No-intro ROM sets, organizing

[gamerforhire]

Hello all, I'm brand new here! The first time I heard about LaunchBox was about 12 hours ago and I installed it on my media server about 6 hours ago. Same goes for RetroArch. I have a load of questions, but here's one that's pretty straightforward, so I'll start with this one first. Anybody here familiar with No-intro Rom sets? I don't like GoodSets and never have. There's way, way too much junk in them, whereas No-intros are very clear, concise, and easy to use. For those unfamiliar, the set consist of ROMs that only officially made it to the console, licensed or otherwise. No hacks, mods, broken games, or any other nonsense. The files themselves are labeled with full, official titles, with the country of origin, such as (USA), (Japan), (Europe), etc. If there were revisions done to the game over time, then it will be noted as such with (Rev. 1) and so forth. My question is, if anybody here uses No-intros, how do you go about sorting them within LaunchBox? When you import ROMs, as I'm sure all of you know, it strips all the bracketed info after the title, which makes for nice, clean lists. However, when you have a game that was released in two different countries, let's say the titles are "Super Mario Bros. (USA)" and "Super Mario Bros. (Europe)", it will show up twice in the list as just "Super Mario Bros." Prior to me stumbling across LaunchBox, this wasn't much of a concern for me because I just displayed the entire title on whatever FE I was currently using (GameEx, Rom Browser, EmulationStation, etc). But, since LaunchBox is so God damn pretty, I want to finally have a nice, clean list of games with no duplicates. Currently, I have my ROM sets per console split up into regions, so for example, under NES I'll have a "USA" folder and a "Japan" folder, so on and so forth. As of now, I've only loaded the "USA" folder for the "Nintendo Entertainment System" because, technically, that's what the console was made for (the Famicom obviously being the Japanese original). I'm curious if anybody here has come up with a better solution. Alternatively, does LaunchBox allow subfolders? I apologize for the absurdly long post. I'm extremely new to all this (to LaunchBox that is) and I guess I'm just really excited to dive back into all this, seeing how far it's come since the last time I've tinkered with emulators, frontends, and such. The last time I built a retro gaming rig was well over 5 years ago when I crammed the smallest PC I could build at the time into an NES (with functional controllers!).

[DOS76]

You can edit the games after the import and add the region. After that there will be a region listed on the right in the games detail pane. Alternatively you can add the second game as an additonal app to the first game and only show the one game but when you right click on the box art it would give you the option to play the other region. To do this you would right click the game that you are going to keep. Go to edit and once the edit form opens click the additional apps tab. From the additional apps tab you want to click add application when this form opens you willl fill out a name so say for Super Mario Bros. I would name it Europe but you can name it whatever you want then set the directory path to the European version of the game and check the use emulator check box. Now you have one box for the game in LB but can launch multiple versions from that one box. Unfortunetley LB does not use any type of folder structure so subfolders are not a thing that is available but they would be great at keeping multiregional games under the same platfrom. You can however you filtering to achieve results that would only show games from the region that you want (I'm pretty sure you can filter by region but have actually never tried it myself). I hope some of this is helpful to you and don't hesitate to ask any questions that you may have on the forums.

[SentaiBrad]

Personally I keep the exclusives from Europe and Japan, then everything else NTSC (USA / N. America). I also have a ton of English Translated Japanese roms myself. Otherwise I don't necessarily sort other than that. Later if I need a version of a game I got rid of (which has never happened actually) I would just grab that one. No Intro and Tosec sets are my favorites. Also, eventually there be an option to have the platform named what ever you want (in this case Famicom), and scrape it as another console (Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)). As you probably found out, some info was scraped as just 'Nintendo Entertainment System', but the official names are the only way we can guarantee the best level of scrap-ability. Once the display and scrape as naming is separate, this would be less of a problem but that is still a ways out. If you want more help then our Tutorial series would be a great place to start, especially if you are new to RetroArch. Even tutorials I did months ago still hold valuable information as each episode covers different platforms but also different subjects entirely, like patching a rom with IPS or BPS patching. Generally people say they start there. Otherwise, welcome to the forums and we appreciate you enjoying LaunchBox this much. If you do have more questions please feel free to ask them all you need. If you want to contribute any data you have to the LaunchBox Games Database then you are also free to do that if you wanna help out. Adding games will be in sometime this week hopefully, but you can edit existing games metadata and images. Also, as you can see from the two replies, we're ok with long posts. ;)

[gamerforhire]

Whaaaat, that's awesome! I'll definitely have to look into that, the whole "stacking" the games under one name. I'll give it a shot tonight. Side question: Do you know when you right-click, delete a ROM from LaunchBox, if it deletes the actual ROM or just the entry in LaunchBox? Thanks again for your help and quick answers!

[SentaiBrad]

gamerforhire said Whaaaat, that's awesome! I'll definitely have to look into that, the whole "stacking" the games under one name. I'll give it a shot tonight. Side question: Do you know when you right-click, delete a ROM from LaunchBox, if it deletes the actual ROM or just the entry in LaunchBox? Thanks again for your help and quick answers!

It just deletes the entry in LaunchBox. That feature is planned for the future though.

[gamerforhire]

Hey thanks, SentaiBrad! Yes, I spent the majority of my time at work yesterday (sssshhhh, don't tell anybody) watching most of your tutorials on your channel. Unfortunately, it's a lot to take in at one time! So last night I started with the basics and installed LaunchBox and RetroArch. I spent most of the night actually wrestling with RetroArch, not LaunchBox. LaunchBox was a breeze :) As for RetroArch, it was a disaster from the moment "go", haha. It wouldn't even start because it said I was missing some dx9 dll, so I had to download some update package from Microsoft. After that, I followed the tutorials step by step to load the NES core and ROM set, but when I went to bind my gamepad input, things went downhill quick. First off, RetroArch wouldn't recognize my gamepad at all (ps2 controller plugged in via usb with drivers). Windows recognized the input, but RetroArch wasn't having it. After a restart of RetroArch, it recognized the gamepad, but when I binded the inputs, they wouldn't work in the game. It would continue to default back to the keyboard. I even had to delete RetroArch entirely and start over because my gamepad input started to take over input from the keyboard (or something, I'm not really sure what was happening), and I couldn't move around the RetroArch menus or use "X" and "Z". Eventually I got it to work, but something is still...off. Every time I start a game, it'll tell me that my gamepad is not configured, but the buttons still work. So it's good that it works, but strange that it says it doesn't work. I dunno, we'll see how it acts tonight. Sorry, got way off topic there, haha. Just wanted to let out some frustration, I guess, and not about LaunchBox. You guys have truly made a stellar application here. I honestly think it's miles ahead of anything else out there. This is basically the FE I've had in my head as a "dream FE" for a while now, but don't have the programming know-how to really put pen to paper. Or rather, bit to byte? No, that sounds dumb too... Anyway, I'm sure I'll be pestering you guys with a ton more questions in the coming months, but hopefully will also be showing off my rig somewhere in between all the nagging questions.

[SentaiBrad]

Thanks for the kind words and the viewing, we're glad it's helping people out. If you want a super easy controller solution, grab a PS4 or Xbox One controller. Both work great and will automatically be pre-configured. Otherwise trying to configure a controller manually is a pain. I have a Generic N64 USB Controller that needs some work sometimes, but most of it's buttons are automatically set too. https://i.imgur.com/IzHVQja.png Just make sure that line under Input User 1 Binds has your device selected. If you start RA with your controller plugged in, it should automatically pick it up, but if not you can go in there and select it. The only other thing would be to make sure your path settings are correct for the System option, it didn't use to point to the System folder by default which is where your BIOS files should go when you start with the more complicated stuff. Otherwise you're not pestering us, so don't worry about it. :P

[gamerforhire]

The PS4 controller is pre-configured? So I just plug a PS4 controller via USB and RetroArch will auto-map the keys? If so, that's great, because I got a ton of PS4 controllers laying around the house. How about over bluetooth? Nevermind, I just did a quick search and it looks like there's quite a few tutorials out there, so I'll check out one of those. Ok, I think that's it for now. Thanks to everybody for your help!

[CADScott]

If you are using the No-Intro format and have the roms named as they require, then you can use a tool developed by forum member mathflair called LaunchBoxAnnotator Tool. See the thread here: https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/features/launchboxannotator-tool After you have imported a No-Intro Rom set, this tool will scan the file names of the roms and extract the data, such as Region and Version, and automatically add those into the correct spots in the LaunchBox metadata. This will then allow you to sort by Region, and if you turn on the "Show Versions" option in the View menu of LaunchBox, will show the Beta, Proto and Version number tags after the names. This will give you exactly what you were asking for automatically, it works really well!

[SentaiBrad]

I forgot about that tool, also yea just plug your PS4 controller in and download a piece of software called InputMapper, it's what I use. If you have bluetooth built in or a dongle then InputMapper should be able to figure that out too.

[gamerforhire]

CADScott, where were you like 5 hours ago, haha I'm just kidding, I should've checked the forums before I started tinkering tonight. That tool sounds AWESOME! Gonna go download and mess with it right now!

[CADScott]

gamerforhire said CADScott, where were you like 5 hours ago, haha I'm just kidding, I should've checked the forums before I started tinkering tonight. That tool sounds AWESOME! Gonna go download and mess with it right now!

I was asleep, sorry! The tool is great, and it does a lot more that just adding data from the filename. I like to use it to hide the regions that I don't need, so that if there are 3 versions say from USA, Europe and Japan, the tool will hide the Europe and Japan ones, but not remove them from LaunchBox, so I can always get to them later if needed. Have a play with it (Backup your LaunchBox.xml file just in case), and explore the options. If you need any help, I can probably point you in the right direction with some of the advanced usage scenarios.

[gamerforhire]

Oh, don't you worry, I'm gonna have your number on speed dial! The last 24 hours have completely rewritten how I think about emulators, ROMs, frontends, and everything in between. I was completely set to go in and set up my FE like I've always had in the past where it was just a giant wall of games that had a couple bells and whistles with fancy boxart and snaps. But with LaunchBox, RetroArch, and now this new fangled LaunchBoxTools, I'm completely removing all prior knowledge of how I used to set things up and starting from square one. So as you might have seen above, last night I did my first initial install of LaunchBox, RetroArch, and my NES ROM set. After doing some manual organizing, I had it where it was "good enough", but then I came back to check this thread only to be shown yet another marvel of technology: the almighty LaunchBoxTools. So, I ditched everything I had setup the night before (basically just the ROM list in LaunchBox) and started again fresh with the LBTools app. I'm currently following the "My Personal Build" section, because that's pretty much my end goal. I'm already familiar with sselph's scraper because I'm also currently building a raspberry pi powered retro console, so I'm working on both the big and small scale. I'm so excited to learn new stuff!

[UncleDaddySwiss]

So, just to clarify, should I just import ALL games from a No-Intro set, and then use methods to filter or hide the ones I dont want to show up? What I had done is to go through all the files manually in Windows Explorer and take all the files I didn't want and zip archive them so Launchbox didnt even scan them. But it sounds like a better way would be to import them all, and organize afterward. Also, while sort-of on the subject, what do people do with bios files for systems like SNES such as _BIOS DSP2 (WORLD).BIN? Do you just leave it in the folder with the ROMs? I've not played a game which required them yet (I don't think anyway.) Do I import them as well and just hide? Thank you.

[Guest Kirsten Marie]

Hey @UncleDaddySwiss! I think it is all about preference. I personally find it easier to import all and then filter later. As far as BIOS, where you put them depends on the emulator. I've never needed any BIOS for SNES so I'm not sure about that.

[UncleDaddySwiss]

Kirsten: Thank you for the reply. I agree, it would probably make more sense to import all games, that way, I can hide the ones I don't want to show, but if I would want them I could still get to them within LaunchBox. As for the BIOS, I think I will either filter them out of the import, if thats possible, or just hide them in LaunchBox. Thank you very much!

[Guest Kirsten Marie]

sounds like a plan! No problem :)

[UncleDaddySwiss]

Also, one more question: If I wanted to "stack" the games by putting other versions under Additional Apps, what would I do with those versions in the main interface? Would I hide them, or just delete the entry entirely? I've moved my mass of games to Dropbox and am waiting for it to sync, and trying to decide my plan of action. I want the cleanest list of games while still being able to access all versions if needed. Also, I've read that recently, it was added that when you delete a game in LB it also deletes the rom file - is that optional, or does it happen automatically? Thank you again.

[DOS76]

When I set up additional apps I delete the games from the games list and only access them from the main game.

[UncleDaddySwiss]

Awesome, thank you. I think i have a "game" plan now.