ghettoandroid

Thanks for the points. I'm emulating an Archimedes computer with little over a dozen games. Although I never grew up with owing the Archimedes, the games I'm currently emulating seem to emulate well. Better timing emulation, ARM3 and peripherals emulation would be lost on me and wont warrant my time in updating to Arculator 2 and to come up with scripts that work with it.

idk. I'm using Arculator 0.99. What are the advantages of using Arculator 2.0 over Arculator 0.99? So far the con of using Arculator 2.0 is that the batchfile is not compatible. They should have old versions of Arculator on their website.

Sorry, I've not been using Launchbox or have been on this forum for a while. I'm not sure if the emulator is using DirectX, but you might want to take a look a program called DxWnd, if you have not already solved your problem. https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/home/Home/

Ya, I felt that way too at first. I guess you have to be technically minded. But I believe most of the problems are caused by psychological barriers. Once you get into it, I swear it is as easy as setting up a stereo system or following a recipe. The key is to be patient and ask good questions, Google is your friend. The AutoHotKeys docs are pretty good too https://autohotkey.com/docs/AutoHotkey.htm. I'm sure doing everything with a controller is very possible.

If that is the case, you're not as lazy as you claim to be. Or you don't plan to use Archimedes a whole lot. Before LaunchBox, I knew very little about scripting anything and my skills are still quite general.

I'm kinda an AutoHotKey noob myself and can only offer solutions to problems that I've already solved. If you can close with the keyboard, you may want to try sending key commands with AutoHotKey in your close routine, the same as we did for the fullscreen routine.

Awesome! If the script works for you, sure!

Yes. But as far as I know, there is no option in Arculator to launch in fullscreen. Arculator has an option to enter fullscreen mode through its GUI menu. Luckily it can be accessed by a few keystrokes. So there are a couple of things I had to do to make this work. 1. I know from experience that when an old emulator glitches in fullscreen mode that the "Override high DPI scaling behavior" may need to be checked from the Compatibility tab. You can access this tab by right-clicking on the Arculator.exe program and choosing the Properties option. 2. Since we can use keystrokes to enter fullscreen mode, we can use AutoHotKeys scripts to launch Arculator in fullscreen. Luckily for us, AutoHotKeys is integrated with LaunchBox. So all you have to do in LaunchBox is edit emulator and choose the AutoHotkey Script tab and enter the following in the tab's field. Sleep, 1000 ;### enter full screen mode ### SendInput !v SendInput f The above script may not be the most effective but it has worked for me so far. Also, I've updated the arculator.bat script to be more friendly when launching in fullscreen. I've attached it to this post. These steps are what worked for me. Your Windows environment may be different than mine. arculator.bat

np! Same, I'm trying to run as many 70's and 80's platforms as I can too. But getting old computer games to run via LB can be a headache and very time-consuming, and I often find that I have to resort to macros, batch scripts, and other helper programs to make it work. The goal for me is to have all the games launch automatically in fullscreen mode if possible and to have all shortcut keys for common operations to be consistent between all emulators.

Sorry, I just realized that the "Don't use quotes" option is not checked by default in the Emulator Details tab. This should be checked. I should have mentioned that beforehand. Hopefully, that was the problem.

Download the script and place it in the same directory as the Arculator.exe is in. Under Emulator Application Path in LaunchBox just, switch out "Arculator.exe" with the "arculator.bat". This should automount the game to disk 0. It can't get any simpler than this. Let me know if you're having any problems arculator.bat code: ::### set paths ### set DiskName0Path=%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 ::### delete arc.cfg ### del arc.cfg ::### write arc.cfg ### echo disc_name_0 = %DiskName0Path% > arc.cfg ( echo no_borders = 0 echo stereo = 1 echo rom_set = 2 echo fdc_type = 0 echo fast_disc = 1 echo hardware_blit = 1 echo double_scan = 1 echo first_fullscreen = 1 echo full_borders = 0 echo hires = 0 echo fpa = 0 echo cpu_type = 0 echo mem_size = 4096 echo sound_enable = 1 echo limit_speed = 1 ) >> arc.cfg ::### run emulator ### start Arculator.exe

There is a file called "arc.cfg" in the Arculator folder that automatically mounts a disk image based on the last session. Mine looks like this: disc_name_0 = Z:\games\1_Archimedes\disks\Bug Hunter And Moon Dash (1990)(Minerva)[h].adf no_borders = 0 stereo = 1 rom_set = 2 fdc_type = 0 fast_disc = 1 hardware_blit = 1 double_scan = 1 first_fullscreen = 0 full_borders = 0 hires = 0 fpa = 0 cpu_type = 0 mem_size = 4096 sound_enable = 1 limit_speed = 1 The "disc_name_0" variable is the location of the disk image that will mount on boot-up. I'll try to make a .bat or autioit script that will write to the arc.cfg file the disk image location before running the emulator based on user selection in Launch Box and post it up here if anyone is interested. I also believe that Mame has support for Archimedes emulation but I've not taken a look at that yet.

I don't believe that Arculator has a command line interface. You would have to use a macro program like AutoHotKey or AutoIt to attempt to automatically mount a disk image in Arculator, or find another emulator with a command line interface.

Although it does not need a command line, it's nice to have it launch in fullscreen mode. http://seriouscomputerist.atariverse.com/media/rtf/Altirra - Command-Line Help.rtf

I found disk images of system 6 on What Is The Apple IIgs website. It's listed as freeware and can be downloaded here; http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/system-6-0-1. I used the "Disk 2 of 7 System Disk.2mg" as the boot disk and renamed it boot.2mg for convenience sake. The custom command-line parameters in LB for MESS; apple2gs -flop3 "FULL PATH TO boot.2mg" -flop4 %romfile% Now I can finally launch all my Apple IIgs games!! If there is a more elegant solution, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll see what I can figure out.

Would you know how to mount a Hard Drive image in MESS? All I'm able to do is mount floppy disks images using the -flop command parameter, and thus unable to launch non-bootable disk images.

I would love to see a demo vid or screen shots of your "kiosk style, CRT friendly" interface when you're ready to post some up!

I should add that you probably what to place the change_screen_resolution.exe file in the same folder as LaunchBox, as LaunchBox will probably use that folder as the root directory and then have LaunchBox execute that script preferably with the Additional App option in LaunchBox.

It should work on networked PCs if you compile the .au3 file into a .exe file. The .exe file should work as a portable program. If you install AutoIt and right click the .au3 file, you get an option to compile the script. Give that a try and see if that works out for you.

Command-line arguments are specific to the emulator that is being used. Different emulators have different command-line arguments. You might want to take a look at the list of command-line arguments for the emulator that you are using to see if there is a command argument that will let you define a particular resolution.

You might want to take a look at a scripting language called AutoIt for Windows. It lets you create a script that automates many of Windows' features, like changing screen resolution and color depth. You can then compile the script into a .exe file that can be accessed through a network. You can then create a .bat script that will run the executable and then start the game and reference that path to the .bat in LB. As a result, you will have to create a .bat for every game that you want the resolution changed for, which could be impractical when dealing with a ton of games unless you're able to create a script that will do it automatically. I've included an AutoIt script as an attachment to this post that will change the screen resolution. You can view the script in a text editor such as Note++ but you will need AutoIt installed to run it or compile it as a .exe. change_screen_resolution.au3

THANKS! That link did the trick!! Command line argument in MAME: ti99_4a -peb:slot3 speech -cart

The default command line parameter that I use is "ti99_4a -cart". I've just tried "ti99_4a -cart1 voice -cart2" and also "ti99_4a -cart voice -cart" with no luck. I'll continue to try similar command arguments. Thanks for your suggestion though.

Has anyone been able to emulate the TI-99/4a with the voice synthesizer and have LaunchBox launch it in fullscreen mode? If so, what emulator are you using? I have the TI-99/4a emulated in MAME but I'm unable to get the voice synthesizer to work. I believe I have the voice synthesizer rom file in the right directory but none of the games that I've tried, that use the synthesizer, are outputting any speech. I'm starting to think that it's not possible to use the voice synthesizer under MAME 0.184.