SentaiBrad

RetroArch can be confusing, but I did create quite a lot of tutorials on the subject if they would help, and Monkus posted his link as well. I did a few tutorials that might be very unassuming, but hold major keys, like the RetroArch Info files tutorial; That's a tutorial on how to find out information on any core by just having RetroArch downloaded. Have a look around the playlist for Systems you might want to try, and RetroArch isn't used for all of them. There are a few systems that I don't think RetroArch is quite up to task for. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6pTDaHeAz-WMcNURVPU-1xLN_TVpT3FB

You need to add the Emulator to your list of emulators, and you can type in anything you want. The drop downs are just suggestions. The only time those drop downs are important is for when you're naming a platform; the default name is the only name we can promise any metadata will get downloaded for. Even then, you can call your platform what ever you want as long as you use the Scrape As feature to scrape it as the proper platform. You might also want to give my Supermodel 3 tutorial a watch:

There was another thread related to this, but instead of the background video it was a foreground video. I think the default anchor point or method of display seems more suited for 16:9, that's my guess though. Did anyone on the stream create a bug ticket for this? Click Issues/Requests at the top if no one has and you'd like to.

If you have a S. Famicom and an SNES platform and want to keep them different then that's totally fine. Derek hit the nail on the head, this is pretty much the reason why Scrape As was created, so people can have custom platforms.

That has been requested several times before, so I think Jason does want to add that eventually; It's just hard to get to everything.

I'm not sure if it's able to just be turned off currently. Those letters should only show up when you press a direction on your controller or keyboard, and then it pops up. The direction changes based on your view, so if you have a horizontal view pressing down or up can bring it up. You don't have to use that to scroll through your games, it's meant to just jump to a letter. Pressing the opposite direction you use to bring it up should go back to the regular navigation.

Every once in a while, a Nightly will have some issues. Going back a day or two or waiting for a day or two for the next nightly usually solves that problem for me. I never cut and paste my old configs, I always copy and go forward, just in case something did go wrong and I have to go back and then wait a few days. It's just like our Betas, for the most part everything is fine, but every once in a while something happens and that beta ends up being no good.

No no, it's ok! Our search may not be the best, and I'm not even certain there was ever a direct post about a lot of things sometimes, it's sort of like this, where it's really a few posts down. No worries, I understand how it can get confusing or you just don't see it, there are A LOT of posts here now.

Funny you should say that, all those duplicate consoles are going to be merged too! Long list of stuff like alternate names, duplicate consoles, all needing to be adressed and it should be soon, hopefully. These conversations have been happening on the forums a lot for a while actually.

That's currently intended. Jason hasn't fixed that portion up yet. However, the recent public poll, the Database was the top voted item by a decent amount the last I had seen it, so he'll be working on all of that soon enough thankfully.

Oh, for the images, you should just be able to delete them and they should re-download, for the Platforms only. The Banners for example re-download the defaults automatically when there is no image there. They're located in ..\LaunchBox\Images\Platforms\, then there will be a list of consoles. Deleting the folders will do the same thing, but I don't know if all of the images get re-downloaded.

Yea, that will do it. Playlists are an extension, a mirror image to filter out games, not a copy of the games to a new platform.

So the CPU is a main player, but yea, a GPU helps when we start getting in to 3D consoles using OpenGL and Direct X or D3D. GTX 950's are half size GPU's (they even make tons of different low profile cards) for good prices. Adding in one of those might be a good stop gap to help... but if you're wanting to go all out, then upgrading the CPUand potentially the motherboard depending on the cap for CPU's, and considering the age... I guess we'd be looking at an overhaul. As for Malware in Project64, that was an issue very briefly and only that it had Adware that you had to say no to. So long as you got the installers from the site, and said no on those pages, you were totally fine. Always. Now, it's not even bundled in anymore, so PJ64 2.0+ (on 2.3 now), doesn't even have that option there. So there is zero chance of that happening.

Speaking of those Demul scripts, I finished editing them up:

MAME to Demul Rom Copier (MAME .184 & demul07a_180816) View File So Derek (@DOS76), originally posted these scripts, and I saw that they were not copying over all of the files for these systems, and that there were now some errors thrown in. So I updated all of the scripts to include name changes, newly added games, and now the Naomi GD and Naomi GD2 scripts also copy over CHD files. Required Files: 1. These scripts obviously. 2. MAME .184b and demul07a_180816 2. A MAME .184 split or non-merged rom set. Searching mame dome of pleasure helps. (Non-merged is suggested for the best compatibility, even though it's much larger). 3. A MAME .184 CHD pack. This is optional, but the Naomi GD and Naomi GD2 games will either not run correctly or at all. The CHD pack only comes as "merged". How to Use: 1.Download the zip 2. Extract the contents of the zip to a folder (like your Demul folder). 3. Move the scripts (.bat) files to your MAME .184 roms folder. 4. Run each of the scripts 1 by 1, and when the script is done it will ask you to press a button to close the Windows Command Prompt. 5. It will create new folders, sorted to the top of your current view; These folders begin with _ so they move to the top. 6. Move those folders to a location of your choosing so that you can import them in to LaunchBox. 6.5 Make sure to set the "Scrape As" option for these platforms all to Arcade (Will automatically pop up during import when you type in a non-default System name) and check the box "Force using MAME Metadata" (That box is on the final screen with the rest of those check boxes). Remember, these are all Arcade MAME Games, so all of their metadata will be in there. 7. Make sure to also tell Demul where your MAME roms are located for parent and dependency reasons. You can add this in the Plugins and Bioses options menu in Deuml, pictured below. The Systems this script will copy games for: Naomi NaomiGD Naomi 2 Naomi 2 GD Sammy Atomiswave Hikaru Gaelco This script uses 2 commands, copy and xcopy, and I can only promise that it will work on Operating Systems that LaunchBox supports (Windows 7, Windows 8 / 8.1 and Windows 10 currently). If you have any questions, leave a comment on the download page or the thread. I will also post Derek's original script for the version of MAME he edited them for. To clarify, his scripts work on a older version of MAME and Demul. Submitter SentaiBrad Submitted 04/18/2017 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins

All of the Arcade based games are in the MAME set, and for the most part, these games will run in MAME (with some exceptions), but there are cases where they run better in something like Demul, Supermodel 3, etc. Since the games in playlists are just copies of that exact entry, they're not being duplicated, they're still in the same platform just a filtered view. You can go in to that playlist, change the platform of those to something; Say like the Naomi playlist, go in to it and bulk edit the platform while in that playlist view. The platform will change for the original games, and then you can move from there. The alternative, which is what I'm working on right now actually, is to run scripts to copy the roms from your MAME folder to a new folder, move those folders, then import them as games in to their own platform on their own. The script method is a bit more... cumbersome, but then you have all those games off in their own folder somewhere. If you do the method where you bulk edit the platform of the games in your playlist, all those games will still be in the MAME/roms folder.

For it to pick up the associated platform info, the names of the platforms need to match. So if you have "Naomi" as a platform, it needs to say "Naomi" in the associated platform. If you have "Sega Dreamcast", it needs to say exactly "Sega Dreamcast". What ever you called your platform, it needs to say that for the name for the command you want to run. That's always been true for any emulator you use the associated command line parameters for.

That only works because you're telling it the exact game to run. That's why, when you put a command in the basic default command line parameters box, it shows you what the command would like: So that should already be achieved, the commands work the same on the Associated Platforms page.

I think it's something that came with our new format.

I just edited a bunch of text earlier and nothing disappeared for me. I just edited your post, and I think the font color got changed. I highlighted the font, then clicked the color picker and chose automatic. It came back after that, so I would guess that might have happened?

If you can afford it, a Western Digital Black Internal drive are some of the best. The black drives are a bit more expensive, but they're performance oriented and really worth it for gaming. Don't get the Green ones though, they're eco friendly drives and their performance is really poor. The blue drives are the average consumer drives, a bit cheaper than black, and will work totally fine. I have 2 4TB Western Digital Book externals that I use, but mostly for storing media and downloads. I keep all my emulation stuff, including my LB install on an 8TB HGST 5400RPM SATA 3 drive. It's price, at the time, was really good because it was on sale. The second you go that high though, the prices start to get insane. Western Digital and HGST (a branch of WD now actually) are some of the best drives. HGST drives have some of the lowest failure rates. I got that data from a data center actually. It's a company called BackBlaze and I use them to back up my PC to the cloud, their data center. They do bi or quad yearly updates on the failure rates of their drives (I'm almost certain it's quarterly). They do it that often because they have thousands and thousands of drives whos on and write times are astounding, so they get lots of data very fast. What would take us a few years to find out, they can find out in like 6 months sometimes.

Yea, I don't want to talk down a present from your wife, I feel bad for doing that, but I'd rather be honest. There are some people here who've had good experiences with Seagate, but every Seagate drive I've ever had failed quickly. I have a 500GB Western Digital drive from 2008 still going strong; though that's honestly a ticking time bomb now and I don't rely on it for anything anymore... but it's still working, and it was an OS drive for 7 years, with tons of re-installs. You can tell if it's USB2 or 3 by the USB A port (the side you stick in to the PC). If it's Blue, it's USB3. If it's any other color (usually White), it's USB2.

Not currently. Some platforms don't even have all their metadata. Like I said, that stuff can only be edited or changed by Staff, and so it will only update when Jason pushes an update to them (like when the associated images changed). So even if there was an option, there's nothing to update.

Well, that doesn't tell me if it's USB3 or not. If it's USB2 (most likely), then you'll be fine to put games on it, it's not going to matter too too much in that regard. Just be careful with the drive, as it can fail easily by being moved a lot. Seagate drives are also notorious for failure. If it's USB only, and no power adapter, seek times may take longer if you haven't accessed the drive in a while too, as it's being powered only bt the PC and the PC will power it down. You could turn that off or lessen it in the power management though.