LEDBlinky Support

[xantari]

5 hours ago, blurt92 said:

Is there anyway to have LedBlinky announce the controls during the Big Box game startup screen? I used to use RocketLauncher's fade in and that worked great but trying to get away from RL if at all possible. Right now, it starts to announce it as soon as the game starts in Mame and tends to get muffled by the game's own sound.

Also, anyone have any ideas on how to get LedBlinky to announce the controls when using Big Box pause screens with Mame? 

Quick question. I've been debating whether to introduce RocketLauncher. What is making you back away from it?

[blurt92]

I was mainly using it for the loading and pause screens and having one less piece of software to tweak and troubleshoot would just make things easier. 

[Headrush69]

7 hours ago, blurt92 said:

Is there anyway to have LedBlinky announce the controls during the Big Box game startup screen? I used to use RocketLauncher's fade in and that worked great but trying to get away from RL if at all possible. Right now, it starts to announce it as soon as the game starts in Mame and tends to get muffled by the game's own sound.

Can you explain this a little clearer? Can you list some specific roms where this happens?

It appears LB sends the message to LEDBlinky before calling MAME, so if you have a game with lots of controls for LEDBlinky to speak, and it's a game that loads fast in MAME, it might be a a delay you want. 

[Headrush69]

2 hours ago, xantari said:

Quick question. I've been debating whether to introduce RocketLauncher. What is making you back away from it?

I use RocketLauncher for only a couple Platforms for specific reasons.

The question should be do you NEED to introduce Rocketlauncher. Is there something specific you need from it or in general you want it's features/media etc over LB?

A lot of people will tell you RocketLauncher is simple once you learn it, but it does have some complexities as well and can be frustrating, especially when looking for updated modules and or information on updated emulators.

[blurt92]

Just now, Headrush69 said:

Can you explain this a little clearer? Can you list some specific roms where this happens?

It appears LB sends the message to LEDBlinky before calling MAME, so if you have a game with lots of controls for LEDBlinky to speak, and it's a game that loads fast in MAME, it might be a a delay you want. 

It happens with every rom whether they have many different controls to announce (MK2, SF2) or just a couple (Galaga, DK, Pacman). LedBlinky doesn't start speaking until after the game startup screen is done and Mame launches. In RocketLauncher it announces the controls while it loads.

I've tried changing the startup screen display time and that doesn't have any effect, it just waits until the game starts and then starts talking over it. 

[Headrush69]

50 minutes ago, blurt92 said:

LedBlinky doesn't start speaking until after the game startup screen is done and Mame launches. In RocketLauncher it announces the controls while it loads.

I've tried changing the startup screen display time and that doesn't have any effect, it just waits until the game starts and then starts talking over it. 

As soon as LB shows the Startup screen, LEDBlinky begins speaking the controls. I don't know your system specs or if possibly you have debugging enabled on LEDBlinky, but I don't think it waits until the startup screen is done.

One issue is if MAME is used in full screen mode, no matter what delay you set in LB, it will switch to the MAME once it takes control. There is no way around that unless you want to run in borderless window mode.

RocketLauncher tends to run a lot of emulators in this mode, so without looking at the module, it's likely why it can keeps it's loading screen up and waits for the completion of LEDBlinky as well.

As a simple workaround, you could make a mame.bat file in your MAME directory with the following:

Quote

@echo off
timeout 10
mame64.exe -keyboardprovider dinput %1

Set this as your mame executable in LB and it will pause 10 seconds or until you press a key while LedBlinky does it's thing. You can change the 10 to whatever number of seconds you need.

 

Edited January 22, 2020 by Headrush69

[arzoo]

43 minutes ago, blurt92 said:

It happens with every rom whether they have many different controls to announce (MK2, SF2) or just a couple (Galaga, DK, Pacman). LedBlinky doesn't start speaking until after the game startup screen is done and Mame launches. In RocketLauncher it announces the controls while it loads.

I've tried changing the startup screen display time and that doesn't have any effect, it just waits until the game starts and then starts talking over it. 

LEDBlinky starts speaking the controls as soon as it receives the "Game Start" command (or after the Game Start Delay if specified). It does not monitor or wait for any other process.

[Headrush69]

2 minutes ago, arzoo said:

LEDBlinky starts speaking the controls as soon as it receives the "Game Start" command (or after the Game Start Delay if specified). It does not monitor or wait for any other process.

Correct, I think this is a perception issue.

Looking at the RocketLauncher code, it appears that LEDBlinky is triggered before the fade-in code and the bezel code is run and my guess is that delay is giving the appearance that somehow LEDBlinky is finishing before MAME starts. 

[blurt92]

52 minutes ago, Headrush69 said:

As soon as LB shows the Startup screen, LEDBlinky begins speaking the controls. I don't know your system specs or if possibly you have debugging enabled on LEDBlinky, but I don't think it waits until the startup screen is done.

One issue is if MAME is used in full screen mode, no matter what delay you set in LB, it will switch to the MAME once it takes control. There is no way around that unless you want to run in borderless window mode.

RocketLauncher tends to run a lot of emulators in this mode, so without looking at the module, it's likely why it can keeps it's loading screen up and waits for the completion of LEDBlinky as well.

As a simple workaround, you could make a mame.bat file in your MAME directory with the following:

Set this as your mame executable in LB and it will pause 10 seconds or until you press a key while LedBlinky does it's thing. You can change the 10 to whatever number of seconds you need.

 

Brilliant! Thank you so much, this does exactly what I was hoping.

[blurt92]

8 hours ago, blurt92 said:

 

One downside of this is that the Pause Screen no longer works properly. Am I correct in assuming that it's trying to suspend "mame64.bat" instead of the actual executable? My work around is changing the pause key in Mame to something other than 'P' and pressing that first prior to loading up the pause screen by pressing 'P'.

 

 

[blurt92]

Actually, the Pause screen won't work at all using the batch file as it goes back to the main menu after hitting "Resume Game" and Mame continues to play in the background. It went back to working when I changed it back to Mame64.exe instead of mame64.bat. @Headrush69 You mentioned borderless windowed mode, are you able to offer any help on that? I've searched and can't seem to find a way to do it in Mame.  When I launch it in regular windowed mode it works but I have the ugly windows boarder up top.

 

[Headrush69]

1 hour ago, blurt92 said:

Actually, the Pause screen won't work at all using the batch file as it goes back to the main menu after hitting "Resume Game" and Mame continues to play in the background. It went back to working when I changed it back to Mame64.exe instead of mame64.bat. @Headrush69 You mentioned borderless windowed mode, are you able to offer any help on that? I've searched and can't seem to find a way to do it in Mame.  When I launch it in regular windowed mode it works but I have the ugly windows boarder up top.

I don't use the pause feature myself and I don't know the mechanism LB uses for pause screen and how it passes it to the emulator.

I'm confused by your answer that it works in windowed mode. The only difference when using windowed mode is the LB startup screen will stay up for as long as the delay you have set. This does not stop MAME from starting up just as fast. It would still be running in the background and you would hear any sound it was making. The only difference is you do't see the MAME screen as soon.

Isn't that the issue you originally mentioned; LEDBlinky and MAME both producing audio at the same time?

Getting fullscreen borderless window mode is as simple as installing one of the several programs ( One Option ), and setting to start on WIndows startup, adding an entry in it's preferences for MAME, and it will take care of the rest.

 

[blurt92]

You're right, windowed mode didn't help. When I tested it last night I didn't realize it was loading the rom from scratch (I have autosave on) after I changed it to windowed mode. The rom's sounds hadn't started yet.

I ended up finding the Wootlauncher plugin and the pause function is working exactly how I want with the added benefit of actually stating the controls through LEDBlinky. Launchbox' pause screen wouldn't do that as it doesn't appear the keystroke was sent to Mame prior to suspending it.

Bottom line, the combination of your batch file suggestion and Wootlauncher solved my dilemma. Thanks again!

[CalmGamer]

Hi,

I’m having a few issues with ledblinky / big box which im hoping someone can help me with. i'm sure its related to paths or permissions but I cant seem to figure it out.

i've set it up so it speaks and flashes the appropriate controls and tested it with 1942 and pacman and it only works sometimes.  the other times I get a "No ROM specified for Game Start event. Missing parameter?" in the ledblinky debug log.

I also have issues where it speaks the controls for the previous and not current game.  I’m not sure if this is a big box or ledblinky issue.

 

thanks

 

[skylesjk111]

I'm by far in expert, but I remember when I first set my LED blinky up it would speak the ROM name, I've since turned that off.  But when I switched games in launch box,

if I didn't wait long enough it's like the system hadn't caught up with the change yet and it would say the wrong ROM name occasionally.  

[arzoo]

This would most likely be an issue with your BB config. LEDBlinky is only as accurate as the data/parameters passed from the front-end.

[CalmGamer]

17 hours ago, arzoo said:

This would most likely be an issue with your BB config. LEDBlinky is only as accurate as the data/parameters passed from the front-end.

Could you point me in the right direction? My settings seem fine but maybe it’s an ini file issue?  
 

thanks

[arzoo]

6 hours ago, CalmGamer said:

Could you point me in the right direction? My settings seem fine but maybe it’s an ini file issue?  
 

thanks

If you turn on the LEDBlinky Debug Log option, run BB and a few games that aren't working, then email me the debug.zip file, I'll take a look. But I can't really provide any support on your LB/BB config.

[CalmGamer]

Thanks. I’ve messaged you the file. 

[CalmGamer]

Thanks to arzoo I think I’m narrowing down the cause in BB. 

It seems to work fine if I select a game from the games list. I can scroll up and down and I’ve checked the ledblinky log and it does receive game selected commands.

My issue seems to be when I go into a playlist (I’ve made a few custom ones) and select a game by scrolling left and right through the box art of the recently played games, rather than going through the regular scrolling list.  

Doing this doesn’t generate any selected commands and then nothing gets passed to ledblinky.

I hope this explanation kinda makes sense. I’m still learning the terminology of the app