Fursphere

Dreams are good. For me, personally, having been in the emulation game for multiple decades now, every time I think about switching to linux, I usually find some core function that isn't compatible. Like some emulator I use, or some piece of hardware I use just isn't going to work. (I think the Mayflash Dolphin bar is currently on that list of things that don't work in Linux for me). LEDBlinky is another tricky one. Or my entire virtual pinball cabinet would be a mess in Linux. basically having to run WINE, which at that point... just run Windows. lol Long story short - Linux is a hobby in itself. For everyone that loves Linux, more power to ya.

This idea SteamOS is build on Debian 8 I believe. So its building on the backs of all the Linux Devs that came before it. Batocera is built of buildroot I think...? Its super stripped down, but also built on the linux kernel. So there is a lot of "work" that others have done that Batocera builds on top of. Making LaunchboxOS would mean that it would be responsible for: All motherboard support All video card support All peripheral support (USB devices, sound games, etc) Basically, all drivers. For everything. Every possible combination of hardware that makes up a "PC". This is way the Raspberry PI is so popular - everything is using the exact same board. So all development is unified. So... on top of building Launchbox features, the developers would be getting bombed with "My random PC part I bought on AliExpress doesn't work" questions. Not a place I'd want to be. This is one of the biggest draws to Windows - DirectX. Microsoft made a bunch of APIs that developers could commonly call (Back in 1995), and then Microsoft does all the heavy lifting with mapping those API calls do the hardware layer. Its a middle man translator. Not entirely sure how Linux does it, but I remember a time not to long ago (say, less than ~10 years ago?) where getting anything to work on Linux was a nitemare. Its come a long way, but its still a mess in my opinion for desktop users.

Sounds interesting! I like the way ArcadeEIP does it best - where its loading the MAME roms and they're fully playable, then switches to another game. I know this would be difficult for almost any other platform outside of MAME though.

A couple of the items I didn't quite understand. Like, I think I do, but its hard to imagine what the final result would be. A graphic mock up would be helpful in future polls to show exactly what you're talking about. And as for the screensaver integration - isn't attract mode a screensaver in itself?

That make sense. I tried that, and it didn't seem to work. Maybe I have to remove it from the "combined" Game first, then import it.

Hello, Looking for a way to break the relationship between different regions imported as the same game. Normally, this is exactly what I want LB to do - all regional versions of the same game 'are' the same game, and only the prioritized region should show up in the main game list, with alternate regional versions available in a sub menu basically. But Super Mario Bros 2. for NES is an exception. The USA version and the Japanese versions are completely different games, even though they have the except same name. Is there a way in the GUI (or even XML hacking) to break the Japanese version into a separate game all together? thanks,

Thanks. Doing the work is quite simple. But it becomes a tax down the road, as every time I update my set its something I have to remember to do. If LB is only going to support MAME in .ZIP format, fine by me. I'll just leave it be.

Fair enough. I'll just switch my set back to ZIP. (Still have a backup). I don't want go XML hacking, at least not right yet. Its kind of odd though - since every other platform in LB doesn't care about file extensions. Maybe add a note to the import page "Files are expected to be in ZIP format" or something.

You can save around 8 - 10 GB of space if you repackage into 7z. Even more if you move to a MERGE set. I always repackage ROMS because the 'full sets' you download from out there are never actually complete, but that's a topic for another thread. Launchbox MAME importer happily imported my set as 7z, and will happily re-import it after it thinks its not there anymore. And you're correct, the metadata for a game shows it with a .ZIP extension. So basically somewhere in the import process it appears to be hard coded to .ZIP. Here is a link to the official mame docs showing archive support: https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/assetsearch.html

Found a bug in 12.10 Beta 4 this evening. I have my MAME .240 set as "split" and 7zipped. (filename.7z) I can import and run them from Launchbox / BigBox just fine. If I do a "Scan for Removed Roms..." (all platforms or any platform) it thinks that all my MAME roms are gone. On my other cabinet where the MAME .240 set is regular zipped (filename.zip), the scanner does not have this issue. Seems to not recognize 7z as a valid filename in regards to scanning for removed roms.

There is a plugin to help with this. LB/BB will extract the file first, then launch the emulator from a temp location. Check it out.

This is kind of related. Who the heck builds these "full" sets? I've been messing with MAME for 15+ years now, and every time I download a "full set", when I do a check with a tool like CLRMAMEPRO against the matching mame.exe binary, it always has some differences or missing roms, sets named or packed wrong, etc. Split or merged, doesn't seem to matter. I just got in the habit or rebuilding when I decide to do an update. Its just bizarre to me. And you also have a to do goofy stuff like torrentzip to build your current set to the torrent set so you can join at greater than zero percent, and even that has weird inconsistencies. Anyway, just thinking out loud here. Not complaining, just truly trying to understand what the heck is going on so updates are easier / more efficient.

Update to this. I got my second cabinet running today. Using RetroArch I was able to play a 2 player Netplay game going between the cabinets using NES fceumm_libretro.dll Core. Took a little windows firewall work, but I was able to start the game 'hosting' on Cab "A" then join the game on Cab "B" (manual join). Works great. Then using the RetroArch fbneo_libretro.dll core, I was able to do the same with MAME games. I had to enable advanced user interface features in RetroArch to tell each instance of retroarch which "player IDs" to request when joining. So I have Cab A request 1 and 3, then Cab B request 2 and 4. I got a 4 player game of Golden Axe 3 going. On my LAN, there is no lag. Runs great - at least in my limited testing. There are some quirks, but its totally playable.

I’m currently building two cabinets to do exactly this. Originally I was going to setup a hardware KVM solution to mirror the displays and link the controls. While possible, it gets pretty complicated with control mapping. Plan now is to use RetroArch Netplay. It’s not supported on every core, but should work with most of the stuff I want to do. Another option is PARSEC, but it shares similar problems as the hardware KVM solution. (Remapping controls) What are you going to use for control inputs? I’m using Ultimarc IPac Ultimate boards in each cabinet.

Too funny. I was just wondering if Big Box ever implemented a feature to change/mute the volume in attract mode. Googled up this thread, with a link to my original feature request that I had completely forgotten about. From way back in 2016 no less. Can I make a donation to get this feature implemented?

I created a work around for this. Basically its a batch file (.bat) that launches along side the game itself, and has a 10-15 second wait time before it fires the appropriate LEDBlinky.exe command. LB/BB lunches games - sends command to ledblinky to start lights. (using the Steam ID game launch method) lights light up. now "steam game ID" can't be seen, so the lights go out, because LB/BB "thinks" the game has closed / ended. My batch file fires a second ledblinky command a few seconds after that, which start the lights back up - which will stay lit until something else sends ledblinky a command. (which happens when you really close the game and LB/BB comes back into focus and starts sending ledblinky commands again). You have to modify every steam game's launch setup to get it to to work, but it works. (is there a way to batch mass edit the things in LB??)

Awesome, thanks!

Bumping an old thread because it seems vary relevant. I just checked my /updates/ folder and its 17 GB in size! Would it be possible to add in a automatic cleanup routine? (maybe with an automatic roll back option as well, if you're going to keep a few older installers around? although I have never had to roll back.) My folder has a whole bunch of named installers (LaunchBox-7.10-beta-2-Setup.exe for example), then a bunch of GUID based files (e4fb21bf-803e-4977-bb89-666cc2eceb3c.exe for example). I'm assuming these are all safe to delete?

Ah. So really it needs an overhaul to be abstracted from the code - so the end users can maintain thier own lists. #FeatureRequest

Must be pretty old then. I update almost every version, and I haven't seen a new game added in a long time. Not that thats a bad thing.. MAME is mostly about the classics. The interface (and options to handle clones, slot machines, etc) made me thing it was using ROMlister in some fashion, which in turn uses the MAME.EXE -LISTXML file dump. So.. how do we go about getting this list refreshed?

Something I've noticed for awhile is when I update my MAME set, and then in Launchbox scan for new games - it never finds any new ones. How does Launchbox actually generate the MAME game list?

This is what I did... eXoDos is in 5 collections. So I made five folders. Unzipped everything into there respective collections (yes, it took a long time). Then I just had launchbox import each collection "Import DOS game" - again, it took a long time. Did it five times, once for each collection. Launchbox DOS game importer did a really good job at find the correct 'launching' file, and for the most part, they all just work. Every once and awhile I have to tweak one - but its not a big deal. Don't overthink it.

Just tested this. Works perfectly! thanks!

PD has EXO it in five parts.