Fursphere

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.

For what its worth, I have the newest (I think?) ExoDOS collection, and I imported the entire thing into LB. Most games work first try. A few need tweaking. My virus scanner said 2 - 3 of them were dangerous, so I nuked those specific games (didn't recognize the names anyway). Took a VERY long time to unzip them all, and even longer to import them into LB. lol

@Jason Carr Some feedback for playlists. For auto-populating can you add some "exact" search features in the contains logic? For example - I built a playlist for Contra to look for "title contains Contra" - but it picks up "CONTRAption zack" (love that old dos game). I know in other computer systems adding quotes is a way to get an exact match. like "Contra" or something. Could you add an "audit" feature to playlists (right click - audit) - or something. Right now its still not clear if i'm deleting a title from the just the playlist, or form the database it came from. An audit feature could possible pull all the details like you do from the platform audit menu? Might be really complicated though. thanks!

@arzoo @Jason Carr I may have figured out a workaround for this. For a Steam URL game, I edited the game and added an additional program to automatically run after the main application. The application itself is a simple batch file. @echo off timeout 15 start d:\ledblinky\ledblinky.exe windows windows The timeout 15 gives it enough time (15 seconds) to let Launchbox go through its LEDBlinky start game / stop game routine, then manually fires off a "start game" command. As long as LEDBlinky doesn't receive any more commands, it should be good. Is there a way to mass-edit the games list to add this additional app work around? Having to manually edit them all could be tedious....

Is it possible to get Dynamic Playlists? For example, base a playlists contents based on search criteria (or multiple searches - "mario bros" and "super mario" for example to populate a playlist)? Might be too CPU intensive, or maybe too small a use case. But figured I'd throw the idea out there.

No option. No message box. It just deleted (and seemingly corrupted the playlist at the same time). I had to delete the playlist to keep LaunchBox running.