kmancali

I am trying to setup launchbox on a separate drive from my main computer, and am having an issue with launching MAME. I currently have launchbox setup with MAME and Retroarch to run Arcade, SNES, Dreamcast, Gameboy Advance, and N64 ROMS. My main system is on my "C:" drive and my emulators and roms (as well as launchbox itself) are all on my "E:" drive. In the Launchbox directory, I have my Emulators in a sub-directory "Emulators" (MAME and RetroArch in their own respective directories) and all game ROMs imported and copied into the "games" directory, then into their specific sub-directories. Retroarch works perfectly for all system ROMs for which it is configured (all but Arcade), but MAME will not run and pops up an error window with an elevation error: "An error occurred while trying to launch the game: An error occurred trying to start process 'E:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Mame0269\mame.exe' with working directory 'E:\LaunchBox\Emulators\Mame0269'. The requested operation requires elevation.". However, when I run MAME itself outside of Launchbox, it runs fine and launches the roms with no issues. I have already set MAME to run as administrator, but that did not help. I also configured the launchbox directory to allow "Everyone" to have full permissions, but that didn't fix it either. Here is my MAME (0.269) launchbox settings. Any suggestions for how to fix this?

We may be on to something here. When I edit your MAME emulator in LaunchBox it shows the [relative] Application Path as Emulators\MAME 0.269\mame.exe. If you click Browse, it opens Explorer to your E:\LaunchBox\Emulators\MAME 0.269\ folder. Correct? (just double checking) No, in fact, when I click on browse, it takes me to the location of the ROMS, (and where the actual MAME program does not reside) - which are here: Should I change this? As to your other questions: To summarize, no matter how you run a game via LaunchBox (launch the game directly or right-click and Open MAME and load a game from within it), saves DO NOT work (nor show previous saves). But starting from the shortcut .lnk file, all is good. Yes! "you use Google Drive or Dropbox or some other cloud syncing service?" I do have google drive and onedrive setup on this computer, but I am not using them to store or play any of my games or related files. All emulators and roms are simply stored on my second hard-drive. I am certainly willing to try turning these services off if you think it would help. As far as I can tell, there is the one and only launchbox installed on my E: drive.

OK. I removed -rompath %romlocation% i still have the problem that it won't save or load. When I start MAME by itself I can load and save games without any issues at all.

OK, so from Launchbox, when I click on 1942 (faster to load, so I started using 1942, but all the same behavior as 1941), this is what I see: then, I click on Open MAME 0.269... and the game loads. When I try to save, I see this: If I hit "1" I get this: When I Look at my MAME shortcut, it is this location: A And again, loading MAME directly via this shortcut, and then selecting 1942, I AM able to save and load games as normal. Should I have Launchbox extract ROMS? It is currently set to "no".

OK. So the plot thickens. I went to the directory where MAME is located and ensured that all users had "write" access. Then I tried again using BigBox to launch 1941 via MAME. Still cannot save. Same issue as before. However, I then tried loading MAME directly and running 1941. Under that condition, save and load now work fine! I then tried again via BigBox and it not only doesn't allow me to save or load, it doesn't even show that there is a saved game, but via MAME, I DO see the saved game. I also checked the location where the MAME roms are located, and that directory also has full write access. Any ideas why this is happening? It seems like I have 2 versions of MAME, but I can't figure out how that would be. I did search across my hard drives and I'm positive that I only have 1 version of MAME installed.

There is NOT an /sta folder under Mame. How can I fix it so launchboc and mame can write?

Hi, Thanks so much for the continued support. I only have 1 copy of MAME, but it is on a different hard drive from the main system files, and is in fact located in the Launchbox Directory under the folder "emulators" (not sure if that matters). I also confirmed that there is only 1 MAME emulator showing in Launchbox: When I press F6, I see this: And when I press "1" on the keyboard (top row, not number pad), I get this: When I press "a", I see this: Input assignments (general) seems to show the correct assignments:

I do have that parameter in there, so that doesn't seem to be it. Any other ideas why this is still not working?

Thanks for the continued support! Here's my MAME save settings And here's my launchbox save script And load script

I edited the save script in launchbox and made it match the name save key (I currently have it set to F6 for save), but I still get the error that says “failed to open… for save state”. Is there something separate that has to be changed in big box?

When I try to save from the pause menu, and get the first error message, and then press a key "like number 1" I get an error message that says "Error: Failed to open gamename\1.sta for savestate operation." This is why I think it's a file location problem. I think Launchbox is trying to access a location to save files that is not where MAME has unzipped the game to...

Thank you so much! This helps get me on the right track! I set the keys for save, load, quick save and quick load. I'm using MAME 0.269. I also have "pause" configured, and when I go to that menu, save doesn't work either. Regardless of whether I do it from the pause menu or not, When I hit the quicksave key, I get the screen to pop up saying: Error:Failed to open gamename\quick.sta for save state operation. When I hit the "quickjload" key, I get the screen saying: Error:Load state file gamename\quick.sta not found When I hit the "save" key, I get this screen saying: [no saved states found] and I can't do anything other than exit (as far as I can tell). Lastly, when I hit the "load" key, I get this screen saying: [no saved states found] Thanks in advance for any ideas!

I am unable to get my game saves to work when running MAME. I have the hotkey setup correctly and when I hit it, the screen just freezes until I go back (escape). Game load, shows that no saves are available, but again, seems to be acting correctly. It's the same issue for all games in MAME. I imported a MAME romset and left the games in the original location (I didnt' have launchbox move them). I wonder if that might be causing an issue where the rom is in one location, but game saves are trying to save in another location. How can I check on this and make sure it is setup correctly?

Thanks! That worked!

Yes, I have done that as well. No matter what controller button I set for "exit", it doesn't work. The only way to exit from MAME is the escape key, which works perfectly as intended in BB.

I know this is a bit of an old thread, but I have the same issue. LB controller automation works, but not in BB. I am using an xbox360 controller and in MAME I can't exit a game using the "select/start" combo that I use in LB with no trouble. In MAME itself, I am unable to configure an "exit" key combo either using the controller. There as well, I have to use a keyboard key "escape" to get out. I've thought about using xpadder, but it seems very finicky to setup and I don't believe will let you use a 2-key combo to trigger the "escape" key. Any ideas?