SiriusVI

OK, so I just had kind of a personal breakthrough when it comes to autobooting apple2 cassette tapes It's so simple that I'm baffled that no one else posted about it before. As an example, I'll use the cassette tape game "3D Star Fire", which runs from Apple II's "Monitor" mode (but I'm sure this will work with other types of cassette games, as well). All you have to do is activate custom command line parameters. For my setup, it looks like this: -L "M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch\cores\mame_libretro.dll" "apple2 -autoboot_delay 2 -autoboot_command "30.3FR" -rp \"L:\LaunchBox\Games\Arcade\" -cass \"%romfile%\"" This part automatically types the correct command to launch the specific game: -autoboot_command "30.3FR" The second thing you need to do is to open the emulator settings for the emulator connected to apple2 cassette tapes (in my example it's a second instance of retroarch called "RetroArch CLI Cassette I"). In the "Running Autohotkey Script" tab, enter: sleep, 8000 SetKeyDelay, -1, 110 Send {F2 down} sleep, 100 Send {F2 up} Send {Enter} Return This will wait 8 seconds (enough time for "30.3FR" to be typed out by the autoboot command). It will then send "F2" starting the tape and then "Enter" to launch the game (credit to @deadfraggle) This is really cool ?

Hey man, great find! Say, how would these lines look, if instead of mame standalone I were to use the mame core in retroarch? SetWorkingDir ..\MAME\ ;My MAME folder relative to Autohotkey Run, mame64.exe zx81 -keyboardprovider dinput -ui_active -skip_gameinfo -autoboot_delay 5 -autoboot_command "j""""""\n" %1% I'm guessing something like this: SetWorkingDir M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch\ ;My MAME folder relative to Autohotkey Run, retroarch.exe zx81 -keyboardprovider dinput -ui_active -skip_gameinfo -autoboot_delay 5 -autoboot_command "j""""""\n" %1% However, I don't know how to target mame_libretro.dll

Never mind, I figured it out. It's: -L "M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch\cores\mame_libretro.dll" "apple2 -autoboot_delay 2 -rp \"L:\LaunchBox\Games\Arcade\" -cass \"%romfile%\"" Works fine. The only issue with this is that the paths are so strict. I don't suppose there is a way to turn "M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch\cores\mame_libretro.dll" into a relative path, is there?

So, in order to try this, I first have to figure out something else, namely how to launch a Mame SL game with retroarch using custom comand line parameters. This is the "standard" command line I use to launch apple2 cassette games from Launchbox: "apple2 -autoboot_delay 2 -rp \"L:\LaunchBox\Games\Arcade\" -cass \"%romfile%\"" Now if I want to Launch each cassette game using a separate command line, how would I achieve that? If I just copy this command line in the field for custom command line parameters, the game won't launch. I've also tried this wone (but without success): retroarch -L "cores\mame_libretro.dll" "apple2 -autoboot_delay 2 -rp \"L:\LaunchBox\Games\Arcade\" -cass \"%romfile%\"" What am i missing?

Great! Tedious yeah, but it's a one time setup. Will Check out how RA Mame handles the cl. I guess in this case it should work the same way. I' get back to you if I find out how this works, haha. Thanks so much for the assistance so far ?!

Interesting. So I would create a separate folder for each game, each with its own "apple2.ini" inside of it? Is that correct?

Hello everyone, I've started working a little on launching computer systems again and got stuck on a specific issue: So one way to autoboot a system is writing an autoboot command into an .ini file that mame can read. However, with some systems, you have to individually type in the rom name in order to boot a game, which means every game needs their individual autoboot command and a systemwide autoboot command does not work. Now I've learned that mame can actually create and read per game .ini files: https://easyemu.mameworld.info/mameguide/config_files/customini.html My problem now is that this seems to work only with arcade games, but not with Software List games. I think the reason for this is the command line used to launch the games from Launchbox. here is an example: If I launch a mame arcade rom (e.g. "1on1gov.zip"), mame will read settings from an .ini named "1on1gov.ini" if one is present --> this works just fine. However, the problem occurs if I launch a software list game (e.g., the apple2 cassette game "3dstarfi.zip") from launchbox using this command line: "apple2 -autoboot_delay 2 -rp \"L:\LaunchBox\Games\Arcade\" -cass \"%romfile%\"" This will only ever create an .ini file called "apple2.ini", but never "3dstarfi.ini". If I create "3dstarfi.ini" manually, Retroarch mame will ignore it. So my question is: Is there a way to (maybe) add something to the command line that will tell Retroarch mame to look for a "3dstarfi.ini" instead of an "apple2.ini"?

Hello everyone, I've posted this thread in the troubleshoot subforum, but unfortunately, nobody replied, yet: I wanted to bring this issue up here, since it concerns my experiences with severe lag / slowdown when using COLORFUL in BigBox. @viking, do you have any idea what could be causing this behavior?

Hello everyone, I've been struggling with something for quite some time now. I experience stutter / lag in COLORFUL BigBox Theme. I've uploaded 2 videos on YouTube showing what I mean. The first one shows BigBox with Critical Zone theme running smoothly, the second one shows the COLORFUL theme lagging when scrolling through platform categories. The same lag occurs when scrolling through platforms as well. I've already posted about this issue a while back in @viking's COLORFUL theme thread, but a solution couldn't be found. I'm hoping that the videos I've linked make my problem clearer. 1. Critical Zone without lag: 2. COLORFUL with lag: Here is what I've already tried to fix this problem without success: setting up a separate Launchbox installation with very few platforms and games. disabling all transition effects force caching images reducing image quality to medium disabling all anti-virus software unplugging all usb devices except mouse and keyboard I don't use MSI Afterburner or any similar software Here are my specs: LaunchBox is installed on a Samsung SSD 860 QVO 2TB CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K, 4300 MHz Ram: 48,0 GB GPU: MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OS: Windows 10, latest updates, drives up to date I really love the COLORFUL theme and would like to use it more often, but as it stands it's just not practical for me, so I'm hoping someone out there can help me fix this issue. Thanks in advance ? EDIT: I should also mention that the lag in COLORFUL occurs mainly when scrolling through the platform categories for the first time. Once I've scrolled through everything once, there is considerably less lag. But every time re restart BigBox, the lag returns.

Thank you! Super excited for this! ?

What romsets and emulators do you use for computer systems, such as Apple II and AppleIIGS?

Got it. I confused HQ with HD.

OK, got it. Seems like HQ is 640x480. All is well then. Thank you! ?

Got it, thanks. Is there any info on the differences between SQ and HQ videos? All the videosnaps that my Launchbox downloaded from emumovies are 640x480. That doesn't seem like HQ to me...

I have a lifetime membership. How can I access the FTP server?

The video engine is already set to VLC. Are there any settings in VLC which I can tweak? My CPU is Intel Core i7-8700K, 4400 MHz My GPU is MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X I also tried turning all the animations in BigBox off, which didn't help

I'm not sure what you mean by my config being old. Launchbox is up to date. I have 1080p 60hz screen. All the files are stored on a fast SSD drive. So it's not slow. As I said I tried both HD and 4k files. Both are laggy with colorful, but work fine with oder themes. I also tested non colorful videos with the colorful theme, and colorful is still laggy. This indicates once more that the issue is not with the videos.

Hey there, thanks for answering. The Theme is up to date. Animations are at their standard values (I haven't changed the default settings). I've tried both 4K and HD videos. Both are very laggy. I don't think it's the videos. The problem only occurs when I activate COLORFUL theme. If I use just the Colorful videos with a different theme, it runs butter smooth.

Importing 9.000 games all at once may take a few hours for sure. 8 hours seem a bit long to me, but I've never imported this many games for a system with as much metadata and media as the SNES, so it may just be that it really takes this long. I have a no intro 1G1R SNES set. I believe it has just short of 2.000 roms. Importing that and downloading all the media on the LB database as well as emumovies took a very long time for me as well. I'm not sure exactly how long, but I think around 2 hours? I'm really not sure anymore. It's been a while since I have updated the set.

Great work! I'll try it and report back ?

Well, just use any mame version below .221 and it should work.

Haha, yes I found out about that by pure accident. Wanted to show these games to a friend and that's when I found out it didn't work anymore.

Zelda is currently unplayable. It launches, but as soon as you select a level, it slows down extremely and eventually crashes. This happens with recent mame core versions, I think .222. If you use an older version of mame (I tried .215) it works. See also here: https://mametesters.org/view.php?id=7716

I've now tried using a fresh install of Launchbox. Same error. Procedure was 1. install Launchbox --> open Launchbox --> close Launchbox 2. Install Flashpoint with your updated installer (adult games included) 3. Open Launchbox to check if everything was imported correctly --> everything worked fine 4. Reinstall Flashpoint using your updated installer (adult games excluded) 5. Open Launchbox -->error What's strage here is that this time, I've named the Launchbox folder "LaunchBoxTest", but the error message reads "LaunchBox\Data".

Great to hear from you! I've just tried with the new version, but I still get the same errors: I will try using a virgin version of launchbox next.