HitmanHart

Oddly enough, I had this same thing happen, but I just added it manually. Only took a moment to do (way, way easier than in my old frontend) and I was all set. Not sure why it missed it, but this caught my eye when I saw it and thought I'd mention it.

Adam: Here's a useful thread when I needed to do the same thing: In short, you can create a batch file to launch Daphne. Works like an absolute champ.

I saw that you can renew/upgrade within the ecosystem you already own (Renew or Upgrade License | LaunchBox) - and it's quite possible they offer an upgrade to the full version with both windows and android, but it would be worth emailing support about it to be sure.

Monsta: It's not hard at all. Not certain this is the exact place, but I'm happy to share a couple of "get started" pieces of advice. 1) from a legal standpoint, you have to own the game data ("ROMs"). But once you own the game, there's a few good places online to find them if you do a search engine query for the game name and "rom". 2) it's important to get the right ROM for the emulator you're using. Gamedata for one system likely won't work in another 3) An easy one to get started with is MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). Lots of good info out there 4) download and install (often just unzip) the emulator, then put the ROMs you have in the ROMs folder in the MAME install folder. Other emulators are pretty much the same. Things like Launchbox are front ends, but there are also some front ends out there that are built-in with emulators. There's plus-and-minus to that. For myself, I much prefer setting up the front end myself and using the emulators as configured individually, but that's because I'm a tweaker. Just know that there's no harm in experimenting. Don't give up, you can't "break" anything by experimenting, and you'll get the hang of it before you know it. -HitmanHart

Hi, Eric, Not sure what you're using for the side art. For me, I just did it with Mame itself using PNG files and that led to an answer through experimentation that might help you. I was working with Space Invaders but remember that the color of that game wasn't done in the pixels...they were all white pixels on a black background and the little bit of color was added by Atari just putting colored clear plastic of various colors over the playfield. To get that effect, I added a transparency layer for each color over the playfield in the art's PNG file and it worked like a champ (I even made them a tiny bit uneven just to give it that manual "feel" for the fun of it). So, you *should* be able to add what you want to the side art file in the playfield area and it should show up in the game area. Again, that's what works for me - but your personal mileage may vary. -HitmanHart

Thank you for this thread. I was able to browse through as a new user of Launchbox and figure this out pretty quickly with Daphne. I used the batch file method and it works like a champ. I did end up setting up new emulator configs for SpaceAce and Dragon's Lair (just named for the game) and pointed them at the batch files. After a just a few minutes of experimentation things were up and running like a champ - very seamless.

- First, I just want to say "Thank you" to the dev team for making a super nice front end. I've worked with others (Emulation Station, Retroarch, Maximus Arcade, etc...) and found that while open source ones are good, they took a TON of fiddling. I loved Maximus Arcade's (it came with my original x-arcade tankstick years back), but because it hasn't been actively developed since about 2014 or so had some issues that were annoying (no "scrape" for artwork...I had to set that all up manually myself - but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy doing it back then). I don't regret the time I spent tweaking that one as I learned a ton doing it, the lack of ongoing support just made it no longer practical. - second: I picked up a Launchbox lifetime license during the sale this past weekend and I'm glad I did. I built a full-size four-player arcade cabinet about two-and-a-half years back (finally got to the point where I had the time to do it) and the addition of this front end to replace Maximux Arcade was fantastic. All the theme options are also super. I selected "coin-op", which was similar, but easier to configure, than Maximus was. Much (MUCH) easier to add individual games (Maximus required a full ROM scan and having to manually tweak all the names each time - that was a bit silly and a serious annoyance each time). I've known this one has been out there for a good long time, but I wanted to exhaust all the open source and no-cost options. Again, those others are good and the results of outstanding communities of people who love retro arcade emulation, but I was looking for a much more finessed experience. I was even able to get my Daphne Emulator working great after a tiny bit of trial-and-error. I ended up using the batch file method that I found in other posts and after a small bit of tweaking I was able to get it working. I own the ROMs for both Dragon's Lair and Space Ace (two games I put hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in over the years) and had spent good time tweaking Daphne to get things pretty seamless. Not having to rebuild that work was a relief. Note that I already had spent hours tweaking my own Mame and Daphne configurations, so I was able use my pre-existing setups which was a huge bonus (all the button and controller configs with sensitivity settings, etc... - I did NOT want to have to redo all of that, or migrate it...I just wanted it to transfer over from the existing program folders as-is). In short, this is everything I was hoping it was and worth every penny (and more) it cost. I now consider my arcade cabinet "finished" (although each of us here know that our hobbies are never truly "finished"). Thanks! HitmanHart