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JoeViking245

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Posts posted by JoeViking245

    Script to shut down Drive when launching Launchbox/Big Box, and then restart Drive when closed?

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    10 hours ago, cscottbrown said:

    Anyway, I'll keep hunting for a solution to this and keep an eye here in case anyone has any advice!

    If, when you disable G-Drive syncing and you're happy with how LaunchBox/BigBox performs via G-Drive (which I guess at this point is actually running from your local G-Drive folder), then...

     

    A variation of a Google search result looks like this:

    • This link mentions "googledrivesync.exe" which is now "GoogleDriveFS.exe" (at least on my PC).
    • It seems there's no command-line parameters you can pass to the executable to turn G-Drive syncing on/off.  So you have to "kill" the process.
    • From the Windows Command Prompt, to kill G-Drive altogether, you can run 
    taskkill /IM GoogleDriveFS.exe /F

    Then to restart it, double click "GoogleDriveFS.exe".  Mine's located in "C:\Program Files\Google\Drive File Stream\100.0.2.0\"

     

    LaunchBox/BigBox has a Startup Applications feature that can load an application when one or the other or both (or neither?) are started. (Which could be a batch file containing the above command.)

    But there are no (immediately accessible) means to launch an app when either close.  "Immediately accessible" meaning, you could create a plugin that captures the System Event LaunchBoxShutdownBeginning and/or BigBoxShutdownBeginning and then (re)start the process "GoogleDriveFS.exe".

     

    Alternately, you could create/use a batch file that handles the whole kit-and-caboodle.  Something like this (edit accordingly) 

    taskkill /F /IM GoogleDriveFS.exe
timeout 5
start /w "" "D:\LaunchBox\Core\LaunchBox.exe"
start "" "C:\Program Files\Google\Drive File Stream\100.0.2.0\GoogleDriveFS.exe"

    Do This:

    1. Verify YOUR Google Drive executable is indeed "GoogleDriveFS.exe"
    2. Change the path to YOUR LaunchBox location
    3. DO point to the /LaunchBox/Core subfolder
    4. Change LaunchBox.exe to BigBox.exe if that is your preference
    5. Verify that is the path to YOUR "GoogleDriveFS.exe"

    If all's good/tested/working, make for a 'prettier' presentation...

    1. Create a shortcut to the batch file
    2. Right-click the shortcut and select Properties
    3. Change Run from Normal Window to Minimized
    4. Click OK to save and close.

    Use the shortcut to start the "whole kit-and-caboodle".  The above makes it so the Command Prompt window does not appear.

    • Thanks 1

    scrolling in bigbox menu is skippy , jittery

    in Noobs

    Posted

    46 minutes ago, beeboy said:

    everything is working fine for me (using fire stick plus bigbox) except when i go to the menu of my games. i am using my controller trying to get to a different menu item and i can never LAND the selection on the next item down the list, it always skips 2-3 down so i have to scroll up and down until i get lucky. usually need to get it to be 2 mennu items away so a single dpad up or down gets me to wehre i need to go.=

    any ideas what is going on? i am using a dualsense connected into firesticks settings as a ctornller. maybe moving firestick to ethernet helps but the game play doesnt have any such skippyness.

    Take a look at this and see if it helps.

     

    making bigbox active window after closing game, NOT steam

    in Noobs

    Posted

    20 minutes ago, beeboy said:

    hi are there any easy solutions for this without scripting for each game? ideally just a setting?

    whenever i close a game i am back in steam which means i actually need to go use my computer to get back in bigbox!

    The only times I've seen this happen is when I launch the game, and it's the 1st time Steam has been launched (on that particular day), and Steam has an update.  Steam will do its update thing and then show the "On Sale" and 'Main' windows.  This happens in the background, so you don't see anything when the game [eventually] starts, and you play it.  It's when you exit the game you see those windows still lurking [on top of BigBox].

    I've gotten in the habit of, before I start BigBox, if I know I'm going to be playing a Steam game, I'll

    1. Start Steam 1st. 
    2. Let it do its thing
    3. close/minimize Steam when it's done
    4. then start BigBox.

    How can I convert my Amiga CD32 ISO images/folder contents to a format (CHD?) for Retroarch play without having to mount an ISO as I do with other CHD titles?

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    27 minutes ago, cleverest said:

    Ideally, I'd like to convert these games to CHD (hard drive format), like many of my other CD32 games are...what tool do I use to accomplish this against each folder, as most of these ISO game folders also contain .CUE and .WAV files

    Hopefully your ones with .iso and the ones with .cue/.bin are for different games.  That is, if you have all 3 in one folder (for one game), you essentially have 2 copies of the game.

    Either way, if you have them all imported into LaunchBox already, there's a plugin for that.  Well, not sure about .wav files.  Haven't seen those before. At least not in this type of scenario.

     

    27 minutes ago, cleverest said:

    Is there a guide somewhere for this?

    I'm sure there's a ton of them.  Could probably search for "chdman convert iso to chd" or "chdman convert cue to chd".  Key term being "chdman".  Might even find something for "chdman convert wav to chd" if that's actually a thing. (Again, outside of my knowledgebase)

    Bigbox Marquee image priorities

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    7 hours ago, amarsden said:

    I want to have my 2nd screen marquee only show a platform image while playing any game in that platform

    Pretty sure the marquee image being displayed does not distinguish between "perusing through your platforms/games" and "playing a game".

    That is, when looking at a game vs playing the game is the same thing (marquee image-wise).

    I assume you have game-specific marquee images because when you're scrolling through your games, that's what you'd like to see.  To have that image change when you go to play that game seems counter intuitive (to me).

     

    You might try looking into using the ThridScreen plugin. I don't know if it will distinguish between the 2 scenarios you want, or not. But it's pretty feature-rich and if nothing else, it may have a feature for manipulating the image type used that'd work for you.

     

    LaunchBox won't launch Retroarch for Arcade

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    29 minutes ago, fishboxtf said:

    Thanks I have also done a clean install this time, under Arcade as emulator and making sure the system doesn't just download a ton of useless cores, also ensureed remove file extension and folder path as well as extract ROM are not ticked

    Still nothing

    You called the emulator Arcade, which led LaunchBox to believe it was going to be MAME.  So it auto-filled the command-line parameters and had 2 boxes checked.  You un-checked "Remove file extension...", but you need to also un-check "Remove quotes" like in you first post.

    The default command-line parameters that were auto-populated (for MAME) are incorrect for RetroArch. Delete that.

    Which brings us to the Associated Platforms section.  You didn't assign the core to the platform. Your 2nd post indicates that it was, in your old install (because you at least got the FBNeo error message.

     

    43 minutes ago, fishboxtf said:

    However, If i use the option says Open Arcade and it goes to retroarch and from there the games can be started with no issue

    That's just because it's just opening RetroArch.  When you start a game directly from the RetroArch front-end, and you tell it (or just load) a FBNeo game, it knows what core it needs to load to make it work.  So it does [work].

     

    47 minutes ago, fishboxtf said:

    So why can't LaunchBox just start directly?

    Because you didn't tell LaunchBox to tell RetroArch which core it needs to use. ;) 

    Removal of music

    in Noobs

    Posted

    1 hour ago, DUNBAR said:

    I am looking through the options to remove the game music previews and disable them downloading.  Not sure if that makes since?  Keep box art/videos but remove music?

    Music files (not to be confused with the audio you hear from videos that are playing) are only downloaded if; when in the Download Images/Media wizard, in the EmuMovies section, you have Music checked.

    image.thumb.png.96735f4022bde1ff335640680cb744cd.png

     

    The easiest way to remove the Music files that have been downloaded is to simply delete the Music folder.

    i.e. D:\LaunchBox\Music\

    Note:  When you go to restart LaunchBox, that folder will be re-created as well as [empty] subfolders named after your Platforms. 

    LaunchBox won't launch Retroarch for Arcade

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    4 hours ago, fishboxtf said:

    Very smart system, and yet it still says missing core.

    Yeah, RetroArch is pretty smart when running it from its UI. 

    The error message you show is actually referring to your contra.zip ROM.  Specifically, appears it can't find the ROM.

    Try un-checking "Remove file extension and folder path".  This way it'll send the full path to where the actual ROM is located.

    Then in Associated Platforms, when you added "Arcade" (or whatever you decided to call the platform), make sure "Extract ROM" is un-checked.

    Change windows orientation for certain playlist navigation?

    in Noobs

    Posted

    38 minutes ago, davedw said:

    Any way to hook into launchbox's navigation flow and trigger scripts?

    For this, you'd need to create a plugin (written on C#).

    Essentially, it'd catch a selection change event, determine that the change went into a playlist (vs say a different game, a platform or a platform category) and that the playlist is 'your special playlist'.  From there, execute what you wanted done.

     

    Is there an ideal input mapping for arcade cabinet?

    in Noobs

    Posted

    11 hours ago, Button Masher said:

    @JoeViking245 Thank you for taking the time to respond to my post. Do you have an arcade cabinet? If you do, how to you have your buttons mapped? 

    I'm looking for advice on the best way to map the inputs that will minimize conflicts and give the best overall user experience.

    I do have a cab, but set the controls up for the emulators I use several years ago.  For any newer emulators installed since then would be for 'newer' systems/consoles which work best with a controller. I use an Xbox 360 wireless controller for those.

    You really shouldn't be having any input conflicts.  After a game is launched, LaunchBox/BigBox "takes a backseat" with its mapped inputs (keyboard and/or controller) except for, of course Pause and Exit [the game].  There are some 'specialty' inputs you may have mapped that will still be available as well, such as screen capture.  Aside from those, after launch, it's up to the emulator and how you have them mapped in there.

    Typically, with the default mappings for a keyboard encoder in a cab, you shouldn't need to change anything in MAME [from its default mappings].  Which I think you already found is the case.   And actually, don't ever change the mappings for the encoder.  Change them in the application-specific mappings.

    Generally, RetroArch's default mappings will give you a real good start.  But for some systems you may want to change things around.  Myself, I didn't have a lot of time on the NES system growing up. So playing that on my cab, to me, the A and B buttons seem backwards. So I changed those for that system.

     

    18 hours ago, Button Masher said:

    causing quits, pauses or reloads etc.

    Regarding these RA (RetroArch) issues, it sounds like you've done some remapping in RA.  None of those 3 should be mapped to any of the [regular] player buttons/joys.  (or player button-combos).  

    You need to break it down and figure out which button presses exactly (in RA) are causing those.  i.e. if Player-2 presses their Button-4, the game pauses.  Then find out if it's like that for all Systems you play in RA (i.e. it does in NES and SNES).  Or if it's just in one of the Systems it does that.

    In this example, you then look in RA's default settings for what's assigned to "Pause".  If it set to "w" (aka P2 Button4), then you know the issue.

    To find out what 'letters' are assigned to which buttons on your cab, open Notepad and start pressing the buttons. i.e. Press Player-2, Button-4 and a "w" should appear.

     

    As for how to map the buttons in RA (general or System or game specific), there are many threads already covering that, I'm sure.  But you need to have a basis for what's-doing-what wrong before you can fix it.  Then once you've at least attempted to research how to setup or change this-that-or-the-other-thing, then ask.  Be sure to specific give details.

    Flycast automatic fullscreen?

    in Noobs

    Posted

    10 hours ago, ReignerDeustcher said:

    How can i make this emulator go fullscreen when i launch a game? also i want to close everthing with esc, is  that possible?

    In your Flycast emulator folder, edit emu.cfg and set fullscreen to yes.  

    [window]
fullscreen = yes

     

    In LaunchBox, edit your Flycast emulator. In the Running Script put: 

    $Esc::
{
    WinClose, ahk_exe {{{StartupEXE}}}
}

     

    Is there an ideal input mapping for arcade cabinet?

    in Noobs

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Button Masher said:

    I would like to have a stream lined input mapping for my arcade cabinet that would allow me to navigate Bigbox, control games, quit back to front end and not have any cross emulator conflicts.

    Is there any references, tutorials or recommended mappings for an arcade cabinet to play nice across emulators without the need for a keyboard?

    My arcade sticks and buttons are mapped to the keyboard and am having issues with conflicts across different emulators. ie buttons work in mame but conflict in retroarch

     causing quits, pauses or reloads etc.

    The keyboard mappings in BigBox are separate from the mappings in MAME are separate from the mappings in RetroArch are separate from the mappings [insert any other emulator here].  Note, the mappings are also separate between LaunchBox and BigBox.

    That is, your cab, using keyboard input(s) will work in BigBox and most any emulator.  However, you need to set the bindings up separately for each emulator.  Fortunately, though RetroArch can emulate many systems, it's considered one "emulator" (but not technically an "Emulator" in itself [by name]). So that will save some time. 

    Autoboot Command / Script for MAME SWL (Computer Systems)

    in Emulation

    Posted

    2 hours ago, balduin said:

    Thanks, but still nothing more than the first letter L and then Err22:


    After pressing Enter you also would need to press the ESC key (\n) on the EXL100 so that the tape can be read but MAME would be needed to be in keyboard focus mode otherwise you exit MAME ;).

    My question here: Are there also commands for ESC, SHIFT etc?

    Without making attempts to fire this system up myself, when you run the system in MAME itself, are you able to load the cassettes there (along with ExelBASIC)?  If not, any further consideration is a moot point.

     

    What softlist cassettes are you using?  (I didn't see any that were associated with the system.)

    Your command line loads the exl100 system and then attempts to load the [non-existent] cart exl100.  Probably remove that part (-cart exl100).

    To add a literal " (quote) inside the command line, I believe you just need to double it.  load""1"" 

    You can't switch the ui_active mode (keyboard mode) from within an autoboot script to be able to press keyboard Esc and then UI F2 (play).  But I'm sure you can accomplish that via a LUA script.  This guy's made quite a few, though not one the EXL 100. But you could use one of them as an example and modify it for exl100.

    https://github.com/Bob-Z/RandoMame/tree/main/autoboot_script

     

    To find what keys are assigned for Shift and Esc on that system, [you might be able to] start it then go into the Tab menu and look at what's assigned there. 

    Looking at your original how-to, you have in there ((ENTER)) and ((F2)) which appear to be literal keys.  Whereas ESC is not inside double parenthesis which would lead me to believe it's the 3 individual letter keys.  Maybe it's just semantics. But in print, they appear different.

     

    To me, all this seems like a lot of work for a system that's marked as Preliminary and only has 16 carts (plus however many cassettes you may have come across). But that's just me. ;) 

    Autoboot Command / Script for MAME SWL (Computer Systems)

    in Emulation

    Posted

    56 minutes ago, balduin said:

    Does somebody has an overall working command line for the Exelvision EXL100 system?
    The first one loading carts is fine, but when loading tape software (only WAV are supported, no k7) with EXELBASIC I always get a typing error after the first letter L.

    The tape loading command for EXL100 is:


    Here's my command-line, which is all fine until the autoboot_command:

    Thanks for you help!

    dash autoboot_command  (no space between) 

    -autoboot_command

     

    [Feature Request] Sort by Playlist

    in Features

    Posted

    50 minutes ago, Jayinem said:

    So any opinions about excluding from all? Just think Launchbox could launch firefox, outlook mail, obs, chiaki, vlc media player with a separate playlist that's not related to games. I mean technically it could do those things now but I'm sure most don't want them mixed in with their games.

    Excluding items from All would make All not really All.

    I have several [non-]games similar to the examples you listed in several of my builds.  They're in their own Platforms. So not intrusive to anything else.  

    Personally, I don't think I ever really click on All to look at/for games. But I do have it Enabled to show.  However, since it's enabled by default, I'm sure a lot of people do use it.

    A possible option you could do is to rename All (in Tools-Options) to something like Everything.  Then create a new playlist and call it 'All'.  In the playlist, you'd have it exclude the items you don't want to see.  i.e. ROM Path - Doesn't Contain - Http

    The problem with this is the playlist needs to get populated whenever you load it.  Depending on how many [actual] games you have in your collection, that could be time consuming.  (Minor. But still a factor.)

    All, as it stands, is just that. It has no filters to cross-check against, so it can just grab your entire collection without prejudice.

    My opinion, All should be All.  Without bias.  Non-games should be in their own platform and can be restricted as such (i.e. switch to Platform Category view and have the non-game platforms not have any "Parents" checkboxes checked.)

    Extra Folders

    in Noobs

    Posted

    9 minutes ago, Aevans0001 said:

    However, now i notice that I have about 189 folders in my c:\launchbox/games directory.  I delete the empty ones and yet they come back.  Is this an error or how it is suppose to be.  I would rather not have 150 empty folders if I can help it.

    I presume those folder names look similar to Platform names.  (That, or exactly like platform names.)  They're auto created when you have auto import enabled.  (For games. Not to confused with the auto import for storefronts.)   This allows you the proper folder names to drop your ROMs into to have LaunchBox import them from.

    Add clickable hyperlinks to Custom Fields

    in Custom Theme Tutorials

    Posted

    1 hour ago, rexryan said:

    Controller option is where im going..If you come up with something would be awesome

    Yeah, that'd require a plugin to capture the controller input.  Then you'd navigate away from BigBox.  And then you have to grab your mouse and keyboard to continue navigation in wherever the link sent you.  Since you have to grab the mouse anyway, may as well grab it early and right-click the link in BB. ;)  (Assuming the mouse right-click capture works in BB.)

    Add clickable hyperlinks to Custom Fields

    in Custom Theme Tutorials

    Posted

    16 minutes ago, rexryan said:

    Worked like a champ..Thanks have you ever tried to get it to work in BB?

    Glad to hear after almost 2 years later someone actually tried this and it working! :D

    Never thought to try it in BigBox.  TBH, don't think I've ever used a mouse in BB.  Keyboard navigation (cab buttons), yeah.  Controller, of course.

     

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