SiriusVI

Hey there, I've just tried importing an MS-DOS collection into LaunchBox and I have noticed that many games have the wrong names. For example, LaunchBox falsly identified the game "Lords of Doom" as "Doom". I think this happens, because the .exe of "Lords of Doom" is called "Doom.exe". Is there a way to make LaunchBox use the folder names for DOS import? I think that would solve this problem. Thanks!

Thank you for this tipp, however, I really don't want to rename all of my roms, since I've already importet them into Launchbox and I have save files within retroarch which match the exact rom names. I think it would be great if a tool scanned for something like file size to identify roms, but I guess something like this doesn't exist.

I wrote a quick tutorial (I had problems formatting it, so some sections are highlighted in white. I don't know why. Maybe someone can fix this):

This has been quite the ordeal, but I finally got it working, so I thought I'd share what I found out. There is some conflicting information online, so it took me a while to figure it all out. I found this discussion / tutorial written by people far more capable than me. My tutorial is based on that. I just wanted to write a more comprehensive tutorial and give some additional info (also this tutorial is technically for andriod devices, so I think it should be stated that it works for PC as well.) https://www.reddit.com/r/EmulationOnAndroid/comments/980mar/tutorial_phillips_cdi_on_android/ 1. What you need: 1.1 Retroarch's Mame core (without year tags) 1.2 This Archive: https://mega.nz/#!0OQ2zASD!UKoefHzpnsHBj79MdYRMWzdZYSv6kpPvxud0DmSSX3A (I hope I'm allowed to post this here) 1.3 CDi roms (I only tested the .chd format, but I'm pretty sure that cue/bin will also work) --> Keep in mind that there are many CDi roms that flat out don't work (more on that later) 1.4 Philips CDi bios files (mainly "cdimono1.zip", but I also have "cdimono2.zip" and "cdibios.zip". I don't know if they are needed for any games though) --> I cannot provide links to these bios files. You'll have to get them on your own. 1.5 LaunchBox, of course. 2. How to get your CDi games running: 2.1 Navigate to your main roms folder and create a folder called "Philips CD-i" (You can name the folder whatever you like, I just used the name that LaunchBox uses). 2.2 This is important: Inside the "Philips CD-i" folder, create another folder called "cdimono1". It's very important that you use this exact name. It doesn't work otherwise. 2.3 Copy all of your Philips CDi roms into the "cdimono1" folder. 2.4 Also copy your Philips CDi bios files into the "cdimono1" folder. 2.5 Download the archive from 1.2. Inside this archive you will find two more archives. Open the one called "CDI_blank.zip". Inside this archive you will find many different empty, "dummy" .zip files. These files have shortened title names for the CDi games (much like Mame roms). You'll need them so the Mame core is able to load your roms (more on that later). Copy all of these empty .zip files into the "cdimono1" folder. --> To sum up, in your "cdimono1" folder there should now be: your Philips CDi roms your Philips CDi bios files your empty .zip files 2.6 Open the archive from 1.2 again, but this time open the second archive within it called "RetroArch.zip". You don't need everything in here, just one specific subfolder: Go to "Retroatch --> system". In here, you will find a folder called "mame". Take that folder and put it in your own Retroarch directory in "YOUR_PATH\RetroArch\system\". 2.7 Download Retroarch's Mame core (without year tags) and leave all the settings at default (you can change the resolution if you want to) --> This is where misinformation held me back. There are many tutorials which tell you to change various settings, but believe me, you must keep the default settings. 2.8 Open LaunchBox and import the empty .zip files from 2.5. Important: You cannot import your CDi roms directly, it doesn't work. Unfortunately, this means that you will later have to rename all your imported roms with their actual names manually (There maybe a way to automate this, but I don't know, I just trail-and-errored my way through this). Also important: when importing, make sure that you choose retroarch as your emulator for the Philips CDi platform. --> you might want to start with just one file at first, just to make sure everything works. You can uset Hotel Mario ("hotmario.zip") for this, since I can confirm that this game actually works. If you have done everything correctly, you should have a game called "hotmario" in your LaunchBox. You can rename it to "Hotel Mario" and get all the metadata for it. 2.9 In LaunchBox, go to "Tools --> Manage emulators". Select retroarch. Go to "Associated Platforms", scroll down and add a new Associated Platform called "Philips CD-i". Choose "mame_libreto" as your core. Important: Don't add any "EXTRA Command-Line Parameters", despite what you might have read elsewhere online. --> You can now run Hotel Mario in LaunchBox and if you have done everything correctly, you should see a light blue screen. Wait a few seconds. You will then see a grey Philips CDi bios screen. Use your mouse and click "play". The game should now start. If it starts, you can import your other games. Keep in mind however, that not all of them will work. To find out which games are not supported, navigate to "YOUR_PATH\RetroArch\system\mame\hash" open the "cdi.xml" (here you can also find out which actual games the empty .zip files correspond to.) If it says something like "<software name="7thguest" supported="no">" that means that this specific game will not work, so you don't need to import it. 3. Further configuration (optional, but very much necessary in my opinion): 3.1 Since you most likely want to use a controller and not your mouse + keyboard, you'll have to map the controlls within the Mame GUI to your controller (I use an Xbox One controller). Once your game is up and running, hit TAB on your keyboard to bring up Mame's GUI. Navigate to "Input (this Machine)" and map the inputs to your controller like this: Mouse Button 1: Joy 1 B or A (your choice) Mouse Button 2: Joy 1 Y or X (your choice) Mouse X Analog: Joy 1 LX (press your left analog stick to the right) Mouse X Analog Dec: LEFT (press left on your D-PAD) Mouse X Analog Inc: RIGHT (press right on your D-PAD) Mouse Y Analog: Joy 1 LY (press your left analog stick up) Mouse Y Analog Dec: UP (press up on your D-PAD) Mouse Y Analog Inc: DOWN (press down on your D-PAD) Now go back and navigate to "Analog Controls". Reduce the two sensitivity settings drastically. "10" is a good point to start, but I found that even lower values ( 5 or even 1) are better for some games. Mouse X Sensitivity: 10 (your choice) Mouse Y Sensitivity: 10 (your choice) 3.2 Now your controlls should be mapped to your controller. However, when I did this, characters in games would start moving by themselves. This is because for some reason, the deadzone seems to be too small. If you experience this, do the follwoing: Once your game is running, press F1 to bring up retroarch's GUI. Navigate to "Settings" --> "Input" and scroll down to "Analog Deadzone". change the value from 0.0 to 0.5 (this worked for me). Important: you don't want to change this setting for all of your games or even for all platforms using the same mame core. You want this change to be in effect just when you play CDi games. So head back to "Quick Menu" --> "Overrides" and hit "Save Content Directory Overrides". This will save the changes you made just for CDi games. If the issue isn't solved for you, try increasing the deadzone value. Congratulations, you are now done! You are now able to experience a bad Mario game and three bad Zelda games (Why did I spend so much time on this?) Jokes aside, I hope this helps someone.

I finally got it to work! Yeah! =D Cdi Games through Retroarch's default Mame core. I'll post a description of how I did it soon!

Hey there, I haven't found an answer to this question anywhere, so I guess what I want is simply not possible, but just to be sure, I'd like to ask anyway: Is there an easy way / a program to search any of my rom folders for missing roms for a specific system? What I would like to found out, for example, is if e.g. my SNES collection is missing any officially released roms. I've tried using clrmamepro with the no-intro DAT file (no Intro is the set I use), but it tells me that I have "0" known games, which is obviously not true. What I'm aiming at is a collection consisting of US releases --> European exclusives --> Japanese exclusives --> (random other regional exclusives). I also only want the latest revisions of any given rom. Since I did all the sorting manually, I'm sure I made some mistakes alog the way. That's why I'd like to check. So if anyone knows of an easy to use way to do what I want, please telle me =).

I've only recently started building a collection once I fell in love with what Launchbox and especially Big Box have to offer. I'm currently at around 18.500 games. My "rules" are that I start with the US complete set (although I'm not sure that all my sets are 100% complete) and add all the European exclusives. I excluded Japanese games for now, but I might add translated versions of some of them down the road. There are so many crappy games in this collection, and some games flat out don't work. However, this isn't much of a problem since I just create playlists for the top 50 to 100 games of each system. Whenever possible, I compressed my games (PS2 to .cso, PS1, Sega CD and Sega Saturn to .chd, Wii to .wbfs, and so on.) I made all my setup portable and saved all of it on a 10TB external hard drive. I made backups of all my files on various other harddrives, but this solution is not ideal AT ALL. I'd much rather have a NAS Setup, but I'm too inexperienced for now and I don't want to spend too much cash. I use retroarch for most of the systems I emulate, except for PS2, Wii, GC, and WiiU. PCSX2 works like a charm and Dolphin standalone is still better for wii games, especially if you want to use a real Wii mote. Dolphin also has a cool widescreen hack for GC games that does not stretch the image. Desmume and citra perform better standalone and also run more games that way. However, the retroarch cores emulate the touch feature much more conveniently to the controller. I have to say that I'm pretty happy with my setup. I don't know what else I could add to it. XBOX games maybe if an emulator eventually gets the job done. But I think PS3 and XBOX 360 games are too big to be stored on drives for now. That would quickly blow up in size. I'm currently trying to get Philips CDI games running through retroarch's Mame core, which I couldn't get to work yet. Other than that, I'm pretty much settled for now. Someone wrote that they had more than 50.000 games. I honestly can't imagine how this is possible. This must include all the versions of games from different regions as well.

Thank you sooo much, this works perfectly =D.

Hey there, I've recently tried converting .gdi files to .chd files using chdman.exe. However, the problem was, that if game consisted of a .gdi and several .bin files (Tracks), I would get one chd file for each of the .bin tracks. So let's say that a game consists of one .gdi and 10 bin files , I will get 10 .chd files named after each of the bin files. How can I make it so that I will only get one .chd files? Does anyone have an idea? Thanks!

Nothing changes if I try the command: "cdimono1 -cdrm". I had already tried that earlier. I haven't tried mame standalone, however, I would really very much like to use RetroArch, since many people seem to be able to launch CD-i games using RetroArch. EDIT: If I use the "cdimono2", I get a black screen and I hear music playing. EDIT 2: I found this tutorial, which I will try out later: https://forums.libretro.com/t/guide-play-non-arcade-systems-with-mame-or-mess/17728

Hey everyone, I'm urrently trying to launch Cd-i games in retroarch using the mame core. I've seen many examples of people onkine getting it to work and explaining how, but somehow I can't get it to work. Ths is my Setup: 1. I have .chd files in my games/Philips CDi - folder 2. Inside the same folder I have copied the cdimono1.zip 3. I've configured the mame core using this tutorial: https://forums.libretro.com/t/run-philips-cd-i-games-in-retroarch-mame-libretro-via-rocketlauncher/8672 When I try to launch a game in Launchbox, retroarch just crashes. When I add the commandline "cdimono1" in the emulation options for retroarch, the bios boots, I get a light blue screen and after some seconds I am inside the philips cdi bios. When I click "play", the light blue screen comes back and I'm stuck. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

So here is the situation, I mainly play games on my TV in the living room. However, sometimes, my girlfriend wants to watch TV and I have to retreat to my office and play games there. So I go to my office, launch BigBox and.... it launches on the TV, because that's what I'd told it to do when I last played in the living room. The problem is that I cannot access the option to change the monitor BigBox uses to my Display in my office, because BigBox is only visible on the TV screen. So I have to go to the living room, change the screen there, interrupt my girlfriend watching her show in the process, and then finally I can go to back to playing games. Needless to say, this is not ideal. So my question is this: is there any way to make BigBox launch on what is set to be my primary display in windows? Kind of what RetroArch lets me do when I set the option to "auto"? Thanks for your help, everyone.

OK wow, that was pretty easy. Thank you so much. I just hid all my wii remotes from retroarch and now only my Xbox controllers will be recognized by it. This is a very simple, but insanely useful tool.

Hey there, I it doesn't work anymore. Seems like the changes from the Beta have now been implemented into the stable version of Steam. =(

Thanks guyverjay, that might be what I was looking for. I'll try get it to work =).