Zombeaver

Happy to help! There were titles released specifically via the Satellaview, but once downloaded onto the cart, they work on non-Satellaview hardware (Super Famicom). If you put the Satellaview roms on a Super Everdrive or SD2SNES, for example, they'll work on the standard hardware. I'm fairly indifferent about their inclusion though, honestly - I understand why people separate it into its own thing, I just think it's kindof unnecessary personally. They're not necessarily Windows, but they'll be either Windows or DOS. This is generally the same for ScummVM too*. The point is that neither of these is actually a platform. The platform in both cases is either Windows or DOS depending on the game. GOG is just a distribution method. We don't need separate platforms for Origin, Green Man Gaming, or Humble Bundle in the db either. You don't call something a "Walmart Game" just because you bought it at Walmart. *There are a few exceptions since multiple versions of the same SCUMM language games are covered through ScummVM, which means that, for example, the NES version of Maniac Mansion is supported in ScummVM. By and large though the vast majority of games that are covered under ScummVM are DOS, as well as some Windows games. I have a Lightgun playlist in my own library, but wouldn't call it an actual platform. My playlist is, in fact, platform-spanning - there's NES, PSX, Arcade stuff... anything that's a light gun game. If I had any Wii light gun games, I'd add them into it. I just think sticking with actual hardware is the better, more accurate option - Launchbox is flexible enough that you can separate things out however you want in your own library, and still have them match up with the db. I have a Classic PC "platform" in my own library that's all post-DOS PC stuff from the mid-90s to early 00s (minimum of 10 years old) - some Windows 3.1 stuff (DOSBox Daum + Windows 3.1), some Windows 95 stuff (PCem), and some native Windows stuff, but this is just a personal preference for organizational purposes, not because "Classic PC" is an actual platform in any real sense. When you start getting into calling an emulator a platform I think it really muddles things, because the games that are covered by that emulator 1) may span multiple actual platforms 2) are likely to change over time. That said, personally I only split out my arcade platforms to a certain degree - I have separate platforms for CPS1, CPS2, Neo Geo, Sega Model 2, Naomi, Atomiswave, Taito Type X, and then use "Arcade" as a catchall for everything else (including CPS3 since it only has 6 games; most people separate it, but I thought having an entire platform for just 6 games was kindof silly). I don't really want 50+ arcade platforms as this would make finding the specific game that I want to play much more difficult - I rarely use the search function, but I'd have to if I did that. Anyway, just my two cents. Good luck!

The Atari XEGS is just the "consolized" version of their 8-bit computers, the games are exactly the same - they just got a repackage/rebrand. It would be a bit like including a separate platform for Playstation Greatest Hits titles. This isn't to say that the console itself doesn't have any significance, just that, from an emulation perspective, there's no difference between them (which would make emulating both and having them as separate platforms pointless). Personally I think the current db platforms for "Atari 800" and "Atari XEGS" just need to be merged into one thing called "Atari 8-bit" (and I put in a ticket to do this 2 years ago haha), which is what I do in my own library. Why is "Big Fish Games" a worthwhile separate collection? Of all the various games developers that have created innumerable classic series recognized the world over for excellence and significance, "Big Fish Games" isn't even a speck on the radar. Their inclusion seems extremely random to me. I think the inclusion of any such collection, even ones of much greater significance is rather silly considering how subjective and arbitrary it is, but "Big Fish", specifically, out of the sea of things out there, is beyond weird. Better add in the Digital Homicide collection too. I'd be more inclined to include literally any of the ones listed as "too obscure" than I would Big Fish. It's super random and arbitrary. While I kindof understand why the Satellaview is included as a separate platform, this would be a bit like including the Sega Channel as a separate platform. They're just SNES and Genesis games acquired by a different means. It would be like having a separate platform for GOG - it's just a distribution platform, they're not "GOG games", they're just Windows games that you get through GOG. The games work on the original (non-Satellaview) hardware - the Satellaview was the means of acquiring them in the first place (same with Sega Channel). Unlike Sega Channel stuff though, some games did make additional calls to the St. GIGA servers for streaming some data during play (like SoundLink audio for the BS Zelda games), which changes things somewhat. I guess on balance it makes sense to have it, but my hangup is essentially that we don't call Alien Soldier a "Sega Channel game", despite that being the only way to get it in North America when it was released. I don't think "Nintendo Wii Light Gun" should qualify as its own platform. They're just Wii games. You might as well include Nintendo Wii Steering Wheel games as a separate platform at that point. I'm not a big fan of including emulators as their own platform either. I know people do that, but it's essentially for organizational purposes. This is what "scrape as" is for. You can separate, name, and organize them however you want in your own library without the need to make entirely separate platforms in the db. I think the inclusion of emulators and "collections" just really muddles things a lot. In my opinion, the platforms should only be for literal game platforms - not "here's some stuff that's actually something else but we're lumping them together because of [insert] reason." Overall, really great list that I can tell you spent a lot of time on. There's a lot of stuff on there I've never even heard of. Hats off!

@Nyny77 Those are from the pack I made The first one there is Neuromancer the others are Razorgirl Molly. You can find them here:

FYI you can use relative paths in AHK scripts too, and I believe they're relative from AHK's location. So if you had the script in the same directory it should just be: Run, Autohotkey.exe RunAfter.ahk If you had it elsewhere on the same drive it'd be ..\..\scripts\ or whatever.

I definitely think there needs to be some kind of Retro Achievements friend integration. Half the fun of achievements is comparing them with other people in your friends list. If you could hover over specific achievements and see something like "Earned by blahblah" (pulled from other people in your friends list) that'd be cool too, though some way to do some kind of score comparison (per-game and overall) at the very least would be appreciated.

Uhhh... yeah that's a pretty big deal if that's the case. I use -c for quite a few platforms. Any time you have one core that you're using for multiple platforms (like Genesis Plus GX for Genesis/MS/CD etc.) you'll need separate configs if you want them to have separate overlays/shaders/whatever per platform, which you're specifying with -c "config\[name].cfg".

Yeah, that's why. Without specifying a specific exe to use in the script, it would just use whatever your standard Windows association is.

Yeah, you would have to have AHK standalone installed + have .ahk files have a launch association with it (which should be default once it's installed) and it should work. It would be like just double-clicking on the .ahk file.

I'll just copy this from the notes I have on the site: "I'm using the DOS version of the emulator CCS64 for this. Why use a nearly 20-year-old emulator in a DOS emulator for some kind of weird emulation-Inception madness? Well, because CCS64 has an extremely handy feature called Maximum 1541 Speed which is essentially an auto-warp (fast forward) feature that automatically starts when it detects data is being read (loading) and then automatically turns off once it's complete. There are quite a few good emulators out there for C64 emulation like Hoxs64, Vice, and micro64, but none that I've ever tried (and I've tried many) have had this specific feature, and I can't overstate how useful it is. If you have any familiarity with the C64, you'll know that by far the worst part of the experience is the load times, and this does an excellent job of mitigating that. Why use the DOS version? Because, frankly, the newer versions have a number of issues on modern versions of Windows (pretty much everything beyond XP) that simply aren't present in the DOS version in DOSBox. With DOSBox Daum I can force a specific vsync rate of 50.125hz (the refresh rate of the C64) and use the excellent mapper function to add lots of useful functions to the controller, like joystick port swapping, making certain buttons send commonly used keys like spacebar, etc. Believe me, there are significantly simpler and less time-consuming options that I could have gone with - I went this route because I thought it was the best experience overall."

I use a USB Dongle with my XB1 controller and it works with that, but I've been told that AHK doesn't recognize inputs over bluetooth, so that's likely the issue. That said, you can still use a bluetooth controller if you go through the admittedly rather convoluted route of using DOSBox to run the DOS version of CCS64 and using DOSBox's own built-in mapper function rather than AHK for remapping. I've actually started converting my stuff over to that format for other reasons - I actually prefer the DOS version of CCS64 for a few reasons - but it requires some extra work, done one at a time per game. I do still use AHK in the specific scenario of multi-disk games to handle the disk switching, but otherwise it's just using DOSBox. I use a .bat for each game to start DOSBox + a specific .conf which is then directed to the rom. Each game is divided into its own folder, so you have a folder for the game, which contains a .bat a .conf and a rom. You start the bat and it does the rest. If you want an example of this, I have a curated collection of games that use this format on my website, and there's an import-only version which can be imported into existing LB libraries. I've been in the process of converting my entire library of C64 stuff over to this format, but it's a time-consuming process.

They're not mutually exclusive. I didn't say it wasn't useful. What I'm saying is that if the option for development is this or say the "pause menu", one sells licenses and the other doesn't. There are small, practical application improvements that I've requested literally years ago that haven't been implemented. Jason's just one guy, and just because something's a priority for you or I it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best place to prioritize that one guy's efforts. I'm telling you from experience that you shouldn't expect something like this to be implemented with any particular alacrity. It might be put in tomorrow or it might be a year from now. So with that in mind, you might want to try one of the suggested solutions before waiting it out.

Excellent! And yeah, I just took a closer look and it's definitely the font size that's throwing me off. It seems way too large to me, at least compared to what I'm used to. I assume this will eventually be adjustable like in normal LB though. Add in adjustable box sizes/spacing and I'll be mostly set. I didn't realize you could change those until a few months back and now I can't go back haha Also, I think you're probably already aware of this, but I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread - platform categories are not in the correct alphabetical order in Next.

Yeah, I think I prefer it the new way as well. That's just me though. Going all the way to the right and bottom does have the advantage of displaying (slightly) larger images/more text at once. Will the width be adjustable like it is in normal LB (maybe it is already and I haven't noticed)?

I know Monkus is gonna fuss but I think I like it the way it is now as opposed to all the way to the top and bottom Probably need to stew over it some more, though. I almost want to say that if you're going to have the gap at the bottom that it should be the same distance in the gap at the top, not a huge deal for me either way though. The only thing I've noticed that seems a little off is the text in the description box... I'm not sure what it is about it. I'm not sure if it's slightly bolder, slightly larger/different font or something but it looks different to me. I'll do a side by side tonight to see what it is, but something about it looks a little weird to me. Will there be an adjustable transparency setting for the details bar? I think that might be a good idea.

You could do this via the additional apps function by adding an .ahk file as the app and then checking the box to "automatically run after main application". This will make whatever program/script/thing you specify run once the game has closed. You can't currently edit additional apps en masse though (although this is on the to-do list) so this would only be on a per-game basis. The problem that you're running into here is that AHK within LB ends as soon as the program that was started/launched ends. It's not like a normal external AHK script which only ends when you tell it to. In other words, it's not persistent once the launched program has ended, so it can't do anything further (like use a WinWaitClose function) at that point. You'd have to make your own (external) script that would do what you wanted, like launching a specific emulator etc. and include a WinWaitClose section to do what you want once the application closes, and then set that script as the "emulator". I think a per-emulator-entry "automatically launch before/after" function would be nice, but it hasn't happened yet (and I wouldn't expect something this niche to be particularly high priority, honestly). That said, @jayjay's answer should work as well, and would likely be the easiest solution.

Nope. Nope, although you can have the name changed if you wish, by emailing the request to support@unbrokensoftware.com I'm not sure what this means. I don't think there's a way to do this, although you can also use the arrow keys, a controller, or letters on the keyboard to jump to specific letters. I don't think so. You can change spacing between *boxes* but not that. I'm not sure what you mean here. It should already be in alphabetical order by default. lol Google translate error there or something. All of this said, Next is still in development and there's a chance that any/all of this will change once that's done. Anyway, welcome to the community!

I'm pretty sure this is because of a core option setting (Quick Menu -> Options). It's probably either the renderer setting or one of the optional things like PGXP settings. I have the bios on for PSX (a few games actually don't work correctly if you have it turned off) and it plays normally, but I play with Renderer=Software and Scaling=1 as this is the most accurate. As soon as you change renderers and start adding in the optional stuff, accuracy is going to drop - more or less depending on the title.

JoyToKey and Controller Companion are both good but one problem with those which may or may not matter to you is that they don't work via Steam Link / Steam In-Home Streaming. As a matter of fact, Winvice and Hoxs64 themselves don't work via Steam Link / In-Home Streaming either. CCS64 and AHK scripts in LB do.

I use CCS64 in combination with AHK to add functions to the controller.

I really don't recommend using TOSEC for C64 as there is a metric boatload of bad dumps in there. A lot of games will have like 6 or 7 dumps available and there might be one or two good ones among them. Gamebase64 is normally a safe bet, with one version each, with the best or at the very least a working version of them.

One other thing that's worth mentioning is that the Maximum 1541 Speed feature isn't going to do anything for you if you're using .tap files. Those are tapes, which Max 1541 Speed doesn't have any bearing on. 1541 refers to the 1541 floppy diskette drive, and only impacts disk formats. .d64 is the format I recommend.

What DOS said is correct, although that won't help with the ones that are getting renamed with Bulk Rename Utility since it'd be more than just the extension that's getting changed. Removing them from your library and then reimporting would probably be easiest. As long as your files are named pretty coherently you should be able to get them to match up with your previously downloaded media.

The second point is particularly important as they won't work otherwise. They'll work if loaded within CCS itself, but not through LB. For whatever reason, special characters cause issues for CCS64 when launched through LB. CCS64 doesn't support compressed formats like zip, it may or may not work with LB's extract function, but I don't use that personally - mine are all extracted. It's not like the files are large anyway.

I would suggest 1) unzipping your games 2) renaming them if they have special characters like commas, parenthesis, brackets, plus or minus signs etc.