sharp3d

Ok, guys I'm still struggling with performance a bit here. What I failed to mention earlier was yes, I intend to run Laucnbox/Big Box on an older workstation laptop, but... everything is on an external HDD connected using USB 3 and when I connect this drive to my new primary desktop where I have a Core i7 6800, a GTX 1080ti and 32GB of RAM it runs just about the same. Very choppy navigating through the game wheel. I guess the USB connection could be the bottleneck but sounds like lots of other are using this method of having everything installed on a external and after all launchbox does advertise itself as being "mobile" for this very reason. Shouldnt be having performace issues, since earlier the blame was on my laptops GPU and what little memory it had. Lastly, as I pointed out before, I turned off just about all features in the default theme except for clear logos. I have background images turned off, but check it out. I still have them showing up. Either I'm not following and background images are something different or there's a bug. settings showing where I have background images turned off: and when I hover over a game I still get background images behind everything, whats the deal? Thanks

Oh I might try moving the apps and media to the PCs HDD and leaving the roms on the external.

Hmm I currently have the esc key set to exit game and close LaunchBox. I’ll have to reconfigure that I guess. Haha any ideas how my keyboard mapping should be setup to allow for alphabet scrolling?

Thanks, I'll set this up as well. Here are my current keyboard mapping settings. Is Page Up and Page down supposed to trigger the alphabet search? Also, how would you set a mapping to "none"?

Hmm weird. I’m using default theme. Perhaps I messed up when I was initially setting up my controls. In “keyboard mapping” I set page up and page down to joystick left and right thinking this would be the alphabet skip setting. So I might need to set that back to default. Which reminds me, having a “reset to default” on each options screen sure would come in handy.

It's an older laptop sure, but it could run games like Skyrim and similar games that came out around the same time at near max settings at native resolution. Not sure why scrolling some PNGs would be so demanding? You say that Big Box has this feature, but you don't mention how to use it? I did notice that in keyboard mapping there was "Page up" and Page down" but this doesn't seem to do what I was asking. It just skips a chunk of games, not jump from A >B etc. If this alphabet feature doest exist, what is it called? Does an onscreen "letter" popup similar to hyperspin or? Thanks

Ok, so I think I am getting close to my "final" setup in LaunchBox/Big Box. I'm running into some performance issues and I was hoping you all can help me trouble shoot. I came across this thread and for the most part, did everything suggested. I'm using LaunchBox/Big Box inside my MAME cabinet: Neo Geo MVS Mini-13 for scale MAME cab is a little rough around the edges, but once I'm happy with the software setup I'm going to do some dressup to the outside. Anyway, I am running Big Box on my old work laptop. Full specs can be found here. Windows 7 Home Premium Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.5GHz NVIDIA Quadro FX 1600M - 256 MB, Core: 625 MHz, Memory: 800 MHz, GDDR3, 512MB with TurboCache 4096MB DDR2 PC6400 800MHz (I upgraded from stock) Because I'm using an arcade CRT monitor, the max resolution is set to 800x600 @60Hz LB/BB and ROMS are setup on a 5TB external Seagate drive using USB 3.0 ( I added an express card with two USB 3.0 ports on my laptop hoping it would help) So again, like the performance thread suggested, I have the bare minimum system processes running. Disabled Windows Aero, HDD defragged, default BB theme, no videos, clear logos for both platforms and ROMS(preference), 25 systems, 11213 ROMs, turned off all background images and reduced image quality to medium. When I scroll for a bit the wheel keeps making the scroll sound but the clear logos disappear and can take 5-20 seconds to reappear sometimes. I saw that changing the logos to just display the list was one of the performance suggestions but I'm hoping to be able to make a few more tweaks where I can leave the clear logos on, because I think this looks so much better. When I Force populate all game wheel images does that stay cached even after a reboot or does that have to be run each session? Here are some screenshots of my settings windows, please let me know if there is anything else I can turn on/off to help performance. Also, I have a few questions about some of BB capabilities. When viewing a massive list of games is there a way to scroll/skip from letter to letter? Hyperspin allowed you to press left or right on the joystick to bring up the alphabet and that was super handy. I did notice the search feature where you can bring up the keyboard in BB, which is cool, but this doesn't seem to really be navigable by arcade joystick and buttons. Would be great if I could joystick around the keyboard and press the same "enter" button that I have mapped to an arcade button press. Then, lets say I am browsing my SNES games and I go to select one, in order to start you have to go to another menu and press "play" is there anyway to skip this second menu? I just want to launch the game from the previous screen to streamline the game launch process. That's about it for my current LB/BB questions. my last few are about game auditing. As you'd expect, when you have so many games a fair amount of them end up not working. I'm not really familiar with the audit process in general, but is there a way for launchbox or retroarch or MAME to "test" the games to see which ones are working and which aren't? I imagine this would take a long time. When I audit in LB I just get a list of games, it doesn't really tell me much about their status, if they're working or not etc. Thanks for the help.

Hmm yes I joined this dome place. When something is labeled a "redump" what exactly does that mean?

Perhaps even simpler. In some of ETA Primes videos where he sets up different cores he won't link directly to where he gets ROMS but he will drop hints, like go to this site and search for this etc... Can anyone recommend a better place to grab a full PSX ROM set perhaps already in CHD format? I'm sure it's probably a no-no to link directly, but maybe drop hints like ETA Prime does?

Hmm... well I have plenty of space on my external HDD that I'm running launcbox/big box on but it's my understanding that CHDs are compressed and still play nice in retroarch? I think I'd like to go that route.

Can you recommend what software and perhaps a quick how-to? I'm a bit lost here. Looks like you can convert these images to CHD's as well? Whats the best way to do that? Thanks!

Downloaded a full Playstation ROM collection. They're all zipped and I opened a few to see how they were structured to make sure their extensions were formatted how Beetle PSX required in documentation and this is what I got. .bin.ecm files and .img.ecm are these going to work? It's going to take a long time to unzip all these roms and then add them to a playstation collection and I don't want to if they're not going to run or if I need to convert them or something like that. I tried running wipeout in retroarch and it didnt work so any ideas?

Ok, Thanks. Side question... I just realized that some of the platforms play music when you cycle through the games and some do not. Any ideas why NES and SNES games would play on game selection screen and none of the other platforms? I've been downloading all media each time I setup a new platform.

Ok I have launcbox / redream running just fine on my desktop PC. Everything is setup on a external USB HDD so I can setup everything on my primary desktop, then connect it to my arcade where I have a Wells Gardner arcade CRT setup that has a max resolution of 800x600 at 60hz. Redream runs fine on my desktop, but on the arcade setup I see the redream window maximize for split second and then crash. I've tried running it at every resolution from 800x600 down but nothing works. Any ideas? Do I need to use a different emulator that plays nicer with a true arcade CRT?

OK I gave this another go. As far as I can tell all the media has been downloaded and in is the right place. So the platform naming for clear logos for TurboGrafx and ColecoVision appear to be correct, but their platform clear logos dont show up in Big Box. Am I looking in the right place? and also for Super Nintendo all the game clear logos appear in LaunchBox when I tell the "Image Group" to show clear logos and the properties are pointing to the right folders where all the clear logos are sitting? But in Big Box I just see the game list. Same thing is happening for Sega CD and Atari 2600. Any ideas here? Thanks

Sorry, can you clarify? Where would I rename the TurboGrafx to NEC TurboGrafx etc?

Ok, I'm off to a pretty good start setting everything up. Hitting a few annoying snags though. Currently a few of my systems in the main systems menu don't have "clear logos" showing up for them, ColecoVision and Turbografx. I downloaded a clear logos pack to try and force it but not sure where to drop them or how to have Launchbox recheck for those. Also a few of my systems like SNES don't have clear logos for the games, but most all the other systems games do. What's the best way to fix a systems games whose clear logos arent showing up even after refreshing image cache etc? I should clarify, when I select "Image Group" > Clear Logos in launchbox everything appears to show up, but they dont show up in Big Box. Then something is weird with my NeoGeo roms, only half of the box art / metadata is showing up. If i click on a ROM whose box art isn't showing up and hit edit, Launchbox has given it the correct LaunchBox DB ID# and if I hit the download media/images button it will grab to correct media, but theres like 80 games not working. Such a tedious process to do it one at a time, but weird because launchbox is recognizing the roms correctly. Any ideas how to ix this?

Thanks for the quick reply. Getting the machine to boot right into Big Box will be one of my last steps, but good to know it's possible. I do have a wireless keyboard with a trackpad for operator functions and fixing things, I just had to use it alllll the time with Hyperspin, so hoping it's usage is minimized with this setup. I had trouble setting up my trackball in Hyperspin, glad to know it's simpler to recognize here. I'll checkout the discord server and yeah so far the community is proving to be very helpful. I was up pretty late setting up 4-5 systems on the external HDD. I have complete-ish ROMs sets for about 60 systems so fingers crossed I can get most of them setup. Since using LaunchBox and RetroArch I have a few more questions. Right now I am pulling box art, logos etc from a non subscription account of emumovies which means, no video. If I decide to donate to gain access to their videos but I've already gone through the very long process of scraping all the other 2D stuff, is launchbox smart enough to know I already have the 2d assets and just pull the videos? Or is there a way to just tell it download the videos? When doing the ROM import, on the screens where it asks, "Would you like to download media from EmuMovies" there is no checkbox for videos that I can see. Will a video checkbox become available when I donate and unlock that feature or something? Then on to controller mapping. This is my current setup just for future reference. I like how be default my controller mapping carries over to each emulator, however on some emulaters like for Neo Geo I would like to change the mapping just for that system. How do you go about doing that? Also when mapping buttons in RetroArch how do I set a particular key to "none" I couldnt figure it out. I watched some of ETA Primes videos, good stuff, very well explained. In one of the videos he pointed out that when you go to tools > manage emulators > select RetroArch > Associated Platforms tab this displays a list of platforms and cores that play nice. But how up to date is this list? Are these definitely the best core for the system? Also some of my cores just flat out didn't work like for ColecoVision I have bluemsx_libretro because that's what the associated platforms list had, but since it doesn't work I want to switch it for another? Whats the quickest way to do this? Thank you.

Hello everyone, first post. Years ago I started a fullsize MAME arcade cabinet build. I bought a empty cabinet, bought a brand new 27" Wells-Gardner CRT, built a custom two player arcade joystick/button control panel with trackball and used an old gaming laptop to run everything. When I first got to the software side of things I was dead set on using Hyperspin. I got most of the 8-16 bit cartridge based systems working, but beyond that Hyperspin just proved to be too cumbersome. Life happened and I haven't touch the project again until just recently. I attempted to pick up where I left off, I read that Hyperspin was now easier to use now blah blah, but I once again ran into all the same roadblocks I remember from 5 or so years ago. So now I am here obviously because I am interested in using LaunchBox. At first glance it certainly seems easier to setup that Hyperspin. But before I spend money and deep dive into another software setup I have a few questions that hopefully can be answered. I'm going to list out my goals for the project, please chime in if anything isn't immediately doable with a low to moderate amount of effort and technical ability using LaunchBox and associated software. 1- Have my PC boot right into LaunchBox on startup 2 - Upon setup have all the software behave relatively seamlessly, ie no need to pull out keyboard, change config files etc. Just hop in and out of roms, switch systems and everything behave nicely 3 - All emulators run on my CRT monitors native 800x600 @ 60Hz and fill the whole screen, no borders 4 - All emulators mapped nicely to my control panel, 2 joysticks 6 buttons per player and trackball This seems pretty standard from my initial research. I've watched several setup videos and read some forum posts. Initially I was confused, I thought LaunchBox did everything. It was the front end and some epic emulator that magically emulated every system. I then realized that people suggested using RetroArch with LaunchBox to do this very thing. I got excited because again I thought, ok Launchbox is the front end, looks easy to use and now this RetroArch software was this crazy badass emulator that could handle any system, wrong again. So... I'll need LaunchBox as my front end, RetroArch to manage my emulators and you still have to download and setup each emulator individually, make sure it plays nice with my CRT monitor, map controls etc... Seems like another potential Hyperspin fiasco. What am I missing here and how is this easier? Thanks for the help.