[Request: Bezel/Overlay Used on the Nintendo Switch]

Hey everyone!

Does anyone know if someone has replicated the bezel/overlay that nintendo is using on it's NES/SNES games on the Switch? Looks pretty good. Can it be replicated?

[Auto M3U Generation?]

Rocketlauncher will automatically generate M3Us, at least for PS1. 

[SNES MSU-1 Cover Art]

I just use the clear logo and backgrounds from the SNES version. No reason not to, right? However, those boxes do look awesome.

[Camputers Lynx Working]

Yep, that absolutely did the trick! Thanks! I don't fully understand command lines so I was pasting the entire command under Default CLP on the above screen, and on the associated platforms screen.

Thanks a million!

 

[Dropping Rocketlauncher?]

I'm in the process of dropping it now, not completely, but for most systems. It's an amazing program, but as mentioned before, with the lack of updates, its no longer staying ahead of the curve and launchbox has caught up in most areas. There's only two things I can't replace: the way RL handles dosbox allows me to keep my exodos set zipped, and the only way I can get the MESS 2015 core in Retroarch to work is through RL (which is no great loss as I'm using MAME proper now anyway, but its worth noting). Its taking me a lot longer than I thought to move my systems over to launchbox because I have a ton of systems and setting the command lines for MAME is time consuming, mostly because of that damned MAME naming convention haha. I actually had to use the RL Module to get many of the systems names matched to the MAME names. Beyond that, as noted, the bezel support is great, but I use RA and MAME for most things so that isn't as important to me.

I will say using MAME for non-arcade systems is actually easier in RL because the work has been done for you in the module, but troubleshooting in most cases is much easier without RL and the extra layer to sift through. 

One other thing I noticed that RL doesn't actually capture all of the systems Retroarch can actually emulate. I haven't been keeping up with the latest module/news, but I was surprised to learn of a few systems that had dedicated cores that aren't an option in Rocketlauncher at least with my version of the module. I know you can just add the system yourself, but thats essentially the same as adding to launchbox and at this point just double working.

OH and speaking of Retroarch, keeping up with the massive amount of config files I need is much simpler without rocketlauncher altering the config directories.

Just my two cents.

 

 

[Camputers Lynx Working]

Hi!

I followed your directions but I can't get this launching through launchbox for the life of me. No matter what I do I'm getting an error "Unrecognized content on command line". I used the command line above, launchbox default, checked and unchecked don't use quotes and every variation I could think of. Any idea what I'm doing wrong here?

 

Thanks!

[Apple II]

I google searched the forums but I used "Apple II" as the search, not "Applewin". Thanks for the redirect on this old thread. Works like a charm!

[Apple II]

When using the fullscreen command, how do you exit the emulator? The only way I can get it to close is by pressing the windows key and closing from outside of it.

 

Thanks!

[Series Playlists and Best Practices.]

So I've become enamored with the idea of using the playlist feature to create collections, series, franchises etc. It seems like it should be easy enough, but I'm running into a bunch of problems. I just wanted to get some outside opinions.

Problem 1: Rereleases. 

Using Resident Evil as an example, theres the HD release to contend with. For many games theres also the multiplatform releases to contend with.

Possible Solution:

I think I've contented myself with the idea that the "best" version based on personal preference should feature in the playlist, and all other versions should be added to that entry as additional apps. Thoughts?

Problem 2: Spin offs, and prequels.

There's something attractive to me about chronological order, but again using Resident Evil, Resident Evil 0 came out later, but is a prequal to the first one. Would you use chronology here, just in terms of where it appears in the playlist, or would you go by intended narrative order?

Resident Evil also has a few light gun shooters. And when you think about games like Super Mario, the spin offs are ... particularly daunting as some spin offs have formed other franchises. This is really where I hit the wall. If you wanted to make a resident evil collection playlist, would you include the light gun games? And further, where would they appear in the list? Chronologically, by narritive (if possible), or just kind of pushed to the back? Any other ideas or ways to organize would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Edit:

So far this is my list specifically for resident evil but I hope to glean some best practices from this venture. I'm thinking I'll just leave the shooters out as if they are important enough to me they should warrant their own collection entry. This is based on narrative, not chronology:

Resident Evil 0
Resident Evil (1)
Resident Evil 2
Resident Evil Code Veronica
Resident Evil 3
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil Revelations
Resident Evil 5
Resident EVil Revelations 2
Resident Evil 6
Resident Evil 7

Shooters:
Resident Evil Survivor
Resident Evil Survivor 2 Code Veronica
Resident Evil Dead Aim

Others:
Resident Evil Gaiden ?
Resident Evil Outbreak (&File #2)?
Resident Evil The Umbrella Chronicles?
Resident Evil The Darkside Chronicles?
Resident Evil The Mercenaries 3D?
Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City (Non-cannon hypothetical)?
Umbrella Corps?

 

 

[Clear Logo Requests]

Heres one that doens't have a logo. Dead Island Retro Revenge. This was the best art I could find. 

[Suicide? There is Hope!...]

Don't have too much to add here, but I myself have an anxiety disorder, and surprising me very much as I moved into adult hood, the more people I got to know, the more I realized many people suffer with mental health issues, and this type of conversation doesn't happen enough. I found this out about my friends and family slowly over the course of my lifetime because people don't talk about it. I went through my teen years thinking I was the only one, because no one wanted to talk about it. The stigma about it is real.

So if you feel like you're suffering alone, you're most likely not, and you certainly don't have to.

Sincerely,

Walter 

 

[can't remove Wikipedia ID]

Definitely try to restart launchbox. That isn't intended behavior, may be a bug. (I like that low key slow show off scroll you did in the video. ?)

[Rons]

I think launchbox does that once a day? It might take a while so best to let it run its course. I know sometimes it'll ask you "do you want to download the latest metadata", so if it really is stuck, telling it no at that point should at least bypass the problem for a while, but I'm not sure how to trigger that. Maybe wait a day?

[N00B With a Question about Save States]

I think Retroarch also has a feature that you can turn on which will automatically load the most recent save state on game launch, which is pretty cool. Goodluck in your search!

[N00B With a Question about Save States]

That would be more of a function of the emulator, not the front end. Launchbox does interface with the savestate feature insofar as Launchbox has a Pause feature that allows you to pause the emulation, and that brings up a menu that allows you to save the state. I don't know of any front end that does exactly what you ask, but there are many of them out there. 

But, if you set up retroarch as your emulator for a system, you can bring up the Retroarch menu during emulation and do everything you're looking for. For me, pushing both sticks in on my xbox controller brings up the RA menu and from there I can save / load states and switch between save states etc. all with my controller. It even saves a screenshot picture of where you saved. 

[The NOOBIEST of questions.]

1 hour ago, Phoenix001 said:

 Lord, I will take a look at your link and read up on that this evening as well. I guess that’s one way for me to spend my birthday evening. Ha ha

Its the best way to spend your birthday! Happy birthday and welcome to the fray! 

Just some background. Retroarch is an emulator, but it is by no means the easiest. Not to confuse you, but Retroarch is actually a program that loads a bunch of emulators, called "cores" and you have to find the right core for the system/romset you're wanting to use. If you're looking to play old arcade games, you should probably start with MAME (the emulator), as stated above, and save retroarch for later. That will entail you downloading the MAME emulator, quick google search, and finding you a MAME romset first.

[Big issue that started in 9.X. Games often don't launch property after startup.]

This is all well over my head, and this may be an irrelevant observation but, personally I have all my roms stored on a separate drive (not C, or L(my launchbox drive). What I've noticed is that because there is no "startup" program accessing the drive with my roms, the hard drive stays "asleep" upon booting the PC, and it doesn't wake up until the first time I try to launch a game. So the first time I launch any game after reboot (or between long rests) sometimes even retroarch will blackscreen, only on the first launch, and over time I figured out its because it's waiting for my rom drive to wake up and something must be timing out in the interim. Mostly this causes a MUCH longer load time on my first game launch, but it'll crash it occasionally as well.

I don't know if it'll help or not, but might be something to consider.  

[performance of launch box after first shutdown]

What system are you having trouble with? What core are you using? And what options do you have on?

If you didn't turn off "save on exit" you may have been fiddling around with some settings and accidentally saved them. We can help you insofar as, to say, probably turn off all the shaders and potentially drop the resolution down depending on the core. Also, under Quick Options / Latency, try turning everything to zero/off.

The reason I mention the Save on Exit option in Retroarch is because you said this happened after you shut everything down and restarted. Go into retroarch, turn that option off, and get used to manually saving any changes.  

[performance of launch box after first shutdown]

Need a little more clarity from you. 

It sounds like it might be a combination of things. Depending on your computer's power, it sounds like something else you have running might be hogging resources. Maybe an antivirus program or something running in the background?

You may have set the settings in the emulator too high for your rig, or maybe a combination of this and the above.

What you're describing is a framerate drop, meaning your computer isn't able to output audio and video fast enough. It's common, but this has nothing to do with launchbox. 

So I'm assuming you have launchbox set up to launch an emulator for you.

What emulator?

What system are you trying to play?

What are the settings you're trying to play it on?

@neil9000 Agreed. But to me this sounds like someone who downloaded some kind of pre-built version of launchbox.

 

 

[Portable PS2 project?]

Its not an insane concept. Portable retrogaming is the best! However, I personally gave up the pursuit of finding a small box pc that would work. I settled for getting an Nvidia Shield TV which is pretty damn close. ETA Prime has a video of it emulating Gamecube games. 

Don't forget about storage by the way. Unless you're wanting to lug external hard drives with it, PS2, GC etc are pretty big files. 

 

[Multiple installs one one PC.]

That doesn't seem possible. But, I would plug in both drives (if you intend to have them plugged in, I have two separate installs of launchbox on two different drives with no problem by the way). Delete the second install of launchbox. When you reinstall, make sure you're doing it properly, which I believe involves getting an email from the dev. See if it happens again. 

 

 

 

[Multiple installs one one PC.]

K. Lets get this clear.

You installed launchbox on your G: Drive sometime previous and that is your main install.

You unplugged this drive (not strictly necessary) and plugged in a new external which your computer also assigned as G:

You installed Launchbox on this new G: Drive and it shows the same platforms as the previous install?

[Multiple installs one one PC.]

You're going to have to walk through the steps of exactly what you did, as Launchbox is designed to be portable, what you're experiencing isn't supposed to happen, and actually seems impossible unless you duplicated your first install and tried to move that to the main drive.

If I had to guess, which I do, you tried to duplicate at least some of the files (maybe so you didn't have to import everything again in your second install). I'm not sure if there is a way to fix that after the fact, but a fresh install should not react to your previous install at all provided they are in different directories.

[Update Sets Launchbox only]

With MAME in particular, you might try the "scan for new roms" feature in Launchbox, as update MAME sets aren't changing the names of roms. So even if they updated a rom, if it's already in launchbox, launchbox will just automatically load the updated rom. No problems there. The only problem would be if the MAME version has added new roms, and "Scan for new roms" might catch that. Since I only update mame roms like once a year, I usually do the method mentioned above myself. Just delete the games and reimport, as you don't lose the Artwork. Just a few extra minutes.

[The Great Emulator Coverage Thread]

Tested Xebra for Sony Playstation. Startup: Works Fine. Pause: Works fine.