Lordmonkus

Ok once you get the error message post what it is but for now my first guess is that it is a Visual C runtime error. I say that is my first guess because I just recently installed Windows 10 on my main gaming system and ran into that issue and had to install the 2015 version of Visual C++.

Any rom set should work as long as the Mame version you are using supports the roms in said rom set. There is nothing in Launchbox preventing this, though a change in the way Mame and its roms are handled may mean changes in how games are loaded. If you are going to use Retroarch with the Mame core and you using an up to date romset you should use the Mame core simply named Mame (no year after it). With the core loaded it should say in the bottom right hand core which version of Mame it is built on.

Well perhaps we can help you with getting Retroarch working. If you can start by giving us more details beyond "it just crashes" that would be good. Is it crashing when you load it ? Is it crashing when you try and load a game ? Does it give you some sort of error message ? Is it crashing with a specific core ? Also more details on your system would help as well like are you using a 32 or 64 bit version of Windows ? Many of us here use Retroarch on a variety of hardware because we feel it is the best overall package of emulation quality and usability and adds a lot of extra features that stand alones just don't offer. I have also done a tutorial for people new to Retroarch if you want to look that over.

So you need to load the emulator first and then once it is loaded it needs to load the rom ? If this is the case then the emulator itself would need to be allow a command line passed to it to load a game which in my experience is not doable. It may be possible but I have never seen it done. Now of course this leads me to ask the question of why are you trying to avoid Retroarch ?

Controls are still setup on a "per machine" basis for consoles and computer systems.

If you don't care about shaders and don't need a GPU something like this refurbished system from Newegg.com is pretty damn nice for the price. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883282495

You should be able to pick up or build something for that sort of budget. I use an old computer that was my parents old machine that is now about 10 years old. It has an AMD FX CPU @ 2.4 GHz, 2 Gigs of Ram and I threw an old graphics card I had in it (Radeon 7850 1 Gig DDR5 vram). If you want to use shaders in Mame or Retroarch to replicate scanlines you will want a semi decnt GPU like the one I put in the old PC. If you don't care about shaders at all then you do not need anything special at all for a video card. Mainly for specs I would look for something that has as close to a 3 GHz CPU as possible, 4 gigs of ram and enough hard drive space to hold all your games. Graphics card is optional like I said above.

First question what is your budget ? What are you willing to spend ? Second question would be what sort of stuff are you wanting to emulate ? Is it just arcade and console up to PS1 or are you wanting to do Gamecube / Wii, PS2 and maybe some of the newer stuff coming like Wii U ?

Kodi with Ember Media Manager to handle the scraping is the way to go.

Jason does on occasion do this, usually a Black Friday sale.

There is only one person you would need to convince to offer a compatible version of Launchbox for Windows XP or Vista and that would be Jason himself. If I had a vote in it I would most certainly vote yes for the support. When I put together my shitty low powered HTPC I would have much preferred to have Windows XP on it but I wanted Launchbox so I opted for Windows 7 and it's running just fine. I suggest making a ticket for it using the Issues / Requests link above and then make a post asking for votes for it. I will give my vote for it.

Unfortunately right now for controllers you can either have a single controller or all controllers. I have asked @Jason Carr to allow you to choose which controllers can be used. I have the same problem with auto scrolling because of a flight stick I have connected. As for your second question, I don't think there is a way to turn that off but I may be wrong. I had a look and couldn't find a way, doesn't mean I didn't just miss it though.

A light version for Windows XP would be awesome. Strip out the theme and playlist support unless that is something super easy to keep in.

Windows XP was actually very good for its day. It was a huge step up from the Win9x kernel being the first version of the NT kernel for home users (Win2k was great but not meant for home users). Vista was a downgrade from XP making it slow, ugly and annoying to use. I didn't upgrade from XP until extremely late into Windows 7s lifespan. If I had any control (and I don't) I would love to see Jason build in some sort of support for Windows XP or even make a more stripped down version of Launchbox for XP since it still a great OS for a simple Mame only cabinet. This is just my opinion though.

Welcome.

The best results I have had come from using the Mupen64plus core in Retroarch which uses the GlideN64 plugin built into it. There is a bit of a weird history with this core. It was first called the Mupen64 core and was based off the stand alone version of Mupen. Then came the Glupen64 core but then for reasons which don't matter to us the end user they took the old Mupen64 core and rolled that into the Parallel core which was the Vulkan renderer core and renamed the Glupen64 to Mupen64plus. Long story short, in the latest releases of Retroarch and cores the best is to use the Mupen64plus core. There is no perfect or even anywhere near perfect N64 emulator yet so your results may vary depending on the game you are trying to play.

Personally I use the split roms set, this allows for more flexibility to pick exactly which version of a game gets loaded. The differences are listed at the end of the guide on the first page. As far as CHDs go, I do not use them but they are needed for certain games. CHDs are hard drive images that some arcade cabinets had in them for video and audio files that were too large to fit onto a chip.

You probably have not set your rompaths for Mame. Here is a tutorial I did for Mame setup for people new to Mame.

I see what's going on, or at least what it looks like. You aren't pointing to Mame but rather the downloaded self extracting zip file. When you try and run the game it's running the exe and it's in turn trying to extract the program. You need to run the mame.exe to extract it to where you want it installed to.

Your system is probably fast enough, but off the top of my head I am not sure what would be causing that issue.

If we could see the details for your Mame emulator in Launchbox that would be really helpful.

Like I was saying previously in this thread, when you hit Tab and bring up the menu right at the top you should see Input (General) and Input (Machine). The settings in the General section are global but can be overridden by changing them in the Machine section. When I am setting up Mame on my computers I set up my global controls in the General section first and then on per game basis I will do the Machine. Setting the Coin and Start in the General section will make that the same for every game. As for your question about games speeding up or stopping I have no idea though my first guesses would be either the game is somehow not properly emulated, your system may not be fast enough for it or maybe you have something else weird going on. Without more details I just don't know.

Do you have Mame set up as an emulator in Launchbox and is it set to be associated with the Arcade platform ?

I will tag @Jason Carr for this so he can take whatever action he wants to with this issue.

Yeah the Mame core is actually reasonable to use now for arcade. I have not touched it for Mess stuff though but I am sure it's still horse shit to setup.