spycat

Hi Jason. This is a really exciting direction in which you're taking LaunchBox. The layout looks great, not too cluttered, and I really like the image thumbnails suggested by bd000. Maybe these could be scrollable and active in that clicking one would bring up the full size screenshot in a window or full screen depending on your configuration. http://i.imgur.com/HY81bBQ.jpg The Play, Open Folder etc sidebar on the left could be expanded to link to other game related things like the game manual. The only thing I'm not too keen on is the alphabet ladder for quick game navigation. While the idea is great, it looks out of place and takes from the overall look. Definitely needs to be hid in it's current form. The alphabet could also be horizontal at screen bottom, or in a checkerboard style popup. I can't wait for this development to appear - it's like waiting for Christmas!

Yes it's great to actually play some games in between playing with LaunchBox heheh. I've always liked to have 2 games on the go so I can switch when I get a bit brain-lagged with one of them. At the moment I'm playing Citadel and a sort of enhanced Quake. Citadel is an old arcade adventure game (1985) which I'm playing under emulation. Once I time-machine my mind back to the 8-bit graphics era I find this game great fun to play. It has a large world to explore, many puzzles to solve, lots of enemies to evade or defeat and for me it's the cat's pyjamas. http://i.imgur.com/WTCD3u2.jpg And when I'm stuck or just Citadeled out, I turn to Lord Havoc's Quake. Hard to describe this, sort of a mod of the original MS-DOS game, using a custom Windows based engine to give way nicer graphics, textures, lighting and much much more. http://i.imgur.com/K5gNUYS.jpg

Hi Wattoo. There is a workaround but only if you have the Premium version. Select Spacing from the Options menu and set the "Game Text Lines to Show" to 0.

Hi Kriven. I use XPadder too and it works fine from the Additional Apps feature. Not sure how similar the JoyToKey command line is, but here's a couple of snaps showing the two Additional Apps to launch an XPadder game profile before a game and then close the Profiler when the game is quit. The /M switch just minimises XPadder to the tray, and the /C switch closes XPadder if it's detected as running. Start XPadder Additional App http://i.imgur.com/ODAVCTD.png Stop XPadder Additional App http://i.imgur.com/zLzd6XF.png

Many thanks Jason.

Hi Jason I have a few requests/suggestions for adding to the Game Details flyout box/right sidebar pane. A new field to enter and show the emulator (where applicable) used by the game, because sometimes a Platform might use more than one emulator and it's easy to forget but nice to know which emulator is assigned to a game. Two situations for me: My Arcade platform uses 4 emulators (Mame, Kawaks, Dice and Zinc) for different arcade games. My Playstation platform games use either the ePSXe or pSXfin emulator depending on the game. A new field to enter and show the input modes accepted by the game - Keyboard, Mouse, Controller (native), Controller (profiled), etc. An option to hide the always shown items such as Portable, Play Count etc. Otherwise, no problems with 4.7 and looking forward to the next version.

I don't know a lot about these games, other than they seem to be PC based - sort of like a customised PC inside an arcade cab. I think they use a built-in version of XP or Linux and a really top-end graphics card. I've seen reports of some people getting them to work with some success using ArcadePC Loader. Other than that I'm all in the dark. Sorry.

Here is how to get Zinc up and running. Download these two files (you'll find them on The Emulator Zone website). Zinc 1.1 emulator (zinc11-win32.zip). OpenGL and D3D renderers 1.2 plugin (d3d-ogl12.zip). Unzip the emulator. Unzip the renderers plugin. Inside this are 2 folders with D3D and OpenGL versions of the Zinc renderer. They have the same filename but are different. Decide which version of the renderer.znc file you want to use and copy it into the root of your Zinc emulator folder. Copy the renderer.cfg file into the root of your Zinc emulator folder. Overwrite the existing file when asked. Now get your games. Remember that most will need a bios file, and clones will need the parent rom. Game and bios roms all go in the emulator's roms folder - leave them zipped. And this is what my Zinc emulator folder looks like. I renamed it to Zinc11 http://i.imgur.com/nx0b0Ft.png The games will run in a 640x480 window. You can edit the renderer.cfg file to enable full-screen, among other things. With the above basic install, all you need in the command line parameters is the game's number. By the way, the Zinc games list on the Emulator Zone is for Zinc 1.0 and is out of date for Zinc 1.1.

Hi again whitoxx I take it you're having a problem with setting up the Application Path box. What goes in here is the path and name of the Zinc emulator exe file. Use the browse button to find your copy of ZiNc.exe and click to set it. I've posted a screenshot of a game as an example. http://i.imgur.com/NRDkc5z.png In my example I have my ZiNc emulator in the folder LaunchBox\Platforms\Zinc11 And in the Application Command-Line Parameters box I type the game's number. If you get setup like that and you still can't get ZiNc to work, then you may be missing something in your install of ZiNc. Maybe nothing happens, or ZiNc box opens and closes again quickly. Let me know and I'll do a post of how I installed my ZiNc. You may already have the list of games supported by Zinc version 1.1, but just in case you don't. I've added them here. The game number at the left is the command line value used to launch the game. 1 Star Gladiator (US 960627) [starglad, BIOS cpzn1] 2 Street Fighter EX (US 961219) [sfex, BIOS cpzn1] 3 Street Fighter EX (JP 961130) [sfexj, parent sfex, BIOS cpzn1] 4 Street Fighter EX (Boss Hack) [sfexbh, parent sfex, BIOS cpzn1] 5 Street Fighter EX Plus (US 970407) [sfexp, BIOS cpzn1] 6 Street Fighter EX Plus (US 970311) [sfexpu1, parent sfexp, BIOS cpzn1] 7 Street Fighter EX Plus (Boss Hack) [sfexpbh, parent sfexp, BIOS cpzn1] 8 Street Fighter EX 2 (US 980526) [sfex2, BIOS cpzn2] 9 Street Fighter EX 2 (Boss Hack) [sfex2bh, parent sfex2, BIOS cpzn2] 10 Street Fighter EX 2 PLUS (US 990611) [sfex2p, BIOS cpzn2] 11 Street Fighter EX 2 PLUS (JP 990611) [sfex2pj, parent sfex2p, BIOS cpzn2] 12 Street Fighter EX 2 PLUS (Boss Hack) [sfx2pbh, parent sfex2p, BIOS cpzn2] 13 Plasma Sword (US 980316) [plsmaswd, BIOS cpzn2] 14 Star Gladiator 2 (JP 980316) [stargld2, parent plsmaswd, BIOS cpzn2] 15 Rival Schools (ASIA 971117) [rvschola, parent rvschool, BIOS cpzn2] 16 Justice Gakuen (JP 991117) [jgakuen, parent rvschool, BIOS cpzn2] 17 Rival Schools (US 971117) [rvschool, BIOS cpzn2] 18 Strider Hiryu 2 (JP 991213) [shiryu2, parent strider2, BIOS cpzn2] 19 Strider 2 (ASIA 991213) [strider2, BIOS cpzn2] 20 Kikaioh (JP 980914) [kikaioh, parent techromn, BIOS cpzn2] 21 Tech Romancer (US 980914) [techromn, BIOS cpzn2] 22 Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (US 951124) [ts2, BIOS cpzn1] 23 Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (JP 951124) [ts2j, parent ts2, BIOS cpzn1] 24 Tetris The Grand Master (JP 980710) [tgmj, BIOS cpzn2] 25 Sonic Wings Limited (JP) [sncwgltd] 26 Beastorizer (US) *bootleg* [beastrzb, BIOS psarc95] 27 Beastorizer (US) [beastrzr, BIOS psarc95] 28 Bloody Roar 2 (JP) [bldyror2, BIOS psarc95] 29 Brave Blade (JP) [brvblade, BIOS tps] 30 Psychic Force (JP 2.4J) [psyforcj, parent psyforce, BIOS taitofx1] 31 Psychic Force (World 2.4O) [psyforce, BIOS taitofx1] 32 Psychic Force EX (JP 2.0J) [psyfrcex, parent psyforce, BIOS taitofx1] 33 Magical Date EX - sotsugyou kokuhaku daisakusen (JP 2.01J) [mgcldtex, BIOS taitofx1] 34 Raystorm (JP 2.05J) [raystorj, parent raystorm, BIOS taitofx1] 35 Raystorm (US 2.06A) [raystorm, BIOS taitofx1] 36 Fighters Impact A (JP 2.00J) [ftimpcta, BIOS taitofx1] 37 G-Darius (JP 2.01J) [gdarius, BIOS taitofx1] 38 G-Darius Ver.2 (JP 2.03J) [gdarius2, parent gdarius, BIOS taitofx1] 39 Dancing Eyes (JP) Ver. A [danceyes] 40 Xevious 3D/G (JP) Ver. A [xevi3dg] 41 Star Sweep (JP) Ver. A [starswep] 42 Kosodate Quiz My Angel 3 (JP) Ver. A [myangel3] 43 Tekken (JP) Ver. B [tekkenb, parent tekken] 44 Tekken (WORLD) Ver. B [tekkena, parent tekken] 45 Tekken (WORLD) Ver. C [tekken] 46 Tekken 2 (JP) Ver. B [tekken2a, parent tekken2] 47 Tekken 2 (World) Ver. A [tekken2b, parent tekken2] 48 Tekken 2 (World) Ver. B [tekken2] 49 Soul Edge (JP) SO3 Ver. A [souledga, parent souledge] 50 Soul Edge (JP) SO1 Ver. A [souledgb, parent souledge] 51 Soul Edge Ver. II (JP) SO4 Ver. C [souledge] 52 Dunk Mania (US) DM2 Ver. C [dunkmnia] 53 Dunk Mania (JP) DM1 Ver. C [dunkmnic, parent dunkmnia] 54 Prime Goal EX (JP) Ver. A [primglex] 55 Wedding Rhapsody (JP) Ver. JAA [weddingr, BIOS konamigv] 56 Hyper Athlete (JP) Ver. 1.00 [hyperath, BIOS konamigv] 57 Powerful Baseball 96 (JP) Ver. 1.03 [pbball96, BIOS konamigv] 58 Susume! Taisen Puzzle-Dama (JP) Ver. 1.20 [susume, BIOS konamigv] 59 Fighting Layer (JP) Ver. B [fgtlayer] 60 Ehrgeiz (US) Ver. A [ehrgeiz] 61 Tekken 3 (JP) Ver. A [tekken3] 62 Mr Driller (JP) Ver. A [mrdrillr] 63 Aqua Rush (JP) Ver. A [aquarush] 64 Paca Paca Passion (JP) Ver. A [pacapp] 65 Gallop Racer 3 (JP) [glpracr3, BIOS tps] 66 Shanghai Matekibuyuu (JP) [shngmtkb, BIOS tps] 67 Cool Boarders Arcade Jam (US) [cbaj, BIOS tps] 68 DOA (Boss Hack) [doappbh, parent doapp, BIOS tps] 69 Tondemo Crisis [tondemo, BIOS tps] 70 Monster Farm Jump (JP) [mfjump, BIOS tps] 71 Heaven's Gate [hvnsgate, BIOS atluspsx]

I never played The Mines of Terror, but I remember buying it's forerunner, Castle Quest, the Tomb Raider of it's day hehe (1985) on cassette. This excellent arcade adventure allowed you 4 lives and had no game save option. The armed guards looked like little toothbrushes holding upside-down match sticks. It had some very cunning puzzles to solve. The hardest I found was at the very beginning when you had to get the sword without the spider nailing you. It took me ages to figure that one out. Other puzzles I recall were escaping from prison and hoodwinking the Troll. It was all very new and exciting at the time. So 3 cheers for emulation, it's like beer only free!

My first dabble with home computers was on an Oric belonging to a friend. This was back in the 1980's when everyone seemed to be making them. I was hooked and after looking around for a bit I went with Acorn's BBC Model B Microcomputer. This was an 8-bit machine using the 6502 microprocessor and Acorn's own OS. It came with 32K of RAM, a really good version of BASIC, was as expandible as your dad's wallet allowed, and played games as well! The first game I bought (mail order from the UK) was Acornsoft's Snapper (a port of the arcade game Pac-Man). My early games were cassette based, but later on I added an external floppy drive. I also remember opening the machine up to fit an internal ROM/EPROM expansion board from ATPL and installing a number of 3rd party ROMS for languages, services and graphics. I gave the lot away (foolishly in hindsight) when I took up a post overseas. But thanks to the wonders of emulation, I'm able to live my 8-bit days all over again. I'm currently relearning BBC BASIC and Assembler in between working my way through Citadel. This game seems to be a lot more difficult now than when I played it in the 1980's. Back then I could build a mental image of the game world as I advanced. Now it's more like I've found the green/white key now where did I see that door. I'm putting this down to being out of practise and not an age thing!

Hi Hippyshake. That looks ok. All you need to do is click the blue bar under Associated Platform and type the name of the Platform for the Mame emulator. Then click OK.

I just noticed an issue with the Games Details flyout/sidebar box and wonder if anyone else is getting it. IF a game has an entry in the Publisher field but nothing in the Developer field then the publisher is not shown in the details flyout/sidebar. Adding an entry to the Developer field fixes the issue. And when the Developer box is reset to empty the issue reappears. The reverse (Developer entry present but no Publisher) does not cause this issue. I'm using the official 4.7 build.

Hi folks. LaunchBox site is back to normal for me. Also out of curiosity just downloaded the 4.7 setup. It took approx 5 seconds to download. By the way just noticed I'm an 8-bit processor heheh. The 8-bit games/computing era is my favourite!

I've also had problems with the site on and off for a couple of days but they seem to have settled down now. Sometimes opening the site was very slow and an a few occasions I got the 500 Internal Server Error.

Hi whitoxx As far as I know, Zinc can't handle input from analog controllers. To use something like a PS/2 or XBox controller with Zinc you could use XPadder (or similar) to make a game profile to map the controller's buttons to Zinc's game keys. The LaunchBox Additional Apps feature can be used to open a profile before the game runs and to close the profile once you quit the game.

Hi whitoxx Zinc is command line based (no GUI), and a very odd command line it is. You should really run Zinc with a frontend designed for it. But it can be run within LaunchBox. Unlike other emulators which use the game's rom name in the command line, Zinc uses a game number to specify a game to load. Games are numbered from 1 to 71. Take the game Raystorm (US 2.06A) as an example. The rom is raystorm.zip and it's Zinc game number is 35. So to run it from the Zinc command line you need to use zinc.exe 35 Using zinc.exe raystorm.zip will not work. As you can see Zinc can't be used with the Use Emulator box ticked, since the ROM file (Emulation is enabled) box cannot point to a number. Instead with the Use Emulator box left empty, the Launcher tab entries can now be set as follows For the Application Path box just browse to the zinc executable. And for the Application Command-Line Parameters box just type in the game's number. If you want to use Zinc in LaunchBox Emulator mode with the Use Emulator box ticked and the rom name in the ROM file (Emulation is enabled) box, then you will need to write a batch file that will take the rom name and convert it to a number and then call zinc with the number as a parameter. Apart from the game number, the command line can handle other parameters if needed (see the text file that comes with Zinc).

Hats off to Clive for all his hard work to enable LaunchBox to be used through Spanish. Here's hoping that this is the first of many language translations for it.

Hi kamyk. Have you tried adding the extra discs as Additional Apps attached to the game's main (disc 1) entry? This way you have only 1 icon per game. Left click to run disc 1, right click to select and run one of the other discs. Also, your games count will now class a multi-disc game as 1 game. Each extra disc will need a separate Additional App. When adding discs as Additional Apps, the Autorun before/after boxes should be left empty.

LaunchBox works fine with Mame, I've had no problems adding the emulator or games. Before LaunchBox, I used different frontends for console/home computer emulators and for Mame. Now I've got an all-in-one frontend plus PC games support. A feature that I miss and think might be welcomed by LaunchBox Mame users (also users of Kawaks and other arcade emulators) is support for AntoPisa's ProgettoEMMA. ProgettoEMMA is an information website for arcade games that can be integrated into a frontend. If a frontend is programmed to support it, ProgettoEMMA can show very detailed information for all your installed arcade games. This includes the History.Dat and MameInfo.Dat files. It also has lots of clickables, some games have a play demo video option. Images can be saved and text copied and pasted. ProgettoEMMA can be displayed in a scrollable window (could be switched in/out on the game details window maybe). It's a most reliable site, my old Mame frontend has been using it for just over 3 years (Feb 2012) with no issues. To really see ProgettoEMMA at work you would need a frontend that supports it. But you can just test it out by using the following example (it will be fullscreen, not in a window like when integrated into a frontend). http://progettoemma.net/gioco.php?lang=en&game=mslug The lang=en bit is optional, without it the game info shows in Italian, but just click the English icon. mslug is the rom name for the arcade game Metal Slug - Super Vehicle-001 By replacing the mslug bit you can see information for other games and this is how ProgettoEMMA works by displaying info for each game as you select it in the frontend's game thumbnails/boxart window. This image shows the original LaunchBox game details for the arcade game Bionic Commando. http://i60.tinypic.com/2j4r34g.jpg And this image is a mock-up of what ProgettoEmma might look like. http://i61.tinypic.com/2qa4s5y.jpg

Working perfectly. Many thanks Jason.

Hi SentaiBrad. The Additional Apps feature itself works perfectly, my problem is with the new Open Emulator menu option added in LBox 4.5. To try and isolate what might be an obscure issue at my end I temporarily renamed my LaunchBox folder, then created a new LaunchBox folder, installed version 4.5 and installed one test game - SkyBlazer (SNes). I then created an additional app for this game to allow a trained version to be run from the right-click menu. Every time the right-click menu is opened for the game a new instance of Open SNes9X is added. The same happens when a new installation of LaunchBox is created, this time installing one test game - Castle Quest (BBC Micro) and creating 2 Additional Apps to autorun the game's XPadder profile before the game and to close XPadder when the game is quit. I've made some png screen captures but unfortunately I don't know how to add them to my reply. So, in the example of SkyBlazer, the Additional App ROM File box points to the game to run, and the Use Emulator box is ticked. And each time that the game's boximage is right-clicked a new instance of Open SNes9X is added to the menu between the Open Game Folder and Open Images Folder options.

I'm now using LaunchBox 4.5 and I've come across what might be an issue with the game boxart right-click menu. This menu now displays an option to allow you to open a game's emulator if it uses one. This new feature works fine until you right-click games that use Additional Apps. Whenever these games are right-clicked, the menu adds more instances of the Open emulator option and the menu keeps getting bigger and bigger, eventually exceeding the screen height. This is annoying, but fortunately not permanent. When you close LaunchBox and restart it then things are back to normal, at least until you start right-clicking again! Anyone else having this issue? By the way this underpriced piece of software has the potential to eventually be the leader in it's field. Have you given any thought to restoring the Donate button?

Hi Jason, just a couple of requests for down the line. A feature to toggle the games launch window between boxart graphics and text fields view formats. I'm thinking of text fields along the lines of OpenEmu (Mac) and EmuCon/EmuLoader (Windows). From a programming aspect this may be a big ask possibly confined to the Premium edition. On a minor note: An option to enter and display release dates as either DD/MM/YYYY or just YYYY. Older platforms and some obscure games for not so old platforms often only have the year available. While these can be entered as say 01/01/YYYY it would be nice to be able to show just the year.

This latest nightly is looking really good with the local metadata and images import features. However, when importing from the local metadata database, the data for the Notes Box is not imported if a user has already put some text in it. This can give the impression that the local database has no Note Box data for that game. For example if I have already made an entry like This is Part 2 of the XYX Trilogy, or This is a Windows mod of the original MS-DOS Quake game. I imagine this is to prevent a duplication of the Notes Box game notes from the local metadata database if it's used a 2nd time for a particular game. This is not a big issue as Note Box user entries can be just cut and pasted to a notepad file for re-pasting once the game overview metadata has been installed.