Domarius

The main reason is I'm making an arcade interface that randomly plays different games on a timer, and you can jump in and play one if it looks good (and the timer will cancel), plus it has a list of games randomly shuffled - the idea is it makes it fun to see what kind of wacky games are out there, and it's starting to work. I have a crappy basic site up at the moment at www.domariusgames.com but I'll make a dedicated site for the software within the month hopefully. It's going to be an add on for LaunchBox.

I just checked that out, and man, that's a really impressive amount of work. I see that he wrote a custom C++ program to help him compile all the variations of XMLs. I think I worked around my current situation in Launchbox by checking the "Combine games with identical titles into one game" on the screen before the arcade import options, and then specifying "Import all roms regardless of clones", I THINK that's done the trick, because I can see all the games that I think should be there, and at the same time, I only have one Pac-Man, etc. But if I have any more problems, I'll be looking into your method. It may be a bit more tedious but it has a high level of control and reliability, so I know that way will always work if I need to go that way. Best part is I can see how it works - I have no idea what LaunchBox is doing under the hood to filter them! By the way, your animated avatar, did you model that in Qubicle or something? It looks awesome

Thanks spycat, OK I went away and tried to educate myself on this, I've been using Mamedb.org and Mame UI to browse clones, but there's still no way to find out the parent rom for a specific rom if you don't already know it. Also if the Launchbox filter was working as it should, if it saw Pac-Man as a clone of Puck Man, it should have prioritised the "North American" version "Pac-Man" and ignored Puck Man... but if it saw them as different games, then it should have both Puck Man and Pac-Man, and not cull the latter... very strange. Thank you, that is good to know that exists. But from what you're saying, it seems you still need to go through some manual curation, and then Hyperchecker will just cull out the roms you haven't selected? I was kinda hoping LaunchBox's filter would work as designed, filtering out clones, fruit games, etc. leaving all the games I know, and also lots of playable games I hadn't heard of so I can explore the library.

I've edited my original post to make it clearer.

I have MAME archive 183 and am trying to import all games with these fairly default settings; Skip clones and prioritise North America All "Skip" check boxes ticked (except Mature games, because why not) "Create playlists" is unchecked though But after it's complete, a large number of popular games are missing, notably Pacman and Double Dragon, to name a couple. Afterwards, if I manually try to drag in some of the games I noticed missing (eg. all zips with "pacman" in the title, and all zips with "ddragon" in the title), with the same default settings, they still don't show up. It says 0 games imported, I guess it filtered them out again. Strangely, if I delete all Arcade games and start from scratch, and just drag in "pacman" and "ddragon" zips again, with the default settings, they show up correctly - I get Pacman, Pac Mania, and Double Dragon 1, 2, and 3. But that doesn't solve the problem, because again, if I import all the games I have, a large number go missing. I found the only way to ensure the missing games show up when dragging in all the games at once, is change the default setting from "Skip clones and prioritise North America" to "Import all clones" - but then of course I get like 10 identical versions of each game...

I just get a black screen for any N64 games I run - the sound works though. There was another thread about this, but I tried "removing the shaders" as best I could, without any luck. (Linked below) in retroarch.cfg, the "video_shader" setting was video_shader = "" but I set it to "null" anyway. No difference. I tried choosing a "glsl" shader in the "Shaders" option under "Quick Menu" after loading an N64 game, still no difference. Always tried restarting RetroArch after every change. I have an old nVidia GeForce 7300 GT in this home made arcade machine I'm using, I wonder if the age of the card is the issue?

Awesome, will do

Thanks - yes indeed, proper screenshots and even a video trailer and other instructional videos are planned, in fact it was only after I sent the video of the prototype that it "clicked" with Jason and he said it would be better as a separate entity, like an add on, rather than me extending LaunchBox as he first suggested (as he was looking for programmers at the time). He actually said for CRT support the way I was intending, trying to use the existing LaunchBox system would just get in the way of the minimalism I was going for. When you start trying to make your arcade a very user friendly, idiot-proof "kiosk" system, using LaunchBox as a starting point, all kinds of details emerge for areas of improvement, and that's what Arcade Attract is designed to address. It's hard to explain till you actually try to do it in practice. Here's the old video of the prototype that I sent Jason (first half has a little demo of the attract mode, and is a little long winded - actual interface is halfway through - if I did this video now I'd do it very differently); https://photos.app.goo.gl/ynNbBKseruprwrki2

Yes of course, that's why I'm putting feelers out right now, I've just been making the thing do it's job as best it can, and now that it's looking like it's actually doing its job well, I'm confident enough to begin discussion on how it will be implemented. That makes sense that it would only work with the premium version - that way there's no chance of people skirting around the main premium feature, and it would help drive up Jason's sales, at least a bit of my demographic, which wants this kind of thing. Which is probably not that huge, I admit, but the need is there, because I need it Ideally I want to be able to charge for it so I get something back for the past almost year of work - so they need a valid Premium Launchbox licence, and then to buy my add-on, it'd only be like an extra $5 or something.

I see where you're coming from now. Well it will be a paid thing, so there's that barrier of entry. But as for that, I need to discuss the details of that with @Jason Carr, and he's been hard to get a hold of on email in recent times, so if you know any other way of getting in touch with him other than tagging him this way, please let me know.

BigBox is great, but it doesn't do the things I listed, hence me making this

Actually I've been talking with Jason personally, and showed him a video, and he said rather than me extending Launchbox, the community would probably like this as a separate streamlined CRT based interface, as LaunchBox's frame work would kind of get in the way of what I'm doing. I made a bullet point list of features that BigBox doesn't have, I don't understand why you think it's still the same thing?

Not quite - as I said, Big Box caters for some of that functionality, but not all of what I just described, here's a not-exhaustive bullet point list; Low spec - very fast, even with tens of thousands of games - almost instant load time and fast scrolling Make your own screenshots on the fly Screenshot based browsing - the screen is full of screenshots, as opposed to a list of titles with one screenshot at a time. CRT compatible - Large text and edge to edge screenshots, no wasted screen space Attract mode - runs games on its own every few minutes when enabled Manage playlists from within the interface Even simpler interface with just the playlists and a "Party Mix" playlist which contains a selection of all the playlist contents (so you know they are hand picked) which shuffles to the bottom as each game is played so that the least played are on top, so something new is always available. The devil is in the details, once I have videos and screenshots up it will be more clear what need I'm filling here. Basically I have my own arcade cabinet and not only does Launchbox not go well on a CRT but I have several ideas for improvements to make it super easy and fun for the average person to browse.

Hi guys, I'm nearing some kind of official announcement (with videos and screenshots and things) for my super simplistic general game front end add-on for Launchbox (called Arcade Attract) and I want to gauge people's interest for this kind of thing. It's meant for social situations where even non-gamers could come up to your machine and just start pressing directions and buttons and choose a game - visually - it's always gameplay screenshots filling the screen, you don't scroll through a list of titles before you see a screenshot. Launchbox can be customised to be like that but mine is streamlined to be readable on a CRT, and also handles the running of the game and the closing of a game, with a "menu" button, and can also add screenshots in real time with a "screenshot" button, for any games missing screenshots. It's really meant as a "kiosk" style situation - 100% joystick & button control (with onscreen keyboard for search interface), no need to touch a mouse or keyboard or manually close the game. It also gets its name from having an "Attract mode" where it randomly changes running games every few minutes, and you can jump in any time and it will let you play. It's EXTREMELY fast; it builds from LaunchBox's data but caches it in binary files so even with tens of thousands of games on a very low spec system, the interface starts up pretty much immediately and scrolling is also immediate with no frame drops. I have a placeholder website here, please register your interest in any way you like, even by posting here. https://www.domariusgames.com/games

Thanks Well I'm keen to soon. I'm working on it as we speak.