JoeViking245

@legolas119 It looks like that program may have a command line option to run. If you know that, you could be good to go. I say "could" because I'm not sure how 'tricking' the program you're about to run affects currently running Windows applications (i.e. LB/BB). Go to the folder where the Locale Emulator program is and run "LEProc.exe". From what I can tell, that's the main program and by just running that, it'll pop up a message saying how to use it from a command line. (You may need to run that from from the Command Prompt instead of just double clicking it in Windows Explorer to see the message.)

Did the 'random' file have any peculiarities about it compared to other video files? Size/aspect/file_type/.... Or was it truly random in that it varied by different videos? If it was a specific video file, could it have been one that people are getting from EmuMovies that we should be aware of?

No offense taken. I was stuck looking at the 'left hand', while you were simply talking about the 'right hand'. They do connect in the middle, just sit on opposite sides. lol It's all good.

"Default" being how you set up your custom config file. Yes. But if you initially setup all possibilities (Player1 left side of cab, Player2 right side of cab, Player1 "XInput Player 1", Player2 "XInput Player 2"......) it should all be good in the 'hood. For the rare game that may have something different, you can always create a 2nd cfg file (MyControls2.cfg) for it and then override the mame.ini ctrlr line by adding to the custom command line parameter for that game "-ctrlr MyControls2". Or if you want to get real crazy, you can create and custom ini file (copied from mame.ini), and name it the same name as the driver source file, or the BIOS set, or the parent [rom] system, or the system[game][rom] itself. Then set the ctrlr line in it. Loading the ini becomes automatic through MAME. No extra custom command line parameters required. https://docs.mamedev.org/advanced/multiconfig.html (But ya, that's going a bit far. ) Same goes for softlists. (i.e. spectrum.ini) Useful for setting "ui_active" and "autoboot_command".

No. Thank goodness! MAME will only read your custom controls file that you created/saved in the ../ctrlr/ folder, and 'pointed' to in mame.ini. No need to to make the 'new' cfg file readonly. So if you forget to plugin any or all of your controllers, your custom config file won't get wiped out. So when you DO forget... curse!, exit MAME, plug your stuff in, restart MAME, apologize for cursing, and play games.

There's really no rhyme nor reason on how Windows assigns controllers on boot. But MAME does have a fix for that. Read (and try to make sense of) this: https://docs.mamedev.org/advanced/devicemap.html And if/when you get all confused by that, try this. - Plug in all your controllers. - Start MAME and configure all your controllers, light guns, keyboard, mouse etc... - Save Configuration. - Exit MAME. - From the Windows Command Prompt and in your ../MAME/ directory, Enter in mame64 -v >ouput.txt and press Enter. - Exit MAME and close the Command Prompt window. - In the ‘../MAME/cfg’ folder, copy “default.cfg” and paste it into the ‘../MAME/ctrlr/’ folder. From here you can rename it to something like “MyControls.cfg”. - Now open ‘../MAME/output.txt’. (the text file created from the Command Prompt above) - Scroll down until you see the “Input: Adding” lines. There will be several. - Look for signs of your specific controller(s). In my case I only have a single Xbox controller (ignoring “keyboard #0”, “mouse #0”, “mouse #1”…) Input: Adding joystick #0: XInput Player 1 (device id: XInput Player 1) - Open your ‘new’ ‘../MAME/ctrlr/MyControls.cfg’ file. - Near top, right after the “<input>” line, (using info from the output.txt file) add in something like <mapdevice device="XInput Player 1" controller="JOYCODE_1" /> "XInput Player 1" is the part AFTER “device id:”. (Not to be confused with the part after “#0”.) "JOYCODE_1" is for player 1. ("JOYCODE_2" would be for player 2. Etc.) From the example in the above link, their “output.txt” has the line Input: Adding Gun #5: HID-compliant mouse (device id: \?HID#VID_D209&PID_1601&MI_02#9&375eebb1&0&0000#{378de44c-56ef-11d1-bc8c-00a0c91405dd}) Note what part of the info they used to create the “<mapdevice device=>” line(s) <mapdevice device="VID_D209&amp;PID_1601" controller="GUNCODE_1" /> - after "device id:" started at “VID” - added “amp;” after the ampersand (&) - set it to player 1 ("GUNCODE_1") After you’ve added your controllers (and light guns), save MyControls.cfg. - Now open “../MAME/mame.ini” - Scroll down to the section “CORE INPUT OPTIONS”. - On the “ctrlr” line, set the value to "MyControls". (Do not put the ‘cfg’ file extension) # # CORE INPUT OPTIONS # coin_lockout 1 ctrlr MyControls - Save and close - Play games

Glad it's all working! As for your 'upcoming' questions, 1st try a search on the forums (or even Google adding "LaunchBox" in the search ). And if that doesn't get you what you need, start in the forums' Home page and whittle your way down to a topic section that's most closely related to your question. Just DON'T post the same questions in multiple locations! And most importantly, setting up you cab and LB/BB can be exciting and yet sometimes overwhelming. So don't forget to actually play (not just test) your games, and have fun.

if !WinExist("ahk_exe BigBox.exe")

The gauges are awesome!!

Did you by chance do any firmware upgrades and change something-or-another to put you iPAC-Mini into XInput mode? That's the only thing I can think of that would make that command line cause issues. If your MAME revision was older, we could blame that. But you said you have 0.213.

Try removing the Default Command-Line Parameter for the MAME emulator and see if that changes anything. If that doesn't change anything, at that same (now empty) location, put in -ctrlr 4Player

What do your MAME emulator settings look like? Can you provide some screen shots please (Details, Associated Platforms, Running AutoHotkey Script)? I assume (again with my assumptions.. lol) that MAME games will load through LB/BB. It's just that the controls are all wonky. Which, as I think about it doesn't completely make sense. Even if MAME loaded it's default.cfg (instead of your 4Player.cfg) you should still have you left joy tied to Up/Down/Left/Right and your Player 1 buttons 1-6 tied to Ctrl/Alt/Space/Shift/Z/X. Unless you remapped (through WinIPAC.exe) your controls. For the screen shots, I'm mainly looking that you don't have any extracurricular command-Line Parameters. (The Running AutoHotkey Script tab should be blank). Also in your Edit [Arcade] Game in the Launching section, only the ROM File field should have something in it.And in the Emulation section, there should be no Use custom Command-Line Parameters: listed (un-checked).

When you say 'default.cfg', any chance you mean "mame.ini"? I'm going to assume your talking about MAME directly and not using Retroarch's Mame as your emulator. Is your mame.ini file located in MAME's root folder or in ../MAME/ini/ subfolder? If it's in the ini folder, move it to the root folder. If for some reason it's in both, put the good one in the root folder and get rid of [rename, backup, delete] the other one. After it not working through LB/BB, when you go back and start MAME (mame64.exe) again and start a game, are the all the controllers still working like they're supposed to?

If you setup your debugger to copy the compiled dll over to the Plugins folder, then launch D:\LaunchBox\LaunchBox.exe, the debugger will exit as soon as the LB exe file exits. Which will pretty much be right away as that exe redirects to LaunchBox.exe in the Core folder, thus exiting itself. Not an anti-debugger. The program exited. "Simple fix"... set the debugger to launch the exe in the Core folder. Problem now is an innate [default] limitation of Visual Studio of debugging a NET Framework class library through a NET Core application. If you look around, there is a way to 'tell your debugger' that you want to debug your library through a NET Core application, and you can get it to work. At least according to the folks on Stack Overflow.

Did you set your IPac to XInput? If not, it acts just like a keyboard. i.e. Player-1 button-1 is 'tied' to the Ctrl key.

That works , if you have the buttons available (or if you can simply 'add them in'). Obviously you don't want to use the players' buttons for "Escape" [exit-game]. But those (players' buttons) can be mapped for BigBox {Select and Back] as they won't conflict for in-game.

"Abandoned", but fully functional. I've used CPWizard to generate controller layouts and it works great. The program is "updated" with the data you supply it. It gets a list of the MAME machines from your mame64.exe. Then just supply it the updated .dat and .ini files found in the ../CPWizard/Data folder. The ReadMe.txt file in the root folder shows where you can get these. It's nice because you can customize the look of the panel to match your own. Here's one of CPW's outputs.The button labels probably could have been adjusted a little further apart, but not many games have that much writing, so I left them there. If a particular game doesn't use all the controls, it will make them transparent.

I'm thinking 'for company', all you'd really need is a Select and a Back button for BigBox. And then something for 'in-game exit'. I'm not familiar with the 1UP button layout, but a button-combo is usually best suited for this.

@Solo187 I've looked around and haven't been able to find a reliable (well, any really, for that matter) source for filtering softlists. I know for MAME Machines (Arcade) there's "category.ini". But even that doesn't filter "Educational". Though who would go to the Arcade to play an educational game? lol

If you switch from the Platform Category view to just Platform view, does Battletoads (NES version, not to be confused with the Arcade Version) still show up When viewing Arcade Platform? I'm guessing no because you said it's tied to a Playlist. If it doesn't show up, which Playlist under Arcade Platform (in Platform Category view) is it [Battletoads] appearing in?

@Ingabagovinanana Yes. The default folder is "roms" which MAME will look for under, from where it was executed. So if mame64.exe is executed (started) in S:\MyEmulators\MAME\, it will look for the rom files in S:\MyEmulators\MAME\roms\ As you can see in my example, I tell MAME to look in 3 different locations on 3 different drives. rompath "roms;D:\roms\Arcade;U:\Roms\MAME NonMerged" S:\MyEmulators\MAME\roms\ D:\roms\Arcade\ U:\Roms\MAME NonMerged\ This tells MAME all it needs to know about where to find the roms. Again, it doesn't care where you put them, as long as you tell it where to find them. Of course! LaunchBox "doesn't care where you put them, as long as you tell it where to find them." Even if they're in the same Platform. And LaunchBox makes the process easy too. You won't be able to use the MAME Arcade Full Set Import Wizard 'cause you can only give it one location for roms. I'm sure they've come across worse, but LaunchBox has you covered... Tools, Import, ROM Files... Next. Then Add Folder And then just follow the prompts.

Glad that helped and that you're 'back in business'! BTW, are you able to open snes directly through the emulator? I can't get the MAME UI (regular MAME 0.224 [but doesn't matter. MAME is MAME/MESS]) to open snes. I get a file missing error. But the games run from the command line and through LB just fine. Obviously snes.zip is in the rom path. Otherwise they wouldn't launch from the command line. It's not that big of a deal as I only use the UI to 1st see if it works. But seems odd.

Well, it was worth a shot. One other thing I like to do is remove the 1st . (dot) on the inipath and then move mame.ini and ui.ini (and any other ini files MAME may have created) into the ../MAME/ini/ folder. That way, any MAME created ini file will be placed in that folder. Also if you create/doctor your own softlist ini file in the ../ini/ folder, it won't also [re]create it in the root folder. And (for me at least) keeps things a little more tidy.

Did it create ini files for those 2 consoles? I only use mame64, but neither of those 2 created ini's. But if yours did, and assuming they're like other console ini's, maybe try... at the top, change writeconfig to 0. Then at the bottom, delete the section IMAGE DEVICES. Or just delete the parameter shown for 'cartridge'. You may also look at their cfg files. Though I doubt there's anything enlightening there.

Whew! Good. lol Usually when when I hear 'update', I assume update to the latest (current) MAME revision.