[Auto Hotkey Scripts]

Yeah, I figured it out myself! That's first, haha.

So this script opens yuzu with betterjoy and then closes both of them when hitting escape:
 

run, M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Yuzu\BetterJoy\BetterJoyForCemu.exe, M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Yuzu\BetterJoy, min

Esc::
{
   WinClose, ahk_exe yuzu.exe
   Process, Close, BetterJoyForCemu.exe
}

!F4::
{
   WinClose, ahk_exe yuzu.exe
   Process, Close, BetterJoyForCemu.exe
}
Send, !{F4}

 

[Auto Hotkey Scripts]

Hey everyone,

I have another problem I'd lie to solve with an AHK script and as always, I'm a t a loss, haha. It is similar to my last problem when I wanted to run and close a program called XOutput.exe with my retroarch emulator.

This is the script that was suggested to me and it worked:
 

run, M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch - Original Controllers (PSX)\XOutput\XOutput.exe, M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch - Original Controllers (PSX)\XOutput, min

Esc::
{
   WinClose, ahk_exe XOutput.exe
}

!F4::
{
   WinClose, ahk_exe XOutput.exe
}
Send, !{F4}

Now I want to rund and close a program called "BetterJoy" whenever I start a Switch game with yuzu emulator. I can get BetterJoy to launch together with yuzu, but the shutdown process doesn't work. My guess is that while XOutput turns up as a program in task manager, Betterjoy is listed under "Background Processes". So I need to find a way to automatically kill that background process, once I shot down yuzu.

Here is what I got so far (again, launching works, but shut down won't):
 

run, M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Yuzu\BetterJoy\BetterJoyForCemu.exe, M:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Yuzu\BetterJoy, min

Esc::
{
   WinClose, ahk_exe BetterJoyForCemu.exe
}

!F4::
{
   WinClose, ahk_exe BetterJoyForCemu.exe
}
Send, !{F4}

 

[AHK script to close Dolphin emulator in a specific way]

14 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

Without overthinking it...

$Esc::
{
   WinClose, ahk_exe {{{StartupEXE}}}
   Sleep, 5000
   WinClose, ahk_exe {{{StartupEXE}}}
}

 

That worked perfectly!

Thank you 😃

(Seriously, I have NO idea what is going on with Wii Sports and that bluetooth dongle. Every game I've tried works perfectly when just shutting down the emulator)

[AHK script to close Dolphin emulator in a specific way]

1 hour ago, JoeViking245 said:

Test this, then confirm that's what's needed to be done.  So remove -b, launch the game and let it completely load.  Then see if [physically] pressing Escape, waiting 5 seconds, and pressing Escape actually works.

If that works, then it's simply:

$Esc::
{
   Sleep, 5000
   Send, {Esc}
   ExitApp
}

This should work if you place the above in the Running Script section of the emulator and physically press "Escape" on the keyboard.  If you're using a controller to exit the game ('stop the emulation'), that may be a different story. 

When using a controller to exit the game, LB/BB "presses Escape" (along with some other behind-the-scenes voodoo) and the Running Script (above) might catch that and do the Sleep/Escape thing.  Don't know.

Hey, thx for the suggestion.

This didn't work unfortunately. This is what happens:

When pressing ESC (on my actual keyboard), nothing happens at first. If I wait a few seconds and try to press ECS again, the emulation eventually stops, but the emulator won't close.

I've tried this AHK earlier and when I have this AHK, the emulation stops immediately if I press ESC for the first time, and if I press ESC a second time, the emulator closes:
 

Quote

$Esc::
{
    WinClose, ahk_exe {{{StartupEXE}}}
}

So what I need is basically have this command executed twice when I press ESC.

[AHK script to close Dolphin emulator in a specific way]

Hey everyone,

I have a very niche issue that I'd like to resolve using a specific AHK command.

 

Short story:

I want an AHK script that first stops Dolphin's rom emulation and then waits a few seconds until the emulation is stopped before it closes the emulator entirely.

 

Long story:

I have an original Wii Bluetooth module converted to USB, so I'm able to use Dolphin's Bluetooth Passthrough feature. (more info here: https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Bluetooth_Passthrough)

 

With most games, everything works fine, but with some games (such as Wii Sports USA (Rev 1)), closing the emulator before the emulation stops, causes a weird issue with the bluetooth adapter. I am in no way capable to explain why or how this happens, but the result is that I have to uninstall the bluetooth device from my device manager and then reinstall it with the Zadig software, before Dolphin accepts the BT device again.

 

If I however stop the emulation and then afterwards exit the emulator, everything works as expected.

Hope someone able to help. 


EDIT: It should be achievable by:

1. first removing the "-b" from the default command line parameters in the emulator settings

2. somehow telling Dolphin via AHK script to send ESC and after (say 5 sec) send ESC again.

I just don't know how to do that

[Flashpoint Importer for Launchers]

39 minutes ago, oblivioncth said:

Got a lot blowing up on me at the moment and there's fact the current release has so many issues means I might have to potentially jury rig some things so it hasn't been a huge priority of mine.

I'll get to it when I can but if it seems to involved I may opt to wait on the next release, sorry.

Understandable, thx!

[Flashpoint Importer for Launchers]

On 10/4/2023 at 5:32 AM, oblivioncth said:

Oh woops, I was mainly looking at your responses on mobile in hurry so I think I reread part of a previous post and thought you said that it did mentioned 12.1. Nevermind.

Hmm. The version.txt thing was probably a goof by them and might present an issue, but we'll see.

Have you already been able to figure out what the deal with Ultimate is this time around?

[Flashpoint Importer for Launchers]

30 minutes ago, oblivioncth said:

Phew, well that explains that at least, as otherwise that issue was sounding pretty nebulous. You shouldn't even be able to activate that with Ultimate, but the importer thinks you're using Infinity because of the way you Frankensteined the builds. On that note, I'm sure that's why you're experiencing the problem with the images not appearing, though I'm not totally sure why yet since I haven't messed with Ultimate myself, but in the end you'll need to somehow restore your copy to a proper straight build of Ultimate only.

 

Once I have my copy downloaded and can inspect it a bit I'll update FIL so that it properly supports 12 Ultimate (annoying its 12.1 and Infinity isn't labeled as that, but oh well).

I haven't frankenstined too much on my current build. I've simply copied over that one config file and when I checked there was just one line missing from my ultimate install compared to the infinity one. 

This is the contents from the infinity config file:

{
  "flashpointPath": "../",
  "useCustomTitlebar": true,
  "startServer": true,
  "server": "PHP Infinity Router",
  "backPortMin": 12001,
  "backPortMax": 12100,
  "imagesPortMin": 12101,
  "imagesPortMax": 12200,
  "logsBaseUrl": "https://logs.unstable.life/",
  "updatesEnabled": false,
  "gotdUrl": "https://download.unstable.life/gotd.json",
  "gotdShowAll": false
}

 

As far as I can tell, the onlky difference is that on ultimate, the following line is missing. Otherwise they are identical:
  "server": "PHP Infinity Router",

And as I said, that's all I've changed this time around.
 

30 minutes ago, oblivioncth said:

(annoying its 12.1 and Infinity isn't labeled as that, but oh well).

So did they actually update it to 12.1 already? I thought that was a misunderstanding on my part. Anyway, the "version.txt" still says it's infinity, so no way for me to make sure what version of Ultimate is currently out.

[Flashpoint Importer for Launchers]

2 hours ago, oblivioncth said:

Obviously you shouldn't need to copy stuff from Infinity to make it work so of course I'll need to adjust for the new file names (which of course they had to change arbitrarily).

Not sure what's up with the speed, so I'll try and figure what's going on with that to. I just started downloading Ultimate myself.

OK, my bad. I accidentally clicked on force download all images. I deactivated it and now the import process is very fast.

However, now I have the problem that no images are displayed in Launchbox. This never happened before, either:

I can Launch the games, and the images are copied to the corresponding Launchbox folder.

[Flashpoint Importer for Launchers]

On 9/28/2023 at 8:43 PM, oblivioncth said:

So the newest release of Ultimate is marked as 12.1? Care to send the exact contents of version.txt?

That's frustrating because Infinity is still just 12 even when updated fully, which means I might need to change how I handle versioning...

OK, so I couldn't wait and decided to redownload Ultimate and try again. This is what I've found:

1. you need to download Infinity and copy the "config.json" from the Launcher directory to ultimate's launcher directory. Doing this will solve the missing key error.

2. When using the importer, it takes much longer now than with 11.1. This screenshot shows the progress after roughly one hour after starting the importer. I'm not sure what's wrong. Might be that Ultimate is just weird this time around.

 

Edit:

This is after roughly 3 hours

[Flashpoint Importer for Launchers]

36 minutes ago, oblivioncth said:

So the newest release of Ultimate is marked as 12.1? Care to send the exact contents of version.txt?

That's frustrating because Infinity is still just 12 even when updated fully, which means I might need to change how I handle versioning...

Oh, but I do get this error message:

 

EDIT: Nevr mind, I downloaded Infinity and copied it over my ultimate install. Now it seems to work. There is definitely something wrong with Ultimate this time around.

EDIT2: Never Never Mind. This seems to have broken my Ultimate Install. Now it thinks I have infinity and all games show as not downloaded, even though they are there. Guess I have to redownload again. See you in a month, lol.

EDIT3: Seems they will fix the problems only in the next version update. Guess I'll just skip 12.0 then.

[Flashpoint Importer for Launchers]

6 minutes ago, oblivioncth said:

So the newest release of Ultimate is marked as 12.1? Care to send the exact contents of version.txt?

That's frustrating because Infinity is still just 12 even when updated fully, which means I might need to change how I handle versioning...

Oh, I never cared to check. My version.txt says "Flashpoint 12 Infinity - Axolotl" even though it's an extracted ultimate archive. I think I confused "12 (REV1)" (which is what the updater wanted to download, but I ended up downloading the completeb archive later) with "12.1".

Sorry, my bad.

[Flashpoint Importer for Launchers]

@oblivioncth any news? 🙃

[Flashpoint Importer for Launchers]

On 7/26/2023 at 8:14 PM, oblivioncth said:

Huh they did put the page back. Well it's still a stretch but I'll keep it in mind if I come up with any ideas.

As for FP itself, yea Ultimate 12 is a bit behind and I'm not quite sure when it's supposed to be coming. I don't think it will be super long, but if for some reason it gets delayed severely I might try to backport the features to an old build so that it can be used with 11.1, but currently it won't work with it as too much changed between the releases.

I finally downloaded and extracted Flashpoint Ultimate 12.1. This was an ordeal this time around.

Your importer targets 12.0, but does it also work with 12.1?

[The Ultimate Magazine Experience]

I have a large collection of .cbr files and for soe reason, Comic Utility Belt does not extract pages from them. It says "Export completed", but no pages are extracted. It works with .cbz and .pdf files.

Any help?

OK, nevermind, it works, but the reason why is really weird.

I copied the comic utility belt folder to my "M" drive, which is where all my Launchbox Tools are. If launched from this directory, the export does not work with .cbr files, but it does with .pdf and .cbz files. The .cbr extraction works if I just keep comic utility belt in my "C" drive in the download folder.

 

What is going on here?

EDIT 2:

OK. got it. There CANNOT be a space in the path to the "comicutilitybelt.exe".

 

That leads me to my next question. Is there any way to export just the last page for .cbr files, too?

[The Ultimate Magazine Experience]

On 8/13/2023 at 6:29 PM, Baggio said:

After messing about will all sorts of programs trying to extract the first and last pages from a PDF I have found out that Adobe Acrobat has actions like Photoshop so you can create a set of commands to run on a whole folder, so I have created 3 for anyone that uses AA.

First and Last page to JPG.sequ 977 B · 4 downloads First Page To JPG.sequ 759 B · 1 download Last Page To JPG.sequ 760 B · 2 downloads

Just double-click each one to install them and in Acrobat to Tools>Customise>Action Wizard, choose which action you want to use, select the folder with the PDFs you want the covers for, and click start. 

It will extract all the images to the folder with the PDFs in with the back cover having 'BACK' in the name (if using front and back or just the back action file.)

 

The reason I have been trying to find an alternate solution to Comic Utility Belt was that it was outputting really really small JPGS on some PDFs and I couldn't figure out why.

Hey, I cannot install the .sequ files. Acrobat Reader tells me they might be damaged?

[Retroarch taking 1-2 minutes to load.]

1 hour ago, IAmADrunkGuy said:

Thanks, i'll have a look. In my frustration, I did a fresh install of windows...same thing hopefully isn't my drive.

 

uff, well yeah this is the nuclear option. If you have a different drive, try launching retroarch from that different drive. If that doesn't work and you have installed windows freshly AND have tried unplugging all additional hardware, ... well then I don't know.

You should check your drives with CrystalDiskInfo. 

[Retroarch taking 1-2 minutes to load.]

10 hours ago, IAmADrunkGuy said:

Yes suddenly stopped working, maybe few days before I made the post. The only thing I did before that was install the launchbox theme maker , forgot the name, but it's the one mentioned here in launchbox. I have since uninstalled it. I also was changing big box themes a lot to see what they looked like but I doubt that did anything to retroarch.

Retroarch itself takes 1-2 minutes to load - Double click on retroarch exe, Window appears as if it were to load normally then window becomes white and on top where it says retroarch it says "(not responding)".

I have deleted everything in my Retroarch location and downloaded it fresh , Still same issue.

Hmm, OK, so this is pure guesswork now.
1. try to unplug EVERY USB device except for your mouse and strat again. If that does not help, then tray a differen USB port for your mouse.
2. If you have multiple GPUs, assign a spcific one to Retroarch (make sure it doesn't use an integrated CPU)

3. Take a look at indows event log to see if an error appears when tring to start Retroarch.

4. Take a look at this thread. The problem sunds similar. Maybe someone there can help you.

https://forums.libretro.com/t/retroarch-on-windows-10-starting-and-loading-games-slowly/17533/21

[Retroarch taking 1-2 minutes to load.]

So it used to work fine and now suddenly it doesn't?

What exactly takes 1-2 min to load? Is it the program itself or when you try to load a rom?

Have you tried downloading a fresh Retroarch archive and started completely from scratch (not just deleting the cfg file, but have a completely fresh install?)

[The Ultimate Magazine Experience]

9 hours ago, DerSchlachter said:

THX, for the Spine, here is my way to create the spine for many files in a simple way.

Create a Folder in which you want to create your spine. In this Folder create a bat to duplicate the Magazine Edge Spine file .
 

@echo off 
set NUMBER_COPIES=200
for /L %%N IN (1,1,%NUMBER_COPIES%) DO copy magazine_edge.jpg magazine_edge.jpg%%N.png

Start bat with your choose of amount, this is what you get.

 

Now of course we have to give the duplicated files the right names. To do this, we go to the directory in which the files are stored. Mark your files, click right Mousbutton an choose copy as Path.

Open an Editor and copy the Path.

Mark the path for example "R:\LaunchBox\Games\Magazine from the Past\CPC Magazin\ click ctrl+h (find and replace) replace with nothing.
Mark the file extension for example .pdf" click ctrl+h (find and replace) replace with nothing.

You get the File names now.

Save with files as .txt in your work folder.

Now, download "Name it your Way (NIYoW)" a small rename tool with an option to rename from a textlist.
I'm almost sure that this also works with Bulkrename, unfortunately I haven't figured out how yet. The tool is my favorite when it comes to renaming files.

Start NIYoW and import your duplicate files

 

Now add below the rule and set these settings. 

In the Parameter field choosse the inputfile, with is your created txt file

click add, in the Mainmenue click Preview & rename.

click rename if everthing is fine, done!

So I just created 7000 files and renamed them

Where do you put these Spline images?

[Launchbox | Bigbox | 532 Platforms | 534 Playlists | 600,000+ Games | The ridiculous collection (updated Jan 20 '23)]

On 8/4/2023 at 6:00 PM, -McFly- said:

I'm trying to find all languages, hacks, homebrews, everything. I have some 'best of' playlists that I found somewhere, if the numbers in there aren't whole (ie. 50, 100 etc.) then I take that to mean I'm missing something. It's entirely possible that I do have everything they're just mis-named but I'm not going through all the weirdly named ones one by one to see what they are...

"Everything" gets very confusing once hacks and fanmade games are included. If I wanted "everyting", I'd just import the entire No Intro SNES set. Then I'd download the Goodset collection, extract, search for "hack" and then import all the hacks. I'd consider this "complete".

However, many of these "Goodset" hacks are unfinished and/or broken, so in my case, I think I'd just search out hacks that are "completed", but that is A LOT of manual work. Anyway, I'd keep the hacks separate from the official releases to keep things organized.

For "completed" hacks, you can start looking here:

[Launchbox | Bigbox | 532 Platforms | 534 Playlists | 600,000+ Games | The ridiculous collection (updated Jan 20 '23)]

On 8/4/2023 at 5:56 PM, cleverest said:

My collection is 16TB. All smartly compressed real-time formats for games... I have exodos, win3x, scumm, Flashpoint (although that needs updated badly), and about 2,300 video game mags/comics and I'm still barely over 62k I believe...I think I'm missing some rare platform odd-ball collections mostly.

That can't be right. Fllashpoint Ultimate alone has well over 170.000 titles as of Version 11.1. Version 12 should come out soon with even more titles.

[Launchbox | Bigbox | 532 Platforms | 534 Playlists | 600,000+ Games | The ridiculous collection (updated Jan 20 '23)]

7 hours ago, cleverest said:

I'm assuming this collection is not a 1g1r collection (and contains only English except translated games+non-English platforms only), right?

Would you be willing to share the complete game list (excel/spreadsheet)? - I have 60k games in mine as per the restrictions above...I'd like to see what I'm missing...

You are correct, he includes everything there is. For a 1g1r set 60k games sounds about right if you have all the major consoles and handhelds, but it depends on what you inlcude. I am at around 300k titles with a (mosty) 1g1r, but I do also include the Flashpoint ultimate collection, the Exo (DOS, ScummVM, ...)  collections and C64 dreams, as well as sveral TOSEC collections for the computer systems (which then makes it not strictly 1g1r anymore, since there is no easy way to convert a TOSEC set to 1g1r). Then Ialso started adding magazines and comics and that way, the collection can get really large really fast.

Been thinking about going the same route as OP, but have decided against it, because Launchbox will get cluttered up too much for my personal taste and BigBox doesn't handle such huge collections very  well, even on a high end PC. I want to still have a conveniently usable collection rather than a complete archive. Plus, if I decided to include everything, I'd probably force myself to do the same for the newer systems (PS3, XBOX 360) as well, and that would mean A LOT of additional storage space, which I don't want to spend money on atm. I'm at around 35-40 TB right now, despite having compressed to CHD or other compressed formats whenever possible. This saved a huge amount of space, but if you want WiiU, Switch, PS3, PSVita, 3DS, Flashpoint Ultimate, ... you'll eventually reach those numbers, even on a 1g1r set.

[Dying Light 2 won't sync to launchbox Database]

34 minutes ago, faeran said:

Steam games have undergone a foundational change to the way they are matched to our database.

We have a number of phases planned to get it all deployed, and at the moment we have deployed phase 1 which stopped incorrect matches from happening.

More work is needed to get through the remaining phases, which will solve what you are seeing here. Most of the remaining work is database related, so best I can say is, it's coming

 

Got it. Thx for the info!

[Dying Light 2 won't sync to launchbox Database]

Hey,

just imported Dying Light 2 from Steam and when looking to sync it to Launchbox's database, it doesn't work. It doesn't even search for anything, the error message just appears instantly:

It's like the search function doesn't work at all for this specific game. It works on other games, or it used to work. Dying Light 2 is the only game I bought after updating to the latest Launchbox version.