Akaoni_Black

Found the solution, uncheck the "extract ROM archives before running" option and the bat file will work again. it will still work even with zipped archives. Not sure why but presumably retroarch may have had an update that added an unzipping feature when launched with steam and so was trying to unzip the file after launchbox unzipped it. or thats my theory

Niche, I know, but I'm looking for full intergration of steam's version of Retroarch in launchbox so that once you import your games, you launch the specific game you want in steam's version of retroarch instead of the standalone version. This is simply because I find the steam play together option a bit easier to use, especially since the other person doesnt need to fiddle with any setup, just accept the invite and bam playing together. You can get around the limited emulator coreselection just by manually adding them. The steam version doesnt block the missing emulator cores, just doesnt give an intergrated way to download them. funnilly enough just dropping in the regular retroarch files gives full access, or having launchbox direct to the install location will have the same results. The problem? Just directing launchbox or otherwise manually executing the steam version's .exe file doesn't launch it with the steam overlay, and so removes the steam play together functionality, the very reason I bother with the steam version at all. For awhile you either had to launch the steam version of retroarch as though it were a steam game inside launchbox and then use retroarch's ui to launch the game you wanted if you wanted intergration through launchbox. Another option that came up was to create a .bat file that launched the steam version of retroarch "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 1118310 %* then drop that file in the steam versions game folder with the retroarch.exe and then set the emulator inside launchbox to target the bat file. This would then cause it to launch the desired rom in the steam version with full features and did so flawlessly, even with updating retroarch....until it somehow broke with one of the recent updates. So im wondering if theres been any changes recently that allow native intergration? or is there perhaps another workaround?

This took entirely too long of pushing off to fix and entirely too long once i decided to look into it before I finally stumbled upon what was the cause of my issue and wanted to share so others experiencing it might be able to use this to help. So bezel project worked wonderfully for mame, and I loved it. However it didn't even prompt for bezels when importing roms or triggering it to import media files for games using retroarch. This was on a new setup and it worked flawlessly before, even with the rom file names not matching exactly due to launchbox just kinda making everything better so I couldnt figure out why it wasn't working now. I even went through and tested fixing the rom names and reimporting one of the consoles to no avail. The issue? Steam intergration. I had installed the steam version, and then directed launchbox to target that exe, then had it update retroarch, so i would get the benefit of both worlds, and have it easily update it. If I left it there, there wouldn't have been an issue. However I wanted full intergration so that when I launched a rom through Launchbox it would launch it through the steam game id (if you just launch the exe file manually or through launchbox, steam overlay and steam play together wouldn't work), otherwise when i wanted to play with friends via steam play together i would have to launch the steam version of retroarch outside of launchbox. That was not seamless enough for me and so i set up a .bat inside the folder with the retroarch.exe file and set launchbox to target it instead. With that it would launch with full steam intergration, and when it would update on steam, by having the .bat file in the same folder as the retroarch.exe, the prompt to update through launchbox would still work flawlessly, placing the files where they needed to go. Which is why it took so long for me to figure it out, if the updates work, why wouldn't the bezel project prompts? So I didn't think about it till after spending entirely too much time on it. The update just dumps the files in the same folder as whatever file launchbox is targeting, however for some reason the prompt for Bezel Project only launches when it detects Retroarch.exe or the mame.exe in the emulator for the games you are importing media for, and doesn't appear to care what the emulator is named under its settings, which is why it worked for mame and not retroarch. The solution is simple, either use two emulators of retroarch inside launchbox, one targeting the .bat and one targeting the retroarch.exe and switch to the one targeting the exe as the default for the system you are importing or triggering reimporting media files for, let it do its thing, then switch back to the emulator targeting the .bat file and let it override the games default system. The other solution is just to edit the emulator inside launchbox to target retroarch.exe whenever you want to import games with bezels or update/reimport media files for a system running retroarch, then switch it back after its done doing its thing. The latter for me is faster since you dont have to have it update all the games to a different emulator each time. Im not sure if this is caused by bezel project or how launchbox handles bezel project, though i feel its somewhat tied to launchbox as when you import via bezel project manually it just downloads bezels for all games in the system, and uses the no intro name set, where when done through launchbox it only grabs the files for the games imported and renames the bezel files to match the file names. If a developer sees this, any way you could make the prompts for bezels to trigger when it sees the name of an emulator is RetroArch, instead of looking for the retroarch.exe? or have a checkbox in the emulator settings to trigger the bezel prompt when updating or importing media files? This is only a niche case though so not sure how important this option would be to be intergrated