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fromlostdays
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Rename Roms
in Noobs
Currently, no, but it wouldn't be recommended. Launchbox keeps important information like region in xml files, but, for a lot of people, it's important to keep that information in the title of the rom. Also, rom naming reflects the people who dumped the rom, and not all of them are created equal. So the naming of a rom tells you a lot more about it than the title. There are, however, a host of other programs that will let you rename your roms any way you like.
Clrmampro, Bulk Rename Utility, Don's Hyperspin Tools, and Fatmatch to name a few. One of the many great features in Launchbox though is that you don't have to go through the trouble of renaming, as Launchbox matches them to its database while leaving your rom title in tact.
If you have a specific question about renaming a specific set, just ask here and we'll help you out.
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Oh that's just the MAME nag screen. If you see that, the roms are working. You can download a "no nag" version of MAME right here on the launchbox website in the forums download section, if you don't want to see it. It has nothing to do with launchbox or how you launch the games.
MAME devs are very meticulous and this box pops up all the time on a lot of games. Doesn't mean they are unplayable. Just click passed it. If you notice sound is missing in place where you know it was before, it might be the particular version of the rom you're launching.
Starting over will not solve the nag screen. Again, the only thing you can do is download a version of mame that is compiled to suppress it. Look in the Third party Applications on the launchbox forums. There's a user there who makes versions of mame with this suppressed for every version of Mame that drops.
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Let me give you some general advice about how to get the most flash in launchbox with the least amount of artwork downloaded.
First, pick what you want your games to display per system. I say per system here, because not all art is created equal in this regard. Nintendo and Sega and popular systems typically have beautiful box art sets, even 3D box art sets, but the box art for MAME/Arcade is sized differently and generally doesn't look good (to me) displayed in Launchbox.
So pick one per system. My experience is that the most consistent art is clear logos (which I use for mame instead of box art).
Next, download Fan Art- Backgrounds. These will display as the background in launchbox when you select a game.
Stuff like screenshots will display in the details panel if you select a game, but its something you can skip. Reconstructed anything you can basically skip.
So we're talking one set of images to display per game, and the backgrounds. That would be maximum look with minimum download.
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That's actually pretty nifty looking!
To speak what I think is your general question, you could tell launchbox to only display box art for every system, or only clear logos or whatever you want. What's weird is that last screenshot looks identical to launchbox's options, only its called Image Group...
In this way, if you just wanted to download box art, or 3D box art, you could set all your systems to just display that. However, there are hundreds of systems, and not all have boxart (some don't have any art).
Things get a little more tricky if you ever want to use Bigbox though, as Art types are embedded in the themes there.
Edit: Since I personally don't use launchbox (prefer bigbox) for anything but set up, I keep mine in "List View" and that's why you don't see any artwork displayed for the games.
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16 minutes ago, Lunatics said:
Does this also apply to the free version? If it does then as a newbie I'd say there should be at least previewing of image type examples so users can know which is which and avoid downloading unwanted images since it takes way too much time to download images especially when you have large collection. By the way does LB use the same image for several categories or download and manage them individually?
It applies to free version.
You can preview images here on the database itself: https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com (but honestly, as said above, the descriptions are right there)
I don't think that launchbox uses the same image for several categories, but honestly I don't understand this question. I can't think of an example of where it would, except that if you have a game in a system and put it into a playlist, the playlist entry will use the same images as the system entry.
Lastly, if you originally meant to say that you shouldn't even get the option of the checkboxes on a per system basis, that wouldn't work because different systems use different type of artwork. Mame/Arcade uses fliers, Windows/Steam uses banners etc. Having the choice about what you download, every time, is optimal behavior.
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31 minutes ago, exp1orer said:
I went back into launchbox > Tools > Options > gamepad/joystick. I unchecked use all attached controllers. I then went back into Mame and was able to setup my coin and start buttons with Joy2 and joy3. Wierd.
I'm not sure about your last question, but I don't think this is intended behavior. I know I've played with multiple xbox one controllers in Mame, but I'll test this later to see if these results can be replicated.
A lot of emulators don't do constant checks for connected controllers, some steam games don't either, so for instance if you wait until a controller shuts down, then try to turn it on and play again it's unresponsive. Mame is like this. In other words, it's good practice to always have you controller(s) connected before you launch something. Bigbox and Retroarch are exceptions to this rule, and they will see the controller the second it's connected. However, that takes us to the above territory about stable IDs. I'm not sure about Bigbox, but in Retroarch for instance, if you connect a second controller mid session, it notoriously messes up the bindings. It seems to want to put the new controller in the first player spot, so the one you're already using becomes unresponsive etc.
Lastly, most of these problems stem from Windows itself, as Windows doesn't assign stable IDs to the controllers. I've been having these issues for years, to the point where I've basically given up on having 2 controllers connected. The only way I can see it working consistently is if both controllers are plugged in and on at all times and the computer never sleeps or shuts down. I know people who make actual cabinets often will have 2 joysticks, and I've tried to figure out how they do it, but from what I can gather it's only consistent in Mame.
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Love this theme! I am having an issue, though. When I select a game... I can't see the options to play etc. So if I scroll through NES, and then select a game, say BattleToads and Double Dragon, this is what I see:
I'm not sure what's relevant. 1920x1080 display, no dpi scaling.v 101 of the theme.
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I did this a long time ago for a different front end, and wound up undoing it for launchbox, but there might be a way to do this by separating the roms. You'll need a .dat file, or .xml file that has the systems listed separately. You can find those around the internet, but for stuff like atomiswave, zinc, sega model 2 & 3 you can use a Hyperlist xml.
I think Clrmamepro has the functionality. It's been a really long time, but what you can do is load the hyperlist xml, say for zinc, into clrmamepro, and then point that at your mame roms and tell the program to rebuild based on the xml at a different location (it should have to option to "copy" and maybe even to "move".) If you use copy, it'll copy just those roms to a different directory while leaving the original mame set in tact. If clrmamepro doesn't work, there are other programs that can do this too.
However, I don't know how up to date the hyperlists are.
The key elements here are a file that lists these systems individually in a usable format (.dat or .xml)
And a program that can move/copy/ or rebuild sets of which there is no shortage.
Hope it helps!
Edit: it should be noted that if you physically separate them, I have no idea how you would us clrmamepro to keep them up to date with future versions. For that reason, I recommend keeping your original mame set in tact. Lastly, sorry I can't be more specific. I went through the "rom" phase of my retro journey too many years ago haha. But a quick google search is your friend.
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Somewhat related question here. I've been using a split set since... I think 197. Rather keep updating the split set, a few weeks ago I deleted that set and just redownloaded a non-merged set .206 (I have two LB setsups, a full one with every game and a second one that I handpick so the non-merged seemed the best way to go). However, I had imported the split set completely on the first lb setup, and about 50 handpicked games on the second install. Perhaps luckily, all the games I handpicked launch fine, but I'm sure there's probably going to be some games in the entire set that don't. Is there a process to update/tell launchbox that I switched sets? Or do I even need to?
Thanks!
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Omg I'm such an idiot haha. Now I understand.
To anyone else having this problem, If you're like me it's user error. I misunderstood the directions, and thought you only had to run the batch file once. Now I get what you meant by saying "you can't set up an additional app per system". Meaning, you can't have the batch file start up automatically with every game unless you set it up as an additional app for every game which could take a while.
I was running the batch file and then closing it. Launchbox never did/does open with it for me but if I
1: run the batch file and just leave it running in the background
2: Open launchbox with the batch file still running in the background
ALL of the games launch fine from launchbox!
This was all just me misunderstanding the directions. Apologies and thanks for talking me through it @Retrofrogg
Edit:
"8. Run the batch file, start up Launchbox and enjoy the flash games!"
This is what I misunderstood, I thought this meant run the batch file once, the first time, and it would do some magic to launchbox and it never had to be opened again. ?
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1 hour ago, Dreamster said:
just use PSX2PSP to convert your multiple discs into a single eboot file, then you won't have to swap discs, the emulator will do it for you automatically.
I have not heard of this! I created m3u files for all my multidisk games, but this seems like a better solution altogether!
No performance hit? What emulators support eboot?
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I can't explain it except to say that maybe the place where the games are stored is failing to access sometimes? It would have made more sense for such a big download to have the swfs stored locally too. I'm not sure how the download is so big while still having the actual swfs on the net?
However, I tested a lot more games, and more work than I previously thought. Testing from #-A I'd say about 5 to 10 percent work. All of the applications paths and (I'm assuming the command lines) are correct on all the games. The ones that don't work just bring up a blank Adobe Flash Player 29 window.
The ones that do work, work instantly and consistently.
So maybe with so many games trying to access various websites, it's the websites themselves that are the problem? How many of these have you tested?
At any rate, I definitely appreciate you trying to help us sort this out. It's not a huge deal, since the games all work in the Flashpoint launcher. It's just perplexing. I don't remember if I opened launchbox the first time I ran that batch, but from my experience these two things could made clearer in the instructions:
1: Run the batch file from the flashpoint directory. (Not the launchbox directory)
2: The batch file reads like launchbox is supposed to open automatically, and then you close it and the file closes with it. I don't know if you can do this, but could be updated to say, leave this window open, then open launchbox, then close launchbox.
I'm not sure exactly how I screwed up, but it was one of those two steps.
Thanks!
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Thanks so much!
No, he was just a guy who used to be (maybe still is) in the scene, and his thing was getting really obscure systems up and running. I'm talking about stuff like ALF. Thanks again! Just when I think I'm finished (I have close to 100 individual systems) new stuff keeps popping up!
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Awesome collection! I'm just going to assume you're familiar with craiganderson for some of these systems haha.
I'd love to know what you're using to emulate the following systems:
apple i 4
banpresto 33
brezzasoft crystal system 3
coleco adam 1
coleco telstar 9
ibm 1945
infocom 337
magnavox odyssey 1
tesla pmd 85 26
(haven't even heard of some of them).
Thanks!
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Seems unlikely that the percent symbol is causing the issues, because on the original post one of the games that successfully imported has that symbol. But I definitely agree you should rename those roms first, or get another set.
Secondly, what method are you using for importing?
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Ok, lets get some more info:
So you had retroarch up and running. What systems were you using it for?
Then, you added a new system to launchbox, and suddenly ALL of your RA systems aren't working, or is it just the sytsem you added that isn't working? What system did you add?
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1 hour ago, Guwanges said:
It got to the point where I was very deliberate with every tap on the joystick, or used the mapped page-up/page-down button
Same. And I couldn't find any trigger that would cause it. For a while I tried to tie it down to bigbox maybe loading a bigger video size but it would be different games every scroll. Maybe some of it was your system, or exacerbated by it, because I just spent 5 minutes scrolling through all my platforms at various speeds and it didn't happen once. I can also fast scroll through all the games without it hitching at all. Of course, only time will really tell. You can try turning of all the transitions as well in Bigbox. I've actually come to think it looks better, cleaner without them. It might solve that box art problem you describe.
At any rate, this just keeps getting better for us controller/couch junkies!
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I noticed this as well. I spend a lot of time in bigbox, and for a long time there would quite consistently, say every 15 seconds, be just the slightest moment where my controller would become unresponsive. It's hard to describe, but it would be like click right on stick (bigbox moves) click right (bigbox moves) click right (nothing) sometimes maybe two consecutive clicks would not read in bigbox. And I'm not talking about fast clicking.
However, I didn't read the changelog in the last update, but this seems to have been fixed completely now. It's quite a small thing that makes a huge difference to the experience.
For the record, this problem would occur in my small launchbox build, I think about 700 games total, I turned of all transitions and use medium box art CriticalCids theme, put launchbox on a dedicated SSD, and my computer specs are:
i5-3570k 3.40 ghz
with a GTX 1060 6gigsram
with 16 gigs of total ram.
It did seem like an optimization issue, but it does seem to be ironed out now.
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Besides manually altering a theme to support it, the only way is to use a theme that already does. There is no embedded bigbox function for this, only the themes themselves.
I'm not sure how to alter themes or even if one exists that does this natively though.
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I'm not very familiar with ScummVM, but you can absolutely change emulators.
First, go to tools/emulators and setup your version of ScummVM in launchbox.
Then, right click the game and go to edit/emulation and choose ScummVM which will have it launching with scummvm instead of Dosbox. However, I'm not sure if those particular games and that particular emulator require any special setup. You might want to look around the forums for that.
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Heres one if you don't mind: It's a MAME arcade game called the Grid. Has a lot of art, but doesn't seem to have a logo:
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It's been my experience that every time this happens, you're simply not saving things correctly. My recommendation is to start from scratch.
RetroArch has levels of saves that will override each other.
The levels are Per Game>Per Directory>Per Core> Retroarch.cfg
What this means is that per game settings will override everything else, etc. all the way down the list. If this doesn't make sense to you, it means that your hard drive and retroarch are probably fine and you're just not saving things correctly. Don't get disheartened. It is a bit confusing.
What this means put simply is that you should work your way backwards through the above list. Save things to the retroarch config that you want to be the same across all cores and games. Saves thing per core you want to be the same across any game that uses the same core (and some cores emulate multiple systems). etc.
So how to do this?
Step one: TURN OFF SAVE ON EXIT.
You need to turn this off. Period. And as mentioned it's on by default. With this enabled, any changes you make automatically get saved when you exit the emulator and if you're just fiddling around it becomes impossible to keep track of everything. Turn this off by opening retroarch and going to Settings/Configurations/Save Config on Exit and click it off. IMPORTANT* once you turn this off, you'll need to save all changes manually, and that includes the one you just made turning it off. You're going to want this option off for all cores and games etc, so this brings us to step 2, which you will want to do before you close the emulator:
Step two: Saving changes to the RetroArch.cfg.
In order to save things to the Retroarch config, (this is the main config that will apply everywhere), you don't need a game loaded, just go to Menu/Save Configuration/Save Current Configuration. If you do this after you turn off Save Config On Exit, then it will be off for all cores etc.
Everything you save here will be applied to every game and core, so, actually you only want to save a few options here, and yours may be slightly different than mine depending on your preferences.
Things to save to the Retroarch config:
Save Config on Exit : Off
Controller Input and Hotkeys
Fullscreen / windowed
Things never to save to the retroarch.cfg
Shaders!!!! Now, I know I said multiple times that things saved to the RetroArch.cfg will apply to all cores and systems, but that isn't the whole truth. The whole truth is that things saved to the RetroArch.cfg will apply to all cores and games which do not have overrides applied to them. Remember the list above which tells us that basically everything will override the RetroArch.cfg? That brings us to the rest of the steps which I'll just condense into one
Step three: Saving things per core, per directory, or per game.
After we've saved those few settings to the main RA.cfg, we now have 3 deeper levels to work with. ALL of these levels are accessed the same way, and all of them will override the RA config. To save things in this way, you have to have a game loaded. When you do, go to Main Menu/Quick Menu/Overrides. Also note here that shades can be saved the same way by going to Main Menu/Quick Menu/Shaders only here they will be called presets. It's the same heirarchy and system at work.
If you save something per core, lets say a shader, that shader will be applied to every game that uses that core, and some cores emulate multiple systems.
If you save something per content directory, lets say a shader, that shader will applied to all the games in your rom directory, and won't apply to multiple systems even if the core emulates multiple systems.
If you save something per game, lets say a shader, the shader will only apply to that game.
That's basically it, at least, this is when you have to start really doing your own testing etc. Some systems (like NES for me) I can get away with using mostly per core overrides because I use Mesen, it only emulates nes, and most games don't need individual settings. So I like the same shaders for all NES games. However, for a system like Nintendo 64, I basically have to make per game configs for like every game. It's all in personal taste.
One last thing, lets say I saved a shader, sabr as a per core shader for nes. If I run into a game where sabr doesn't look good, I can still save a per game shader for that specific game and that will take priority over the per core shader. So just remember the list heirachy above and happy gaming!
OH, and all of this is contingent on you not using rocketlauncher. If you're using rocketlauncher to launch per system configs, the methodology is slightly different.
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I'll jump back in here. I also have everything on different hard drives. Roms (Flashpoint Launcher included) on R:, Launchbox on L:. No problems moving the xmls, no problem using find and replace to set the directory to the flash.exe. But, when I ran the batch file, it only popped up saying (Don't close this, Launchbox will open and this will close with that), but launchbox never opened and eventually I closed the batch.
Everything works fine when launching through the customer gui. But in launchbox, when I launch most games a flash window just comes up but no game is playing. I say most because for SOME weird reason, Deal or No Deal works fine through launchbox. haha.
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This is awesome, thanks!
Just to be clear, I'm a little confused about changing the application path. I think I get it, I just want to make sure.
For instance, it now reads:
<ApplicationPath>Games\flashplayer.exe</ApplicationPath>
I should change this to the absolute path to the exe? I keep my roms (in this case, transferred the whole flashpoint folder intact to the rom drive), so for me it would look like:
<ApplicationPath>R:\Flashpoint 5.3 Ultimate\Arcade\Games\flashplayer.exe</ApplicationPath>?
This isn't on my C drive, or the drive launchbox is on. Will this cause any problems?
More advanced question, is there any way to add games to this set? I've collected about 80 of my favorite swfs, and all of them are already in here except one. Desktop Tower Defense is in the set, but its the older version, while I have the newer version SWF. Previous to this I had the swf launching find through rocketlauncher, so I can just leave that entry in launchbox, but I'd prefer using the same source for everything if possible.
Thanks for any advice!
Rename Roms
in Noobs
Posted · Edited by fromlostdays
Try Fatmatch, I think it will do exactly what you're looking for. Its the only program I know of that will let you name files based on a fuzzy match of the names of other files.