LEDBlinky Support

[Sithel]

Maybe other frontends point to the exe file of the game through steam. That's what I'm doing as a work around and it's working fine.

[Fursphere]

Maybe if you disable the "game end" check, LEDBlinky should just update the next time it gets a command.   That would be when you're back in BB and you select a new game - the preview should queue up the light map?  Maybe?

[arzoo]

30 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

Maybe if you disable the "game end" check, LEDBlinky should just update the next time it gets a command.   That would be when you're back in BB and you select a new game - the preview should queue up the light map?  Maybe?

That's correct, if LEDBlinky doesn't receive the Game Quit command it will assume the game is over as soon as another command is received. Not a perfect solution but it should work.

[arzoo]

58 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Hmm, that makes sense since Steam games are launched via the steam ID, so there's no way for me to tell when the process ends (really it doesn't end at all because of Steam). So hmm, any idea how other frontends do this @arzoo or if it even works at all with Steam games? I could probably just disable the game end command for Steam games, but obviously that's not ideal either.

I'm not sure how other FEs handle Steam and I don't use it so I can't really help much - sorry. But not sending the Game Quit command to LEDBlinky (for Steam) should be a suitable workaround.

[Fursphere]

To be honest, I'm not sure if any other Front Ends handle steam games w/ LEBlinky.   Probably because most front ends don't support Steam games at all to my knowledge.  HyperSpin had a 3rd party steam game importer that sometimes worked, but I'm not sure I every got it working with LEDBlinky integration.

[Fursphere]

As a work around for this issue, I was trying to figure out how to launch a simple batch file prior to game start to get the LEDblinky light map running.  But due to the nature of how the Steam games launch (URL based) I haven't come up with anything that works.

 

 

[Fursphere]

@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....  

[Sithel]

@arzoo

You happen to know what causes the voice not to work on some games and others it's fine? For example Donkey Kong, I have the Controls.ini below. When I go into the game she says "Donkey Kong" but I have it set up to say controls and pause animation when I hit pause and she says nothing and the pause animation don't trigger. Other games like all the Mortal Kombats. NARC,  Black Tiger, Zoo Keeper to name a few works fine for example. It actually seems like all my vertical games have the issue no matter what I try. All 1941 series, all the donkey kong game, 10 yard fight. I know when It don't work when the Pause led animation don't fire off. Maybe a simple setting i dunno but thanks!

[arzoo]

18 hours ago, Sithel said:

@arzoo

You happen to know what causes the voice not to work on some games and others it's fine? For example Donkey Kong, I have the Controls.ini below. When I go into the game she says "Donkey Kong" but I have it set up to say controls and pause animation when I hit pause and she says nothing and the pause animation don't trigger. Other games like all the Mortal Kombats. NARC,  Black Tiger, Zoo Keeper to name a few works fine for example. It actually seems like all my vertical games have the issue no matter what I try. All 1941 series, all the donkey kong game, 10 yard fight. I know when It don't work when the Pause led animation don't fire off. Maybe a simple setting i dunno but thanks!

 

LEDBlinky uses the MAME Output System to respond to the 'Pause' message (from MAME). I'm not sure why MAME would send the message for some games and not others? Try using the LEDBlinky MAMEOutputTest app and see if the games (that aren't working) are sending the Pause message. Get back to me with the results.

[Sithel]

@arzoo

Here's some info I have so far with what I tried.

Here is my LEDBlinky Config I have.

With those settings for example, Donkey Kong will speak the control "Jump" and "Start /Coin" on game start. When I pause nothing happens and the results in the MAMEOutputTest app is nothing, not a thing shows up.

Changing nothing else and launching Mortal Kombat, I get all the controls spoke and "Start/Coin" on game start. But now when I hit pause, it's speaks the controls again and starts the Pause animation. Here's that result in the MAMEOutputTest app.

If there's anything else I can provide let me know, thanks!

[arzoo]

If nothing shows up for DK (and other games) in the mame output test, this would indicate that mame isn't sending any messages (including Pause) for those games. What version of MAME are you using?

[Sithel]

Fixed with changing my mame version to .180

I was running .175 and oddly enough it was all working except for vertical games on pause. I did read the pop up window about not working with .170 - .175

I guess is there output issues with those versions? Either way, thanks for the help and glad I got it all working.  

[MANCADE]

Thanks @Sithel and @Fursphere for those two workarounds. For my Steam games, the problem I had was LEDBlinky would correctly light and say the buttons/joystick but then immediately revert to the front end active state even though the game was still playing. I also had some problems with only one of the U360 controllers changing its maps. I've gone with the timeout option as the workaround. This decision was so that LB/BB still launches via the steam ID. 

I made a couple of modifications in my approach. The first was that I had to add "/t" to the timeout line to get the delay to work on my system. I also added nobreak to stop the process being interrupted by a key press . The second was to run the .bat file through a .vbs file to stop the black command screen from showing when the .bat file is run. The Additional Apps feature is used to run the .vbs script (not the .bat file). I also have the Run before Main Application option ticked. The scripts are below if anyone is interested.

I have quite a few Steam games (>100) to work through with this workaround so it would be nice for LB/BB to work better with LEDBlinky for these games. The other option could be for a future release of LEDBlinky to add an option to delay the process by a user-specified time, to effectively replicate Fursphere's workaround?

Example for Street Fighter V. The Emulator is set up as "STEAM".

LED_STREET_FIGHTER_V.bat file contents:
@echo off
timeout /t 15 /nobreak
start C:\PATH_TO_LEDBLINKY\LEDBlinky.exe STREET_FIGHTER_V STEAM

LED_STREET_FIGHTER_V.vbs contents:
Set oShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Dim strArgs
strArgs = "cmd /c LED_STREET_FIGHTER_V.bat"
oShell.Run strArgs, 0, false

Both these files are in the same folder

[johnstewart]

@arzoo

I've been running LEDBlinky along with LaunchBox/BigBox and an Ultimarc UltimateI/O board (simulates a keyboard) for some months now; it's pretty great and most things Just Work. I've been trying with no success to find out how best to tackle a couple of issues, the most important one being some games not lighting up joysticks.

For games with dual joysticks (Robotron, for example), I had to manually map controls in MAME. The UIO board shows up as a keyboard, however, and the upshot seems to be that LEDBlinky then doesn't light up the joystick LED. I presume this is because MAME doesn't show a control as joystick, but as a keypress. Player 1, for example, joystick events are translated to arrow keyboard keys.

I tried in GenLEDBlinkyInputMap to set ports JOYSTICK1 to include KEYCODE_UP as well as JOYSTICK_UP, but LEDBlinky still doesn't light up the joystick LED.

I can't within MAME set the P1 "up" to be JOYSTICK_UP, since I don't have an actual joystick (UIO is effectively a big keyboard).

How do I tell LEDBlinky (and/or Launchbox) that it should light up the P1 and P2 joysticks when playing Robotron (or SmashTV, or Cloak&Dagger... any 2 joystick game where I had to re-map keys in MAME)?

thank you!

[arzoo]

16 minutes ago, johnstewart said:

@arzoo

I've been running LEDBlinky along with LaunchBox/BigBox and an Ultimarc UltimateI/O board (simulates a keyboard) for some months now; it's pretty great and most things Just Work. I've been trying with no success to find out how best to tackle a couple of issues, the most important one being some games not lighting up joysticks.

For games with dual joysticks (Robotron, for example), I had to manually map controls in MAME. The UIO board shows up as a keyboard, however, and the upshot seems to be that LEDBlinky then doesn't light up the joystick LED. I presume this is because MAME doesn't show a control as joystick, but as a keypress. Player 1, for example, joystick events are translated to arrow keyboard keys.

I tried in GenLEDBlinkyInputMap to set ports JOYSTICK1 to include KEYCODE_UP as well as JOYSTICK_UP, but LEDBlinky still doesn't light up the joystick LED.

I can't within MAME set the P1 "up" to be JOYSTICK_UP, since I don't have an actual joystick (UIO is effectively a big keyboard).

How do I tell LEDBlinky (and/or Launchbox) that it should light up the P1 and P2 joysticks when playing Robotron (or SmashTV, or Cloak&Dagger... any 2 joystick game where I had to re-map keys in MAME)?

thank you!

Try this; using the GenLEDBlinkyInputMap app, assign DOUBLEJOY8WAY to the port(s) for both the left and right joystick LEDs. Assuming you're using the standard controls.ini file, ROBOTRON should have "P1Controls=Dual 8-way Joysticks+doublejoy8way" which is the Primary Control that LEDBlinky will light up. This support link may also help. Let me know if that works.

[johnstewart]

4 hours ago, arzoo said:

Try this; using the GenLEDBlinkyInputMap app, assign DOUBLEJOY8WAY to the port(s) for both the left and right joystick LEDs. Assuming you're using the standard controls.ini file, ROBOTRON should have "P1Controls=Dual 8-way Joysticks+doublejoy8way" which is the Primary Control that LEDBlinky will light up. This support link may also help. Let me know if that works.

Thank you. Yes and no!

So indeed adding DOUBLEJOY8WAY to the ports does light up the joysticks, but as you say in the support link:

Quote

The downside to using the Primary Control codes is that LEDBlinky will light all the trackballs or joysticks regardless of how many the game actually uses. 

 

This is a 4 joystick cabinet, so my design goal is to have the middle two sticks lit up for classics like Robotron, but then to have the left two in red, and the right two in blue for simultaneous dual stick games like SmashTV.

So I had been trying to get it working with the finer grained control as later in the doc:

Quote

For example, a Player 1 8-way could be assigned the codes; "JOYCODE_1_UP", "JOYCODE_1_DOWN", "JOYCODE_1_LEFT", and "JOYCODE_1_RIGHT". Actually, you could just use the codes "JOYCODE_1_UP" and "JOYCODE_1_LEFT" since any game that uses one direction always uses the other. 

When I assign "JOYCODE_1_UP", "JOYCODE_1_DOWN", "JOYCODE_1_LEFT", and "JOYCODE_1_RIGHT" to the port, it's not lighting up. I've also tried adding KEYCODE_G, KEYCODE_D, KEYCODE_R, and KEYCODE_F (what the right stick joystick is actually mapped to on the keyboard), to the same effect.

I can't help but think that the problem actually lies somehow with the fact that for these games, due to me having to remap the controls in MAME, none of the joysticks are actually configured as controls.

For example, this is the control mapping in Robotron in MAME. You can see only Kbd Up/Down/Left/Right/R/F/D/G are mapped:

Whereas this is the default MAME control config, where the (default) joystick mappings are there:

I can't remap "Joy 1 Up" within MAME because I don't have a joystick (and not finding any way to figure out how to manually edit a MAME ini file somewhere). But this smells like the missing piece, if LEDBlinky isn't lighting the joy when the keyboard Input Code is mapped (which seems weird).

[arzoo]

@johnstewart LEDBlinky reads the mame cfg files (default and individual roms) to determine the inputs used for each game, so I'm not sure why it's not working for your configuration. You could try using the Troubleshooting app to see if it helps with an answer. But if not, please turn on the Debug Log (Misc Options tab), run LaunchBox with a few games (Robotron, Smash TV, etc), then email me the debug.ZIP file and I'll take a look.

[johnstewart]

6 hours ago, arzoo said:

@johnstewart LEDBlinky reads the mame cfg files (default and individual roms) to determine the inputs used for each game, so I'm not sure why it's not working for your configuration. You could try using the Troubleshooting app to see if it helps with an answer. But if not, please turn on the Debug Log (Misc Options tab), run LaunchBox with a few games (Robotron, Smash TV, etc), then email me the debug.ZIP file and I'll take a look.

Done! We shouldn't post these publicly because they contain license information, right?

During the debug test, I fired up BigBox (which fires up LEDBlinky), ran Robotron, quit, ran SmashTV.

DOUBLEJOY8WAY was among the input codes for JOYSTICK_2, so during both games, Joy2 lit up. But none of the other joysticks did.

In the controls editor, I also tried Import > MAME Games, then importing both robotron and smashtv. They do import, and I see that P1_JOYSTICKLEFT_UP and P1_JOYSTICKRIGHT_UP are both listed under "Control" (along with others), so it seems that LEDBlinky is recognizing that those controls are part of Robotron (and SmashTV):

In GenLEDBlinkyInputMap, port label JOYSTICK1 is configured with input code JOYCODE_1_UP:

 

... but only the joystick with DOUBLEJOY8WAY (joy2) ever lit up.

 

Edited August 22, 2017 by johnstewart

[xantari]

I'm having some issues with the LEDBlinky support. I am experiencing flicker as shown in the following video when I press buttons.

You will see that the RGB lights go out when I press a button, then come back.

How to make it solid throughout bigbox?

Additionally, how do I specify different colors for each of the launchbox keys?

Thanks!

 

[arzoo]

If you turn on the Debug Log, run through the same scenario as in the video, then email the the debug.ZIP file I'll take a look. You can set the Launchbox colors from the Controls Editor; click the FE button (in the middle) and edit each control to set the colors.