Lahrs

Thank you for the suggestions. My daughter's wedding is on the 6th, and I lost track of this post in the midst of the chaos. I started using Caesium based off your suggestion, and I absolutely love the bulk option. While ffmpeg may have similar, or even better compression/quality, the GUI just makes everything easier. I still have many images to convert, but I finished one system to test, and Big Box for the Xbox system feels much snappier. On the computer, no difference in quality. On the big screen, there is still a decrease, but it is minor. I doubt anyone who sees Big Box in action without being told what to look for will notice anything. I'm also not going to be visually inspecting every image each time I load Big Box. You made me very happy, which is great because this wedding thing is stressing me out of my mind.

I figured best place for media question. I understand there is no perfect solution, you compress, you lose something. I have .png files in particular that are 10mb each. That doesn't help with storage or quickness in Launchbox (they look great though in Big Box). Jpg looks horrible when blown up on the big screen, even at best quality. Is there a middle ground, or should I look for a better program for jpg compression? I currently use Irfanview, but I've had that for more than 20 years, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was something better now. [EDIT] The downgrade in jpg picture quality is noticeable on my 83" TV. Everyday use on my 1080 monitor is not much of an issue.

I'm knee deep in systems and games and enjoying the ride, even if it takes time to weed through some duds. So, I’m curious, have there been any surprises you’ve encountered since beginning with retro gaming? I'm thinking consoles you never tried before, but it could be a game too. Personally, since I put in more than a decade working as a store manager, district manager, and even managing an arcade at a water park, I am loving playing virtual pinball games without having to worry about burned out solenoids or anything like that. Now I can actually enjoy the games without thinking of them in terms of revenues and parts. Mostly, I am fan translated imports. We (NA), definitely missed out on great games.

100%. My initial purge got me down to 2100ish I think, somewhere around there. It's going to keep getting smaller as I play and find out what I want to continue playing and which ones didn't hold my interest. I'm horrible about backlogging games, which is why I started printing out checklists of games owned vs. played/completed. This alone has helped my wallet quite a bit. I do believe LB has a similar option built in, which will be very handy. The only extras I want, other than the downloads from LB and EMUMovies, are bezels. Having a widescreen monitor, the bezels not only look good in general, but really help counter the wide screen vs the CRTs nearly every game was released on. I will have to play around with those until I can home in what I like. Until then, I will the Extras zipped somewhere. Unfortunately, I'm running out of HD space, both on my PC and my NAS. That will be my next upgrade, much bigger hard drives.

I'm installing MAME (v.267) with the Launchbox wizard. I've gone through the setup process and put in my filters to pare down the games and am currently in the process of important all the goodies from LB and EMUmovies. Along with the MAME rom set, I also have the optional Extras package. With LB importing the games that fall within my filters, and LB and EMUmovies doing the lifting for the extras, can I delete the Extras download I did? That was a big file. What about the other 39k games that were filtered out? I have a non-merged set, which should prevent conflicts from removing games now, but what about when .268 eventually is released, will not having those extra files be a problem when I update? If so, I can just zip the extra games I'm not using now and store them... somewhere. A more general question, any tips, tricks, or other you can share to improve the MAME experience? This is more of a subjective question of course. I did play Altered Beast on a different installation, and oh boy, it was clearly missing an arcade controller, that would be my tip to myself, buy an arcade controller, or build one. That game was definitely designed to eat quarters, it was absolutely unforgiving. At my highest point, I was in charge of 17 arcades, and one of the first things I did with nearly half the games was turn down the difficulty. Despite pushback from all the higher ups, I saw an increase in revenue when I did that, more people were having fun, fun equals more quarters, or tokens as it were. Never understood the 'destroy the player' mindset.

Right now, I have LB on my main HD, but that may move. I haven't decided on my final setup yet. I have a second 1TB m.2 drive that is basically a glorified junk storage. I'm thinking about turning that into a dedicated LB drive. I can't remember off the top of my head, but all media is normally stored within LB folders, regardless of emulator and ROM storage, correct? Currently, C\LB\Emulators\emulator name. And then the ROMs are in F\game system name\ROMs. All I meant about the ROMs being on another drive is that is already how I have it and I believe whatever solution I come up with as far as where LB and emulators go, the ROM drive can stay where it is without worrying. Basically, it's done. One step down. For your setup, its G\game system folder\game system emulator\rom folder, correct? That is pretty straight forward and keeps each system contained in one spot. I like that. In my original post, when I said my brain is struggling to keep up, I meant that. Brain damage from car accident changed everything, and what was once easy to figure out can be a nightmare now. That is why I keep asking these questions. I'm trying to map it out. Fortunately, Unbroken Software consistently puts up great YouTube videos. The visuals are a huge help. I will get there; it will just take a while. Thank you for your patience and thoroughly answering my questions. You have been a big help as well.

Second question. As far as ROMs go, I have a large selection of smaller files, 16 bit and older, and then much larger files, 32 bit+. I know LB creates its default ROM folders, and I would like to use those for the smaller files. How should I name the folders for the larger files that will have to be on a separate drive? Whatever it takes to make LB work more efficiently and self-contained, the better. Automate as much as possible. Final question (at the moment), should I just use Retroarch to keep even more automated and self-contained? Personally, I do prefer individual emulators for certain systems, as some standalone work better than the Retroarch cores, but I may be willing to forego that for ease of use. Admittedly though, this isn't my ideal approach, and am weighing the pros and cons of such an action.

What started off as a small project for my son and I, has grown into a beast, and I'm overwhelmed. Please bear with me as I have more and more questions. I'm contemplating uninstalling Launchbox and all my emulators and starting from scratch. I moved too many folders to different drives, selected new emulators for different systems, making some portable, some not, some inside LB emulator directory, some not, and editing things here and there. I'm certain it is all completely salvageable, but a refresh will just make everything easier on me, with the only change necessary would be the ROM paths, which should not a problem. Starting from scratch is my preferred method going forward. All that said, current question. I have a folder inside the LB folder (C:\games\Launchbox\Emulators), and I have all of my emulators, including the ones I will no longer use (I haven't cleaned them out yet), there. Yesterday, I used the emulator update link within Launchbox emulator manager. PCSX2 and Dolphin had a checkmark indicating an update, I clicked it, and through that, LB downloaded the emulators and installed them into new folders, C:\games\Nintendo\Nintendo GameCube - Wii, and C:\games\Sony\Sony PlayStation 2 respectively. Rather than being inside the Launchbox emulator folder, they were installed next to the Launchbox folder. LB chose these locations, I did not. However, I find this to be quite helpful, especially if LB monitors these emulators. I need ease of use more than anything right now. I decided to move forward and set up a new emulator, I clicked 4DO from the dropdown list, downloaded the installer, and, now what? Where should I install it because LB didn't create a new folder? Normally, I would just put it in the emulator folder within LB as I had been doing before and setting the emulator path, but if LB will monitor each emulator from the dropdown list if placed within this new folder structure it started, fantastic. So, for the 4DO, something like creating a C:\games\3DO\...? What exactly would LB be looking for by default? Included image: Having the version and status boxes filled and monitored by LB, such as with PCSX2 and Dolphin would be ideal for me. I need ease of use. My brain is struggling to keep up.

I worked for Namco for 15 years with arcades. From arcade attendant to multistate district manager. I have had my absolute fill of hacked cabinets and broken games. I will not go anywhere in the vicinity of a non-working .chd file, broken or hacked ROM, except Ms. Pac-Man, which was originally a hacked Pac-Man machine. Honestly, the fact I'm anywhere near MAME in general has my family laughing at me, that I fell back to the dark side.

I believe we are on the same page but to be sure (huge amount of bandwidth if I mess up). I have the .266 non-merged ROM set (need to update), which I chose non-merged so I can go and remove all those that I'm not interested in without breaking any other ROMs. As far as the .chd files, those I meant as cherry picking. I have a list of working .chd files from the Arcade Database already, and from there I'm only grabbing the ones I want, 20ish. I was making sure that I didn't download a bunch of stuff I didn't need, which is why I was asking about the labeling of merged .chd sets. and pairing it with a non-merged set. I couldn't find anything as labeled un-merged .chd sets and ultimately figured I was chasing something that didn't exist. As an example, even though there isn't a Pac-Man .chd. Let's say I get rid of all Pac-Man clones, keeping the parent. I get the Pac-Man .chd, which will have everything to run all Pac-Man versions. I can't, or at least easily and worth the time, break down the .chd file for just Pac-Man, it will have all Pac-Man versions, regardless of if I use them or not. That file is still considered merged. As far as I can tell, those merged and non-merged files are compatible, but will not be able to run any clones as I no longer have the clone ROMs.

I have a full unmerged ROM set as I plan to curate it down to my liking in the future, which can be more difficult with a merged set. When it comes to .chd files, I'm only seeing merged sets. I understand that a .chd is by nature a merged file, but I don't want to download the massive ton of non-working .chd files. Are there only merged .chd sets? I believe I can still cherry pick the merged .chd files to only download working games, but I'm pulling my hair out by looking for non-merged .chd sets and am now thinking I'm looking for something that doesn't exist. Any help?

Is there a way to move just the Images and Video folders to a separate drive? I have my ROMs across multiple drives, which was easy to do, but I would love to reclaim some HD space where LaunchBox is located. LaunchBox is on my fastest drive, and I would prefer not to move the entire installation to a slower SSD. I'm still in the process of building a complete setup to my liking, so it is the best time to move it if I need to. Onto my question on themes. Some, such as Colorful Bigbox, have additional downloads from other creators. Are these files meant to overwrite the ones that come with the default theme? Kind of an à la carte style? Knowing me, I am sure I will have more questions before I am done with the setup phase.

I'm rocking a massively powerful GTX 1660 Ti (I say with sarcasm), but it actually does well in emulation all things considered for a four-year-old, middle of the pack at that time GPU. The rest of my current system is newer, though nothing cutting edge. I've had no problems with Switch and older systems, PS2 on down. I have not tried any PS3 emulators to gauge my system's performance on more recent consoles. I definitely have a better idea of what to look for. I suspected single core would be the main factor for the processor. Looking at CPU usage during emulation shows little to no activity beyond the first core, and I'm guessing any activity on the other cores is from a different program utilizing the processor in the background.

Thank you for the instructions. I just got over excited and downloaded everything at the highest quality possible. Do that for one system, not the end of the world. Start doing it for all the systems, definitely some storage and performance problems. But lesson learned and now I'm back in reality to give it another go.