fromlostdays

No problem. Sorry I can't be more helpful, but I can say always expect bugs. I get some of the behavior you mention JUST using Big Picture. Can't tell you how many times I'd closed a game in Big Picture only to have it refocus to black screen and then having to mouse to it to get it to grab focus back and be able to use my controller again.

Some subsequent information since I don't feel like I was helpful at all. Steam has a "desktop profile" that will run controller keybinds for you when you're on your desktop. I mention this because Controller Companion is great but its also yet another thing running at the same time. If you want a shot at the smoothest experience possible while having both open, you're going to want the least amount running in the background as possible, and especially any kind of programs that pull screen focus or messes with inputs. I'd bet you would also benefit from learning some rudimentary autohotkey (or someone in the forums could help if you ask specific questions), like scripts to auto focus Bigbox or Steam at certain times, maybe even freezing them while in game. Also, experiment with Big Picture in Full Screen / Windows mode to see which gives better results.

I have a similar mindset at least although I never imported one into the other. I just use them for different things. I use Bigbox when I want to scroll a massive library and find a game, and I used Steam Rom Manager to import my favorite roms into Steam and use Big Picture when I know exactly what I want to play, but that's probably part of the issue, both programs are front ends. I don't know too much about how it all works, but it makes sense they would compete for the same things (like controller input, focus on the screen etc.) So my inclination is to say this is a unicorn, especially considering how Steam Big Picture handles its overlay. There is a middle ground, which is this: This third party plugin for LB/BB basically launches any game in your LB/BB build through Steam. It gives you all the functionality of the steam overlay for all your retro games without having to import any Non Steam Games into Steam. The Dev is awesome, but unfortunately, Steam tends to break it and you wind up having to wait for the dev to figure out how to fix it. So while it's an ideal solution, it's not a perfect one.

Follow up information: The first thing you should know is breathe easy, it'll work either way for PS2 (not PSP fair warning). Apparently the emulator can account for both compression types because PCSX2 is awesome and this is just another reason why. However, technically, you should use createdvd on DVD titles and createcd on CD titles like JoeViking said. Theres an easy way to tell which you should use, and its by the file extension of the uncompressed rom. If its .iso = use createdvd .bin = use createcd That said, if I had already compressed my games to chd, I wouldn't worry about it. Hope it helps!

Nerco! So my ps2 games are all currently in .gz. I want to convert them to .chd. However, having just gone through this process with PSP games and learning that there is a huge difference between "createcd" and "createdvd" when compressing psp games (createcd causes the emulator to error), I'm wondering which of these options I should use for my PS2 games?

Good day! So my main launchbox build is getting up there in years. 🤣It's a massive build in terms of games, media etc. In fact, I bought a 1 terabyte M.2 drive just for launchbox and it's only got a couple hundred gigs of space left (I store my games seperately). I know a good chunk of that space is actually taken up by emulators. Everything from storing bezels, DLC files, necessary (and unnecessary emulator files). Anyway I'm getting to the point where I'm wanting to go in and clean out as many unnecessary files as I can. So, just regarding launchbox's program files, are there any I can trim? Caches? Like I said, this install is old (from back when launchbox just did DOS and updated over the years) and it's been accumulating files the entire time. For instance, just my launchbox/backups folder is almost 8 gigs. So, thought it would be interesting to figure out how to bring youth back to older installs by trimming some (if any) bloat? Any suggestions? EDIT: I'm aware of the tools launchbox has to clean up media, I'm talking strictly program files. Thanks!

So when launchbox passes the rom to mame to launch, mame is looking at the roms folder as set in the mame config. In my case that folder is on an external drive, and the config reflects that, but it's getting confused cause in that folder is a bunch of individual folders, and the command line is addressing that across the board? Nice. Oh, you got jokes. I never use retroarch for arcade either, it's just going to bother me that it doesn't work, but now, I'm maining retroarch playa. I'll let you know how to get it working. 💪 EDIT: Switching from the mame core to the fbneo core in RA fixed it, no additional steps required. Can't say why, but the mame core just doesn't seem to like trying to run non merged roms at the moment.

I've been on this kick to set all mame roms in individual folders named after the game, don't ask why its an obsessive compulsive thing. I'll worry about the finer details of updating the set later since I only update mame every few years. Anyway... I'm using the most recent non merged set and ran into this same problem which is how I wound up here. This worked great by the way, and thank you, but I was wondering if you could explain WHY this works a little more conceptually to me? Is it that whatever launchbox is telling mame on launch has mame defaulting to looking for the files in other zips? What's going on here? Lastly, is there a way to make the games work in Retroarch the same way, as it is having the same problem and I want to keep as many emulators working as possible. Thanks!

Currently at 74,000, but still less than 8 TBs of space. Handpicked for bigger disk systems, lots of 1g1r sets, all hacks, translated, etc. versions imported as additional apps to the main game, but with a lot of the mame software list imported. Collection very much has duplicate games across systems. A few of the older PC systems imported I haven't been able to get working. So, I can't say the entire collection works, but just to give an idea. I see people talking about 16 plus terabytes and I'm assuming they are doing full lists for PS2 and up.

Another option is to get a wrapper program. Steam and last time I checked a while ago DS4Windows both basically turn a PS controller into an Xbox controller (native xinput), which is better supported in general than what I'm guessing is Dinput for Playstation controllers.

To simplify this, think of Launchbox as "path to emulator, path to rom". It's just the front end. The way I use Launchbox is to have it memorize the "path to rom" to my individual rom folders. Emulators typically (retroarch aside) don't try to act like a front end, and when launching a game from within the emulator you often have to manually put in the path with some exceptions. That said, the way I have everything setup requires 2 elements: The organization of roms etc. into folders (for which I used a small program called File2Folders and a program called Bulk Rename Utility to accomplish) The saving of screenshots/save files into content directory (which is emulator specific) I'm being careful with my words because I set all of this up a long time ago and things may have changed, and also because there's a thousand different emulators out there, but lets take Dolphin for example. Dolphin saves gamecube saves into a virtual "memory card". You can change the default location of that memory card, but as far as I know, there's no way to set it to save an individual per game memory card into content directory. In other words the second element of my setup doesn't work for all systems. It will, however, work for all systems for which you use Retroarch. Retroarch lets you control where saves / screenshots etc. are dumped, and you can tell it to dump them in the content directory. Some emulators naturally dump this stuff into content directory, and some don't. The content directory for me isn't "Nintendo Entertainment System" continuing the above example. The content directory is "Super Mario 2" folder in the Nintendo Entertainment System folder, so everything works. I'm not exactly sure I'm addressing your question, so let me know if I'm not understanding you, and if I have, hope this helps. I think what you're ultimately asking is do I set this up through launchbox, and the answer is no. Beyond importing the roms, the screenshot and save file paths have to be set in each emulator.

This is probably more complicated than what I'm about to say considering the color change on the controller, but sometimes when an emulator closes it looks like bigbox is in the foreground, but its not. In other words, try to replicate this issue, and instead of restarting your controller, just click bigbox once with your mouse (to bring it to the foreground), then try the controller. This isn't a solution, but it'll help determine what the actual problem is, and what it isn't.