[demul loads fine in launcbox desktop, but not in bigbox]

Noted if I ever see that question again haha. I'm glad you got it sorted out!

[demul loads fine in launcbox desktop, but not in bigbox]

Hrmmm. I notice that you're using the "launch with" option to launch the game. What happens if you just double click the game? I'm asking because I also see you have more than one instance of demul. Are you sure the games are set to launch with the same version? 

[demul loads fine in launcbox desktop, but not in bigbox]

This is baffling because BigBox uses the same settings, paths etc. to launch games that Launchbox uses. What you're describing should be impossible. If it launches in Launchbox, it should launch in Bigbox. The only thing I can even wildly guess at here (I don't use demul) but some emulators like PCSX2 have two windows going when emulating, one for the emulator, one for the game. Maybe the actual game window is getting hidden behind BigBox? 

[My collection - 200 systems]

Were the other files loaded as additional apps?

Edit: Also I'm about to do this on my big build as well as all the paths of my games have changed slightly. How did you go about re-adding without re-downloading art? Just delete entries in Launchbox, re-add games and don't click on any art to download? 

[Launchbox will not run Retroarch game]

Be assured Launchbox runs Retroarch just fine, you should be using the most recent version of RA, there's no reason to use an older one. Do me a favor and take two screenshots:

Launchbox/Tools/Manage Emulators/Retroarch then screenshot the "Details" tab and the "Associated Platforms" tab.

Once I see the problem it shouldn't take long to fix at all, especially if you're able to launch games through Retroarch standalone.

Also, what is Retroarch portable?

 

[Why do version numbers in names confuse LB so much?]

Alternately, I can't live without a program called Bulk Rename Utility. Unsung hero of rom renaming imo. It takes a little bit of getting used to but if you just think of it like a text editor that edits all filenames in a folder, instead of text, it's not all that unintuitive.

For "Fly Harder v1.00"

You can use the Find/Replace box to:

Find: v1

Replace with: (v1

Fly Hard (v1.00

This will also target every other file in the folder that has v1 in the title.

Then use the Prefix and Suffice Box to add:

Suffix: )

Fly Hard (v1.00)

This will target every file in the folder.

Note: if there are files without version numbers in the set, you can just use a windows search for "v1" and move all the files with version numbers to a separate folder real quick, use Bulk Rename Utility to fix them, and when finished just put them all back. If you don't, the first change will only target files in which "v1" exists, but the suffix ) will get applied to all files. There are ways to have it target only specific files in a folder but a quick directory move is the simplest and quickest way to target only specific files.

Done for the whole set in less than 10 seconds. If there are versions 2, 3 ,4 etc. just run the find replace 4 times and change the numbers to v2, v3, v4 etc.

Edit: just a quick warning though, the program does exactly what you tell it to do. So if you don't uncheck the suffice box for instance and keep running it for all the version numbers you would wind up with

Fly Hard (v1.00)))

You can undo your last move but that's it. So when you're learning, best to take it slow. Having said that, if you make a mistake, you can usually just use the same program to fix it  So in the above example

Find: )))

Replace with: ) 

Hope it helps!

[Launchbox will not run Retroarch game]

First, can you launch the games through Retroarch without launchbox. I don't do a lot of sega saturn but I use the psx hardware core with no problems. My guess is that it won't launch games through retroarch probably because you didn't put the bios, or the right bios, files in the retroarch/system folder. 

[Having game names like Puck-man and Gryzor instead of Pac-Man and Contra]

You can (you're not changing the reigion directly, you're changing the Launchbox ID number). Right click on the game, and click "Edit". In the top of the window you should see a launchbox ID number in blue. X that number out, and that space will turn into a button called "Search for Metadata". It will search according to the title. I just tried it, you should be able to delete the title Gryzor and change it to "Contra" and select the contra arcade. That will give it a new Launchbox ID number, which is the number that tells LB which media to download, so you can then go to the bottom of the edit page where it says download media. You might want to delete the other media first.

[Possible to change/set image for multiple games?]

I don't know of any direct answer to your question. Except copying the box and renaming it over and over for each entry, I don't think there is a way to do what you're wanting to do. You can set up 1 default box image per system, but that doesn't really seem to help you. However, if you import the hacks into their own system, and create just a generic "Hacks" box, it would look better for all the hacks.

Alternately, if you set up all the hacks as additional apps to the main game, then you can launch them just fine via LB and BigBox and not have to worry about the art, or list clutter. Just a suggestion, its how I handle hacks and I'm really happy with it. If you want to go that route, it's pretty quick and easy to do.  

[network drive error - Directory could not be created error]

Curious, I went ahead and checked the size of my video folder in my full build. That includes 150ish systems, and 80isk games, however, obviously videos don't exist for every game. Also note that I downloaded some bigger videos for steam games directly from youtube, playlist videos, a few alternate sets for platform videos etc.:

Video Folder:

Total: 160 Gigs

Files 24,746

For perspective, Nintendo Entertainment System video folder:

Total 9.5 Gigs

Files 1099 (That includes over 200 theme videos)

Theres so many files in the images folder I don't feel like waiting for it to calculate size haha, but its pretty negligible in comparison. The other space heavy assets are definitely music and manuals with manuals taking second place.

Could not have been more wrong about the images! I let it sit for about 15 minutes.

Images folder:

Total size: 132 gigs

Total files 412,933

Music

15 gigs

Manuals

30 gigs.

Bear in mind that I downloaded everything, never unchecked a box on import. Nor have I run the images cleanup function.

So with all of those systems and games, and with zero curating on media, looks to be about 337 gigs of total media.

Hope it helps!

Another thing to think about is how the lions share of all of this media was automatically available to me via automatic download, automatic sorting and naming with the just the price of launchbox and an emumovies sub. That's one hell of selling point, and cheers to the people who helped build the LB database.   

[Having game names like Puck-man and Gryzor instead of Pac-Man and Contra]

Lagniappe: 

"And of course, the game was originally called Puck-Man, but the name was changed for America because someone might vandalize the “P” and turn it into an “F.” Yes, the U.S. subsidiary said that that would be bad. We wondered, what should we do? And decided to change it to “Pac.” Then, after the American version came out with the “Pac” spelling, we used that for the entire world."

[Steam stops my controller from working with launchbox, retroarch and big box]

Have you installed an Xinput Wrapper?

I don't think Steam acts as an Xinput Wrapper. Basically it turns your DS4 into a Steam Controller. That shouldn't break Bigbox, as I'm pretty sure Bigbox supports Dinput and Xinput. However, in Retroarch, my guess is that when steam takes control of the controller, you would have to navigate to retroarch settings/input and change the controller type.

Wrapping the controller to Xinput should solve the problem, as hopefully Steam and everything else will see it as an Xbox Controller, which works seamlessly with all of the above, butttt... you will lose some of the DS4 functionality... like the touchpad and gyro.  

  

[Joy2Key or RocketLauncher Needed anymore?]

You could use a keymapper for any emulator that doesn't support a controller, or if you want to get more fancy/complicated with your controller bindings. For instance, I use Rewasd for some DOS games, and I also have a "Desktop" profile on it so I can use the controller to start up BigBox etc. But at this point, and especially with Retroarch covering so many systems, keymappers are becoming much less needed.

Rocketlauncher won't provide much extra functionality either. I stopped using it a while ago. At this point it's really just for people who want extreme customization on stuff like fades, bezels and the Pause menu, or if you ever find yourself wanting to put a bezel/overlay on an emulator that doesn't support it natively.

I were building for the first time, I wouldn't anticipate any needs from either, and if I ran into something obscure I wanted to do with the controller or with some art, I might look to see if a keymapper or rocketlauncher could do it at that point, but that's pretty much it.    

[My collection - 200 systems]

I'm with you McFly! If I wanted to collect just the games I'd play I'd have stopped years ago!

My solution has been to have 2 LB/BB builds. One, small with just the games I play, the second is a monster with over 100k, and yes I import regional clones and games that don't work. Depending on what mood I'm in I either fire up the smaller build and play games, or just spend the evening tinkering with the monster. ?

My latest obsession has been to redo my rom sets in such a way that:

Each Unique Rom has its own folder (USA preferred, which is actually the hard part) and of course regional exclusives

Within each of those folders, all of the regional clones, translations hacks, etc. all named identically to the rom with the exception of whats in the parathesis

 

Hypothetical Example:

Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Mario World/ Super Mario World (USA).sfc

Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Mario World/ Super Mario World (USA) (Rev 1).sfc

Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Mario World/ Super Mario World (Japan).sfc

Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Mario World/ Super Mario World (Japan) (Translated English).sfc

Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Mario World/ Super Mario World (Extra Levels) (Hack).sfc

 

Theres no real reason to keep all of these versions, especially a translation of a Japanese version back to English, but I do. Redoing the rom sets like this makes it an absolute dream to import sets into Launchbox as every version but the USA version will automatically be saved as an additional app, and for games like Contra, which is VERY different in the European version for instance, make for a great showcase to friends. However, renaming all the hacks, and finding and renaming Japanese titles to the USA titles has been quite a challenge.

Anyway, keep on keeping on homie! You're certainly not alone in the Pokemon approach to retrogaming haha

 

[MAME Bezels....]

You have a few options, and maybe a few more I don't know about.

1: The best option would be if you can configure mame to do this. Alas, I don't know if this is possible, though I do suspect it is. I'm just not sure how.

2: Use Retroarch, as you can apply a per core bezel that will always show up, and then the rest of the bezels per game. The problem here is that it doesn't save you much time as you'll still have to apply the game bezels per game.

3: Rocketlauncher is a program that helps you control the actual launch of games, and you can configure Bezels per game and per system. 

4: Make 1429 copies of the general Mame bezel and try to use a program like Fatmatch and/or Bulk Rename Utility to automatically change the names of the copies to the rom names, and then just put them in the right folder. Both of those programs will rely on you having a folder with only the roms you want to rename the bezels to, though.

5: Download Bezels for the missing games. There's a Bezels project, called The Bezel Project that is aiming to make a unique bezel for every game, including all the Mame games. https://github.com/thebezelproject/BezelProject You can look into this, though I think they will download in a format that is compatible with Retroarch. Also, the Hyperspin, Rocketlauncher, and especially Emumovies forums and FTPs are full of MAME Bezel sets. Also, there is a Mame artwork file released with I think every version of Mame and downloadable from the same places you can reputably download Mame sets. This might have most of the bezels ready to go. It may be a little work but at least at the end of all the effort you'll have unique bezels for your games instead of just managing to apply a system specific one.  So if 1 doesn't work, I'd recommend 5.

Hope it helps, and sorry I don't have a better answer to your specific question about Mame function!

Goodluck!

 

 

[Bigbox repeat platforms]

Guess here: Open launchbox and look under playlists to see if theres any playlist that has 17 games in it. IF so, right click it, and click Edit, go the parents tab and uncheck "root".

[Image Location Structure?]

One more thing: if you go to Launchbox/Tools/Options/Legacy/Images and click any art type, you'll see that by default launchbox has "backup" art categories clicked for certain categories... for instance

"Box Front"

Box Front

Box Front Reconstructed

Box 3D

Launchbox will look for an art file named after the game in each entry in order. So if all three of those are checked, it will look for a box front art in Images/System/Box Front, and if it doesn't find one it will then search the folder Box Front Reconstructed and then Box 3D etc. and it will display any image it finds there. If you want to have total control and really see any missing art, you may want to go into those options and uncheck everything else but the first box. 

 

[Image Location Structure?]

I know absolutely zero about themes beyond how to use them, but you can try this: 

Edit: I did some fiddling and I think most of the stuff you're asking about it in the themes xaml files which you can edit with notepad or wordpad. 

[Slow Big Box startup time]

Yeah that actually seems about right. Having a massive amount of games will slow it down more in my experience, but 15 - 20 is about right even for small builds. 

[Adding images to Launchbox]

For clarity lets say you have a set of boxart you downloaded somewhere. You can easily add that set to launchbox in bulk, by dropping the set into the images/[system name]/boxart folder, and then under tools tell launchbox to refresh all artwork. This is much faster than dragging the images into the launchbox ui.

But the images do have to be named right. "Right" is a little fuzzy here, because launchbox does a fuzzy match to find the art. You basically just want the gamename and set up like gamename-01.png/gamename-02.png as an example if you have multiple files for one entry.

You can use a program called Bulk Rename Editor to quickly rename all the art files in a folder. I recommend this program to everyone as I don't know how some people get by without it.  

I'm pretty sure most art sets come pretty close to the game name anyway, so you should be able to just drop the set in the appropriate images folder and call it a day. You may notice, after you refresh, that a few images haven't updated. There a few liberties people take with naming games and art. For instance:

Legend of Zelda, The - A Link to the Past 

vs.

The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the PAst

 If you run into this, you can just manually update the name of the art, or you can update the title of the game in launchbox.

Hope it helps. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[nintendo sufami turbo" how to you add this system?]

Scrape Sufami Turbo as Super Nintendo since it was an add-on. Pretty sure at least a few of the games are in the LB database.  

["Combine games" dialogue box too small]

You could try quickly changing the title of the main game, maybe just add an extra w to williams per the above screenshot, so you'll see which one is disk one in that list, select it, and then change it back after. I have not tried this but theoretically it should work. I can't imagine there are too many games with titles that long. You can/should also report the issue if I'm wrong about that.

Edit: I'm not an expert on disk changing, but from what I understand the emulator would probably handle that? Unless the emulator required you to launch straight into disk 2 or 3 etc. when the game is saved after a certain point, hiding the entries shouldn't be a problem. But, again, not an expert on that.  

[Console Metadata (Mega-Thread)]

Two for the Dendy: 

[Console Metadata (Mega-Thread)]

HyperScan:

 

 

[Console Metadata (Mega-Thread)]

Lviv PC-01: