Hamfighter

I appreciate the help! Gonna give it a try!

I've been using Bigbox with my Tankstick with great results except for one problem. The ONLY thing I have to use my keyboard for is exiting a game (using the ESC key). I've had no success getting that button mapped to my Tankstick. I'd sure love not to have to use the keyboard at all. Any suggestions on this one small problem? The ultimate solution would be to use one of the two buttons on the left side (farthest back) to quit. The one closest to the front is my "insert coin" button. Thanks!

I appreciate all the responses. I suppose I may just need to play with it a bit...I just wanted to make sure there wasn't a definitive "best way" to do it in this scenario. Is Dropbox the cloud most folks would recommend? I was leaning towards using OneDrive as I have a user (with it's own one drive) called "Xxxxx Arcade." I thought it would make sense to simply load that user on all three pc's to keep everything synced. However, I'm not certain if you would then have to have a log-in screen on each computer which would diminish the arcade aesthetic . I'm still somewhat baffled how an installed program such as mame or launchbox doesn't have to be installed on each computer (but that just shows my ignorance). I'm gonna have to take a leap of faith. Thanks again!

Hmm. Is there any reason you would choose not to put everything in Dropbox? I'm using my desktop PC for the busy work, and wanting to sync with a pc upstairs in the playroom with a tank stick and a pc in a mame cabinet down in the basement. Of course, each setup will have separate controller settings.

Jason, would that include installing Launchbox within the Dropbox file in addition to storing all the roms and emulators (mame) within Dropbox? As a roundabout way of asking the same question...is there anything you would not install/store in Dropbox? Thank you, sir!

Happy Weekend, Y'all! I've been toying with Launchbox for quite a while now, and really enjoy it (and quite thankful for the simplicity). I've used it on my home pc with both a tankstick and, more recently do to the "ugliness" of the tankstick in my office (not my words), a little Hori Fighting Stick Mini. Now things are getting interesting... I've been thinking of setting up a pedestal type system with an extra slim pc and the tankstick in the playroom. Out of the blue last week, I ran across a MAME arcade cabinet on craigslist with an old xp pc and some horrific front end that barely works. The bones are great, and so I'm working on putting yet another small pc in it with Launchbox. I went ahead and sprung for BigBox last week, and now I'm ready to get to work on all three setups. I know the video tutorials talk about the ability to load launchbox in drop box or google drive etc. Now I'm really interested in doing that so that I'll be able to share everything across my three systems (office, play room and cabinet). I'm afraid I'm not having any luck figuring out how to make it happen. I'm certain there's an article somewhere, but I haven't found it. I'm needing really dumbed down instructions on if somebody can point me in the right direction. Really basics like where to install mame, launchbox and the roms to make it all work. Thanks for the help! By the way, here's a picture of the cabinet I picked up on craigslist last week...really excited!

I'll play around with different cloud based options and let y'all know, but your recommendation of Dropbox goes a long way! Yeah, good old Microsoft can't leave well enough alone. Security/parental controls worked great on 7...of course, so did Windows Media Center for a decade (I won't start on that one). For other overly cautious parents out there, creating a new Microsoft ID/email and a new "child's" account that you can load up with restrictions works great. Actually, I'm sort of liking having a dedicated account just for gaming! I'm going to throw out a couple more questions that I couldn't find specific answers to in the forums/Google. Truly, there's no hurry, and I'm not expecting personal tech support...these would just be some niceties that someone might know off the top of their head... Regarding MAME itself, I downloaded the mame0176b_64bit.exe Official Binary as I'm running Windows 10 64bit. Perhaps features I'm looking for aren't within the official mame, but I'd like a way to save high scores and/or maintain a "power-on" state so as to not have to boot the game as though it were being plugged in each time. Also, I had to change the inputs on each individual game (This Machine) versus setting defaults for all games (General), because when selecting Input (General), that screen would appear off the screen at the bottom of the screen, with no way to scroll or page down to the options to change. Never seen this in mame before. Third and final question for the night (I've been on vacation this week, so putting way to much time into all this): As we know, the classics or all oriented in a portrait format, leaving those black "letterbox bars" on the sides. Within LaunchBox, is there a way to add the cabinet art in lieu of the black bars? I would think if there was, it would have done it automatically like so many other things! Overall, I'm just so pleased with the success I've had (unlike so many other trys before). Was even able to easily incorporate my Tankstick including the trackball with relative ease (besides that strange mame glitch that caused me to have to map buttons for each game individually). Oh, and the kids are happy too...all for them after all ;)

Thank you, Jason! Played around until way to late last night, but had a great time, and got a good number of mame games running! Few problematic ones, but I'll do some more research before reaching out. A quick heads-up for others like myself who want parental controls for a gameroom pc...unlike Windows 7, Windows 10 will not provide any parental controls on a "local" account, therefore you must create a microsoft account (email) and add it as a child's account. Then you can enact parental controls. Also, parental controls no longer carry over to Chrome or Firefox, so only keep IE/Edge if you want to block inappropriate content. Leads to two quick questions: 1. Does BigBox prevent access to the rest of the computer without perhaps using a password? That would take care of parental controls right there! 2. For clarification, would I use Dropbox (or OneDrive or Google Drive) for the roms only, or for the emulators and LaunchBox/BigBox itself? Thank you so much! Enjoying the games and the comradery of the forum! Ham

I've dabbled with numerous emulators, frontends, mame, openemu (on the mac) and LaunchBox in the past, but I've decided to go All-In with Launchbox and start everything from scratch! I've got a little Gateway mini tower (AMD A6-3600 2.1ghz with the built-in HD Radeon 6530D graphics, 1TB drive, 16GB ram, wiped out and running freshly installed Windows 10 Home) that is going to be the dedicated gameroom/arcade PC. Little bit of overkill on the ram, but it used to be the Windows Media Center PC :( The plan is for this pc to be in the gameroom upstairs, but I don't wan't unrestricted internet access upstairs for my kids and all their friends. I also don't necessarily want the arcade pc tied to my personal Microsoft account. My thought is to create a new local account called "Arcade" without a password for games. I like the idea of storing everything in the cloud so I can also access and play with things on the desktop downstairs and the laptop. I'm having trouble getting my head around getting started. Does this seem like a good way to start, or do y'all have a better recommendation for initial setup? Thanks in advance for the help!

Thanks so much...integration would be great!!!

To clarify, I'm installing primarily on a Sony i7 all-in-one with descent specs...the Surface 3 is for work while travelling.

Thank you, Brad. Currently, mame is what I'm most interested in, and so I'm sure the problem is configuring it correctly (which I'm not, apparently). I'm sure once I have it right, Launchbox will be easy. I'm assuming, as a non-coder on a 64-bit Windows 10 machine, the mame0172b_64bit.exe is my best bet. Will Launchbox care where I install it to (ie, C:mame), especially if I'm wanting to utilize OneDrive in the future? Is there hope that Launchbox/mame will even work on a Surface 3 (non-pro)? It seems most the guides for mame setup are for older versions, or contain a lot of assumptions for setup knowledge. If there is a particular resource you recommend for a new mame user, that would be greatly appreciated. From there, I look forward to adding all the old-school systems to Launchbox that I have in the attic. Thanks again

Thank you all for the responses! I travel a lot and was, of course, immediately called out of town. I will start again from scratch and try to be more specific when I run into a question. Main thing I wanted to do was ensure there wasn't a resource available that I should utilize before asking specific questions. Thanks again for all the guidance so far!

Hey y'all, I've played with numerous emulators and front ends with varying degrees of success. I've watched many of the Launchbox youtube videos and read a bunch of posts. I tried an initial setup, and just didn't have the success I had hoped for. I'm really looking for a super basic, step-by-step, leave nothing to chance, assume nothing, setup guide. Am I missing it somewhere, or can someone point me in the right direction. I'm fairly tech savvy, but have apparently gotten dumber over the years. I sure appreciate the help!