SentaiBrad

Which is also true, but as long as they are on the same hard drive they use relative paths. I almost always find it a bad idea to do this. When it comes to most systems doing this breaks the games, like disc based games or MAME games for example.

MAME is functionally no different than FBA, besides some slight standard's differences. FBA utilizes the MAME DAT from which we internalize the information passed. So we take the game names, information, and based on the check boxes during import pass on the games in to LaunchBox. Anything can still be ran from MAME. Just because it's not imported in to LaunchBox, doesn't mean it still isn't there. I used an FBA specific rom set, but both roms are called 'mario.zip', yet MAME plays the audio and FBA doesn't. MESS is integrated in to MAME and does hundreds of other systems as well. I have tutorials for systems in MESS when there isn't a good emulator otherwise for them. I{ would be more than happy to answer questions you have about MAME, but the MAME / Arcade tutorials have a ton of info in them too. The MAME tutorial is out of date a bit, so plug in the latest version of the MAME Rom set and the latest MAME release, and it's functionally the same thing.

So this is personal preference, but no you don't need Rocket Launcher for LaunchBox. You are more than welcome to use RL with LB, but it isn't a requirement. If you want to keep things simple for your kids, less steps is good too. So, if you have LaunchBox on the same hard drive, with all the games and emulators, LaunchBox will use Relative Paths. They look like '../LaunchBox/'. If you have these, as long as the paths after '../' Stays the same, you should be good to go. So if you have '../LaunchBox/' and '../Emulators/, you move this to your kids PC, and it should work just fine. If you have stuff on different drives, that's when you need to edit the corresponding XML's with Notepad++ or do a re-import. Re-importing is easy, as long as you carry over your media (which should use relative paths by default), and you import your games with no media (uncheck all of the boxes), they re-import fast and re-associate the media automatically if they're in the proper locations. So you remove NES, re-import NES (with the same platform name as before), and all of the video, music, images and manuals should re-attach automatically. If you have any more questions or need anything explained more just let me know!

I appreciate the appreciation! That sounds really corny reading that back, but I do!

Use MAME. Unless there is a specific reason you're using FBA, MAME should work just fine.

In MESS, just make sure to point the roms path to your MAME Roms folder so it knows where the BIOS are, otherwise that command is proper for Atari 5200.

Ah right, the folders labeled after the BIOS! This then means you need to pull all your BIOS out and put them in the right location. With MAME or MESS standalone, you just have a regular MAME Rom pack, which has all of the BIOS included, and you tell it the path. As long as the command is correct, and you use the proper BIOS command, you're good to go. I do need to mess around with just regular MAME Derek. I can't tell you why I prefer MESS standalone, I just do for some dumb reason. It would take 1 less step otherwise. I vaguely remember having a reason why... but I don't recall it now.

I just used the latest MAME Rom set, and set the MAME Rom import rules to prioritize North America, no clones.

I've seen that too. A cheat tutorial could be very helpful. I am concerned about how many people want it, but I did tutorials for systems that aren't super popular anyways, so why not. I'll add that to my list. I did do Retro Achievements inside of several tutorials, but I learned that not a lot of people notice when features are tucked inside of another tutorial. Custom Configs and Retro Achievements being the prime two suspects in this case that NEED their own tutorials. I'll make sure to add these two the list as well. Edit: Ha, I do have Custom Configs added to the list, and I apparently keep forgetting about it.

I don't particularly have a set schedule, I try and do what's needed, like updates to older tutorials when the software updates to a point where it's becoming more of a headache. RetroArch just updated recently, changing the default keyboard keys and some UI elements, so I can only imagine that some tutorials are getting more and more out-dated. I would totally consider doing more tutorials in a given week or month, but that is totally up to @Jason Carr. I do a lot as is. If we could reach our first $1k Patreon goal, then something like that is totally more plausible. I knew of these cores, but the G&W core I am not even sure how to get working, and I honestly assumed that no one wanted to see the Virtual Boy done. That system gives people massive headaches. I will gladly add them on though. A few users have asked to see my real gaming set up and my PC / Emulation set up. You can probably guess it fairly easily, but that would require someone to have watched most of the tutorials, RSS and read my posts to put it all together. It's not too terribly exciting, I don't have a cab or anything fancy. A tutorial on how to order from Monster Arcade is actually an extremely good idea! I didn't think about that. That would require some extra set up though, so I will have to talk to Jason about that one. As for an HTPC only type of tutorial, I don't quite get the question here as all of the tutorials are oriented towards a controller, and once it's set up in LaunchBox it's automatically usable in Big Box. They're complete for any type of set up, so could you narrow that down a bit for me before?

Retro Arch gets confusing, and the best way I found to do this is by creating custom configs. Follow this portion of the tutorial where I teach users how to create and use custom configs. If you are on the latest nightly, all of the config options are now located in the "Configurations" menu on that first tab. So some things have been updated, and I demonstrated doing this with the SNES bsnes balanced core, however you can apply that to any and all cores. You load the core, create a new config, with the config loaded you set your specific settings, then set the -c command in the associated platforms page.

Did you do all the proper commands? You need to have the proper associated platform name and default command line parameters, and then the proper MESS commands. You also need the roms and bios in the right location. I am not even exactly sure how it works. In regular MAME you tell it where your MAME Rom set is, by either putting it in the default roms folder or changing the path. In RetroArch it wants BIOS in the system folder generally, unless it automatically looks in the folder it's loading the rom from, then I don't know how it's pulling the proper BIOS info. Follow the MESS tutorials we have and utilize standalone MESS, it's the least complicated path, which is saying something.

No. There is no standalone mess core anymore, you use 'MAME'. They've been merged for quite a while now. Standalone MAME and MESS have been merged, and so have the cores in RetroArch. MAME 2014 doesn't have MESS integrated and is an older version of MAME. 'MAME' is the latest with MESS merged. Technically there is a MESS 2014 core, it's under MULTI, which has been there (though they could have removed it on the latest nightly, im a week or so behind), but the absolute latest MESS and MAME stuff in RA is the 'MAME' core, simple MAME, no dates after it. Independent of that, not related to RetroArch, I was saying I still prefer standalone MESS. MESS and MAME are combined, but MESS gets compiled from source by someone else now.

It does, and all you need to do is use the Online Updater from within RetroArch. I still prefer standalone MAME and MESS outside of RetroArch (MESS can still be compiled separate), but they are usable from within RetroArch if you can properly pass the extra commands.

It sounds a bit off, but I just tried Mario Bros. from the MAME Rom Set in MAME, and it played with sound just fine.

Yea, I saw someone the other day complaining that their Big Box install didn't look at all like the videos, and they didn't realize that 1, they were on a cracked version (5.7), and that these are the latest versions of Big Box, and 2, that it takes a bit of leg work. They updated and I think they were upset because they didn't have Premium any longer, so Big Box went poof. 5.7 is partially broken too, so these people are not only spreading around this BS and hurting us, but then the end user thinks that LaunchBox and Big Box are broken. It sucks really.

Yes, I've been playing Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall recently. Some games may have issues over others, and you may need to change around settings here and there. If you don't have a special conf file for the game (the exodos cxollection has specialized conf files for example), then looking online for the settings should help. Some versions of DOSBox may be better for it too, like DosBox-x or DOSBox LFN which are based on the more up-to-date SVN builds of DOSBox.

The deletion bug should have been fixed. It may take some time for the changes to take effect, even after being approved, so if it's been 24-48 hours after it's been accepted, then there might be a problem. How long has it been?

It's been a while since I checked, but I believe you can only see them if it's been rejected. I do believe you would normally hover your cursor over the rejected portion and it would tell you, but it's been a while since I did this, and stuff that I've had rejected before actually disappeared on the Database, so I can't double check.

Yea, I haven't done Taito explicitly, but the older Taito stuff should also be in a regular MAME Rom Set if I recall. If you have a specific Taito rom set and need help with FBA, we do have a tutorial for that: I avoided RAINE because it's actually not recommended for a lot of systems. MAME, FBA and the odd Supermodel covers mostly everything.

RetroArch also automatically assigns controller inputs to a lot of popular controllers. If you plug in a PS3, PS4 (both require an extra piece of software), a 360 or Xbox One controller, then each core will automatically assign the proper buttons to each button (except for PC cores). It's also personal preference at this point. If you want help with NES, check out this: It's one of the older tutorials, but it should still apply. Some things have just been updated since then, especially RetroArch. If you want a more beginner friendly, assumes nothing tutorial for both RetroArch and LaunchBox, check out this one as well:

If you don't have to do that on the other machine, then you told MAMEUI where to look for the roms. The roms MUST go in to the MAME Roms folder, unless you tell it to look somewhere else. MAME must know where all of your roms are or it will not work. The reason being, is because while you are telling it to load a single rom file, it automatically looks for parent and child roms, and BIOS files. So if you tell it to load a single file, and it can't find parent rom files or BIOS, it will not work. That is exactly what that error message is saying (the one you quoted). So if you want your MAME roms in a different location, they ALL need to be in the same folder, and you need to edit your MAME ini (or in the settings), to tell it where they are located it. Otherwise, leave them in the roms folder (the default location it is automatically looking).

You can add controller support for DOS Games, but you honestly shouldn't. There will be hundreds of DOS games that will not work with a controller, even if you make it work with extra software.

Oh sweet! I never tried to use a controller with DOSBox honestly, so I never thought to change the joysticktype= line. I also didn't know if DOSBox would pass the drivers off intelligently like this. Thank you for the extra info @Zombeaver.