Johnny T

I'm no expert by any means but I did notice a lot of options in BigBox regarding this. If you press Escape in BigBox then you can go to Options and look in there for settings regarding Videos. It could also be that your theme isn't set to show them? You could also check they are there in the actual video folder within Launchbox itself? My system was set to show a still image if the video was missing so it might be that your videos just aren't there for some reason? If so I believe you can rescan your ROMs to download the required videos.

I completely concur. I'm an ex-hyperspin guy but I've not looked back since getting Launchbox a few weeks ago. It's been the best money I've spent in a long while. I was getting very frustrated with emulation but I now love it again. ?

I'm not sure I'm understanding the question correctly but, when you choose the option (under Tools) to Import ROMs, then it will ask of you want the system to try and automatically populate the meta data and get images etc. It will do that on every system if you tell it to (as far as I'm aware). ?

Thanks rexryan. Must be a problem with my roms then. Cheers

I had a bit of trouble getting American Laser Games to work. I spent a lot of time on Google and between many different posts I managed to cobble something together which seems to work well for me. I thought I would post the details just in case anyone else is having trouble and it helps you out. This info is simply me regurgitating other info I've found so I'm standing on the shoulders of giants with this so I can't take any credit for it. Firstly create a .bat file in the folder where your Daphne is for American Laser Games. I called the .bat file "American Laser Games.bat" The contents of the file look like this.... daphne.exe singe vldp -fullscreen_window -ignore_aspect_ratio -x 800 -y 600 -framefile singe/%1/%1.txt -script singe/%1/%1.singe So this .bat file needs to be in the same folder as your daphne.exe file and it assumes your folder layout is like this.... Launchbox -> Emulators -> American Laser Games -> this folder contains daphne.exe and the American Laser Games.bat files. The same folder has another folder called "singe" which contains further folders titled the same as the various games... such as... crimepatrol Launchbox -> Emulators -> American Laser Games -> singe -> crimepatrol -> maddog etc.... Each game folder must have a .txt file inside it with the same name as the game. The part of the .bat file is pointing to this .txt file. Where the .bat file says..... singe/%1/%1.txt The software will replace "%1" with the name of the game. So, if you had a game called maddog then the .bat file is looking for a file with the path.... singe/maddog/maddog.txt So, either make sure these files are in the right place or alter this part of the .bat file to suit your locations. Next... import the ROMs into LaunchBox but just import all the .txt files (the files with the same names as the games and the folders). Finally, edit the emulator settings so that it looks like the following..... And (hopefully) that should be you sorted! Happy shooting ya varmant!!!!!

Hi all, I'm struggling to get the Amstrad GX4000 working. My ROMs are .cpr files. I've tried WinApe and Arnolds etc but to no avail. I've been trying MESS and MAME tonight but still no luck. I'm just trying to run the game from the emulator in the first instance before putting it into Launchbox. My game is called "Barbarian 2 (Europe).cpr" and so I've tried to run MAME with... mame64.exe gx4000 -cart "Barbarian 2 (Europe).cpr" And the screen goes black with the MAME "Initialising" message and then I just go back to the Command Prompt with... Fatal error: Device Generic Cartridge Slot load (-cartridge Barbarian 2 (Europe).cpr) failed: File not found If I try... mame64.exe gx4000 -cart Barbarian 2 (Europe).cpr Then I simply get this message.... "2" approximately matches the following supported software items (best match first): * Software list "gx4000" (Amstrad CPC Plus & GX4000 cartridges) matches: barb2 Barbarian II coptr271 Copter 271 crzycrs2 Crazy Cars II firefor2 Fire & Forget II robocop2 Robocop 2 tennisc2 Tennis Cup II batman Batman brubber Burnin' Rubber dicktr Dick Tracy klax Klax mystical Mystical navyseal Navy Seals noexit No Exit othunder Operation Thunderbolt pang Pang panzakb Panza Kick Boxing Error: unknown option: -<UNADORNED2> If I then try...... mame64.exe gx4000 -cart barb2 I get the black "Initialising" screen again followed by this message in Command Prompt.... barb2.bin NOT FOUND (tried in gx4000 gx4000\barb2 barb2) Fatal error: Required files are missing, the machine cannot be run. Has anyone any ideas what I'm doing wrong? A lot of Googling has found people who have got it to work through RocketLauncher but I'd rather not go down that route if I don't have to. Anyone who has this system working just with Launchbox alone?? And, if so, are you using MAME ?? And, if so...... how? Any info or help you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Brilliant Neil. Thanks as always for the info. I've not really played around too much with the audit tool but will have a closer look at it. Thanks ?

Hi all, I've got a few systems working now so I want to go through and remove games that I don't want and duplicates etc. I have a few questions about this... 1) Is there a way to quickly detect duplicates? Either through launchbox or via third party software? 2) If I delete a game from launchbox will it delete the ROM too? Or just remove the value from the database? 3) How do other people sort / filter / consolidate their games? Do you just do it by hand or are there tools available for this sort of thing? Thanks ?

It's maybe worth trying to launch a particular game directly from MAME first to make sure everything is set up correctly. You need to correct Bios files and also (I think) you need the correct ROM path set in MAME.ini (but I might be wrong about this - maybe launchbox sorts that for you?). If you can run a particular game direct from MAME then open launchbox and try and start the same game from there.

Thanks Dragon. Yep.. it's the latest one.

Hi all, I'm just working my way through setting everything up and would really like to get the LEDs to show the correct buttons when starting a game. I've exported my MAME.xml but need the "controls.ini" file. I have one that is 483Kb in size and last modified on the 5th January 2011. The LEDBlinky website points to a website that no longer exists and so I wondered if anyone knows if there's a later one out there? Or... has someone managed to set their own one up that they would be willing to share? Either way, any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Cheers John

Regardless of what is deemed a "complete" list, having the ability to audit against your own list would be a really good idea. It might just be a list that is the 500 best games on xyz platform. Or it might be an officially maintained "complete" list (or variation thereof). If we could point LB at it and have LB tell us what games are different / missing / superfluous this would be a nice feature. (Assuming this can't already be done - I'm new to LB but certainly haven't come across this feature yet)

Great stuff. Thanks for letting everyone know. ?

Yep the YouTube tutorial is what I followed and it really couldn't be simpler. If you watch it and then apply that technique to your prosystem emulator I bet you'll have it sorted in no time mate. :-)

Hope you're back retro-gaming in no time Dragon. All my very best wishes mate

Are you absolutely dead set on prosystem? If not, what about trying RetroArch? As I say, it worked straight out of the box for me? If not, have you tried what Neil advises in the next post up?

I just set up my LB system to use RetroArch for the 7800 and it's working very well. As far as I know (and I'm very new to this so forgive me if I'm wrong) but LaunchBox doesn't need to know how to "handle" the emulator as such. It just launches it as per your settings (emulator path / quotes or not around roms / etc) so, in theory, it should be able to launch any emulator. What if you just launch the emulator directly, do the same games play okay then?

Hi Dos, Thanks for the info. I've been doing some more digging and found a plugin for LB that allows a remote browser to access things like current game being played, manual for current game etc so technically I suppose it would be possible to set up a second device (old tablet or something) to sit and display the manual. It would be good to have the manual available 'in game' though via a shortcut key or something. I may fire it in to the suggestions box! I think the problem with the instruction cards (as I envisage them) would be that they would be specific to the system they were running on. i.e. I envisage an instruction card that shows the controls relating to my own cabinet which obviously would be different to other peoples situation. I might have a think about this though and see if there's a way of doing this without it taking me the rest of my natural life Thanks again for all your help

I had a game from Daphne disappear on me (Cobra Command) and what I did to sort it was highlight Daphne in the platform list, click the burger menu at the top and select "Audit Platform" (I'm not in front of my computer with LB on now - I'm at work - so it might be Audit System or something to do with "Audit"). That brought up a list of games for that system but for some reason my Cobra Command had assigned itself to a different system (I think it's because it thought it was the game "Cobra" with Sly Stallone). With the grace and deftness of a mentally-challenged gorilla I managed to 'somehow' change it back to Daphne and sort out the incorrect artwork that had been brought through and it re-appeared in it's rightful place. So... it might be worth trying to "Audit" whatever system you have problems with in future and see what games show up in there (I know you've sorted it out now but it's worth knowing how to do it for future reference). For your current problem try a selection of games. I was struggling with (what I thought) was a MAME problem but it turned out that the ROM was the problem. It was a version of Atic Atac that wasn't getting passed the loading screen. I changed to another version of the ROM I have and it worked fine. Good luck. Hope you get it sorted

Hi all, Well, I've only been messing around with Launchbox for a very short time so I'm still finding my way through all the features. One part that I think is brilliant is the fact that when I click a MAME game there is an option to see the Manual. However, the manuals for MAME games are generally the manufacturers instructions to the arcade owner for setting the machine up - dip switch positions etc. I would much rather see proper instructions for the game so I'm thinking of creating some "instruction cards" for my favourite MAME games (and maybe some other emulators) and then finding where the current 'manual' is kept and over-writing it with my own instruction card. My first question is..... 1) Is that possible to do? Or will it just get over-written next time I import games? 2) Does launchbox only accept .pdf for these files or are there other compatible file types? 3) As this is maybe a common request, is there a set of instruction cards already printed somewhere? 4) Is there a way to access the 'manual' (instruction card) whilst in-game? Thanks for any help you can give me.

I think the problem with MEGA and some of the others is that they host so much copyrighted content that they always tread a very fine line between being legal and illegal and hence, they are susceptible to having their domains/storage "seized" by law enforcement. I've known a few 'storage' sites disappear after having domains seized and I would doubt very much if you'd get your data back if that was to happen (obviously not a major problem if you still have the original but worth considering).

That's brilliant!! Thanks for the info. Really enjoying setting up Launchbox at the moment. I'm glad you talked me into it!!!