JoeViking245

Each Platform stores its data, metadata and media separately from others. So if you import one into your PlayStation platform and the other into your DOS platform (or whatever name you gave it that's not "PlayStation"), they will not copy over the other. They will be saved into completely different files and folders/sub-folders. If for some reason you're importing them into the same Platform, during the import process, there should be a checkbox to allow duplicates to be imported. Not sure how that will affect the metadata and media for those games, but both should import. Hopefully this isn't the case.

Most likely your games exe is a sort of launcher in that it actually [then] launches another application which would be the game. As soon as the 'launcher' starts the game, it exits itself (and the game plays on). LaunchBox sees this ('launcher') as the Main Application and in turn runs the After Main Application script (or batch file closing your wheel in this case). The "Wait for Exit" option is for the Run Before Main App only. This only explains what's [possibly] going on and doesn't really help. I'm personally not familiar with DirtShowdown. Hopefully someone who is, can chime in with actual help.

I ran into the same issue (SelectionChanged) a few years ago when I was 1st working with the API. Granted I was attempting to learn C# at the same time as leaning what an "API" is. (Probably not a good combo. lol) 😊 At a later time, I worked on a BigBox plugin with @jayjay that allows you to launch a game/application directly from the Platform Wheel View level. This uses UserControl, IBigBoxThemeElementPlugin. Unfortunately, you will need to modify your BB Theme Views to catch it. The good part is it's only adding 2 lines. The Class would be something like namespace MyNameSpace { public partial class MyUserControl : UserControl, IBigBoxThemeElementPlugin { .... } } And once IBigBoxThemeElementPlugin is initialized in the class, you can use the method public void OnSelectionChanged(FilterType filterType, string filterValue, IPlatform platform, IPlatformCategory category, IPlaylist playlist, IGame game) { //do stuff return, false; } This will give you the selected platform and game. You also have access to OnEnter() and OnEscape() (as well as a few other controls). The 2 added lines in the Views are xmlns:JoeWasHere=\"clr-namespace:MyNameSpace;assembly=MyNamespace" <!-- AND --> <JoeWasHere:MyUserControl /> To be clear, I never pursued SelectionChanged. So there's a really good chance there's a 'proper' way to use it and make it work for your application. This is merely "a suggestion on how to catch game wheel exit from within a plugin." And as I write this out, I realize you need to somehow figure out if you're currently in a platform view or a games view. May be something in the API or you may need to set a bool inside OnEnter/OnExit??? And maybe I still only 'know enough to be dangerous'. lol

It wouldn't be too bad. But ya, you'd need to create about 10 or so individual playlists (assuming you have any tables that goes back to the 1930's). Then if your tables have their release dates (which they all should), then it's all automatic. I've been able to find a lot of the videos via EmuMovies. Granted they may not be for the specific version of the table I have. But it's a something. This is for VPX I'm referring to. For Pinball FX 2/3, you can find those here For the missing VPX videos (or videos where you want to see your table), there's a plugin that can [almost] automatically make them for you. But for several hundred tables, it'd still take some time. Especially since you'd have to do them one-by-one. But it does help some to streamline the process. It's easy to do. lol And as TJ said, But I think that's true for game machine/console archiving in general. The never ending "just one more change, then it'll be perfect". lol

That too.

There's a checkbox in the PCSX2 UI for starting fullscreen. But sounds like that may not be an issue for you anymore. I've never seen the unzip progress bar before. But then again, I don't zip my ROMs. 😊 So I can't confirm if there's even supposed to be one or not. I can see how having an unzip progress bar be good or bad. Depending on the user. Part of me thinks it would be good to have it so you know that something is going on (vs being frozen or locked up). On the other hand, it should happen relatively fast. So 'hiding' it may make for a cleaner gaming experience. I will contend though, the amount that you save in drive space really isn't worth much when you see that a chd isn't much larger (if at all) than a zip file because the chd itself is compressed. Then factor in the time (though somewhat minimal [I imagine]) to extract the ROM before playing compared to directly reading a chd. I digress. But something to consider.

Are your ROMs actually zipped? If so, do you have cue/bin files in the zip? And are the files inside the zip named the same as the ROM.zip? When extracting, it's possible it's trying to use the bin file (which won't work). You may want to think about extracting your files and converting them to chd.

That should have already been in with the 'full set'. (Have to ask..) was the romset you downloaded v0.245? You need to have the romset and MAME executable versions match. (i.e. your image above shows you installed MAME v0.245) An "Image error" sounds like a bad rom file. If it said "...file missing...", that would (typically) indicate a mismatched rom file and executable versions. Or that the 'full set' you downloaded was not actually a full set.

Did you use the Import ROMs (File or Folder) or do the Drag & Drop method? Regardless, LaunchBox will recognize zip file names. Especially since they're the same as your other set. Is it the Media and Metadata that's not getting scraped? Or is it "a lot of the games" aren't getting imported? I'm guessing the latter because LB does cross check your existing MAME games and doesn't import those [again]. Unless you tell it to Force importing duplicate games. If that's not the case, oops. My bad.

Copying [the 'Default' folder] and modifying one thing (in the GamesDetailsView.xaml file) is essentially creating your own custom them. As suggested. The line you're wanting to remove looks something like this. <Image Source="{Binding GameBackgroundImage}" Stretch="UniformToFill" HorizontalAlignment="Center" ClipToBounds="True" UseLayoutRounding="True" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="Auto" />

Think of the post as a Historical Reference. Coupled with the fact that (8 years later) its' download link is no longer even available, 'No harm. No foul'.

That's probably the best (and easiest) solution.

What does your batch file look like? Any way you can start the game directly without the launcher? If you were some way able to do that, you could use start blah blah xpadder Start /w "" "D:\games\MyGame.exe" start blah bla Kill_xpadder The key part being the "/w" which will wait for MyGame to exit before continuing to Kill_xpadder.

Thanks! Glad you like it. The Bulk Remove was kind of an afterthought to "what if they use this and later find they don't need them anymore." No. This works on a game-by-game basis. If you need every game in multiple platforms to have the same run-before and run-after command, I suppose you could select All platforms in the left pane (the top of the list where you select individual platforms). Then select all the games and add the before/after apps to them. Then in the few platforms don't need it, select them and use the bulk-remove plugin. Platforms don't run applications. Emulators don't have the option for a run-before and run-after command. Only individual games do. In fact, that's largely the reason why this was created. Call it a sorta work-around to give a platform/emulator a run-before and run-after option. Personally, I don't use it (beyond the initial testing) because I don't have any fancy controllers, light guns or the sort in my setup (which as I've seen, is the typical need for it). Over a period of time, I heard, several times over, people expressing concerns like "I have 250+ games in this platform and I have to add the same thing to each of them one-by-one-by-one?" This was my solution.

@Prestonjezek you may interested in this too. You'll need to type the code for Max Players manually. I don't know if it needs to go the in Advanced tab or in the C# Code: section. So I did it in both. The code for maximum 2 players is: game.MaxPlayers.Equals(2)

Of course there's a way. It's a different approach for pressing [controller] buttons. But for pressing keyboard keys, it goes something like this: Enter & Esc:: WinClose, ahk_exe {{{StartupEXE}}} Enter::Enter If you holder Enter then hit Escape, it will execute the WinClose statement. Otherwise, if your press Enter and let go, it will 'press Enter'.

Now days you can use on the fly filters located in the left-hand sidebar, next to the search box to view your 4-way joy games. Once you set the filter, click the filter icon again and create a playlist of your selected filter(s).

So what did you end up with for your full command line for "Doctor Who and the mines of terror"?

No worries. The plugin just hangs out in the background doing absolutely nothing. It sits in its recliner, sipping an endless cup of coffee, reading the newspaper and having not-a-care-in-the-world. It has no clue as to what you're doing in LaunchBox/BigBox. Be it scrolling through looking your collection, switching themes, adding new Platforms or downloading media or new themes. The magic begins only when you click/press Play (and not a moment earlier). LB/BB sends it a notification that a game is being launched. The 1st thing it does is gets: The primary and secondary image types and monitor # you selected during setup (via an xml file located in the plugins folder) The filepath for those 2 images It then verifies that the Primary Image file actually exists. If not, it checks for the secondary image to exist. If neither exist (rare), it heads back to the recliner. If one or the other does indeed exist, it then verifies that the monitor # selected is valid. If the monitor # is invalid (rare), back to the recliner. Otherwise, the image is sent to the corresponding monitor. Once the game is exited, LB/BB sends another notification stating such. The plugin then discards its connection to the monitor and the image file. Then back to the recliner awaiting the next Play notification.

Version 1.1 of the plugin (middle of page 2 in the link above) doesn't have Advertisement Flyer (Front or Back) as an available option. But if you test it with other image types and you find that the plugin is going to suit your needs, let me know and I'll have my team add that in as an option. No. It will look for the appropriate image to display only when the game is launched. (We might be talking semantics here. You can 'select' a game you want to play without actually 'launching' it.)

It might be the escape sequence: \x20

If RA MAME is like standalone MAME, for Computers (i.e. Acorn Micro) you need to press Scroll Lock to get out of the emulated keyboard. Then you can press Tab to get to MAMEs game menu.

You were getting close. Put the whole thing in quotes. -autoboot_command "*cat\n*exec who0\n"

The contents of your script would be Esc:: Send, !{F4} Set it up as an Additional App the exact same way you did here: Not having a built-in "Exit to Windows" option is odd. But the script should work for you. It may not work if the game's executable spawns another file to start the actual game. There's one sure way to find out if it'll work.