freeflyer454

Dang. It might only work if a hot key is set to trigger it. I don't have a lot of experience with AutoHotKey so I'm just guessing. Well, I'll look at adding that feature to the rom launcher in a few days.

Just did a quick search for the AHK command to move the mouse. In LaunchBox, go to Tools > Manage > Emulators... then edit the entry for the Phoenix Rom Launcher. On the left side of the window, look for Running Script. Inside there, paste the following: MouseMove, 0, 50, 0, R That *should* move the mouse down 50 pixels from it's current position when the Phoenix Rom Launcher is run. I haven't tested it for certain, but you can play around with it and see if that does what you're looking for. Hope that helps.

Sure, the program is written in AutoIt, so it'd just be a simple line of code and recompile it. I'm offshore atm and won't be home for another week or so, but you can try it yourself. Or look into adding a similar AHK script to launchbox when it launches the phoenix-rom-launcher. Either way could move the mouse for you. Hope that helps.

As far as I know, the Phoenix emulator doesn't have a way to launch directly into fullscreen mode. Doesn't seem to be any commandline options for that. This launcher app I made uses Phoenix's keyboard shortcut to go fullscreen as soon as it's launched. Works pretty good.

Sorry.. had some new priorities come up. Still plan on working on this when I get a chance.

Thanks. From just looking at it, the program should determine the platform easily since the path contains both the word "Jaguar" and the extension ".J64". So I may have to dig a little deeper into it to find where the undeclared variable is. I'll try to come up with a fix soon.

Hmm.. ok. If you don't mind, what's the full path & name of your rom that you're launching? I'll see if I can figure out what's going on with it. It's strange to me that it's giving a "Variable used without being declared" error. You'd think it'd pick that up when the program is being compiled, but so far, they've all compiled cleanly.

I think that error means the Rom_Launcher can't determine the platform for the rom being launched. Is this the original Rom_Launcher from the first post that you are using? That one used key words in the rom's path to determine which platform it was for. The versions I created on the 2nd page of this post also used the rom's file extension to determine the platform. They haven't been fully tested so I haven't updated the original post with the newer version yet, but I think they should work better.

I finally got around to adding this feature. It compiled cleanly, but I haven't tested it out yet. The route I went was to just add an entry to the launcher's ini file. You'll see it listed as "AHK_script=". Not sure if it'll work with just the name (if in the same directory) or if you'll need to supply the full path in quotes. So basically, after launching Phoenix, the launcher will run the AutoKey() function if it's been enabled. If it's disabled and there is a value in the script's path variable, then it will launch that script. Also, this assumes AHK is installed and ahk scripts are associated with the AHK program. Let me know if this works. I'll try to do some testing with it and maybe add a section for it to the GUI once I have time. _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.ini _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.exe

Hmm... is your idea to integrate the features of your AHK script into the rom launcher or is it to use your AHK script on the launcher & Phoenix? Your AHK script could probably be launched through LB alongside the launcher (disable the AutoKey feature) and modified to kill both the launcher & Phoenix on confirmation of exit. Have you tried that yet? Trying to incorporate the features of your AHK script into the rom launcher would involve figuring out controller input in AutoIt. It seems there are some rudimentary examples of controller input with AutoIt, but that'd take some time to test & play around with it. Edit: Forget that... I see what the issue is. Without the AutoKey feature turned on, the rom_launcher immediately exits after launching Phoenix (so an AHK script launched through LB wouldn't work in that scenario). And with the AutoKey feature turned on, it kills Phoenix as soon as Esc is pressed and then exits. Another option might be to have the rom_launcher launch your AHK script. I think AutoIt can launch AHK scripts using ShellExecute("path\to\script.ahk")

So, I looked into it some last night. I couldn't strictly use the rom's file extension because Phoenix accepts some common extensions (".bin", ".binar", ".rom") for multiple platforms. but all the rest of the extensions for various rom files I can use as a filter to determine the platform. I combined that with my previous way of filtering for common system names. So, I think that solution will work a majority of the time (though I haven't had a chance to test it yet). Here's a quick updated version I cooked up last night - if you want to give it a test drive. I'll look into the AHK script you provided. I'm not sure if AutoIt can handle controller input - I'll have to investigate that one. But at least the variation 1 should be do-able. _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.exe

Ah... that's good to know. I didn't realize that's how LaunchBox handled compressed roms. I think I did it the way I did because that was the easiest way to determine which platform the game was being launched for. I need to know the platform since the xml nodes are in different node paths between platforms. I guess a more fool-proof way would be to compare the game's file extension with lists of extensions for each platform. I'll look into implementing that and updating the script. I need to update the script here anyways (got another version that works with ColecoVision roms now). I'm working offshore at the moment, but I'll try to get it done in a day or two (hopefully).

It's not necessary. That's just a feature I added to the program to easily kill the Phoenix emulator with the Esc key. I believe me & some other people had problems getting the AutoHotKey feature in LB to work with Phoenix, so I just put my own version of it into this program as a convenience.

One thing you'll have to do after you import the new games into Phoenix... you'll need to delete the old "_Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.xml" file. The way I wrote the script, it won't overwrite it's backup file, so you'll have to do that manually before making a new backup (otherwise, the backup utility will only keep giving you the "Restore" option).

Yes, it'll work like that. Only thing is if you ever do a restore from that backup file, you'll have to setup the bios-es again. You could always just copy over the bio settings for those systems from the config xml to the backup xml. Not that big of a deal, though. Glad you got it working.

Not sure I completely understand the situation you describe... You have three Phoenix emulator folders and you would prefer to have one. To do that, go ahead and get your single Phoenix emulator folder ready - just make sure it still has that "full" _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.xml file to go along with the Rom_Launcher. Then in LaunchBox, under Tools... Manage Emulators. Then pick the one you want to keep and associate it with the 3 different systems (remember you'll actually be selecting the _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.exe file as the actual emulator exe). Then go ahead and remove the other unused Phoenix instances. I'm not sure, but LaunchBox may ask at this point if you want to associate those games with the emulator. If it does - great! If not, you may have to do it through the Bulk Edit Wizard. You do this by selecting one game from one of the systems, press Ctrl - A to select all the games for that system, Right-click and Edit to bring up the Bulk Edit Wizard. Press Next. Then for the Field selector, you'll want to pick Emulator and for Value, select the single Phoenix emulator. You'll do that for each system. As long as you're not actually changing the game rom or bios file paths, then the Rom_Launcher backup file should be good. If you are moving any of them, then I'd suggest opening the _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.xml in a text editor and correct the old paths to the new paths. The xml file is just a ascii txt file and can be easily read and edited. If you have a bunch of paths to change, then use a text editor with a search & replace feature. Hope that helps

I have to exempt the exe in my antivirus (BitDefender), but other than that, I have no problem launching it through LaunchBox. I've finally tested it with ColecoVision games added to my LB library, and it all seems to work the same as the previous version. First off, you can try launching it from the command prompt and add the path to the game rom as the argument. That'll let us know that the program starts Phoenix and changes the config file as it should. Like on my setup, I typed.. L:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Phoenix [3DO, Jaguar]\Phoenix v2.8.JAG\_Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.exe "L:\LaunchBox\Games\ColecoVision\River Raid.col" As for the LaunchBox error, it sounds like a permissions issue - something denying LaunchBox from executing this new exe. Maybe some other security software that may be blocking it? Maybe try running LaunchBox as Admin? I don't really know how to help with that issue.

Ah.. if everything is already loaded into the backup file, then go ahead and drop in the new exe file. It should just work.

Just got around to loading a ColecoVision romset into my LaunchBox and setting it up with the Rom_Launcher. Found a bug right off the bat: it wasn't launching roms. Fixed it in this version. _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.exe

Good question... I'd probably use the old exe file to restore the rom library back into the phoenix.config.xml file. Then I'd move both the _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.exe and the _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.xml files outside of the Phoenix folder somewhere. That way, if something is wrong with the new exe, you can always go back. Once that's done, it's okay to put the new _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.exe inside the Phoenix folder. ---- There's several ways to do it, but basically, you want to have all your current settings and full complete rom library inside the phoenix.config.xml file. If you did the restore, then you can launch Phoenix and load up any remaining roms into it's library. Once you've got everything set and loaded into Phoenix (that means you have a "full" config file), you can create a new backup. The _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher won't overwrite it's own backup file, so you'll have to delete or move the old _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.xml file if it's still inside the Phoenix folder. If you already have Launchbox setup to use the _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.exe as the emulator for the 3DO, Jaguar, and ColecoVision games, then it should be ready to go. ---- After typing all this up, I realize my simple little program isn't as intuitive as I had imagined it would be. LOL It really is a simple program once you understand how it works though: - The backup button just makes a copy of Phoenix's config file and names it _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.xml. - When the program is run through LaunchBox, it does four things: it searches that backup xml file for the rom information, it deletes all the rom info (making it quicker to load), it copies the launched rom's info back into Phoenix's config file, then it launches the Phoenix emulator. - The restore button just copies the backup file and names it back to phoenix.config.xml. Hope that helps. Holla if you have any more questions or run into any issues.

Alright... played around with the script a little bit this evening. Added the ColecoVision and even the Sega roms to the Phoenix launcher. Haven't fulled tested it yet, but it appears to work. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.exe

Yeah.. I'll need to make some changes to the script to make it work. It should be pretty straight forward though. When I wrote the script, it didn't occur to me to make it work with any of the other systems Phoenix emulates - I was only using it for 3DO & Jag. -- Just re-read your post. I think what you're describing was a bug in the script that dealt with determining which platform Phoenix was being launched to run. The best way I can determine which system is being launched is to look for specific words in the rom path that is passed from LaunchBox to the Phoenix launcher. So the rom paths need to contain the words "3DO", "Jaguar", or "ColecoVision" somewhere in their paths. Before, it was case sensitive, which was causing the problem, but I fixed that part.

Truthfully, I never tried running ColecoVision games in Phoenix. I image they'd work the same in Phoenix as with the 3DO & Jag games. It probably wouldn't be too hard to add that functionality to my script. Trickiest part might be formatting the backup/restore GUI again. If I have time this weekend, I can look into it.

I just happened to be looking back over the script and saw something that might be causing your issue. The program looks for the words "3DO" or "Jaguar" inside the rom's path to know which platform it's for. So if either of those particular strings are not in the rom's path, it could cause it to throw that error. It's always the little things you miss that trip you up ?

Hi. I'm the one who authored the _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher. Glad to hear you found it useful. You actually don't need the _Phoenix_Rom_Launcher.au3 file - it's just the source script that AutoIt complies into the executable file. I included it as a download in case anyone want's to read the script to see how the program works or study some clean AutoIt scripting