fraganator

I'm not sure if an existing Additional App can be converted to its own game entry, but you can import the Japanese version of the game again. When importing it a second time, check the Force importing duplicate games option and uncheck the Combine ROMs with matching titles into a single game option. Once imported, it should appear as its own game entry. You can then remove the Japanese version from the additional apps of the original Super Mario Bros. 2 game.

Hi everyone, Version 2.13 of the plugin is now available (download here). It's a small release with a few UI bug fixes and tweaks: Fix config window DPI scaling issue (Thanks @JamesBond@ge) Config window performance improvements Option to skip version during update check

Hi @ladysman214, You can manually edit the Platform xml file in the LaunchBox\Data folder to configure the startup time to 45 seconds. Close LaunchBox, then open the game’s platform xml file (LaunchBox\Data\Platforms\<platform name>.xml) in Notepad. Look for the StartupLoadDelay tag under the corresponding game and change the value to 45000. <StartupLoadDelay>45000</StartupLoadDelay> Save and close the file, then open LaunchBox. If you check the game config window it should now say 45 seconds.

Thanks for the bug report, I was able to reproduce it on my machine. I've created and attached a quick build which should make the config window fit on screen at 150% DPI. Could you test it out and let me know if it fits on your screen? ArchiveCacheManager_v2.12_DPI.zip

Hi @WeedZ The best way to switch between discs in a multi-disc game is to use an M3U playlist file. LaunchBox can automatically generate an M3U file for multi-disc games, and the discs can then be swapped within the emulator. The M3U setting for an emulator can be enabled in the Tools->Manage->Emulators menu. Select and edit the emulator, then in the Additional Platforms page check the box in the Use M3U Playlists for Multiple Discs column: You can launch a certain disc by selecting it in the Play Version menu, or the Additional Apps/Versions menu in BigBox.

Hi everyone, Version 2.12 of the plugin is now available (download here). This is another big update, and includes the following new features. Option to copy non-archive files to the cache (Thanks @gonzalogil, @Laizhensil) Support for extracting additional formats (Thanks @Nixx) Option to extract chd to cue+bin using chdman Option to extract rvz, wia, gcz to iso using DolphinTool Option to specify a launch folder for cached games (game platform, game title, or emulator title) (Thanks @Rogerooo) Useful for managing common RetroArch settings Smart Extract option to only extract required files from an archive (Thanks @Nixx) Useful for merged ROM sets Emulator selection when launching a file from "Select ROM In Archive" list (Thanks @Nixx) Option to bypass LaunchBox's check the ROM file exists when launching a game Allows launching cached game immediately - no waiting for slow disk spin-up or network latency Allows playing cached games 'offline' if NAS or cloud storage unavailable Config window and UI overhaul Minor bug fixes Thanks again to everyone who contributed feature ideas and provided feedback. The plugin release page has been updated with documentation on the new options and features. Please see below for additional notes on this release. CHD and RVZ extraction These new extraction options require placing a copy of chdman.exe and\or DolphinTool.exe in the Extractors subfolder of the ArchiveCacheManager plugin folder. These applications haven't been included with the plugin to keep the file size small, and because they won't be commonly used options. Why have an option to extract CHD files? <Emulator> already supports them! CHDs have become the ROM compression format of choice, and offer very good space savings. This option is for folks who want the smaller size of CHDs, while retaining the ability to play using emulators that don't have CHD support, or where CHDs may not run as well as the uncompressed disc image on their system. The majority of users won't want or need to touch this option. That said, implementing it provided an opportunity to rework and modularize the backend extraction logic, so in theory any compression format can now be supported. If there's a particular format you'd like to see supported in a future release, let me know and it should be simple to add. Caching non-archive files The plugin now has the option to copy and cache any game file. When copying a game to the cache, only the file in the game's Application Path will be copied, so the game file needs to be able to run stand-alone. If the game relies on additional files (data files and so on) these won't be copied, and the game probably won't launch correctly.

To add a little more info on how LaunchBox handles extracting and file parsing zip, 7z, and rar files. If the emulator or emulator platform has the "Extract ROMs" option checked, the compressed file (zip, 7z, or rar only) will be extracted to LaunchBox\ThirdParty\7-Zip\Temp when the game is launched. This temp folder is cleared when the emulator exits. LaunchBox has some rules when selecting which file from the zipped ROM to pass to the emulator. It will look for a file with a certain extension, in the order mds, gdi, cue, or a file named eboot.bin (there may be other file types, but these are the ones I'm aware of). So playing a zipped ROM containing cue+bin files will always select the cue file (not the first file or a random file). If no file match is found, I believe it selects the last file in the archive. This simple file checking covers many zipped disc based ROMs (at least for Redump sets), regardless of how many files are in the archive. You will start to run into issues with some formats such as zipped MSU-MD games (which contain a mix of formats), where LaunchBox wants to launch to cue file, but the emulator needs the md file.

Thanks for the feedback, happy to know it's a useful plugin for you I was thinking of having a few selectable path options in the initial implementation, such as Platform, Title, and Emulator. Additional selection options or custom bindings can be added in future if required.

Hi @Rogerooo Thanks for the suggestion, it's a good idea. It should be a fairly simple addition - I'll see if I can add it into the next release. It's being tracked as an issue on github.

Ah well, it was worth a try. I've found if I purge the database IDs from games I can get it working. Maybe I'll make a little plugin to backup and purge database IDs, and restore them if I need to do updates from the LaunchBox database.

Thanks. I did try delete, but I guess I didn't have the row itself in focus. I think I was clicking a drop down, selecting something, then saw the row was highlighted blue and pressed delete, but nothing was happening. Same if I click the empty space in the Custom Value column to try select and delete a row. If I click between any of the drop down selectors and the column dividers, that lets me select the row then delete it.

Yeah, I did a bit more testing and it appears the Related Games results won't return any game with the same database ID, regardless of the search criteria used (such as platform not equal or region not equal). Which is understandable, as the related games lists probably shouldn't show the game itself. I wonder if it could it be tweaked so if the game is being compared against local games, then the game's GUID is used to exclude itself from the result list, rather than the database ID? The database ID would obviously still be used to match against the database. Or perhaps an option to allow duplicate database IDs in the search results.

I'm trying to use the Related Games' Possible Ports list to display games from different regions in my local collection. I have a platform per console region (for example Sega Mega Drive (Japan) and Sega Genesis (USA)), each filled with region specific games. I've configured the Possible Ports options as below, with the check being a match on the LaunchBox Database ID, but it's not detecting anything (please ignore the duplicate rows, I don't know how to delete them). The test case has Sega Genesis (USA) with Ghouls 'n' Ghosts, and Sega Mega Drive (Japan) with Daimakaimura. Both games have the same database ID (#2592), but Possible Ports has no matches. I've closed and reopened the Game Details page to force it to refresh, but the list is always empty. Any suggestions?

The related games option is looking good. A couple of questions: Is there a way to delete rows from the Related Games tables from the Options page? I've found it takes 2-3 clicks for the drop down menu in each row to respond. It feels like successive clicks focus the table column, then the row, then the list box. Is there anything that can be done to reduce the clicking?

Hi Brendon, Can you open and unzip any of the CD rom zip files with 7-zip, outside of LaunchBox? If you have 7-zip installed, right-click on the CD rom zip file in File Explorer and select Test archive: If the test passes ok, does the emulator have the Extract ROM archives before running option checked (under Tools -> Manage -> Emulators, then double-click the emulator)? I assume it has, otherwise 7-zip wouldn't be called, but it's worth checking. To see why 7-zip is throwing an error, first enable LaunchBox's debug logging (under Tools -> Options -> General -> Debugging). After enabling it, close and open LaunchBox, then try run one of the CD based games to generate the 7-zip error. Once you see the error, open File Explorer and navigate to <LaunchBox>\Logs and find the latest log file. Open it and search for SevenZip.Extract Log. You might see something like this listed below that line. 2022-03-28 01:43:34 PM SevenZip.Extract Log: 7-Zip 21.07 (x64) : Copyright (c) 1999-2021 Igor Pavlov : 2021-12-26 Scanning the drive for archives: 0M Scan D:\Emulation\ROMs\Sony - PlayStation\ 1 file, 84175728 bytes (81 MiB) Extracting archive: D:\Emulation\ROMs\Sony - PlayStation\Doom (USA).zip 9% Open ERROR: D:\Emulation\ROMs\Sony - PlayStation\Doom (USA).zip D:\Emulation\ROMs\Sony - PlayStation\Doom (USA).zip Open ERROR: Cannot open the file as [zip] archive ERRORS: Is not archive 9% Can't open as archive: 1 Files: 0 Size: 0 Compressed: 0 That should give you a hint as to what has happened. Please post the log file here if you need some help parsing the log. Are you using any launchers or other plugins, or is a pretty vanilla LaunchBox / RetroArch setup?

Hello everyone! Version 2.11 of the plugin is now available (download here). There are two download options depending on your version of LaunchBox: ArchiveCacheManager.v2.11.zip - For LaunchBox 12.8 and above ArchiveCacheManager.v2.11_LaunchBox12.7AndOlder.zip - For LaunchBox 12.7 and older New features include: Multi-disc support and automatic M3U generation Extract and cache all discs in a multi-disc game Generate and use M3U if configured for the emulator \ platform Custom filename priority for all emulators \ platforms Option to automatically check for plugin updates Updated 7-Zip to version 21.07 Minor bug fixes The multi-disc feature has required changes to just about every code file in the cache manager core. I've tested the plugin as exhaustively as I can, but there may be some use cases that haven't been accounted for, or some bugs introduced. If you do find any issues or bugs, please leave a message here or on github and I'll try get them fixed asap. Plans for the next release: Refine multi-disc support (per emulator \ platform setting, manually extract + launch multi-disc game from right-click menu) Option to extract only single file from archive Option to copy non-archive files to cache Update config window with individual emulator \ platform options (multi-disc, extract single file, copy non-zip, etc) Update config window to match LaunchBox theme See below for a summary of the new features. ---------------------- Multi-disc support and automatic M3U generation This release includes a major new feature - support for multi-disc games and automatic M3U generation! To use the multi-disc cache feature, enable the Multi-disc Support option in the Archive Cache Manager config (it's enabled be default). In the emulator settings make sure Extract ROMs is enabled, and Use M3U Playlists for Multiple Discs is enabled (if supported by the emulator). The following actions occur when launching a multi-disc game: All disc archives from a multi-disc game will be extracted and added to the archive cache. If a disc is already cached, only the missing discs are extracted. The progress indicator on LaunchBox's startup screen indicates the extraction progress across all discs. M3U files will be generated (one per disc) with the filename based on either the game ID (this is LaunchBox's M3U naming convention), or the game's title + version. Configure the M3U naming convention with the Use Game ID As M3U Filename option in the config window (it's enabled by default). Note that the M3U filename may be used by emulators to name save files. Using the game ID guarantees the save game files will be unique, but can be difficult to manually manage. A list of cached file paths are written to the M3U files, one path per disc. The file path for each disc is selected based on the emulator \ platform file priority if it exists, or the new All \ All priority (details below). This ensures only cue, gdi, or other disc table of contents type files appear in the M3U file. The paths in each disc's M3U file will be in priority order for that disc. So Disc 2 of a 3 disc game will list entries in order 2,1,3. This is the same convention used by LaunchBox when launching a disc through the Play Version menu. If the emulator \ platform supports M3U files (as configured in LaunchBox), the generated M3U file will be used when launching the game. Otherwise a single disc will be launched, and swapping between cached discs can be done manually in the emulator. A future release will overhaul the config window, and provide more granular options on a per emulator \ platform basis, but for now the multi-disc support option is global. Custom filename priority for all emulators / platforms This release includes a new global priority for selecting files within an archive. This priority is listed as All \ All in the plugin config window, and applies to all emulators and platforms. The default for the global priority is mds, gdi, cue, eboot.bin, which mimics LaunchBox's internal priority when launching a file from an archive. Note that specific emulator \ platform priorities take precedence over the All \ All priority list. The All \ All priority is the basis for the contents of the multi-disc M3U file generation. Be careful removing entries such as cue, unless a specific emulator \ platform is used to handle cue and similar file types. Automatically check for plugin updates The plugin now includes an option to automatically check for updates when starting LaunchBox. This is a simple version check of the latest release on github, and nothing is automatically downloaded or installed. When this version of the plugin is first loaded when starting LaunchBox, a message box will appear asking the user if they'd like to enable the update check. The option can also be changed at any time in the config window. If a new update is found a message box will appear shortly after LaunchBox is started, with the option to open the plugin's release page in a browser.

There doesn't seem to be an obvious way to get what was selected at the point when the selection was changed, just what is currently selected. The StateManager has methods for getting selected games and the selected platform. Not sure about the playlist though. Might involve tracking some selection state internally to work out what has changed. PluginHelper.StateManager.GetAllSelectedGames(); PluginHelper.StateManager.GetSelectedPlatform();

I thought a per emulator / platform setting might make sense too. I've raised on issue on github to track it.

Hi @Nixx, thanks for the report. Are you launching the game from the "Select ROM In Archive" right-click menu? The plugin assumes the entire contents of the zip/7z/rar file are required to play the game, and so will extract everything from the archive. The selected file is then used by LaunchBox to start the emulator. I can see in this use case extracting 58GB worth of files to play a single game is overkill. Perhaps adding an Extract All checkbox to the "Select ROM In Archive" window to handle either extracting all files, or extracting and playing only a single file? I'll give some thought to the best way of handling this use case.

Version 2.0.10 of the plugin is now available, with support for the new per platform ROM extraction setting in LaunchBox 12.8. Please note this release is compatible only with LaunchBox 12.8 and above. If you're using an older version of LaunchBox, please use v2.0.9 of the plugin. For the next few releases I'll provide two download versions, one compatible with LaunchBox 12.8+, and one for older versions of LaunchBox.

I did a quick test of the import process, and it's unclear what the core selection does during the import. I started with a manual RetroArch install (v1.9.1, not installed via LB) without any NES cores, and LaunchBox 12.8. libretro_mesen was manually downloaded via RA's Download a Core option. RetroArch was configured within LaunchBox to use the libretro_mesen core for NES games: A NES game was imported. During the import process the core selection is pre-set to nestopia_libretro (this should be set to the above configured libretro_mesen core, which I believe is possibly a bug). The import continued with the above default settings (nestopia + auto download). After the game was imported I checked the emulator settings for RetroArch, and they were unchanged (still shows libretro_mesen as the NES core). RetroArch was run and there's no indication nestopia_libretro was installed (not listed in the available cores). The imported game shows RetroArch as the emulator, without any core specific arguments. So I'm not sure what the core selection during the import is doing. It didn't change the already configured core, and didn't download the nestopia core either. Maybe because my copy of RA wasn't installed by LB in the first place? In any case, it seems like you may be able to ignore this option, @Archmage_R. Try import a game with the default core selection and see what happens.

I've noticed a similar issue when importing a game to a platform that has a non-RetroArch emulator set as the default, and RetroArch isn't installed / configured. The import wizard always prompts to select between installing RetroArch or using another emulator, where it should just use the currently configured default emulator. I've raised an issue about it here. In your case, can you set the nestopia core as the default, do the individual imports, then change the default back to the mesen core? LaunchBox will then update each game's emulator to use the mesen core.

Hi @Nixx, That sounds like a cool addition. It looks like you managed to resolve the System.Drawing.Common issue. The other error messages relate to a new property only available in the 12.8 beta version of Unbroken.Launchbox.Plugins.dll, specifically IEmulatorPlatform.AutoExtract. You can try updating LaunchBox to the latest beta, then use that version of the dll. Otherwise you can grab the code for version 2.0.9 of the plugin, which still uses an older version of the dll.

It should be doable, though might only be effective for single file ROMs (so not ROMs with multiple files, such as cue+bin). Would that be a problem? I've raised an issue on github as a reminder