JoeViking245

@rcoltrane In the future, please don't be so quick to blame LaunchBox. It's only doing what you told it to do. If you wish to use that particular command line (expert11 msx1_cart:hero), you have to edit your MAME emulator and check the box that says "No space before ROM". But that kinda screws up any other Platforms you have associated with MAME. Instead, use this as your Default Command-Line Parameters under Associated Platforms for your 'Expert 11' (or whatever name you gave it) Platform. expert11 -cart1 If you wish to verify through the Windows 10 DOS prompt, try: mame64.exe expert11 -cart1 hero Note the space and no : (colon) before the game_name (hero).

LB/BB shouldn't be messed up when exiting a game if the 3rd line (re-starting DS4W) get's executed. This is essentially a 'bulk' means of the game-by-game process. It's doing the 'Run Before [line 1]/After [line 3] Main Application [line 2]' you'd need to enter in for each game.

Sounds like a lot of IFTTT type applets. And I believe the preferred term is efficient rather than lazy. For now, probably the easiest way to to what you'e wanting is to redirect you emulator executable for the given Platform to an AHK script (or batch file). Basically, edit your emulator and in "Emulator Application Path:", point that to the script file. Then your script file would be something like Run, D:\batch\kill_DS4W.bat RunWait, "path_to_emulator.exe" %1% Run, D:\batch\start_DS4W.bat ExitApp LaunchBox will pass the rom_name as %1%. Obviously calling a script to call a batch file is pretty convoluted. But you can how that'd work and (hopefully) refine it.

The standalone MAME emulator seems to run them fairly well. At least for the couple that I tested (Alien3, F1 Super Lap and Golden Axe: Revenge of Adder).

@lino11 in the regular MAME emulator, what error message(s) are you getting? Maybe take a screen shot of that for us.

lol. K. At least you got it to fire up.

Can you get it to run smoothly?

So it sounds like there's something not right between the Arcade Stick controller and Daphne. I don't use either one of those so I can't really help. And you were correct about using 'return' in the script. My apologies.

If you're seeing a "2" and a "6" in Notepad when pressing buttons on the P2 controller then ya, the script is good. (Though I don't think "return" is necessary. But doesn't hurt anything) If you start the AHK script in Windows and then load Dragon's Lair directly through Daphne (outside of LaunchBox) , do the player 2 buttons work there?

ms5pcb and mslug5 are both parent roms. So neither will be seen nor import as an 'additional app'. Whereas mslug5h is indeed a clone of mslug5.

In standalone MAME ui...Double click (or press enter) on Apple Derby (or any cassette) Press <Ctrl>+B and then <Enter> That'll get you to the ">" prompt. Press <Scroll Lock> Then press <F2> Toggles keyboard emulation and sends "Play" Type in LOAD and then press <Enter> be patient and wait just a minute until you hear a beep AND see a second ">" prompt Type in RUN and then press <Enter> Now Play. If you get an Err message after typing in LOAD (or RUN ) and pressing <Enter>, I don't know what to tell you. "Apple Derby" seems to load and run though. It's a start.

Problem solved. As it turns out, Asteroids is one of the few, if not the only game that saves a high score ("hi") file with no actual high scores in it. It's just a matter of finishing your 1st game and entering your initials.

Ok, so we are dealing with 2 separate emulators. Yes, MAME (standalone emulator) will reset itself based on what's plugged in. Setting default.cfg to read-only is a good work around. At least as far as losing controller configurations. Another way (because I always love options) is: But that still doesn't help how Windows reassigns ID's. So adding a brand-x controller as a 2nd, I'd be inclined to say that won't fix it. MAME says' they resolved that with mapdevice (link above) but I guess that doesn't fully work. I only have 1 controller so I can't help there.

I'm not sure if Jason has an API setup for the site, but for all_metadata (vs just what you have on your system[mentioned above]) you also have-at-your-fingertips... ..\LaunchBox\Metadata\Metadata.xml This (190 MB file) gets updated directly from the LB database. I believe LaunchBox updates it once every 24 hours. To update your local copy, you may need to do a 'download metadata' for a game (or more) so it grabs the most current xml file.

I didn't pay attention to see that you were using MAME in RA. I've never used MAME in RA myself. That said, I wonder if you swap the controller indexes inside retroarch.cfg if that would (would have?) work(ed). input_player1_joypad_index = 0 input_player2_joypad_index = 1 input_player3_joypad_index = 2 input_player4_joypad_index = 3 input_player5_joypad_index = 4 input_player6_joypad_index = 5 input_player7_joypad_index = 6 input_player8_joypad_index = 7 Swap player1 and player2 to 1 and 0 respectively.

View MAME High scores in Game Details - A plugin for LaunchBox/BigBox View File View MAME High scores in Game Details - A plugin for LaunchBox/BigBox Use this plugin to see a games top 3 high scores in the Game Details. Features Shows high scores for most games in your Arcade platform in the Game Details. After playing a MAME Arcade game that saves its' high scores [and is supported by the included hi2txt program], this adds a Custom Field called "Hi-Scores" to the game. It will store 1st, 2nd and 3rd place and appear in the Game Details when the game is selected. What's needed (3) files that are included in the downloaded zip file (the plugin) One file that is included in the Version 3.0 downloaded zip file MAME configured to save high scores Saved high score files (These are automatically generated by MAME [once configured to save them] in the "hi" and/or “nvram” subfolders of your MAME emulator) What it won't do Show high scores for games using emulators other than MAME. MAME does not save high scores for all arcade machines, so not all games are supported by this plugin. Contributors @jayjay and @JoeViking245 A HUGE Special Thanks goes to GreatStone’s utility “hi2txt”. This utility converts MAME’s high score files into a readable format which ultimately makes this plugin possible!! http://greatstone.free.fr/hi2txt/index.html Installation and setup instructions: Step 1: Installing the Plugin Step 2: Making sure MAME is set up to save high scores Installing the Plugin: Download the plugin, LB-BB_Hi_Scores_v1.0.zip, from the LaunchBox download section After you’ve downloaded the zip file, be sure to unblock it in Windows by right clicking it, selecting Properties, and clicking Unblock Open the zip file and extract/copy the "Hi_Scores" folder into ..\LaunchBox\Plugins e.g D:\LaunchBox\Plugins\ If you have previously installed “MAME Hi-Score Display - A plugin for BigBox”, you will only to copy the “HiScoreCustomField.dll” file into that same folder. Otherwise all 3 files are required. (Only one file is required with version 3.0) The 2 plugins will not conflict with each other. Setting up MAME to save high scores: Using a recent official MAME release – By default, plugins are enabled in MAME. You can verify this by looking at the “mame.ini” file located in the root MAME install folder. Open “mame.ini” and scroll down to (or press Control + F and search for) “Scripting Options”. “plugins” should be set to 1. If it’s 0 (zero), change it to 1. Next, open “plugin.ini” also located in MAME’s root directory and change “hiscore” to 1. If you have an older release of MAME, you may need to do the following steps. Go to this website: http://www.mameworld.info/highscore/download.htm and download a copy of the file hiscore.dat that corresponds to your version of MAME. The file (hiscoredat.zip) will need to be unzipped. Place the file hiscore.dat in your MAME/Plugins folder Open up your MAME.ini file in a text editor. In newer versions, this file will be in the same directory as the MAME.exe Press control + F and search for “Scripting Options” Next to the word Plugins, type “1” no quotes Next to the word Plugin, type “hiscore” no quotes It will look like this: How to use: Start LaunchBox or BigBox Go into the "Arcade" Platform Select a game, run it, then close it Now select a different game, then go back (poor man’s version to refresh the Game Details) If the game has saved high scores, they will now appear in that game’s Detail pane Depending on the BigBox theme you use, the amount of data shown in the Game Details may be limited. So you might need to go into Options, Game Details and deselect some of the Details. Be sure that “Custom Fields” is checked. Submitter JoeViking245 Submitted 12/04/2019 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

Under ..\LaunchBox\Data\Platforms\ you'll find the xml files for each platform that holds all your game info. From there it's just a matter of parsing the info into your db. I think that's what you were looking for.

You can remap each controller to the order you want them in. At the command prompt in your MAME root directory, enter in "mame64 -v". Along with a a bunch of other stuff, it will list each controller's Device ID. With that info, you can remap your controllers to the order you want. I personally haven't tried it, but it seems to make sense. You can find more details here: https://docs.mamedev.org/advanced/devicemap.html

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.