JoeViking245

I think what you're needing to do is create a RetroAchievements Platform Category. Then nest those 'RA systems' under that Category. Then in BigBox, set your view to Platform Category. (vs just Platform, or Playlists) Platform Categories and Nesting (edit the Platform, Platform Category or Playlist and look in the Parents tab) can do wonders to beautify your setup. But with an intricate setup comes great responsibility, time and effort.

According to your screenshot, Player 1 (P1) Start is set to keyboard 1 (top of the keyboard. Not "1" on the 10-key) and the Start button on your Player 1 controller. Not button 1 [on Player one's controller].

1Joy4:: (like you started with) is the one that should work. There's a chance the emulator is "taking over" the controller so AHK isn't able to catch the button press. I assume the controller works normally in-game, otherwise. What emulator are you trying to make this work with? What other emulators did you try it with that also didn't work? There's a slight chance what you call button "4", AHK sees as a physical different button. Try "smashing" the other buttons? If you have Steam running, it might be "taking over". Since the basic Process, Close, {{{StartupEXE}}} works with $Esc::, if you have LaunchBox premium, should be able to, instead of using a script, map the button 4 press to "Exit Game" (or "Close the Active Window" in BigBox). Note, LaunchBox and BigBox controller mappings need to be done separately. Also, (for reference) using WinClose, ahk_exe {{{StartupEXE}}} is a preferred method over Process, Close. Though won't magically make 1joy4 work, it is a "nicer" way to close the emulator.

LaunchBox has already thought of that.... Tools < Options < Gameplay - Screen Capture Assign a Screen Capture key Start the table Press the key Exit the table You will be prompted with something like 'Do you want to save the screenshot for this game?' Being nostalgic for the real deal, for the main image I use the actual cabinet itself. If the LB Games Database or EmuMovies doesn't have the cab image, I then look at https://www.ipdb.org/. Then as a backup for ones I can't find, I'll use the tables Advertisement flyer, which looks really good also. Being presumptuous, your next request may be for video clips ('video snaps') of the table in action. EmuMovies will have many of those available (incorporated in with the Metadata and Media download in LaunchBox). For those they don't have, there's a plugin for that to create your own. Enjoy! 😎

Did you try turning it off and back on again? Seriously though, try unplugging from the USB ports anything that's not essential to running the [basic] computer. Leaving only one keyboard/mouse and the encoder board plugged in, then restart the system. (No USB controllers, no external hard drives etc..) If still nothing, try moving the encoder to a different USB port and restarting. Sometimes when adding/removing/switching things between ports confuses the computer. Just need to 'slap it around' a little. And if still nothing.... I am sorry for your loss.

You added quotes around you pathToVP path. Don't do that. I forgot a % symbol on the VPversion line. Oops. 😊 Though probably doesn't matter, I changed the direction of the slash ( / ) on the Run line. Lastly, I added quotes around fullFile on the Run line to account for spaces in the table path_to_table. #SingleInstance Force pathToVP = Z:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Visual Pinball fullFile=%1% SplitPath,fullFile,filename,dir,ext,fileNoext,drive StringSplit,VP,fileNoExt,[] VPversion = % VP2 if (VPversion = "VP6") exe := "VPinball-6.1.exe" if (VPversion = "VP7") exe := "VPinball-8.0.exe" if (VPversion = "VP8") exe := "VPinball-8.1.exe" if (VPversion = "VP9.0") exe := "VPinball-9.08.exe" if (VPversion = "VP9.1") exe := "VPinball-9.14.exe" if (VPversion = "VP9.2") exe := "VPinball-9.21.exe" if (VPversion = "VP9.9") exe := "VPinball-9.95.exe" if (VPversion = "PhysioMod") exe := "VPinball-9.9-PhysMod5-Updated.exe" if (VPversion = "VPX6") exe := "VPinball-X-6.2.exe" if (VPversion = "VPX7") exe := "VPinball-X-7.3.exe" if (VPversion = "VPX8") exe := "VPinball-X-7.3.exe" Run, "%pathToVP%\%exe%" -minimized -exit -play "%fullFile%"

Try Tools < Download < Force Update Games Database Metadata and see if doing that clears things up.

You might try Googling "launchbox mamehook". Several hits were made to threads on this forum (apparently some of which I was also involved in). They all seemed to have resolved similar issues (some included dealing with LEDBlinky. Ignore the LED parts, but don't ignore those posts).

You need to contact your vendor regarding how they setup your pre-configured drive. Support for these will not be given here.

Then it sounds like you're stuck with using the MouseClick method you discovered above. Or just deal with the extra clicks (or controller button presses).

@skizzosjt has a great idea using the ControlSend command. Way more reliable than moving the cursor and clicking. The Waits and WaitClose's can often be overlooked and underutilized. Glad they were brought up. Thanks S! (I was being too lazy to think. 😊) Looking the Exit screen screenshot, it 'says' you can press Enter for "OK". Which leads me to believe that you can also "press" arrow keys as necessary to move to that menu item. This leads me to believe that on the initial launcher screen, you can do the same thing. This also leads me to believe that you're using a controller for the game and that these menus can be handled with said controller. But can appreciate wanting to automate these little extra steps. Your launchers exe file is "CHRONOCROSS_LAUNCHER.exe". What is the exe filename of the actual game? Plagiarizing the script provided above: This assumes the actual games exe is "chronocross.exe" This assumes at the Launcher window, you just need to press Enter This assumes the exit window places the cursor on Audio and you need to down arrow 3 times. (then press Enter) #SingleInstance Force SetKeyDelay, 0, 50 Run, CHRONOCROSS_LAUNCHER.exe WinWait, ahk_exe CHRONOCROSS_LAUNCHER.exe ControlSend,,{Enter},ahk_exe CHRONOCROSS_LAUNCHER.exe WinWait, ahk_exe chronocross.exe WinWaitClose, ahk_exe chronocross.exe WinWait, ahk_exe CHRONOCROSS_LAUNCHER.exe ControlSend,,{down}{down}{down}{Enter},ahk_exe CHRONOCROSS_LAUNCHER.exe The 2nd line is in case the launcher is being stubborn about accepting key presses from AHK. The duration is suitable for most apps. But you can try increasing it of it needs more. Do test with an actual keyboard 1st to get the necessary physical key presses needed. Then just replace the name of the actual game's exe and the actual controls (keys) needing pressed. If the key presses for some reason don't work, just replace the 2 ControlSend's with the MouseClick method you discovered above.

Once you get that script all dialed in, read here to add the script as an emulator. Auto Hotkey Scripts - Page 34 - Noobs - LaunchBox Community Forums Look specifically part way down at Add the "new" Emulator:.

Ahhh.... preconfigured. That's cheating. This script will help you get started. You'll need to change the pathToVP to the root folder your exe's are located in. VPversion will give you whatever's between the [brackets]. i.e. vp6.1 and vp8. If your table filenames have more than one set of [brackets] in them, (not to be confused with parenthesis), that'll probably mess the script up and it won't work. Next you need to add the other 31 if statements (2 of the 33 are shown for examples). I don't know if the older versions use/have the same command line parameters (-minimized -exit -play). If they don't, then some finagling will need to be done. #SingleInstance Force pathToVP = D:\Emulators\Visual Pinball fullFile=%1% SplitPath,fullFile,filename,dir,ext,fileNoext,drive StringSplit,VP,fileNoExt,[] VPversion = VP2 if (VPversion = "vp6.1") exe := "VPinball-6.1.exe" if (VPversion = "vp8") exe := "VPinball-8.0.exe" ;do this 31 more times Run, "%pathToVP%/%exe%" -minimized -exit -play %fullFile%

What do you get when you WindowSpy the "Escape Menu? I presume it shows you an exe filename. Try changing the escape sequence to match what you need. !F4:: { WinClose, ahk_exe [the_filename_you_found].exe } This way you're not clicking their "Quit". You're [force] closing 'that' window.

The AHK script is a smaller footprint and easier to manage than an exe. To close the launcher as well, just add the standard escape sequence to the bottom of the script. $Esc:: { WinClose, ahk_exe CHRONOCROSS_LAUNCHER.exe } You might be able to, before WinClose, add your necessary MouseClick to click on Exit.

First off, that's just sick. And I don't mean in the slang conventions of "cool/neat/awesome...". Many of the Visual Pinball exe's are backwards compatible. vpinball-9.95.exe should work for any table created in the vp 9.xx series. Possibly also for the older vp 6.x and 8.x series'. VPX-6.2 should work for everything down to VPX. VPX 7.xx and VPX 8.xx should work in their respective series. Some VPX-7 tables work in VPX-8. Others don't. Myself, any table I had that was created for vp9, there's a VPX version. So I've gotten rid of anything vp9 and prior. But that's just me. Wait... you mean to tell me you've set up Visual Pinball, have tables from all those versions, got them all working in your setup... all on your own? Without knowing how to code? Well done! I'm not saying you need to know code to be able to setup VP. But it'd seem to me, someone with the wherewithal to setup something that extreme would at least know a little bit of coding. In all seriousness, you really should whittle down the # of exe's you have. If nothing else, for your own sanity. Then also, update tables that were recreated in newer versions of VP. Because if you're going to play them, play something that looks and plays good. Just sayin'. 😎

Thanks for confirming. If it won't hook after MAME is running, then a Sleep time won't help any. It also won't work if ran from the Running Script. My last-ditch effort... I have no idea what your Additional App script looks like, but you might be able to add some stuff at the end to 'restore' the MAME window. Run, "D:\SomeFolder\MAMEHooker\mamehook.exe",,Min Process,Wait,mame.exe WinActivate,ahk_exe mame.exe If WinActivate doesn't produce the desired result, you can try WinMaximize. Also, Min(imizing) might work better than "hide".

You can drag-and-drop the LaunchBox Log file here and the developers will take a look if/when they have a chance. But you said you already reported the bug. So may be redundant.

If you have the Additional App set to launch "before main application", you'd probably need to set a pretty long sleep timer. If MAME Hooker can by physically started after MAME starts, instead of a sleep timer in the additional app, add something like Process,Wait,mame.exe. Then load MAME Hooker. Can add a short Sleep after the Wait to make sure MAME is fully loaded. Or better yet, WinWaitActive,ahk_exe mame.exe. If you will be using MAME Hooker for all MAME games, instead of an additional app, you could add the script to the Running Script for the MAME emulator. (If MH can be started after MAME is running) So MAME Hooker is set to hide, but all it does is minimize?

From a different thread.... in short, that particular "error" is an annoyance rather than an 'issue'.

Hmmm. LB shouldn't be telling MAME to "minimize". Unless I suppose you have MAME windowed and in the emulator settings (in LB) you have the box for "Attempt to hide console window on startup/shutdown" checked. Even then, I don't think LB "minimizes" what it sees as the console window. I think it just puts it at the bottom of the z-order. (I could be wrong) A test would be [assuming MAME is running fullscreen] is to turn off Startup Screens for your MAME emulator and see if that changes anything. Also in the Startup Screen section, there's "Hide All Windows that are not in Exclusive Fullscreen Mode". Again, assuming MAME is running fullscreen, may check/-un-check that. (THough don't think that'll change anything with your situation) Another would be to create a new emulator that's your AHK script (passing the ROM name to the script). See what that does. Is MAME Hooker set to start minimized? (if that's even an option) There's aren't end-all, cure-all solutions (yet?). They're just processes of elimination.

If you use an AHK script outside of LB/BB to Run mamehooker then Run mame.exe [ROM], does MAME not minimize?

14 versions of vpinballxxx.exe? I can see maybe up to 5 or possibly 6 as many are, to a degree, are backwards compatible. Or are you talking pinball emulation in general (including Future Pinball etc.)? One Option: Setup your 14 variants of vpinballxxx.exe emulators. Import the tables into 14 platforms using the 14 respective emulators. (you can go to your Tables folder in Windows Explorer, then filter-search i.e. *[vp8].vp? then drag/drop the results on LaunchBox) After all are imported, you should be able to bulk edit the 14 platforms of tables and change their Platform (combine them all into) to "Visual Pinball". You probably need to do it 14 times, but they should all maintain the respective emulator. Another option (which would be a lot cleaner): Such as you illuded towards, create one emulator. That 'emulator' can be a batch file, AHK script, Python, C# app ...whatever you're comfortable with coding in. Then just pass the table to the 'emu' and parse the filename for whatever's between the brackets (i.e. [vp8]) and then use 14 if/then statements (or a switch/case statement) to start the respective emulator. Then you can just dump all 6k+ tables in, all at once, into one platform, using one emulator. Since they're named the exact same as the table, you can just copy those into /Images/Visual Pinball/[image_type_of_your_choosing]/ folder. Like in 'one option' above, go to your Tables folder in Windows Explorer, then filter-search *.jpg, then copy the results into the folder.

First off, thanks for adding the screenshot! They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That one there is the cat's meow! It truly says it all. Sincerely, thank you. Looks like you've imported the .bin files. I'm kind of surprised the games launch. I had in the back of my head that they needed to be launched via the .cue file. The .cue file is what the plugin is specifically looking for in the game's application path. That's why it's not finding/converting any. If you're adventurous, you can exit LaunchBox (wait for it to be completely closed in the background). Edit your /Data/Platforms/Sony Playstation2.xml file. Do a bulk search-&-replace from ".bin" to ".cue" (without quotes). Save. Close. Start LaunchBox. Run the plugin again. If not, remove all those games from LaunchBox and re-import them, importing the .cue files.