zerohex

Ha, It adds up quicker than you think. I had an initial budget of $1500 for it and stayed under that if you take out the value of the PC.

QTY Item Price 14 GoldLeaf Push-button : Red $ 35.00 6 GoldLeaf Push-button : Black $15.00 1 Start Logo Push-button Black : 1 Player $4.00 1 Start Logo Push-button Black : 2 Player $4.00 1 I-PAC 2 Interface $39.00 2 J-Stik Oval Top : Black $44.00 1 U-Trak Flushmount Arcade Trackball: Red $79.00 1 1/4 Plexi for control panel top $53.00 1 Nintendo Marquee $59.00 1 Control Panel Graphics $75.00 1 Dark Grey tinted Glass 31 x 30 x 1/8 $170.00 1 Hisense 32" LED TV $120.00 1 Ultimarc Aimtrak LightGun $95.00 2 3/4 MDF 4x8 shets $70.00 DupliColor Automotive Lacquer : Silver, Black, Primer, and Clear $150.00 Total $1,012.00 PC Parts Asus Z97-A Motherboard Intel i5-4590 Haswell Crucial M550 256GB SSD 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 Corsair Hydro Series H75 with Silent fans Nvidia 560 Ti 4TB HDD EVGA SuperNova 750 PSU estimated $1,200.00 GRAND TOTAL : $2,212.00 PC cost is estimated. It was an old Gaming Rig I had collecting dust so I just re-purposed it.

@nathanddrews - I am actually going to make an itemized spreadsheet with cost soon. I'll post a list once I'm done tallying it all up...

Thanks. The 7" screen is populated by CPWizBiz/CPWizard. CPWizBiz is added to each game as an addition app and it is called with certain CLI arguments which then relay what image to show on the screen. Once I exit a game it goes back to the base control image for BigBox functionality. I have different images set for gun games and games that can only be controlled via DS4 controller, etc. CPWizBiz is Stigzler program and works great.

Let me start by saying thanks to Mysterysmellyfeet on Reddit. I came across his build and decided to make it with some modifications. Also, thanks to stephenpbhs who put his Vewflix standup mod build out there for Mysterysmellyfeet and myself to steal/borrow. Also, a big thanks to Scott at Gameongrafix for printing the CP graphics. Another thank you to Stigzler for CPWizBiz. A last minute addition with a 7" screen under the main screen to show controls and of course the Launchbox Team for a great front end. With all those thank you's I gladly accept the award for most thank you's in a forum post... Anyways, for the real topic at hand, the finished project and a link to the album. Can see the album here: https://flic.kr/s/aHskUxhi9j

I'll help as much as I can. I'll send you a PM through your forum.

@stigzler I think LB/BB has default systems. I'll put together a list of BB System Names that were default. You can always rename the systems in LB/BB but you can't be accountable for people going off the standard. @DOS76 The ability to add additional apps is what this is in reference too. You can add additional apps but currently if I want to run CPWizBiz as an additional app I have to add a cli argument per game with the game title, platform, etc so it knows what controls mapping image to display. The idea is that instead of typing out "Mortal Kombat" we could reference a variable that would return the field we are trying to access and then the same cli arguments can be copied to all games. Furthermore, if there is something to this level, I'm sure Stigzler could do more LB/BB on a CPWizBiz level like he has done with GameEX, if he was so inclined :).

Are there any database fields that can be used when calling a 3rd party app? For example, when calling and emulator to launch a game it uses something like the following: dolphin.exe "FULL\PATH\TO\ROM\FILE" Is there a similar way to use the game title, platform, and emulator name? this would allow a general cli argurmant for a 3rd party app like cpwizbiz For example: CPWizBiz.exe -gm "{GAME}" -sy "{PLATFORM}" -em "{EMU}

I have it working well with CPWizard and CPWizBiz on a second monitor. Takes some configuration but once you get it going it works seamlessly. Thanks for that recommendation @Crush . I actually ordered a 7 inch display to add to the cabinet since I was so pleased with it and @stigzler was great. He quickly pointed me in the right direction to fix the minor issues I was having. Next thing I am trying to figure out is how to mass add application to games because on the BigBox/Launchbox end, each game has to be configured to launch CPWizBiz with the executable plus the arguments for each emulator and/or game. I was hoping Launchbox had a way to maybe do a %game%, and/or %emulator% variable which will know the values. That way in each application section for the games you could have the following: CPWizBiz.exe -gm "%Game%" -em "%Emulator%

ok, I applied for the group and will start posting there once I am in.

Ok, so I did some testing and everything is displaying correctly when running the command via cli. I did not see a parameter for this but is there once to launch cpwizbiz minimized? Also, CPWizBiz stays open so calling it via another cli command does not change the control screen. For Example: First command: CPWizBiz.exe -gm "Home Control System" -sy "NESFlix" -rg "NESFlixArc" Opens up Control mapping image for BigBox. Second Command: CPWizBiz.exe -gm "Mortal Kombat Komplete" -sy "NESFlix" -rg "NESFlixArc" Nothing changes after this is ran. If I run the second command after closing cpWizBiz it will relaunch it and change the CPWizard image.

I think that may have been what I was missing. I'll have to test later today. For some reason I was thinking it was the magic button of loaders and would automatically know what BigBox is running. But now that you say we have to issue a cli command before launching game to tell cpwizbiz what game control images to load it makes more sense. I had went through the videos for setting up systems and home control, etc. Setup one game, MK Komplete to test. Will let you know results once I test now that I believe I have an ides of the correct way to do it.

@stigzler - I have been fiddling the past day or so with this. Not sure what I'm missing but I have configured a system and game for BigBox and then another for MK Komplete (PC). How do I get it to switch between the 2 when I launch the game in BigBox? All it does it stay on the last active one I was working on in CPWizBiz/CPWizard.

Thanks @wemr97dl - I am actually looking into that program now based on others recommending it as well. I like the idea of a 7" screen to show controls. I'll have to test it out. I have room for it under my 32 inch as well. If it doesn't do what I want I'll continue developing my own.

Worked perfect, thanks.

Awesome, thanks. PS4 and 360. Still in early stages so just need some to test with.

@The IVI, Awesome work, thanks. Would it be possible to make them with a transparent background? The way I have them fading in currently as a splash screen would look pretty cool imo if it had no background it was just the platform title and controller. @Crush - Thanks for all the tips on AHK and per emulator settings. I have tinkered with those before but, my goal for this app is to easily make custom control images and display them at game launch, per game or per emulator, if you want. the showing of an image is the easy part. Making a Form that you can change labels for arcade controls is the harder part. Unless I make dedicated 6,7,8 button templates instead of working of an image. I was thinking the user would have an option to upload a picture of their control panel and can select each button to add mapping label.

Is there a way to run an executable before launchbox/bigbox runs the emulator? Basically, I need launchbox/bigbox to run seeControlsSplash.exe then launch the emulator and game

This is very rough. It's just to test out functionality and I can add complexity to it from here. If you extract the zip file to its own folder then open up command prompt. Go to that folder and run SeeControlsSplash.exe 360 NES or SeeControlsSplash.exe PS4 NES You will get a splash screen with the images The IVI provided. Customization/setup form will come next. This will be where you can take the image and assign labels to each button. sc.zip

My goal for what I was thinking about designing is this: 1. you go into the setup portion of this package and select the consoles/emulator you use. 2. in the controller setup tab you will have a drop down for type of remote and platform. a. in this tab you select the controller type(there will be default images for things like keyboard, PS4, xbox 360, etc.) then you select platform. b. then you click each button to say what it maps too in the emulator, you will also be able to enter custom text so for custom settings. I.E. Light Punch(LP), etc. ideally I would like this to go into the emulator config files and pull this info automatically. 3. Then in launchbox/bigbox when you select a game it will show the mapping image for x amount of secs or until another key is pressed. I already have the step 3 done. I can call the executable with 3 arguments (controller, platform, game). Based on this it displays a certain image. This was the easy part. Essentially, the app I want to create is for per platform and per game and would work for all emulators. I'm open to any and all suggestions and criticisms. Once I get a sample app done I'll make it available with some setup instructions.

I was thinking of writing a 3rd party application, if I ever get time. My thought for my setup was to have launchbox call this application with an argument of the game you try to launch. The application will show your control mappings, per game or console. For me, I have a lot of per game configurations for my arcade control panel that make the games more enjoyable because the buttons flow better. The setup part of this application would be the pain point though. Ideally, it would get the emulator and game info from launchbox, then look to that emulator for any custom configs for that game. If none exist show the default mappings. It would show this on screen for a designated amount of time selected by user and/or until a key is pressed. Then Launchbox would launch the game. I still need to do more research into what it would take to do it. It's pretty easy if you take out the automation of finding the game and emulator and pulling the mapping info but that would be to much setup work on the user in my opinion.

I use big box as the front end of the Arcade I am building(hopefully done in the next week or 2). Although the coin operation for emulated arcade games is nice I was thinking, what if we had a coin/credit mechanism for BigBox as a whole. the idea would be : Each credit give you "x" amount of minutes. When you're time runs out it give you a 30 second countdown to add more credits before it goes back to the main menu with controls disabled. This feature would give it somewhat of an arcade feel and make coin mechanism useful for more than just Arcade games.

@Jason Carr - Now it happens with both WMP and VLC. But, with VLC the video were instantaneous from the get. No Delay in the beginning.

Yeah, I have Windows up to date and have read a little bit on the ntldll errors. The strange thing is it does not happen in 7.1. Was there a big change in the functionality behind using VLC in the source code? @qqmoreqq, I had a slight delay between platform videos only upon the first transition. After that it was fast. This is not happening with WMP.

Went through the test loop for about 4-5 min with WMP and no error. It seems to only be with VLC. I have the latest VLC version. System info below: Windows 8.1 64-bit Intel I5-4590 16GB Ram Nvidia 560 Ti It definitely seems to be something with VLC integration.