damageinc86

Playlist concept with tags seems like it might be a good way to approach this. It would be even cooler if when you were in a certain playlist chosen from within the Arcade platform, LB would have a set of artwork stuff for that playlist so it sort of felt like you just went to a different "platform" for a while.

That's cool. But then I wonder if you can say something like " convert current filter level to it's own platform", ENTER, and voila! your schmups are their own platform without any of the hassle that has plagued us before now. I guess i'm confused. So does the filter stay on for the entire arcade genre? So if I want to go to beat 'em ups, vs. shoot 'em ups, then i have to deselect the current line of filters and then re-select the filter to show the next set of games I want to play? If so, then that would be cumbersome for people who just want to have those all ready to go without having to select the appropriate filter each time. Unless it was a pretty quick process, I guess it wouldn't be that bad, like a pop up menu with a rolling list you select to filter and bam, it's done. But then also people who like having cool artwork for those different platforms might still want the platform option. '

ohh i haven't seen that. But can you make it a platform of it's own after you filter it to show those?

Arcade is a hard one. The simple overall way of doing it could easily be the popular manufacturer way that Hyperspin has adopted. That could really get a lot of beginners started very easily. Beyond that though I think it might be cool to have a way to create a platform for people who want a different approach such as Schmups, Beat em ups, fighting (like street fighter), Shooters (gun), etc., etc., and then an option to have a general classics one where people can select all other sorts of games that they feel fall into the classic category. I stopped trying to do databases with arcade in hyperspin after I got the manufacturers done because it got old having to use donsxmltools to sort stuff, and I wanted to move on. But launchbox seems like it already has a more interactive way of doing things, and when you create your schmup platform for example, you could do a lot of it within the program itself, especially with scraping and the LBdatabase features.

For my hyperspin setup I had arcade split by the popular manufacturers. Atari, Capcom, Konami, midway, taito, etc. But after a while of using it that way, I came to realize that I have to search so much more because I constantly forget what game was from what platform. So I might go back to just like a greatest hits arcade platform.

This happened to me, but everything still works fine and I'm guessing it's because of the command line stuff that launchbox sends to rocketlauncher. I have the launchbox.xml but it's just full of my initial few systems when i first copied and pasted it. All other systems still launch through rocketlauncher though on the default RLUI plugin that I had setup for hyperspin.

Speaking of coming over from hyperspin. I'm so glad I already had nice artwork for all my systems because of the amazing people in that forum and ftp. Scraping for it is a nice feature but it ended up being so varied in quality that I couldn't stand it. Had to get all the nice cart, box, and clear logos from Hyperspin stuff. LB looks amazing now with a consistent set of images. I wonder if Jason has thought about any sort of collaboration with the media creators at HS. Launchbox really needs that nice artwork to be all it can be.

oh that would be awesome! good news

I can't use retroarch with anything besides my handheld systems because it only recognizes three of my controllers. two xbox360 and one other one. When I have GC, SNES, and PS1 hooked up. No matter what input driver I have ever selected, it will never allow me to map the other controllers. Major flaw imo. If they ever make it actually see all controllers you have plugged in automatically, then i'll try it again. I mean, even launchbox sees every controller under the controller menu and applies the navigation buttons you select to everything, so I can pick up any controller and move through the LB menus. I wonder why retroarch can't figure that out?

I have always had all homebrew and romhacks on their own platform. I would never think of adding them to an official database. They not only deserve their own database/platform, but also the official databases don't need to be muddied with it. Its so subjective too.

Oh wow, that sounds cool. I guess I just never investigated it because I already had mine setup previously with Rocketlauncher.

Yeah to me it makes it easier to work with dosbox since Dfend is it's own little frontend for that. Made it super simple for my setup. I love it.

Nice! glad to hear it is on the way. I like the global metallic theme for example, but then when you go into the system itself and run through the games list, it's just a black background. Would be nice to have some system stuff in there, background, etc. stuff like that. Thanks!

Have any of you used Dfend Reloaded for launching MS-DOS games? I wonder if that might help out? Of course, I use it through Launchbox, so its all taken care of there.

If different frontends communicate with rocketlauncher, it actually takes out a step since you already have all the emulators setup in rocketlauncher. I just went from hyperspin to launchbox rather quickly by selecting rocketlauncher as my emulator and it was already all setup with rocketlauncher so bam no directories to look in for each and every emulator, just point each platform to rocketlauncher and it takes care of the rest, which once you set up the first time it is pretty much done from then on out.

How did you make the device/fanart backgrounds? I'm trying to make one for a custom platform "PC Games", without the Windows logo.

Is there currently any way to do per system/platform themes? I notice all the themes so far have been global themes. Wondering if that is just a preference of everyone who has made themes, or if it is because you can't make a theme that changes to a different look once it is in the game view of a platform?

Wow that worked. Odd that it has to be the opposite setting than what it should be for restoring a front end lol. Thanks!

It's nice to not have to set up your emulators with each front end, Rocketlauncher centralizes it. Also, you can set up Joy2Key profiles to be launches based on the RL database name, so it takes care of all keymapping launching without having to point to the EXE of the game within the keymapping program itself, but rather RL takes care of it by matching the profile you make to the game's name in the RL database. Super nice feature. The Bezels are amazing also, makes things look sooooo nice. The Fade screens that cover up the emulator launch is another super nice feature, which should be built in to front ends IMO. The PAUSE feature which puts a menu screen above the emulator that has a save state menu where you can enter the emulator's save state keys in autohotkey format into RL, and it will send those commands to the emulator behind the PAUSE screen, so that you can do savestates just by selecting it from the menu and hitting enter. Another feature that I think should be standard within frontends. These are the reason why I use Rocket Launcher. To me, those features make it an essential part of the frontend experience. If those features could be integrated into a frontend, then i'd have no reason to use it anymore. Fade, Pause, Keymaper profile launching based on database names, and Bezels.

Even with "restore launchbox on game exit", the window still moves and shrinks in size after exiting a game. I have set up some PC Games (exe) and some NES games using Rocket Launcher as the emulator, and it launches just fine through RL, but always ruins the Launchbox and BigBox window on exit. Is this anything that can by fixed through LB/BB, or is it Rocket Launcher not knowing how to give Launchbox the focus back?

Didn't check to see if this has been brought up yet, but I am getting frustrated with how long it takes for bigbox to begin scrolling through the clear logos after you have held the move arrows up or down. The hesitation is too long and it messes up the quick response flow that you have if you just repeatedly tap the key. Is there a way to adjust the delay to initiate fast scrolling once you have held the up or down keys? It should really be brought down to close to instant/little to no wait to begin scrolling. Just bought lifetime, and excited about the progress, it's just those little things that sometimes make things hard to get into. thanks!

I am trying to come over from Hyperspin, got the lifetime license, and i'm stuck on my very first system. This looked so intuitive on all the videos, but I don't get it. I'm used to being able to add custom platforms by just editing an xml, or adding the name, and using rocketlauncher for the launching. I specifically want to add PC Games, which is not just windows or steam games, its everything that I run on a PC vs. a console. I have no idea how to import my shortcuts to the pc games, so that Launchbox will add the names of those to the PC Games databse. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

The only thing I like about the PAUSE menu in Rocketlauncher is that you can save and load your states without having to press any keys, because the AHK script that Rocketlauncher sends to the emulator, does it all for you. All you need to do is specify those keys, and then when in the PAUSE menu, select it and the rest is done for you. It wouldn't even need to be a full pause menu necessarily, just a little savestate overlay would be nice to have. That is seriously one of the nicest features out there. oh and I didn't mean pause menu like an emulator pause menu, I mean what used to be called Hyperpause from the old Hyperlaunch days.

The only thing I need from LaunchBox that RL currently does, is apply Bezels to the emulators, and a PAUSE menu which we can specify the autohotkey button presses to send to the emulator to use it's save slots. Those are the only two things. If you can manage that, then you will have a ton of people converted instantly I think.