JoeViking245

So what did you end up with for your full command line for "Doctor Who and the mines of terror"?

No worries. The plugin just hangs out in the background doing absolutely nothing. It sits in its recliner, sipping an endless cup of coffee, reading the newspaper and having not-a-care-in-the-world. It has no clue as to what you're doing in LaunchBox/BigBox. Be it scrolling through looking your collection, switching themes, adding new Platforms or downloading media or new themes. The magic begins only when you click/press Play (and not a moment earlier). LB/BB sends it a notification that a game is being launched. The 1st thing it does is gets: The primary and secondary image types and monitor # you selected during setup (via an xml file located in the plugins folder) The filepath for those 2 images It then verifies that the Primary Image file actually exists. If not, it checks for the secondary image to exist. If neither exist (rare), it heads back to the recliner. If one or the other does indeed exist, it then verifies that the monitor # selected is valid. If the monitor # is invalid (rare), back to the recliner. Otherwise, the image is sent to the corresponding monitor. Once the game is exited, LB/BB sends another notification stating such. The plugin then discards its connection to the monitor and the image file. Then back to the recliner awaiting the next Play notification.

Version 1.1 of the plugin (middle of page 2 in the link above) doesn't have Advertisement Flyer (Front or Back) as an available option. But if you test it with other image types and you find that the plugin is going to suit your needs, let me know and I'll have my team add that in as an option. No. It will look for the appropriate image to display only when the game is launched. (We might be talking semantics here. You can 'select' a game you want to play without actually 'launching' it.)

It might be the escape sequence: \x20

If RA MAME is like standalone MAME, for Computers (i.e. Acorn Micro) you need to press Scroll Lock to get out of the emulated keyboard. Then you can press Tab to get to MAMEs game menu.

You were getting close. Put the whole thing in quotes. -autoboot_command "*cat\n*exec who0\n"

The contents of your script would be Esc:: Send, !{F4} Set it up as an Additional App the exact same way you did here: Not having a built-in "Exit to Windows" option is odd. But the script should work for you. It may not work if the game's executable spawns another file to start the actual game. There's one sure way to find out if it'll work.

Then it sounds like you're on an older version of LaunchBox. I haven't looked at that in a while. Hopefully someone else can chime in that may be of better help.

So ya. The plugin should work no problem for that. But again, the image will only show during gameplay.

You need to select which full set version you have first. That info's needed for later steps.

Your verbiage was fine. My reading ability was not correct. 😊 That's an interesting feature. The kickplate, as Windows sees it is considered a monitor. Isn't it? i.e. Monitor 3? I'm pretty sure it has to be.

Does the avx2 version you have run games by itself (outside of LaunchBox)? If so, remove "--fullscreen" from your Default Custom Command-line Parameters and type in "-batch" (no quotes, single dash). You can set full screen in the emulator itself or use "-fullscreen" (no quotes, single dash).

Most likely it's not minimized. It's 'behind' the playfield. Sometimes you can hold Alt and then press Tab until you get to the DMD, then let go of Alt, then click the playfield and the DMD will stay on top. Exit the table and restart it and it'll be there. Other times, do the Alt Tab thing, click and hold the DMD window, "wiggle" it around with the mouse a little, let go of the mouse button then click the playfield. You may need to right click the DMD window, select Show Borders, do the wiggle thing, right click and select hide borders and then click the playfield.

I kind of had to try it. That's the only way I could tell if it worked while I was writing the plugin. The only potential chaos it may cause is if you tell it the wrong monitor # to use. And even then, nothing will break. It'll just display the image on the monitor you told it to (vs. the one you wanted). Worst case scenario: exit BigBox, go to where you copied the plugin into and delete the plugin and restart BigBox. It'll be as if nothing ever happened. As I'm re-reading your original question, this plugin may not be what you're after. The plugin only works during game play. Not when looking through your collection in BB. Sorry 'bout that. At this point, there isn't a means to have an image display on a 3rd monitor while perusing your collection in BigBox, that I'm aware of.

There's a beta plugin release that can do that. The original one just does control panels. But if you read though the threads, there're updated versions that allow for different images.

Another option is to do it directly in MAME itself. Click the floppy disc then select an option. The file will get saved to ../MAME/ui/exported.xml

Your proxy/wrapper for the emu could be a batch file, AHK script or even something in C# (or similar). If you leave the Custom Command-Line parameter blank, uncheck "Remove Quotes" and also "Remove file extension...", the full path to ROM is going to be received as %1 (or %1% in AHK). From there it's just a matter of checking if the file exists in that location, if not, copy it (or whatever your plan is) then start the emulator with the appropriate command lines and %1 for the ROM file. Heck, for that matter you can have it delete the ROM after the emulator exits if you're so inclined. You could even pass %platform% to use to select a specific emulator. Making the 'wrapper' more generic. I'm not sure how that works with Additional Apps. You'd need to check "Use Emulator" and select your 'wrapper'. I'd assume it passes the same Custom Command-Line Parameters you set in the emulator/wrapper for that given Platform. You may need to [re]set that in the emulators' Associated Platforms section under Default C-L P for the Platform(s). If nothing else, you're still able to receive %1. To ramp things up a bit, you could make use of Badges. On your laptop copy, set all of the games "Installed" field to "false". Then under Badges, check "Enable Installed" or "Enable Not Installed" (or both). This way you get a visual indicator. Then if you see a game you want to play that is indicated to be not installed, have your plugin(?) setup for when you right-click that game and select the plugin, it copies the game over and sets "Installed" to "true". Although as I now see this [thought] in writing, it (almost) doesn't help you with Additional Apps. "Almost" in that the plugin could copy the main game and its Additional Apps. What's 1 or 2 more games on the laptop? If you sync your LB installs between the Laptop and your main gaming PC (minus ROMs), that's not really the best option. So then you go to Plan "C". Create a plugin for a Custom Badge. The plugin will: when you select a Platform, scan to see if the file exists in the games' Application Path. And if so, show a badge for the respective games. Though this still doesn't really help with the Additional Apps. For those, expand the Additional App to its 'own' game, or set it as the main game.?.?. Just some thoughts showing where there's a will, there's a way. And that you-can-get-there-from-here 😎

Glad it was a simple fix. The caveat to removing that Command-Line is that (I think this is how it goes) you can't use the controller in the LaunchBox Pause Menu. The fix for that is to get an updated romset and its corresponding revision of MAME, then put the Custom Command-Line back in. Regarding standalone MAME vs Retroarch+core, standalone MAME is what's recommended. When using Retroarch, you're essentially using an emulator [core] to emulate an emulator [MAME] to play a game. That's what's going on with the text in the 2 menus you see. The differences you see in your gameplay images is the use of (or lack of) shaders and other thingy's I personally don't mess with. For most any other Platform, Retroarch is your friend. Welcome to the world of emulation. And when you're staying up all night solving technical problems, don't forget to spend some of those nights staying up playing video games.

I see you're using an older version of MAME. Try removing the Default Command-Line Parameters and see if that works.

Someone has...

Try renaming mame64.exe to mame.exe and then make sure to edit your emulator in LaunchBox and change the application path to point to the ["new"] mame.exe.

Edit your game(s) and add an Additional Application that launches Keyboard2XinputGui.exe and check the box Automatically Run Before Main Application. That's the easy part which I gather you already figured out. Running (closing, in this case) an application after a Steam game exits is a bit more tricky. The easiest way to accomplish this is to launch the games exe file rather than using the Steam gameID #. Edit the game, and in the Launching section change the Application Path to point to the games exe file. I don't know if this affects any of the Steam interface or achievements, but the games will run this way. Now create a new text file and in it put: SendInput, {NumpadMult} ExitApp Save the file somewhere where you won't forget where it is. Maybe in the same folder as your "Keyboard2XinputGui.exe" file is. Like with everything else, give it a fancy name like "ExitK2X". Now rename the file to have an .ahk file extension. like "ExitK2X.ahk". Be careful that it doesn't get renamed "ExitK2X.ahk.txt". [Back to editing the game in LaunchBox] Add another Additional Application. Give it a fancy Application Name like "Exit Keyboard2XinputGui". For the Application Path, Browse to and select "AutoHotkey.exe". You'll find one in /LaunchBox/ThirdParty/AutoHotkey/ In the Application Command-Line Parameters field, type the full path to where you saved the .ahk file, and put it in quotes. i.e. "D:\Games\Keyboard2Xinput\ExitK2X.ahk" Now check the box for Automatically Run After Main Application. Click OK. And Click OK again. I've never personally used keyboard2xinput, but it's my understanding that the asterisk * on the keyboards' 10-key [a.k.a. the multiply button on the number pad] is what closes the program. That's where the "SendInput, {NumpadMult}" comes from.

The way that Steam launches their games, that's not really going to work. ...the [wait for game to exit and] closing the AHK script on exit part. Though you may be able to do that if you launch the Steam game directly from its exe file. Basically ignoring the Steam interface. But then you may be opening the door to a lot of other issues. You should be able to map any necessary keys for a game, in the game itself. At least I can in all my Steam Lego games. If you're wanting to create a key to exit the game, can't (won't, actually) help you there. Mainly because of how easy it is to go to the in-game menu and select Exit to Windows.

Sleep, 20000 Send, {numpad4}{numpad5}{numpad6}{numpad7}{numpad8}{numpad9}