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.

Hey guys, keep in touch with me. Progress is going great on my "kiosk style, CRT friendly" interface, it's a separate program that uses Launchbox data for convenience (because it does a great job at what it does and why re-invent the wheel) but is a completely unique and simple interface. It's something I want to do but the part that crosses over functionality with Launchbox (scanning your games and building a library) is left to Launchbox, because I will never replicate how good that is. Instead I should just make the part that's different than Launchbox. Oh yeah - Jason and I had a chat, turns out what I'm aiming for is too far out of scope of Launchbox. Particularly the interface. It's super simple and a lot of the "windowsy" stuff would get in the way of trying to make it as simple and clean as possible for a CRT. I'm taking inspiration from 8bit and 16bit consoles for how to best make it usable in that resolution. I'm using SDL2 and C++ and essentially drawing my own graphics. Also it's built around having this thing in your living room and making it very easy for people to just start playing random games. This is a different design goal than Launchbox. Launchbox is for the game enthusiast who wants to organise their games. My interface is for the game enthusiast who wants to show off their games to people who may not be into games and not know which ones to play. There are a number of features built around this concept. Send me an email at domarius@gmail.com and I'll keep you up to date. I guess I'll also post in this thread with updates and screenshots. While progress is going well, I'm the kind of person who won't post any updates until the thing is near completion and it's all about adding features. We've all seen projects that post updates from the start, get people excited, and then fizzle out. My preference is to not start posting pictures until it's so far along that the thing is definitely going to be completed.

Ah wow - ok I'm forwarding it again, to jason@unbrokensoftware.com right now - maybe check your spam folder too??

Hey Jason, just checking you got my email. I guess I'm anxious cause I'm kind of excited about this, I really want this thing to happen

Thanks @Jason Carr :) Yeah I'll send a portfolio / examples as part of that. We'll discuss the details I guess.

Thanks @Jason Carr, well I can send a résumé, let me know what's involved. May as well put the time towards doing it in an existing system than re-inventing the wheel. Let me know what you need to make the decision.

Jason Carr said Hi @Domarius, I won't discourage you from writing your own frontend, but I would say that instead of writing your own you could re-theme Big Box to work better for CRTs. Big Box visuals can now be fully customized so in theory everything should work great that way. What features are missing from Big Box that you're looking to implement? Well if it's possible to customise LaunchBox and reach the result quicker, I will totally do that. Not sure it's the case at the moment, but maybe you can verify; It's all about exposing random games to you in a visual way. I know you guys have taken some steps towards that with screenshot view but in my experience we can do even more. Imagine walking into a room and being immersed in a random selection of game screenshots - you get reminded of games that you forgot about and get excited to play them. I want to move as far away from a text list of game titles as possible. The reason I have the following features is to combat the demoralising effect a flat list of game text titles has on your motivation to find a fun game, and also the overwhelming number of games and not knowing where to start. I have some of these already working but I'm doing a re-write and adding some more features. All are listed below; Attract mode: (This is what I have working) This is a "kiosk mode" kind of feature, meant for a cabinet that's left on during a party. It randomly plays games every few minutes like an arcade machine plays demo play-throughs of its games. This works really well for emulated console and arcade games, since when you start them, they naturally do this. So every 3 minutes or so, it closes the game down and starts a new random game. At any time you can walk over and start playing and it will stop the timer when it detects input and let you play the game. You can also just press the favourite button if you like what you see and it will tag it as favourite without stopping the timer. (Actually the favourite button works anywhere - during gameplay, in the menu, etc.) Games of the day / week / month: You can change the setting but let's call it "games of the day". As well as your other playlists, there is also one randomly generated called "Games of the day" which randomly picks X amount of games (eg. 20) and puts them in a play list each day or whatever. Opening it should be like "What's in the surprise box today" kind of feeling. DOS game interface: Should work for other emulated computers like Amiga, C64 etc. When you choose the game screenshot, it pops up a list of executable files. You choose one and it runs it. The next time you run it, it will automatically have this selected, so you can just hit the "Confirm" button twice to start the game quickly in future. This also gives an easy way for you to run the Setup program of the game. This eliminates the need for a game to have a specialised D-Fend profile imported. Manage playlists from within the interface: I have a simple way of creating / deleting playlists and adding / removing games from them, all with the joystick input. This is another "kiosk mode" feature. My approach is centered around what you call "Big box" mode, since that's what I want for my arcade cabinet. I want to be using it and go "That's a cool game" and quickly add it to the "4 player" game playlist in a few seconds rather than have to switch out to another interface or back to windows to do some tweaking, which I will never get around to and forget about the game. Of course I have other features like onscreen keyboard, searching, etc. which are double-ups of what you have in LaunchBox, but I haven't bothered listing them here. And there are some under-the hood things that are meant to make it easy to just drop in roms and screenshot files, and have them all magically match up and show up with screenshots without you having to do stuff, but I know you have your own version of that too. So what do you think, keep going, or can I help update LaunchBox, or something?

I'm writing my own emulator front end specifically for CRT screens. For this reason, it uses a simple 3x3 tile view of game screenshots and very minimal text. I'm not going into competition with LaunchBox, no way - it's just that this feature, and a couple of other things I want for my arcade cabinet, don't yet exist in LaunchBox. Also I don't plan on re-creating most of what LaunchBox does, it's just these specific features I need. If LaunchBox had these features, that would save the the time doing it myself and I'd give up my project. Happy to know what the LaunchBox developers think though. I suspect they might not prioritise the features I need though - hence me making my own :)