe backtobed.exe                                         ; Wait for game to close
Run, C:\Users\Arcade\LaunchBox\LEDBlinky\LEDBlinky.exe 4                    ; Tell LED Blinky game has closed
ExitApp

1::f
a::Space
c::Send, {Wheelup 6}
d::Send, {WheelDown 6}
s::f

 

[Sort by Raster/Vector]

41 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

The raster/vector info is listed directly in MAME.  If you open MAMEui64, look at the "type" column.  Is there any way to use this info to update LB with these categories?

Ahh... you're right. MAME -listxml does list the display types for each machine.  <!ATTLIST display type (raster|vector|lcd|svg|unknown) #REQUIRED>

So the only thing the LB developers would need to do is add a new element to their metadata when they parse -listxml and add a new field the UI.  Then adjust any other methods that are affected by this.  Including Search, Filters and Arrange By.  Sounds simple enough.

Because this unique to just the MAME/Arcade platform, it'd probably only happen by an upvoted Feature Request and then a "popularity vote" on the Community Poll.  I've recall people asking about Arcade display types once or twice (or more?) since I've been here, so it may already be on BitBucket.

[Launching Steam Game and Launchbox thinks it's closed before it's even opened?]

Not really sure what to say about the game(s) that launch using "steam:..." where Run Before AND the Run After both do work.  I wonder if you rebooted your computer and tried these games again, if it (Run After) will still work?

The ones where you tried the exe directly and run after doesn't work, those few might have a similar 'launcher' affect.

 

2 hours ago, vaderag said:

is it just destined not to work

That all depends on how determined and creative you're feeling.  

 

[Launching Steam Game and Launchbox thinks it's closed before it's even opened?]

2 hours ago, vaderag said:

works with some steam games tho (Arcade Moonlander)

You're probably launching directly to the games .exe file (vs "steam://rungameid/xxxxxx") for these.

[Sort by Raster/Vector]

LaunchBox doesn't store display type information about Arcade machines.  So it can't be filtered.  In fact, there isn't really an up-to-date definitive list that sorts by display types for MAME.  

I think your only option might be to create a Playlist for each one.  You'd 1st need to manually generate a list for each display type (see attached).  The Arcade Database can help you with that using their Additional Filters and then exporting the results to an ini file(s).

    MAME Raster.ini    MAME Vector.ini

Next, install the plugin that can create playlists using these ini files and follow the How to use instructions.

 

[MAME: Non-Merged Roms help?]

48 minutes ago, Phlyp said:

I guess it's required to keep mame roms under the mame emulator's rom folder for launchbox?

As Retro808 said, you can put the ROMs anywhere you want.  But MAME needs to somehow still know where they are.  An alternate to adding the path in MAME itself, you can add edit your MAME emulator in LaunchBox and add to your Default Command-Line Parameters 

-rompath %romlocation%

Then if you move them again (aka, import them into some other folder), when you load the game, this will tell MAME exactly where the ROM is.

[ROM File Path in AHK Script]

1 hour ago, grki said:

Does anybody know how I can find out the full path of ROM file for Running or Exit Scripts?

First, note that the Exit Script is only for when exiting from the Pause menu.

As you've discovered, you can't pass a variable to a Running Script, an Exit Script nor an Additional App.  But you can get creative and find them.

To get the "FULL\PATH\TO\ROM\FILE" from inside a Running Script, you can follow this example.  In this post, it gets the variables passed to "hoxs64,exe".  Change that to "vmware.exe".

 

After that part, you'll need to add an overriding escape sequence so you can run the vmrun.exe sequence. Making use of the appropriate variable you extracted.  Something along the lines of:

$Esc::
{
   RunWait, "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware Workstation\vmrun.exe" stop "%theVariableYouExtracted%",,Hide
   Run, "C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware Workstation\vmrun.exe" reverToSnapshot "%theVariableYouExtracted%" LaunchBox,,Hide

   WinClose, ahk_exe vmware.exe
}

 

[Batch files and BigBox]

I see a couple of options.

You could create a shortcut to the batch file.  Then right-click the shortcut and select Properties.  In there, set Run: to Minimized.  Then point your game to the shortcut instead of the actual batch file.

Alternately, have a batch file that [only] replaces the ini file and set the game to launch with DEmul as normal.  Next, add an Additional App to the game that will run this batch file Before Main Application and check the box Wait for exit.

[Troubleshooting MAME High Scores]

13 hours ago, Joe35car said:

Hello,

Need some help. I made a copy of my Launchbox setup to someone and he has his own forever license but for some reason it shows my name joe35car but his initials GAB. Look like this in Robotron (joe35car - GAB). How do we fix this? He is also a member here.

 

Thanks

 

Change the LaunchBox Games Database login credentials.

[Mame pixels in lb]

11 hours ago, oilersman said:

Now if I can figure out how to make mame with HLSL stick in lbox as well then I'll be set! 

Do a Google search for something like "LaunchBox MAME hlsl". You should be able to find enough info to give you MAME HLSL sensory overload.