Fry

You're the man, thank you so much. I knew I was doing something stupid!

Hello, Is there any tutorials around for developing plug-ins? The API documentation is helpful but I'd love to see some code samples. Would anyone be willing to share their source code for adding a menu item to the system tools menu? I've attached my super simple sample, just trying to get my menu item to show in the tools menu. It compiles. I've tried copying just my DLL and also the entire BIN folder to my LaunchBox\Plug-ins folder but I don't see my menu item under the tools menu. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I'm sure I'm missing something obvious. LaunchBoxMenuItemTest.cs

The reason I would like to do this is that I’d like to build playlists with auto-generated conditions for my favorite games in a genre, series, or collection. For example my favorite beat em ups playlist where favorite = true and genre = beat em up. I’ve noticed the metadata that launch box pulls down for series and genre fields isn’t always what I want, I prefer it to be categorized a little differently for my playlists. I could change the values manually and they save but if I redownload meta data I would lose those values. There are a lot of minor changes that I’d like to make so I am thinking to create a plugin that would allow me to specify my own xml file for game meta data and it would add whatever is in my file to the game when launchbox is pulling in meta data. Does anyone know if this is possible? If not I could create a plugin that is a menu item where you can click it and it updates all games. I just thought pulling the data in while launchbox is pulling the data in would be more seamless.

Hello, I am interested in building a plug-in that allows you to pull in additional meta data for games (series, genre, favorite check box, etc...) from an additional sources. I’m wondering if anyone knows of an event or interface in the plugin API that would let me hook in to when a game’s meta-data is being saved or updated? I didn’t see it but I am new to building plugins for launchbox so maybe I’m missing it.

Is anyone aware of a game controls database (similar to controls.dat for MAME) but for other platforms like NES, SNES, Genesis, etc...? I'm working on a little project to generate marquee images for my BIgBox 2nd monitor that will display some game art and an image of my arcade control panel with call-outs describing what each button does. I couldn't find anything like that online. I figured I might have to build it up myself and that will take forever so I just want to make sure I'm not duplicating a ton of effort that somebody has already done.

Thanks Retro808. I really appreciate the feedback. That is interesting about the zindex. I’ll keep poking at it and see what I can figure out. Thanks again!

I'm just getting into some custom theme development and I'm wondering if anyone can help me with what is probably a super basic question. I'm working on a GameMarqueeView and I'm trying to display the clear logo for both the selected game and the selected platform in my view but the game's logo is displaying a marquee or a banner and the platform's logo isn't displaying at all. I have a feeling it has something to do with my LaunchBox image priorities but if that's the case, I'm not too sure which image priority i'm supposed to change to get the clear logos to show. This is super simple so I'm sure I'm doing something stupid here. I know this isn't going to look good, I'm just doing a proof of concept to make sure I'm getting the text and images I need before I start working to beautify things. I've got a 2x3 grid like shown below and I'm trying to show the game title, platform name, game clear logo, platform clear logo, and game marquee. The game title and game marquee displays great. The game clear logo is showing a marquee or banner image. The platform name and platform clear logo are both blank. Here's how it looks in my marquee monitor: Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong. I did confirm that I have the game and platform clear logos in their default folders. I just imported a MAME full set and downloaded everything from LB and EmuMovies and everything looks normal as far as the images in my LB images folder. I get the feeling it has to do with the image priorities or I've done something wrong with my XAML? Any help would be greatly appreciated! GameMarqueeView.xaml

Thank you so much, I've sent you my xaml file and some screen shots to show you what I'm running into. Really appreciate you looking into this for me!

No, unfortunately it doesn’t work to display the text of my custom fields. I’m not sure if I have something wrong in my syntax. Is there a special place where this chunk of code needs to go? I just have it right above my grid definition: <aov:SelectionSnoopVMP x:Name="SelectionSnoop" /> I’ve got a text block and I can display a hard coded string and I can bind to the active game properties and display the game name and other properties like that. When I switched the binding to try to display the custom fields, nothing appears in that space when I run BigBox. It’s not giving any error, it just doesn’t display anything. I am super new to WPF and XAML but I’m trying to learn. I have a hunch it’s a problem with the DLL reference not resolving for whatever reason and that error that visual studio is displaying is legit because any time VS showed an error like this and said my markup was invalid, I’ve seen a similar result where that thing VS complained about just doesn’t display when I run BigBox. I will try some stuff like making sure I’ve got the themer DLL in the right place and unblocked and make sure there’s nothing wrong with the reference and maybe play around with the location of that selection snoop declaration line.

Thanks a lot man! I did have a problem though. I'm running LB 9.10. The Ao.Bigbox.Themer version that I got from here is v3_9_4: So I'm getting an error in visual studio when I try to reference v3_9_6 because I don't have that version. I tried to go ahead with the reference to v3_9_4 but then I'm getting an error in visual studio on this line <aov:SelectionSnoopVMP x:Name="SelectionSnoop" /> It says: The name "SelectionSnoopVMP" does not exist in the namespace "clr-namespace:Ao.Bigbox.ViewModels;assembly=Ao.Bigbox.Themer.v3_9_4". Do I need to upgrade to 3.9.6? If so, is it available to download? I only saw 3.9.4 here on the site. Thanks again for your help, this plug-in looks awesome.

Hi Eatkinola, Thanks so much for sharing these! I'm wondering if you could show a little sample code on how to use ActiveGameCustomFields from the SelectionSnoopVMP? If it's not too much trouble, would you mind showing a simple xaml snippet on how to display the text from a custom field in a text block?

Cool, thanks for the info. I will focus on one marquee view to show controls for now.

Is it possible to have multiple GameMarqueeView.xaml files in a theme to display different views on a 2nd monitor? If so, is there any way to switch between them while in game using a hotkey? The reason I'm asking is that I'm playing with customizing the GameMarqueeView to display control mappings for my arcade cabinet on a 2nd monitor. I think I can use the images in the controls information folder to display the control mappings on my 2nd monitor and then I was thinking it would be great if I could press a hotkey and cycle through a different view which would show images from other folders that I don't really use like fanart - cart - front/back and put images with movelists there and have a 2nd and 3rd view point to those images. I just don't know if there's any good way to swap between views or if BigBox even supports more than one marquee monitor view.

That’s awesome, I didn’t know about the arcade controls information image type. Ya, I reckon on that second part, it would be a spiraling mess of requirements to build an add on that would do that mapping stuff even if the controls database existed and creating that missing controls database would not be trivial at all. I imagine this is a pretty niche feature too. The main reason I think it would be amazing to have it incorporated into launchbox is to harness the amazing user base to come together and generate that missing controls database content. Having it as a part of launchbox would give it more visibility than some of the 3rd party stuff I’ve seen and I could see the community pulling the data together. But it’s totally understandable that the effort would be way bigger than the value, especially with the ability for us to manually make images and use that new image type. I’m super excited to take an image of my control panel and see how it looks on the marquee monitor with some call outs using a custom theme.

For the controller images, it would be great to have a new image type for theme makers so that custom control mapping images can be displayed without bastardizing the other existing image types. This is super useful for arcade cabinets because many console games are very playable on an arcade cabinet but the controls generally need to be mapped much differently than how they appear on a game pad and with so many games it’s difficult to remember which button does what What would be amazing is an app with a database of game controls and the ability to create custom images of a control panel. Then allow users to define the button locations on the control panel image, define mappings of those buttons for each emulator and have the system somehow read game specific button mappings for each emulator and cross reference with this mythical game controls database to generate call outs that could be overlaid on the control panel image specifying each buttons main functions. I recognize that this would be a huge effort and probably at the far periphery (or maybe way outside) of launch box’s intended scope. It would just be awesome to have an image type that we could show on marquee and pause themes to display control mappings even if those images need to be manually generated for now. I’m not sure how popular this feature would be but I would love it!

Thanks Retro808! I will read through the linked thread and see if I see any. I'm curious to find out whether anyone uses this setting for any emulator.

Does anyone use the emulator setting for startup screens to hide all windows that are not in exclusive full screen mode? If so, which emulators do you use it for? I was noticing some problems with it a long time ago so I ended up unchecking this box for all emulators but I'm wondering if there's a known list of emulators that this setting works well with.

@dragon57 thanks so much for this! Does this work for any resolution monitor or do you have suggestions to make the bezels fit on a 1440p monitor without black space between the game and bezel? In general, what is it doing? I see there’s a png and cfg file for each game/bezel. Is the png image size static or does it shrink/stretch based on the system where it’s installed? Does the cfg file change the game’s play area? Does the bezel project change any other Retroarch settings besides the png and cfg files they drop? Or are these bezels meant to be used with some specific settings from the video section around resolution or aspect ratio? Sorry, it’s a ton of meandering questions. I had used this before: It’s great for a lot of games but I could swear some games resolution started looking funky and the bezels left some black space around the game play area. I figured it’s because I’m on a 1440p monitor but I wasn’t sure. Any suggestions or explanations about what changes this does with Retroarch and MAME is greatly appreciated!

I am curious if it’s possible (or how difficult would it be) to change the size of the gameplay video in the game wheel view based on the platform? I think it’s 4:3 which is great for the majority of my platforms but the video snaps I got for PS3, WiiU, and my steam games are all 16:9 so there are black bars on top and bottom of the game previews. This is super nit picky but I thought I might tinker with the xaml if it’s possible to put some conditional formatting of the video and the box that goes around it for those platforms which have 16:9 games. Is it possible? Anyone able to point me in the right direction? Also just wanted to say thank you for this awesome theme. I’ve used it for quite some time and it has my cabinet looking fantastic!

You're the man, CDBlue. I compared working and non-working log files and saw this in the non-working log file: [19:17:04] Custom timer mode: QPC Changed the Debug > Custom Timer to Default and everything is working. Thanks again guys, you rock!

Thanks for the suggestions, guys! I thought it just sets the default emulator that will be assigned to a game when you import a new game for a given platform. Is it doing more than that? I did confirm that it's pointing to 1.14.0. And if I change it to 1.15.4, it will launch but the issue with this game and CEMU occurs where it just hangs on a black screen. Yes, I can right click and choose which emulator to use. I can choose 1.14.0 and it does that same thing where it starts and stops. I can choose 1.15.4 and it launches successfully but hangs on the black screen. Thanks for the suggestion. I took Launchbox out of the picture and I see the same behavior when I try to launch from command line so it's something with CEMU and not Launchbox. I can see the crash in CEMU's log file now so I think it's clearly a problem with my CEMU setup. It's interesting that it loads fine using the application but only crashes from command line. I will tinker with CEMU settings and see what I can figure out.

Howdy, I was wondering if anyone might be able to help troubleshoot a game that is not loading. The game is Guacamelee for WiiU (CEMU). I have two CEMU executables (1.15.4 and 1.14.0). All of my WiiU games that point to 1.15.4 are launching fine from Launchbox. Guacamelee is the only one that points to 1.14.0 (because there's a regression in the latest version but it works fine in 1.14.0). I can launch the game via CEMU 1.14.0 and play no problem. In LaunchBox, I just created a 2nd emulator with all the same settings but pointing to the other executable. When I launch the game via LaunchBox I see CEMU pop up and start loading the shader cache and then there's a flicker and it goes away. I tried removing my autohotkey script and disabling game startup screens just to make sure but the same behavior occurs. I also tried deleting the game from LaunchBox and reimporting it but still got the same behavior. I enabled logging and I see an exception in there but I don't think that's the issue because I see the same exception when I load a game that's working. Is there anything anyone can see in the logs that indicates why the game is closing? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Debug 2019-04-14 07-56-16 PM.log

2 years later this guide was super helpful to me. Thank you so much, @Lordmonkus! It's not possible through CEMU's interface but there is a (cumbersome) way to do this. I use a windows batch file as an additional application which will replace the controller profile with a different configs for each game when the game starts up. For each game that I need to set up different button mappings for, I do the following: Open CEMU Options > Input Settings Map buttons for controller 1 and controller 2 specific to the game you're setting up Close the input settings and close CEMU - I don't bother saving the controller mappings with any special profile name, just map them and close everything. Also, closing CEMU probably isn't necessary, but I want to make sure the input settings get written. I think you just need to close the input settings form and the controller profiles are written to your hard disk. Go into your CEMU's installation folder and find the controllerProfiles folder. Inside there you should see files called controller0.txt (for player 1 controls) and controller1.txt (for player 2 controls). I guess if you mapped controls for other players those will be there too. If you saved them with a specific profile name they will be there too. Copy those txt files. Go back to your CEMU folder and create a new folder. I call it "MY CONTROLLER CONFIGS" Go into your new folder and create another folder for the game you just mapped Paste the controller0.txt and controller1.txt files there Go back to the "MY CONTROLLER CONFIGS" folder and create a batch file, I call it Set[GameTitle].bat. So like SetMarioKart8.bat. Right click that file and edit with notepad or notepad++ Paste these lines in there xcopy /y "D:\Emulation\Emulators\CEMU\MY CONTROLLER CONFIGS\Mario Kart 8\controller0.txt" "D:\Emulation\Emulators\CEMU\controllerProfiles\" xcopy /y "D:\Emulation\Emulators\CEMU\MY CONTROLLER CONFIGS\Mario Kart 8\controller1.txt" "D:\Emulation\Emulators\CEMU\controllerProfiles\" Fix the file paths to match your system - the batch file is copying the controller0.txt and controller1.txt files into your CEMU controllerProfiles folder and the /y switch is saying to replace the files if they already exist. This is why I don't save my profiles with any fancy names so I can just replace the default controller profiles that CEMU expects to be there when it starts up and it just works because it's looking for those file names In Launchbox, find your game, right click, and edit Go to additional apps tab Click Add Application - Enter a name, select the path to that bat file you just created, check run before the application (and I check wait for exit to be safe even though it takes a fraction of a second) Now, I haven't set up a ton of CEMU games so far so every game I have has an additional application to set up it's controller profile. However, if you find that like 90% of games have a default profile and there's just a handful that need special settings then the approach I took with Redream for dreamcast games and works exactly the same is to create a default profile and custom profiles for the games that need it. Then set the additional application to copy their custom profile for on start and another additional application to copy the default controller profiles back on exit so that I didn't have to set up an additional app to set the default controller profile on all the default games. Not sure if this makes sense but that's how it works for me. If you need some screen shots or clarifications I'm happy to add more info but this feels pretty verbose already so I'll leave it there.

Is the source code for CPWizBiz v1 available? I'd love to see this developed as a launchbox plug-in and eventually make it's way into the core product. I know you're thinking about a more generic solution that can support any front end but I'm pretty much dedicated to launchbox at this point so I'd like to see it more tightly integrated with launchbox instead of having another program running on my arcade cabinet machine.