Daphne Laser Disc emulator - a comprehensive tutorial

[DOS76]

Finally gave this a go this afternoon I'm up to step 8 now and I'm trying to source the DVD's but the other games are working good I see on a site that there are more games than are listed in the loader I am guessing that these games aren't playable in Daphne as of yet.

[Drybonz]

CriticalCid said I already mapped the two buttons in Daphne Loader but they don't work in game. Other buttons like LB or RB are working toally fine if I map them to coin and start.

Hmm... that's odd. Not sure what to say. I use select for my coin and start for, well... start. Hope you are able to get it working.

[Drybonz]

DOS76 said I see on a site that there are more games than are listed in the loader I am guessing that these games aren't playable in Daphne as of yet.

I think Mad Dog McCree and Johnny Rock, etc used to be playable, but I could be mistaken. This would have been back before the whole Digital Leisure thing. Also, there are some that are playable in MAME as CHD's, like Cubequest, which is like a laserdisc Tempest.

[Drybonz]

I just picked up a copy of the DL 20th anniversary discs and did the downloads through Daphne... I noticed the files were a little different than the ones I had been using previously and it did, in fact, fix the problem I was having with brief messages displaying between some scenes, so that was nice. I have a small problem with the attract mode starting over when it is half-way through... I would like to fix that if possible. Also, the 2.1 Enhanced version is no longer playing the initial drawbridge scene like it did with the old files I was using, and I would like to get that back. Anyone have experience with either problem? Thanks for the help.

[dalogan72]

Your tutorial just amazing, extremely well done. Now where can We get cliff hanger rom and and .dat, ogg, and the movie clip files. I believe it is the only one we can not download from there. Thanks in advance

[DOS76]

We can't tell you that and really your not supposed to ask. I'm not trying to be a dick or nothing that is just the rules of the forums no asking for ROMs or BIOS files due to copyright laws.

[dalogan72]

No problem, I understand. Anyway thanks for your fast reply.

[CADScott]

Cliff Hanger is still commercially available, and is therefore not available for download through Daphne.

[Drybonz]

CADScott said Cliff Hanger is still commercially available, and is therefore not available for download through Daphne.

I didn't realize that... what platform is it available on? Just curious.

[CADScott]

From what I know it is available for sale on DVD, for play on PC. I am not sure where it is available from, but this is the reason that it is not downloadable, as it is not considered abandonware.

[Drybonz]

Hmm... I'll have to check around for that.

[orac31]

Thank you I threw a few teddys out of my pram but after using your bat file it works fine now to go throw and name the games right

[CADScott]

orac31 said Thank you I threw a few teddys out of my pram but after using your bat file it works fine now to go throw and name the games right

Glad it worked for you, gotta love the Daphne games!

[jallen99]

Awesome set of instructions! Very informative with excellent detail. Unfortunately, I've hit a snag. I downloaded Daphne a couple of months ago and got Dragon's Lair 1 and 2 and Space Ace running perfectly. I had the DVD set for these games already and was able to get them working in Daphne with a little bit of configuration. But now I can't get them to launch through LaunchBox. I created the batch file as you suggested (I left the resolution the same as what you listed since that's my monitor res, and I changed the path to the location of my text files). When I click on the icons in LaunchBox, I get an error message (for all three games) that appears to come from the game itself telling me there was an error: ROM dl_f2_vl.bin couldn't be found in roms/lair/, or in ./roms/lair.zip (That's the error message for Dragon's Lair, but they are all similar.) Any ideas? The .txt files I pulled into LaunchBox are "lair", "ace", and "dl2-framefile". I didn't quite use the same steps as you did in the beginning, but it was close. I had worked with Daphne a couple of months ago before I saw your post and the games run fine through the Daphne interface without the DVDs. I also did some configuration in the Daphne interface (such as full frame resolution changes, # of lives, unlimited game, etc), that I'm wondering if this configuration would make it into a game launched through LaunchBox. Also, with my 360 controller, I was only able to map the A/B/X/Y buttons for the joystick positions and the R button for the sword. It couldn't seem to read the joysticks.

[angelobodetti]

This saved my life! I spent 4 hours trying to figure this out till I found your tutorial. Do we need the batch file to get the games to load? I know in RocketLauncher it loaded without any special configurations - Just pointed it to the roms folder where I have the .txt files.

[jallen99]

I could still use some help. The games run perfectly under the Daphne interface, but I cannot get the batch files to work or to get them into LB. I went back and created a separate batch file for each game and placed the command line that comes up when you run it in Daphne. I copied this command line and placed ONLY that text in the batch file. Here's the one for Space Ace: daphne.exe ace vldp -framefile C:/Games/Daphne/vldp_dl/ace/ace.txt -blank_searches -min_seek_delay 1000 -seek_frames_per_ms 20 -homedir C:\Games\Daphne -fastboot -bank 0 00000000 -bank 1 00110001 -latency 50 -sound_buffer 2048 -fullscreen -x 1280 -y 1024 I put the batch in the same directory as the Daphne Loader and I get the same errors as before, about it not being able to find a certain bin file in the ROMs folder or the Ace zip (though the bin file called out in the error definitely DOES appear in that zip). Here's the error I pulled from the log: Loading ./roms/ace/sa_a3_u1.bin ... 0 bytes read into memory ROM sa_a3_u1.bin couldn't be found in roms/ace/, or in ./roms/ace.zip Could not load ROM images! You must supply these. What am I doing wrong? Does more text need to go into the batch file? Why does this run with the Daphne Loader, but not from the command line? Also, when trying the batch file in LB, I'm adding it in with Daphne as the emulator, and have also tried it WITHOUT any emulator attached (since Daphne is called out in the batch file). Of course, neither works but I was wondering which method I should be using. I would be eternally grateful if someone could help me figure out what's going wrong. Thanks so much!

[MrCanuto23]

Hi! Great tutorial but I couldn`t get it to work within LB, the games run perfectly from daphne emulator but not from LB. I open the game and it does nothing, just runs the .bat and nothing happens.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

I added the PAUSE command to see what happened in the bat file

Edited August 12, 2016 by MrCanuto23

[Lordmonkus]

Here's a quick and simple way to get your Daphne games working in Launchbox. It may not be an elegant solution but it is simple and it works as long as you have your games loading through the DaphneLoader.exe.

Step 1) Make a batch file for each game, call the batch file whatever you like. I made these batch files right in the directory which contains the daphne.exe

Step 2) This step will be repeated for each game. Open your DaphneLoader.exe and for each game you have and want to import into Launchbox  click the Configure button and go to the Advanced tab. The bottom drop down menu "Display command line", set this to Enabled, click apply and ok. Now when you start that game it is going to popup with a bunch of text, select it all and copy. The game will launch but just exit back out.

Step 3) Open the batch file you created for the game in notepad you just copied the command line information from and paste it in and save.

Step 4) Drag the bat file into Launchbox and put into whatever platform you choose. I use the platform Daphne.

Step 5) Right click the game and click edit. Go to the emulation tab and uncheck "Use an emulator to play this game". After you click apply it will popup with a message saying you need to specify and emulator do you want to do this now, click no.

Now you can go back into each game and reverse Step 2 to disable "Display command line"

When you launch a game from Launchbox if you get an error message repeat Step 5 just to double check it.

Like I said this may not be an elegant solution to this emulator and Launchbox but it is the simplest that I know of and it does work.

[Stank]

THANK YOU! This is amazing!

[MrCanuto23]

On 12/8/2016 at 4:08 AM, lordmonkus said:

Here's a quick and simple way to get your Daphne games working in Launchbox. It may not be an elegant solution but it is simple and it works as long as you have your games loading through the DaphneLoader.exe.

Step 1) Make a batch file for each game, call the batch file whatever you like. I made these batch files right in the directory which contains the daphne.exe

Step 2) This step will be repeated for each game. Open your DaphneLoader.exe and for each game you have and want to import into Launchbox  click the Configure button and go to the Advanced tab. The bottom drop down menu "Display command line", set this to Enabled, click apply and ok. Now when you start that game it is going to popup with a bunch of text, select it all and copy. The game will launch but just exit back out.

Step 3) Open the batch file you created for the game in notepad you just copied the command line information from and paste it in and save.

Step 4) Drag the bat file into Launchbox and put into whatever platform you choose. I use the platform Daphne.

Step 5) Right click the game and click edit. Go to the emulation tab and uncheck "Use an emulator to play this game". After you click apply it will popup with a message saying you need to specify and emulator do you want to do this now, click no.

Now you can go back into each game and reverse Step 2 to disable "Display command line"

When you launch a game from Launchbox if you get an error message repeat Step 5 just to double check it.

Like I said this may not be an elegant solution to this emulator and Launchbox but it is the simplest that I know of and it does work.

Excellent solution! it Worked for me, Thanks!!