MacGuyver

I sorted it out! I didn't realize that for my game there were multiple versions of patches for slightly different ROMs of the same title, and I was selecting the wrong ones. Once I selected "only show owned games" in the RPCS3 patch manager, I quickly realized that none of the correct patches were enabled for the exact ROM that I had. When I selected those, they were enabled for the game correctly from Launchbox too.

Any tips on how to enable specific patches for the individual games? When I launch games from the RPCS3 interface directly, it remembers what patches I have enabled for the specific game. But when I launch the game through Launchbox, it does launch (hooray), but none of the patches are enabled, so there might be issues with bloom for example. But launching the game direct from RPC3, it remembers the individual patch settings.

Thanks again Zombeaver for the INSANE amount of careful work you continue to put into these updates. All the new features, the new shader, the updated core with improved SID emulation, new bezels, better zoom settings, all the game version updates, the new overlays, and especially the next set of curated games, it's a dream come true for the fans of this platform. We're not worthy! Truly awesome.

Guys after playing around with PRG Starter and running into some snags, I'm moving onto a different solution. Even though it's useful for many situations, from what I can tell it still does not provide an easy command line method of running multipart files, which means excluding some of the best Vic20 cartridges. I feel like the best option is to follow in Zombeaver's footsteps on the C64 Dreams project, and use RetroArch with the latest VICE xvic core. There is a lot of great features being added right now on the VICE cores, and the ability to to use shaders etc from Retroarch is just too powerful to ignore. I'll update when I'm further along.

Zombeaver, the quality and breadth of the work you are doing with these releases is insane. New games, new features, updated versions, custom notes, new bezels, the list goes on. And now with possible savestates and an improved VICE core around the corner, there is more to come, apparently! Thank you so much!

The game specific instructions presented as a sticky note is awesome! Smart idea with the database so you can consider upgrading game versions, too. And more games coming? How do you find the time for all this?! Thank you!

Wow, what a lot of work and detail you are putting into these updates! BIG thanks!!!!

Sweet! Can't wait.

Holy smokes, what a treat! THANK YOU SO MUCH! This is the ultimate way to play C64 M.U.L.E. Wow, 4 player simultaneous gameplay on a Commodore 64 game, how incredible! It was really nice of you to take the time to figure this out. Now that you've got this 3 & 4 multiplayer sorted out, you might want to consider setting up Bruce Lee Return of Fury the same way! It just got released as freeware a few months ago and looks incredibly slick, plus it allows 3 player simultaneous play! https://megastyle.itch.io/bruce-lee-return-of-fury

Thanks for the super detailed explanation, which made me realize the complexity of this idea. I thought about this and I think that ultimately it would be too easy to mess up the other person's game. So I don't think it's worth pursuing but I do appreciate the inventiveness of the solution! I do think that this is the best way to do this, if you're able to make it work. And yes, if it works with 3 controllers it should also work with 4 I'm happy to do any testing and very appreciative! ?

Hi Zombeaver, a BIG thanks for adding M.U.L.E into your super slick C64 Dreams setup, and also the work you put into customizing the keyboard. It works fantastic! I even tested the 4 player setup and it's definitely a better keyboard layout. I can't wait to play this with my kids, I've been talking about this game for years. BUT, I've been thinking a little more about the 4 controller setup, because I'm not going to give up on this! I know that my copy of retroarch sees my xbox 360 controllers # 3 and 4 when I turn them on because I see a status update from Retroarch when it detects them. However I realize that the VICE core in retroarch normally allows only 2 controllers for input as far as I know. So I have 2 theories of ways this could be bypassed to finally allow full 4 player controller support on MULE. I have yet to test either of these, but open to your feedback. Method #1 - Don't use VICE to interpret the 3rd and 4th joysticks. Instead use something like Joy2Key to read controller 3 and 4 and convert them into the W, S, D and up arrow, down arrow, and right arrow keys. Method #2 - Use a specially modified version of C64 M.U.L.E which was re-coded to read signals from a 4 player joystick adapter. Of course, the actual hardware adapter is for a physical C64 made by Protovision, but I understand that VICE has a special user port mode that can emulate this adapter called CGA mode. Details here https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=39013&sid=02011793d92a367b12679b878453b371 And here is the link for the specially modified 4 player version of M.U.L.E.: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=101455 Interested in your thoughts!

Thanks very much for adjusting the keys on M.U.L.E. Zombeaver! Really looking forward to testing this.

M.U.L.E. is actually my favorite C64 game of all time, and you have to play with a group to truly get a feel for how great the competition aspect of the game really is. Having said that, it's nearly impossible to have players 3 and 4 use the keyboard at the same time comfortably so I would love to find a way to map those keys onto controllers 3 and 4. The part I wasn't sure about was the fire button being two keys together. And thanks so much for the shift tip on the forum replies ?

Hi Zombeaver, thanks for the update, and I can't wait for the next installment! An expansion on my request for "M.U.L.E." which it sounds like you've just added, my dream is to be able to play the 4 player mode with my kids, using 4 controllers. ON the 4 player mode on the C64, M.U.L.E. uses the keyboard for players 3 and 4: Left Keyboard Player: "Q" key = up, "Commodore" key = down, "Q" + "Commodore" = Fire Right Keyboard Player: "Up Arrow" key = up, "=" key = down, "Up Arrow" + "=" = Fire I wonder if there is an easy way you could map these keyboard commands onto controller 3 and 4? (I'm also using XBOX 360 controllers). Thanks ever so much! (Also, how are you responding single spaced on the forum?) I can't seem to sort that out.

Wow, it's awfully nice of you to open this up to the community for the next set of games you'll do. I'll add a few more games to the list, if I'm not too late. So many good titles to choose from! Here's a few more obscure titles that I enjoyed playing way back in the day: Flloyd of the Jungle Gyruss Jupiter Lander Mario Brothers Miner 2049er Oil's Well Pharaoh’s Curse Racing Destruction Set Snokie Ultima III:Exodus Wizard of Wor

Quick question Zombeaver - If I already have a platform in my LB setup called "Commodore 64", how can I merge the games platform in C64 dreams into this current one? It was relatively easy to change its parent to computers like you suggest, but when I tried to change the name it said "Another platform already exists with the specified title. Please choose a different title" Hmmm - Any way to merge platforms? Or do you have another suggestion to integrate it with my current Launchbox C64 games setup? Thanks!

Thanks again for all the help. I sure am going to be looking forward to your updates on this project. I can't stress enough that in all my years of C64 emulation, I've never seen as good a presentation as what you've done here. The games play better than on a real commodore! What a treat. I'll PM you with a separate list rather than hijacking your thread. Thanks again!

My DPI scaling in Windows is set to 100%. I found someone else having the same problem with Retroarch, and the solution which worked for me was to right click on the Retroarch.exe program in the C64 dreams folder, click "change high DPI settings", and select the checkmark "override high DPI scaling behavior performed by" and select "application". Now it works perfectly! What a treat! I'm really impressed how you've got the zoom level perfect to crop out the borders, and the Retroarch rendering looks incredible as far as scanlines. Thanks very much for the explanation of how hotkeys work on Retroarch. Makes sense. By shortcuts, I was refererring to the fact that sometimes when I click on the C64 dreams copy of Launchbox.exe it would install it instead of running it, and the Launchbox shortcuts in my windows Start menu would launch the C64 Dreams version of Launchbox instead of my regular installation. Would like to avoid this, but maybe the easiest way is to just import C64 Dreams into my existing Launchbox setup. A few more questions How can I change the alien type background on the sides? Do you plan on showing a tutorial for the process you go through for adding new games, so that I could add some more favorites of my own to this setup with the same care and attention that you have? Based on how careful and how you are actually doing custom setups for every single game, I totally believe that it's going to take you a few years to get through the entire library. You are doing this with the same level as an archivist, and for that I thank you!

Wow, what an incredible amount of work you've put into this, Zombeaver! I absolutely love how insanely careful and picky you are to ensure the experience is smooth. I absolutely love the cheatsheet controller image that comes up, and how you've set up the controller with such useful features. I plan on digging into this in a big way! A few quick questions. The biggest issue I had is that I couldn't get the display resolution to work correctly. My monitor is 1920x1080 but for some reason the image appears zoomed in when I run this setup. I even tried running the 1080p bat file but it did not help. I will admit that I don't find the user interface on Retroarch very easy to use but I'm not familiar with it. The other thing that was difficult is that getting to the Retroarch screen to adjust was also difficult, since it does not display wide enough to show the video settings. I was able to fumble my way to 4x3 on the aspect ratio, so I could see everything but then the image was quite small, so I'd love to hear any suggestions on how to adjust this to be in between the two. The other thing I noticed is that running the version of Launchbox with your package would occasionally interfere with the shortcuts for my main launchbox installation, Finally, the one last item I wished for is the ability for the escape key to quit, instead of representing the run stop key on the keyboard. Is this easy to adjust? Thanks!

Changing the config file to read-only worked for me. Now all 4 of my x-box 360 controllers always work on Mame. Could never get this to stick and it was driving me crazy.

Interesting! I'll try this. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks for the tip on avoiding unzipping roms!

This one was tricky, mainly because there are a lot of Vic20 ROM dumps that are multipart, and I haven't quite figured out how to run two seperate files in Launchbox, one after another, with different custom command line parameters for each. So until someone helps me with that, what I have been doing is finding alternative dumps where someone has already combined the two parts together. What you were running with all the 6000 prg files you were finding was probably only half of the dump, with (very likely) some A000 files that need to be run as well. I was able to locate the following dump of The Vic20 Atarisoft version of Moon Patrol: (Notice that is does not have "multipart" in the title) Moon Patrol (1983)(Atarisoft)(NTSC)[6000].CRT This file is located in the TOSEC.2016.11.11.Commodore.VIC20.AlphaBot ROM collection on Archive.org. With this file, the -cart6 command will run the game without any problems. (you MUST unzip the file first!) A few notes: For some reason I was not able to import this file with Launchbox. I think the square brackets are causing problems. Once I removed the square brackets around [6000] it worked fine. Also I am noticing on my imports that when I import zip files, a lot of games get missed for some reason. So I am only imported unzipped roms. I am only noticing this with my Vic20 Roms. I hope this helps.

Here is the settings for the one game I was having trouble with and solved with the -cart command. The other screen is the settings I am using for VICE. What game are you trying to get running? I can sort it out on my side and let you know how I got it started. Give me the exact file name of the ROM you are using.

One more tip that I just discovered. It helped me to get more games working! I'll explain carefully. The example is "Load Runner". I loved playing this game on my Vic as a kid, but for the life of me, I couldn't get it working using VICE in Launchbox. I noticed in the TOSEC set available on archive.org there were the following ROM dumps of this game: Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)[h][A000][multipart].crt Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)[h][a][A000][multipart].crt Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)[h][a][6000][multipart].crt Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)[h][6000][multipart].crt Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)[A000][multipart].crt Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)[6000][multipart].crt Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)[6000].crt Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)(b)[A000].crt Whereas in the Gamebase20_v3 set, there was only one Lode Runner dump: Lode Runner.zip which contained two files: Lode Runner-6000.prg Lode-Runner-a000.prg I tried everything to get these to work. The great tips listed above which worked on TAPs and other cartridges (using -autostart or -cartgeneric) did NOT work on any of these Lode Runner dumps. Then on the Vic20 Denial site, a user named Mayhem gave me the following tip of what needs to happen to run the Lode Runner.zip file on VICE via the command line: -cart6 Lode Runner-6000.prg -cartA Lode Runner-A000.prg You need the argument cartX, where X = 2, 4, 6, A, specifies the memory block to attach it to. Not sure you can execute loading the game with the files in a zip. This was the info I needed to sort this out! While I was NOT able to get Launchbox to run TWO separate files in the command line like suggested above, the information about the -cart command is very important. So next I focused on the ROM dumps that were not multipart. So in the list above, there were two rom files that were already joined together. Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)(b)[A000].crt Lode Runner (1983)(Broderbund)(NTSC-PAL)[6000].crt I could not get the (b) [A000] dump to work, but the 2nd [6000] dump does in fact work fine in Launchbox, by adding the -cart6 on the command line parameters line! Success! However, I for some reason this command does not work if the crt file is contained in a zip. So make sure to unzip it first! So in summary, if you are trying to run dumps from TOSEC, stay away from the multiparts, make sure files are unzipped, and use the following command line parameters: For .crt or .prg files ending in A000, use -cartA (must be capital A, small a does not work) For .crt or .prg files ending in 2000, use -cart2 For .crt or .prg files ending in 4000, use -cart4 For .crt or .prg files ending in 6000, use -cart6 Let me know if this helps you run any more carts!!! ?