fromlostdays

Oh wow. Yeah Launchbox should definitely not be changing the name of roms! Sorry, I was reading too quickly. That's definitely some kind of bug.

It adds the -1 because some media has more than one of the same type available. There might be 5 screenshots for a game so it will download: Screenshot-1.png Screenshot-2.png Etc. For use with Launchbox, there is no reason to delete this number, but the media will still work without it.

To answer your last question, not all games have media, or are even in the LB database. See below for explanation. It should be stated that importing "Rom Hacks" probably means 2 things: 1: The Hacks are named weird. They just usually are, and Launchbox does a fuzzy naming match but it only works so well. 2: There aren't all that many rom hacks in the database. I know there are a few well known ones, but there certainly isn't media for every NES hack. You're better off using a default art (say a box) and just use paint to add the word "Hack" as it'll be a uniform look. Lagniappe: If you want official nintendo box art for the game the rom is a hack of, you need to name it right. [Game Name] (Hack Name Region Etc.) all extra info should be in parenthesis. Example: Mario Bros. (Extra Levels) (Hack) (USA).nes Scraping this as NES will make sure Launchbox recognizes this as Mario Bros. and scape accordingly. Extra Extra info: You can use Bulk Rename Utility to rename all the hacks very quickly, but from my experience some hack names are really convoluted and some don't even have the game name that's hacked, so this can become a chore. If you do however, rename as above, instead of importing as a different system "Hacks" you can import all the hacks into your standard NES system and they will all automatically be setup as additional apps if you check the option for that. Turn "Force Duplicates" off if you go this route. I'd be willing to bet import is much slower when launchbox is struggling to make database matches because of the rom naming.

I've never used MAME for Sega Saturn either, and would also recommend switching, but I came across this in google: It seems like you may have to specify the correct region bios in the command line? (I have no idea how to do this) Because I don't use MAME, I'm not sure but I recall a few older Saturn Emulators required you to actually mount the disk (using something like daemon tools) before the emulator would run the game. I don't KNOW if Mame is like this, in fact I kinda doubt it, but it might be worth looking into.

Put everything where you intend to keep it and update the paths, etc. Then open launchbox, go to tools, manage emulators, double click Retroarch, and take a screenshot of both the "Details" and "Associated Platforms" tab, please. We'll see what we see.

Bump. There doesn't seem to be any documentation on how this is supposed to work or if any special steps beyond "Tick M3u Support in associated platforms". I deleted a game entry from launchbox, Chrono Cross, and went to import roms / import files and scanned my Chrono Cross folder for "cue". It found both cues (for disk 1 and 2), and so I imported like normal. Imported disc 2 as additional app. No m3u either in the folder with the cues and bins, or in launchbox/games. I tried again turning "combine matching games with a single title" off thinking that might have messed it up. It imported both discs (as expected), but generated no m3u. This was all with my roms on an external so I: Switched to my smaller build, and put the bins and cues in launchbox/games folder and repeated the above. Still no joy. Then I realized I was using the psx hardware core, thought maybe that one wasn't in the support list... changed to the regular beetle psx core. No change.

You're going to have to be a lot more specific. What games, what emulators etc.

I agree Retrolust's bezels look awesome. But yeah there's no magical shortcut (as far as I know, but thats not saying much). You'll have to apply per core at least, and then per game. I used The Bezel Project on my big build, which admittedly doesn't get as much testing so I haven't noticed. It would be interesting to try and reverse engineer how they accomplish having all the bezels automatically display, even with errors, as just putting the configs in a folder isn't enough. If you knew that, might be able to modify it to fit your purposes. I'm just not that smart haha.

If you need to alter your screen, you only have to do it once (not necessarily an autofit but you can apply it to all your games at the same time), as you can make the changes and save them to the main retroarch.cfg (will affect all games), or a per core config (will affect all games that use that core), or a per game config. It looks like that bezel pack looks amazing, but will require you to manually edit the video screen and probably add a shader for the curve. In terms of arcades, many bezel packs are 16:9 with 4:3 empty space in the middle so the screen will just naturally fit. I recommend looking for The Bezel Project as its the only resource I know of that will provide per game configs along with the bezels which makes them hands free, no setup on a per game level. In terms of setting up the bezels you have, you can do this the same as noted above (per retroarch.cfg all games, per core, or per game). So if they are system bezels, you can just load up a game with the core (any game), manually select the bezel and do any adjustments as needed, and then under quick menu select "Save per core config" and those settings will apply to every game that uses that core.

I can't really help in MAME, but if windows recognizes each controller as a different controller, then in Retroarch you should only have to go into Input/Port 2 Binds/Device Index and change it to the second controller ID, and then Port 3 Binds Port 4 etc. That should cover joysticks, at least. In terms of track balls and lightguns, thats all over my head, but in RA it should work in a similar way. If they all have different IDs in Windows, it should be possible to map them all on per core, and then per game configs in Retroarch, but I don't know if its possible to map 2 different controllers to one Device Index (In other words, if a game uses a joystick AND a trackball for player 1) I'm not sure how to set that up.

Notice the same issue here, using Colorful. Funnily enough, it was AAE (and CAVE) for me, as I went and got some better logos. @viking Launchbox supplied the system logo for AAE initially (it was just a replication of the "Arcade" logo) but the png image wasn't in the AAE platform/ clear logo folder. I guess Launchbox was looking in the arcade folder and replicating the arcade logo from there... Any idea why placing a clear logo in AAE/Clear Logo (previously empty) wouldn't update on media refresh when using Colorful? Thanks!

I'm not very savvy with networks, but just from my own general knowledge, I would certainly store launchbox locally, since the entire user experience centers around it, and because it's having to pull a massive amount of files; art, images, videos, xmls etc. I would probably also store the emulators locally, as they are small in terms of space. Roms I would think you could get away with over the network as all you're risking is a little load time. But do take what I say with a grain of salt here. I think @DOS76 uses a network?

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

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?

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?

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?

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.