Starting from Scratch, Scratch, Scratch!!!

[Hamfighter]

I've dabbled with numerous emulators, frontends, mame, openemu (on the mac) and LaunchBox in the past, but I've decided to go All-In with Launchbox and start everything from scratch! I've got a little Gateway mini tower (AMD A6-3600 2.1ghz with the built-in HD Radeon 6530D graphics, 1TB drive, 16GB ram, wiped out and running freshly installed Windows 10 Home) that is going to be the dedicated gameroom/arcade PC. Little bit of overkill on the ram, but it used to be the Windows Media Center PC :( The plan is for this pc to be in the gameroom upstairs, but I don't wan't unrestricted internet access upstairs for my kids and all their friends. I also don't necessarily want the arcade pc tied to my personal Microsoft account. My thought is to create a new local account called "Arcade" without a password for games. I like the idea of storing everything in the cloud so I can also access and play with things on the desktop downstairs and the laptop. I'm having trouble getting my head around getting started. Does this seem like a good way to start, or do y'all have a better recommendation for initial setup? Thanks in advance for the help!

[Jason Carr]

Hi @Hamfighter, absolutely! It does sound like a good approach; I do something similar on my arcade cabinet. You can use Dropbox to cloud sync everything; it works extremely well. I think you've got a good plan there, ultimately. Windows 10 has some great parental controls features that should help with the Internet access restriction stuff as well. I was able to configure my son's computer to be able to pull down artwork and stuff without a problem while restricting most other sites. Anyways, welcome, and enjoy! :)

[Hamfighter]

Thank you, Jason! Played around until way to late last night, but had a great time, and got a good number of mame games running! Few problematic ones, but I'll do some more research before reaching out. A quick heads-up for others like myself who want parental controls for a gameroom pc...unlike Windows 7, Windows 10 will not provide any parental controls on a "local" account, therefore you must create a microsoft account (email) and add it as a child's account. Then you can enact parental controls. Also, parental controls no longer carry over to Chrome or Firefox, so only keep IE/Edge if you want to block inappropriate content. Leads to two quick questions: 1. Does BigBox prevent access to the rest of the computer without perhaps using a password? That would take care of parental controls right there! 2. For clarification, would I use Dropbox (or OneDrive or Google Drive) for the roms only, or for the emulators and LaunchBox/BigBox itself? Thank you so much! Enjoying the games and the comradery of the forum! Ham

[Jason Carr]

Ah, yeah. Silly Microsoft and their privacy invasion garbage. :/ Big Box unfortunately won't truly prevent access to the rest of the computer. It might be able to trick a young kid, though. You can protect it with a pin and disallow exiting. But of course there are keyboard shortcuts that can still get around it; I don't do anything to force keep you in Big Box. The best solution is to put everything in Dropbox, including the entire app, your ROMs, and your emulators. It's easiest if you just put everything inside your LaunchBox folder (Emulators in an emulators subfolder, games in a Games subfolder, etc.). I personally know Dropbox works completely seamlessly that way. Google Drive and OneDrive should as well, in theory. However, the last time I used Google Drive (more than a year ago and I never tried to put LaunchBox in it), it was an atrocious experience, because it crashed constantly. So just FYI on that. Let me know if you end up using OneDrive or Google Drive and how well it's working for those.

[Hamfighter]

I'll play around with different cloud based options and let y'all know, but your recommendation of Dropbox goes a long way! Yeah, good old Microsoft can't leave well enough alone. Security/parental controls worked great on 7...of course, so did Windows Media Center for a decade (I won't start on that one). For other overly cautious parents out there, creating a new Microsoft ID/email and a new "child's" account that you can load up with restrictions works great. Actually, I'm sort of liking having a dedicated account just for gaming! I'm going to throw out a couple more questions that I couldn't find specific answers to in the forums/Google. Truly, there's no hurry, and I'm not expecting personal tech support...these would just be some niceties that someone might know off the top of their head... Regarding MAME itself, I downloaded the mame0176b_64bit.exe Official Binary as I'm running Windows 10 64bit. Perhaps features I'm looking for aren't within the official mame, but I'd like a way to save high scores and/or maintain a "power-on" state so as to not have to boot the game as though it were being plugged in each time. Also, I had to change the inputs on each individual game (This Machine) versus setting defaults for all games (General), because when selecting Input (General), that screen would appear off the screen at the bottom of the screen, with no way to scroll or page down to the options to change. Never seen this in mame before. Third and final question for the night (I've been on vacation this week, so putting way to much time into all this): As we know, the classics or all oriented in a portrait format, leaving those black "letterbox bars" on the sides. Within LaunchBox, is there a way to add the cabinet art in lieu of the black bars? I would think if there was, it would have done it automatically like so many other things! Overall, I'm just so pleased with the success I've had (unlike so many other trys before). Was even able to easily incorporate my Tankstick including the trackball with relative ease (besides that strange mame glitch that caused me to have to map buttons for each game individually). Oh, and the kids are happy too...all for them after all ;)

[Jason Carr]

Hehehe, thanks @Hamfighter. I'm glad overall everything is working out well. MAME can be configured to save states automatically (for most games) as well as use bezel artwork and the like. Unfortunately LaunchBox doesn't yet help you with that stuff, so it has to be configured in MAME. Same with controls. I think for the bezels it's as easy as finding the bezel artwork package to download and putting it in the right folder. Automatically saving states is buried somewhere in the MAME options. Sorry I don't have more detailed answers for you; my MAME configuration knowledge is a bit rusty. ;)