JoeViking245

Try highlighting Windows (next to Platform) and pressing Delete (aka remove the associated platform). Then click Search for Metadata. That should give you a list of platform options for Half-Life. Select the last one (Windows). If the options don't appear, you may need to refresh your local database. Tools, Download, Force Update Games Database Metadata...

Correct.

From the sounds of things, your game.zip is from a merged set. Meaning the zip file contains the parent game and its clones. The file itself is named after the parent game and when you import that [single] game, that's what LaunchBox imports. It doesn't look 'inside' to attempt to determine if the ROM is from a merged, non-merged or split set. If it is indeed from a merged set, and you want to launch just one of the 'embedded' clones, you can change the launching path to the ROM to the name of the would-be clone. Example: if the ROM is polepos.zip (World version of Pole Position) and you want to launch the Atari version-2 version of the game, change the application path of the game to point to poleposa2.zip (even though that file doesn't physically exist in that location). When you launch the game from LaunchBox, MAME will know to look inside polepos.zip for the Atari version. If you want the options to launch any of the other versions, you'd need to manually add them as additional apps and then mark the one you want as default. That's if you're importing your [merged set] ROMs one-at-a-time. aka: The hard way. To get all the clones imported as Additional Apps (or separately, for that matter) from a Merged set, I believe your only option is to use the ever-so-intelligent MAME Arcade Full Set import Wizard. This will account for clones that are in a merged set. But you need the full-set (merged, non-merged or split) to use the wizard.

When I 1st read your original post, I thought you were saying you had all games working directly with MAME but none through LaunchBox. Rereading it, it sounds like you have some MAME games able to launch correctly through LaunchBox. If some work correctly when starting them through LaunchBox, they should all work correctly. Especially if they're all working directly through MAME. For the Pole Position Atari licensed versions, make sure you have all the Device files located in with your ROMs. You'll need these as well as the Atari version(s) on the game ROM. LaunchBox doesn't know if the games actually work on your setup or not. So it can't default anything for you in that regards. With the clones imported as Additional Apps, you can edit the main game, go to the additional apps section and select which on you want to be the default game.

Can you edit (in LaunchBox) your MAME emulator and share a screenshot of the Details section?

Doesn't look like you loaded a cassette. From the Command Prompt, you'd [probably] type mame.exe mikrosha -cass alambush That would start MAME with the cassette for Alien Ambush. Next, you'd need to "Load" the cassette [into memory]. Press Scroll-Lock to get out of the emulated keyboard, then press F2 to Load the cassette. You should hear some nasty sounds (kind of like the old modems) and see a loading count-down (or count-up) timer. Wait until that's done, and they game might then load. I say 'probably', 'should' and 'might' because I haven't tested it. But that's the general process for other cassette systems. Note that Mikrosha and Radio-86RK are 2 separate systems, with the prior being a clone of the latter.

Add a new "game" and in the Launching section, set the Application Path to C:\Windows\explorer.exe and for Parameters, enter the path to the folder you want to open up to. Depending on where you place this 'game', you may need to also go to the Emulation section and un-check Use an emulator....

I'm not familiar with that emulator (nor MALA or Mgalaxy), but looking at some comments from 2015, the only command line parameter it takes is the path to the ROM file. Whether that's still true 8 years later, don't know. Also, I've no idea what "Finder" is. (Is that a MAC thing??) That said, in LaunchBox, edit the emulator and make sure none of these boxes are checked. And also (unless your ROMs are zipped and they need to be extracted first.) To verify that you even can run it from LaunchBox, open the Windows Command prompt window where the emulators' executable is located and try running it from there. coolcv.exe "full\path\to\the\ROM\file.ext" (changing the emulators actual executable name [if it's not that] and the actual path to the ROM.ext [with quotes]) If you can get it to run from the command prompt, you can get it to run in LaunchBox.

I was having the same issue and followed @neil9000's advice from page one of this thread and that worked for me.

For Area51, you should have the main ROM file, area51.zip (which is about 622kb). And then have a folder called area51. This [sub]folder should then have a single file area51.chd (which is about 475MB).

It seems like there should be an easier way, but you could create a new emulator and have it point to your script. Then have those game use this new emulator. LaunchBox will pass the "full/path/to/the/rom/file.ext" to your script. Have your script do its pre-game Sinden thing (if any), then start the emulator with the appropriate parameters and "%1% " as the path to the ROM (or just the ROM filename, depending on your check boxes). Then do the AHK voodoo to get past the calibration screens. This way you keep the ROMs path (in LaunchBox) as it should be. And if you need to change something later, you only have to change the emulator (or edit the script). Alternately, you could add an additional app to these games. Have the app point to the AHK script and check 'Launch Before Main Application'. At the top of your script, add something along the lines of Process, Wait, emulator.exe to wait for the emulator to be running. You might need to then add a WinWaitActive ahk_exe emulator.exe to make sure it's the active window (and maybe a short sleep timer to make sure it's fully loaded?).

Here's what I found: It'll play cassettes, but there is no softlist set for it. But somewhere, somehow, it can work.

For the Model 2 emulator, you need to turn off Auto Switch to Fullscreen. Open just the emulator and uncheck it. Then exit. Or (if you dare [you'll get the same outcome]) edit EMULATOR.INI and change AutoFull to "AutoFull=0" (without quotes).

Glad it works now. The -rompath parameter will override whatever is stored in mame.ini. It's great for regular games (when you don't have the ROM path setup in MAME). But wreaks havoc for CHD's stored in a different location. As you discovered.

If I'm reading that correctly, this may be what you're after.

No worries. Go into Setup and check the boxes for (g) and (h) and see if that changes anything. I know you said you tried all settings, but currently you don't those 'recommended' settings checked. And be sure to click Save right after checking those 2 boxes.