JoeViking245

Also be sure not to have them installed under "c:\Program Files" or "c:\Users\me\..." and the like.

It's about 2.5 yrs old, but still relevant for starting out with LaunchBox plugins. "Let's Build Some Plugins! - 2017-05-08 - LaunchBox Development Live Streams"

Sweet!! Glad it's working without errors!

Glad it's working! Ya, it seems with any type of gaming oriented programs (emu's to frontends and including batch files as you've found), admin privileges do more harm than good.

Run Before: No command line unless you're loading a specific profile for joytokey. Run After: taskkill /f /im joytokey.exe

I don't know anything about joy2key, but for getting a Visual Pinball (VPX) table to: Hide the editor window launch directly to the table and exit it completely with the Escape key (or whatever you've assigned to quit ...add the Default Command-Line Parameters -minimized -exit -play But definitely setup an emulator for all your tables.Nothing needs to go in the "Running AutoHotKey Script" and "Exit AutoHotKey Script" tabs. Then just point to the table. If you know the command-line to load and unload joy2key, in the games Additional Apps tab, Add Application, browse to your jo2key executable, set the 'load' command line and select Run Before. Select OK. Do the same thing again this time setting the 'unload' command and select Run After. Problem is this part you'd have to do for each table.

For PCSX2 it has just one lineAnd for Dolphin, it's actually "portable.txt" (not .ini [oops]) and it's just an empty file.

I think most are good about that. (not adding anything to c:\Users\....) It's been a while since I've actually done a new install, but if I recall correctly, for both Dolphin and PCSX2 I had to add a "portable.ini" file to the emu's folder.

You can just move the neogeo.ini to the ..\ini folder. If you want to have things a little more tidy, create a "source" folder below ini ..\ini\source You will then need to add that inside mame.ini on the "inipath" line. (as you have found, it's not setup up by default that way by MAME)

If you're working with just the LaunchBox directories there shouldn't be any issues syncing the two as LaunchBox is portable. The issues come about with emulators. Some will store data in your c:\Users\name\AppData or even \Documents folders. Also if you use different drive letters for LB and emulators between the 2 PC's, that may become an issue. Now if you're adding systems to an emulator already setup like RetroArch, Sync would work. Same as with adding metadata and media. If you don't already own GoodSync, one I like using is FreeFileSync. Does a great job, has good features and is continually updated.

I don't have a set up to test this. So I just used the code and Notepad (and a 360 controller) to see the output. And ya, SetMode Play didn't work here either. I was hoping it would when you tested it in an actual game. Though Send {z}{x}{q} did work with the same results as {z down}{x down}{q down}{z up}{x up}{q up}. At least for me. You definitely do need #Persistent. Otherwise it just closes itself (the script) right away. The SetTimer is also needed. But may want to increase it to somewhere 100 and 200. In fact, that's probably why it's saturating (spamming?) you key inputs'. When set to 5, you barely press the trigger and you instantly get "zxqzxqzxqzxqzxqzxqzxqzxqzxq".

@Parse AHK sometimes has issues sending simultaneous key presses within games. Especially with odd <letter><letter><letter> combos. Try setting the SendMode to Play (instead of Input) and see if that does anything for you. #Persistent SendMode Play SetTimer, WatchAxis, 5 return WatchAxis: GetKeyState, JoyZ, JoyZ KeyToHoldDownPrev = %KeyToHoldDown% if JoyZ > 55 Send {z}{x}{q} else if JoyZ < 45 Send {a}{s}{w} return On the 2 actual "Send" commands, they may need to be "SendPlay". But I think setting the SendMode is supposed to take care of that.

My latest discovery... loading a floppy and CD based game in MAME. At least for FM Towns. In LaunchBox, under Game - Edit and in the Emulation tab, check the box "Use Custom Command Line Parameters". Then enter in the box below it fmtowns -flop1 %1% -cdrm %1% This will work assuming your paths are setup in MAME itself. The easiest way I've found for Software Lists is to put the all in 1 folder. Then all you need to tell MAME for the 'rompath' in mame.ini is just that one folder ("software" in this example). So for Lord of the Rings 2, it would look like: D:\emulators\MAME\software\ D:\emulators\MAME\software\fmtowns_cd\lotr2.zip D:\emulators\MAME\software\fmtowns_cd\lotr2\the lord of the rings - the two towers.chd To run this game from the command line, you'd use mame64 fmtowns -flop1 lotr2 -cdrm lotr2 It will know to look for both the "lotr2.zip" file and ...chd_file under the "fmtowns_cd" folder because of the "fmtowns" parameter in the command line.

For me, I just use CriticalZoneV2. It's simple in style, but not to too simple. It has a lot of nice visual "bells and whistles", but is not overwhelming to the senses. Look through the different views and find one you like.

I don't know the answer to your question but to help in your search, what you're looking for is a [game] frontend.

The issue is not your PC nor BigBox. The message says there's an issue with the Theme you're using: "Nostalgia". Try a different Theme and see if the issue doesn't reappear.

@slagfart Thanks for being my guinea pig. lol jk Looks like you found one (of possibly many) anomalies to MAME, it's Software Lists and how they deal with CD-ROMs and their hash files. In MAME's collection of "Fujitsu FM Towns CD-ROMs" (at least according to their hash file), the set contains both CD-ROMs and floppy disks. That's why the popup, well... didn't popup. It saw some floppies in there and took them all to be floppies. So it didn't ask you about CD-ROMs. And to top that off (as I now look through it closer), the hash file doesn't have the full_name.ext like other hash files do for CD-ROM consoles. So using your example, all it has is disk name="abel" instead of something like disk name="abel.chd". I don't know if there's something special about FM Towns CD's or if that particular contributor decided since they're not all CD-ROMs, they'll just format the xml like non CD-ROM consoles. I really don't know. I ran the Import for fmtowns_cd, got no popup regarding CD-ROMs, and it did seem to go fast. Though it didn't 'crash' when I clicked OK. Did you have to do something like Ctrl+Alt+Del to shut down LB then? I did have a Windows Explorer window open looking at the Data\Platforms directory and indeed the xml was not there after import was [successfully] completed. Like you indicated. It did however show up inside in LB ui as a [new] Platform with 488 games. When I exited LB, the xml file then appeared in the Data\Platforms folder. So I'm guessing that's just how it works and I'm good with that. When you went back into LB, was the FM Towns platform there? If not, go to Tools, Manage Platforms and see if it's in there and how many Associated Games are with it. Also I see you were looking at "Platform Category". Change that to "Platform". I think. Don't think I can help too much with the anomaly as I can only work with what MAME gives me. But I would like to figure out the issue with the 'crash'.

I've never used demul and am not familiar with it. It just seems odd that Esc from the keyboard works but not via the controller. Just looking, RA and Dolphin don't need scripts to close. Look for a setting or command line parameter for demul for exiting with Esc. That's all I can think of.

@tallpr24 From your early posts (now that I've read them all), it sounds like closing the emulator was not an issue as you were able to hit Esc and it closed. The issue sounds to be with mapping your controller. If pressing Esc closes it, don't mess with that part any more. Look into the controller mapping. As stated, LaunchBox and BigBox have separate places where you need to map to them.

Putting in the code where it was suggested, if you hit Escape on the keyboard, does it close?

Alternatively (again in regular MAME) you can copy the mame.ini file and paste it in MAME's ini sub-folder renaming it to "bios_file_name.ini". In your case it looks it would be "apple2ep.ini". Now edit it and go to the section "CORE INPUT OPTIONS" and change the value of "ui_active" from 0 (zero) to 1 (one). Save and exit. You'll get the same results as adding -ui_active to the command line [without having to add it].

Don't know about that but, for regular MAME, you can add to the command line -ui_active Then when the game starts, MAME will have already 'pressed Scrl_Lock' for you.

Not sure if you can assimilate this to RA MAME, but in regular MAME via the keyboard. To switch to side "B" {Scrl Lock} (to switch between emulated keyboard) {Tab} (to show MAME's menu) (select) File Manager (select) flop1 {Enter} (select) side B {Enter} {Esc} {Esc} {Enter}

Did you try copying the one (mame.ini) from your regular MAME folder?