stonev

Clearly, I prefer the drama of the reveal. Think of the fans, Joe! Ok, so looking at it more closely, all of the auto-generated Arcade playlists have "Arcade" as a prefix (e.g., "Arcade Atari Classics"). So really, calling them "Atari Classics" doesn't break any rules, so I'll just do that. That said, I think there's a useful tweak here that @CriticalCid might want to consider. I think simply switching to Nested name might cause issues to current users, so a display option to either use Unique (default) or Nested would be an appreciated upgrade.

Sorry, I should have provided more context. So in LB, I created a new category called "stonev Arcade". Under that category, I've added several playlists that mimic the LB-generated MAME playlists but with added platforms. For instance, I have Unique Name, "stonev Atari Classics" and Nested Name, "Atari Classics". In BB, under Options > Views, I have Default Startup View as "Platform Categories". When I stop on "Atari Classics" on the selection wheel, the text in the bottom-left corner says "stonev Atari Classics". I would think it would just say "Atari Classics". So I think I'm in the correct view (Platform Category). At least I hope that's the case because the unique=nested won't really work since I'm essentially copying (and modifying) already-existing playlists. I hope that makes sense!

I was playing around a bit with Unified yesterday and noticed that for my custom playlists, the theme displays the Unique name rather than the Nested name. Is this expected behavior, and if so, is there an option to choose which is displayed? Thank you!

I mean, what kind of tinkerer would I be if I didn’t spend 2x time setting up something that takes me 1x time?! I think I’ll go the rule-based playlist route. But as arcade platforms continue to proliferate beyond MAME, I do wonder if there’s room for user-defined fields (for example) that would allow for platform grouping (among other things). I’ll add it to the list of feature suggestions I haven’t gotten around to making…

Ok, I didn’t know about the 2+ categories being automatically interpreted as OR, so thank you for that. It does seem like there’s no way around the platform-by-platform (or playlist-by-playlist) manual maintenance process, though. So if you decided to add Triforce emulation via Dolphin, you’d have to go in and manually assign all the games to the “Arcade X Other” platforms. Am I interpreting that correctly? And out of curiosity, why did you opt to go the platform route rather than the playlist route?

Ok, my bad. A great idea, but I left out one critical piece: I have some console games that I don’t want included (e.g., NES Duck Hunt). Really, my big distinction is: Stuff you needed to go out to the arcade to play vs. stuff you could play at home. I mean, I could do Supports = Light Gun and Platform =/= NES, SNES, etc. but that gets back to the issue of maintenance: If I add, say, a TurboGrafx to my collection, I’d have to go through all of the playlists to exclude it. I suppose this is where the concept of user-defined “Platform Groups” might come in handy?

So I’ve seen similar threads on this topic but I’m not sure if they address my issue. Apologies if I’ve missed it. My controversial(?) opinion is that I like the auto-generated playlists that LB creates for MAME, and I would like to use the Platform Category view as default in BB in order to expose those playlists. The problem (I think) is that LB associates the “Arcade” category with MAME specifically. However, as we know, other emulators (Supermodel, Flycast, Demul, Lindbergh Loader, etc.) also play arcade games. Let’s say I wanted a category of Lightgun games. If I look at the one auto-generated by LB, it contains only the MAME lightgun games. This makes sense since the rules are Platform=Arcade and Genre=Shooter (or whatever). What about lightgun games like House of the Dead 4 (Lindbergh Loader)? I could certainly create a new playlist where Platform=Arcade OR Linux Loader and Genre=Shooter. However, this could get a little tedious if I had several playlists. I’d also have to update them all if, say, a new loader/emulator emerged that could play another arcade system. Is there a solution to this (besides manually creating and maintaining these playlists)? For instance, is there a way to alias an arcade “Mega Platform” that includes all of the arcade systems which could then be referenced in category playlists? That way, if a new system emerged, you’d just have to add it once to the alias and the playlists would automatically update. Or maybe I’m thinking about this completely wrong. I’d be grateful for any guidance y’all could provide!

Got it. I decided to pass "-c linuxloader.ini -o controls.ini" as default command line parameters for the emulator. For HOTD4, I use custom command line parameters, "-c linuxloader_hotd4.ini -o controls.ini" and for LGJ, I do the same "-c linuxloader.ini -o controls_lgj.ini" It works great and feels a LOT better than just using .bat files. Thank you for the mini guide!

Joe, I’m curious about how LB deals with this. For hotd, I use the default control file but have a separate settings file (using custom crosshairs and setting CPU speed), whereas for LGJ, I use the default settings file, but have a custom controls file (to invert the mouse movement). So for hotd, if I use the game’s emulation section to set the control file, does it overwrite the default -c linuxloader.ini or append to it? If the former, then I’d think I’d need to add the -o option *and* the -c option in the game’s emulation section. If the latter, then just the -o option. Similarly, for LGJ, if I just add the -o option, what happens to -c linuxloader.ini specified in the emulator settings?

Check that. Discord help pointed me to this file: https://github.com/lindbergh-loader/linuxloader/blob/main/src/loader/mainShared.c I think it shows which file is the executable for each game. I’ll see if I can use these in LB and set it up like Joe suggested.

Thanks, for the step-by-step, Joe! The reason I went with bat files instead of your straightforward method is that I couldn’t always find an elf file in each game. I’ve got one for Too Spicy, Initial D 4, and HOTD 4, but not Afterburner, GSE, LGJ, or Virtua Tennis. So I only have a game path to reference. Apparently, LL finds whatever file(s) it needs at the end of the path. Or am I being to literal by only looking for files with .elf extensions?

I haven’t had this problem, fortunately.

The game folder is one of the default places to put the ini files, but it’s not 100% necessary. I keep my files in my Linux Loader folder and use the same file for multiple games. As I mentioned, you can use the -c option to specify the relevant main ini file and the -o option to specify the relevant controls ini file. Since these are still early days, updates come pretty fast and often add new ini settings. It’s a lot easier to change 1 file than 1 file per game.

I’m happy to post a bat file, but there’s really nothing complicated beyond following the GitHub Windows Guide. Just: linuxloader.exe -g “path\to\game” -c “path\to\config\ini” -o “path\to\controls\ini” I just made the batch files because it was easier than typing. The TP roms will NOT work. Apparently, they are not “clean” dumps and have been specifically modified to work with TP. I can tell you that the “clean” roms have been archived on the internet, though.

Your instincts are good! There’s a point update almost daily so, yes, it will take some time to settle. I think I’m just really impressed at how well it worked out of the box (although there has been plenty of development on the Linux version). For those interested in playing around, I would definitely suggest joining the Discord that is linked on the GitHub page. Although setup is relatively straightforward, the rom files need to be “clean” and some folders and files need to be renamed in order for some games to work. Hopefully it won’t be long until it’s a little more stable and a UI is released. In the meantime, I’ll keep playing…