New to Launchbox/Emulating - Dumbed Down Step-by-Step Directions?

[Hamfighter]

Hey y'all, I've played with numerous emulators and front ends with varying degrees of success. I've watched many of the Launchbox youtube videos and read a bunch of posts. I tried an initial setup, and just didn't have the success I had hoped for. I'm really looking for a super basic, step-by-step, leave nothing to chance, assume nothing, setup guide. Am I missing it somewhere, or can someone point me in the right direction. I'm fairly tech savvy, but have apparently gotten dumber over the years. I sure appreciate the help!

[DOS76]

At what part do you run into the problem? I'd be happy to help you out with explaining anything specific that you want to know but I can't sit here and right the LaunchBox manual.

[CADScott]

Is there a particular system you are trying to add? Some are a lot trickier than others to add and get working, MAME for instance is very fussy with the configuration of the roms (Nothing to do with LaunchBox, but gives many new players a lot of problems) If you give us some information about the exact system you are trying to set up and which emulator you are attempting to use, we should be able to point you in a better direction. LaunchBox itself is very easy to use and setup, but the configuration of emulators, bios files and roms can be very difficult. I suspect the issues you are having are more likely related to those items rather than LaunchBox itself.

[SentaiBrad]

Yea what Derek and Scott said, where are you having your problems? I make the video's so it would be good for me to know where I am falling short. The later tutorials I try and make sure to go through most of the basic steps as I was in the beginning, but over time I thought people would get tired of hearing the same thing over and over. Well, I forgot that some people wont watch all or don't need to watch all of them. :P

[fromlostdays]

Step one: (For ALL FRONTENDS). Make sure you have your games and emulators working OUTSIDE of the front end. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP. If you do, you might wind up wasting a lot of time trying to fix a Front End that works fine. Step Two: Figure out how your front end wants to import and store your games. For most of them, they will have an import process with step by step documentation. Launchbox does, see above posts. And for many of them, they'll want to save your games in an XML list. This is just a fancy text document that keeps a list of all your games so the Front End knows what's there. Step Three: Figure out how your Front End wants to work with your emulator. In the case of LaunchBox, it wants to do everything associated with the emulator including inserting the rom and launching. This is very convenient. So all that remains is figure out what LaunchBox needs to know in order to launch the emu/game. Again, see above. There are step by step instructions. Once you have at least one imported game, and one working emulator in LaunchBox, proceed to step four. Step Four: Joy. Repeat as needed. :D

[CadetStimpy]

To all of the above - One of the many things I enjoy about this Forum is how quickly others will come to someones aid, even if they are magnitudes ahead of them on that topic. [insert 'Thumbs-Up' here] I've seen Comments on the Internet where more knowledgeable persons (well, they think they are, anyway ) come-down really hard on Newbies (or someone ignorant on that topic). But, none of that here! The life-preservers are thrown out quickly! Thanks!

[SentaiBrad]

Jason really tried hard in the beginning and for the last 2 or so years have tried to carry that torch forward as much as possible. Because of his example is why I think we have the forums the way they are. I try to carry that as much as possible, because you may have noticed, but he's not as hands on with the entire forum like he used to be because he's making LaunchBox. However, when ever he does step in for what ever reason he's still always like that regardless of how life is going. We talk daily, and that was always unspoken between us, the people here are our bread and butter. Without them, without you we literally have nothing. That's not to say we roll over for people, but it is to say we recognize our products exists because of the daily forum viewers, the premium customers, the YouTube viewers, etc.

[DOS76]

I hate when people are ignorant to other people who are trying to learn something. I'd rather teach them what they might need to know then berate them for not knowing, but that's me. LB forum is a friendly place where users can get help without being insulted for their lack of knowledge.

[CadetStimpy]

Well, Jason certainly succeeded in making this Forum a pleasant and informative environment, and you are a more than worthy successor (I, personally, couldn't keep up with it), as I'm still enjoying this Forum as much, or more, than I ever did.

[Hamfighter]

Thank you all for the responses! I travel a lot and was, of course, immediately called out of town. I will start again from scratch and try to be more specific when I run into a question. Main thing I wanted to do was ensure there wasn't a resource available that I should utilize before asking specific questions. Thanks again for all the guidance so far!

[SentaiBrad]

The only official resource are the forums and the video's, and you hit both of those. So now I want to make sure you get up and running as best as possible and hopefully I can clarify as much as I can from the video's.

[Hamfighter]

Thank you, Brad. Currently, mame is what I'm most interested in, and so I'm sure the problem is configuring it correctly (which I'm not, apparently). I'm sure once I have it right, Launchbox will be easy. I'm assuming, as a non-coder on a 64-bit Windows 10 machine, the mame0172b_64bit.exe is my best bet. Will Launchbox care where I install it to (ie, C:mame), especially if I'm wanting to utilize OneDrive in the future? Is there hope that Launchbox/mame will even work on a Surface 3 (non-pro)? It seems most the guides for mame setup are for older versions, or contain a lot of assumptions for setup knowledge. If there is a particular resource you recommend for a new mame user, that would be greatly appreciated. From there, I look forward to adding all the old-school systems to Launchbox that I have in the attic. Thanks again

[Hamfighter]

To clarify, I'm installing primarily on a Sony i7 all-in-one with descent specs...the Surface 3 is for work while travelling.

[SentaiBrad]

The Surface Pro 3 is just a Windows tablet, so long as you have a model with the power behind it you should be fine. This goes for any other machine as well, as long as it's Windows based. Games and Emulators can be anywhere you like (hopefully that was shown in the video's) including over a network or OneDrive. Even if guides are for older versions it should be mostly the same unless they've changed something significant. The last big significant change was when MESS was integrated, and even then nothing changed besides the combination. For the most part, revisions to the emulator just change what games can be played, usually. So if you add the emulator, then tell LB where your MAME games are, and use the MAME import process you should be good to go. Now granted, MAME is super tricky and confusing and even LB doesn't handle it all that well. For importing MAME the easiest way possible though I do suggest using this: https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/emulation/lightspeed-ultra-fast-mame-importer-tool#p13904 We are even working on integrating it in to LB in the future.

[Hamfighter]

Thanks so much...integration would be great!!!

[SentaiBrad]

Of course! If you have more questions please feel free to ask us.

[fromlostdays]

Emulation 101 Conceptually, there's like 4 possible elements that you need to consider when emulating. There may be a few more for more complicated systems, but once you're comfortable with these four, you'll be well on your way to troubleshooting yourself. Roms (Every time) Emulator (Everytime) Bios (Sometimes) Directory Structure (Sometimes) Roms: The thing to consider about roms: 1: Can/Should they be compressed. For the majority of emulators, compression to zip or 7zip is not necessary. It IS necessary with MAME however. Your roms should be zipped. 2: Does the Emulator support the extensions my roms have? For most popular systems, this is hardly a concern, but it does happen. You could get a set of roms with an extension that only works in a specific emulator. If games are not launching through the emulator, you should check to see if the emulator supports your rom extension. (Note that for a compressed roms, the emulator will have to support the extension of the rom AND the extension of the compression method, 7z or zip rar etc.) 3: Bad dumps. They exist, but are pretty rare. It could simply be the case that your rom is bonk and you should redownload it from somewhere else. 4: Naming Scheme. Very few emulators care what your roms are named. MAME however, cares plenty. It will only launch roms that are named correctly. The good news is, I've never seen a mame set of roms available that wasn't, so you probably don't have to worry about this too much. NOTE: MAME also has a lot of versions as you noticed. They come out with a new version like once a week or month or something. Its... awesome... but tedious if you want to stay current. So with MAME you have the extra concern of whether the version of your romset matches the emulator version. Personally, I dont bother, and I'm not alone. The good news is that for the most part, newer versions of MAME seem pretty backwards compatible with older sets of roms. However, if a rom won't launch, this could be the culprit. I have a v151 set of roms I use with MAME, and I use the v170 of the emulator with no problems. (Then again, I've never even come close to launching all the games, so just be aware of this) BIOS: Some emulators require BIOS files in order to operate. MAME does not require a bios to emulate many many arcade games, but now that MAME has integrated with MESS, it does need bios files to emulate other systems. Worry about that later. In most cases, this is as simple as putting the bios file into the folder the emulator expects it to be in. That's usually all there is to it. Directories: As you get more advanced, you'll understand that pretty much any emulator worth using will have some kind mechanism to alter the directory structure, be in the GUI or in a config (text) document. Usually, this is a simple matter of setting the path. Most emulators will require paths to (roms, savestates, save files, bios) these being the most important. Mostly you'll be able to do this from inside the emulator GUI. One last note about directories, every emulator will have default directories for all of these files. With MAME, you may notice it'll create some folder after you run it once. At any rate, using the default directories will save you from having to change your paths, but it limits you in terms of where you store your roms etc. Understanding these core concepts will help you when you're watching step by step videos or reading tutorials. Naturally this is a gross simplification, but knowing this going in will help you understand what the tutorial is trying to tell you.