Any way to hide extra windows/the emulator until the game is launched in bigbox?

[Ell]

I'm trying to make my htpc as seamless as possible with little to no reminders that I'm actually in windows, and the extra windows when launching things is pretty annoying. In dolphin when I launch a game, I always see the main dolphin window for 1-3 seconds before the game launches and goes full screen. I would like to hide it if possible. I managed to hide the extra windows you see when closing the emulator with this in the autohotkey section of the emulator config:

$Esc:: { WinActivate, LaunchBox Big Box Process, Close, {{{StartupEXE}}} }

but haven't been able to figure out a way to hide the window that pops up when you start a game. And in nullDC/demul it's a similar problem, it shows the main window of the emulator for a few seconds before it loads the game and maximizes. Anyone know of a solution for this?

[SentaiBrad]

My honest guess is that they're not specifically designed that way, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a way.

[Ell]

Yeah, I figure if there's a solution it's probably an autohotkey workaround thing. Maybe delaying focus for the window for x amount of time. But my autohotkey skills are not that strong and have no idea how to do that.

[SentaiBrad]

Neither are mine. I do remember Dolphin having options for how a game starts up or how the windows are handled though.

[Ell]

I've probably tried them all :P Tried adjusting every setting I could find that could even possibly make a difference.

[Ell]

After much trial and error I figured it out. Here's how I did it in case someone else finds it helpful.

DetectHiddenWindows, On DetectHiddenText, On Run, Dolphin.exe "%1%" "%2%", , Hide Sleep 3000 WinShow, Dolphin WinActivate, Dolphin $Esc:: { WinActivate, LaunchBox Big Box Sleep, 100 Process, Close, Dolphin.exe ExitApp }

Saved as dolphinlauncher.ahk and made in to dolphinlauncher.exe, with autohotkey, put in same directory as Dolphin.exe. In Launchbox make dolphin point to dolphinlauncher.exe, launch options "-b --exec=" with "no space before rom" checked. Nothing in the ahk section of launchbox. Works great, should be able to adapt it to other emulators pretty easily. Might need to adjust the sleep depending on how fast or slow your computer it.

[SentaiBrad]

Sweet, thank you very much for sharing this with us.

[Ell]

Turns out that script doesn't work for demul because it refuses to actually launch the game until it's the focus window. But I found a workaround for it, if you open Demul.ini and change windowX, and windowY to a high number it will launch directly in to the game instead of showing the main window first. For example mine is:

windowX = 9999 windowY = 9999

I think maybe this is the window location and because it's a high number it appears off screen, but I'm not sure.

[Dormat]

I successfully used the below code as an AHK script (the above code didn't have proper line breaks).

DetectHiddenWindows, On

DetectHiddenText, On

Run, Dolphin.exe "%1%" "%2%", , Hide Sleep 3000

WinShow, Dolphin

WinActivate, Dolphin

$Esc::

	{

		WinActivate, LaunchBox Big Box Sleep, 100

		Process, Close, Dolphin.exe

		ExitApp

	}

 

Edited August 14, 2016 by Dormat

[Mute64]

Nice good work...this was one of the reason i decided to add RL in LB since it does all the hidding stuff 4 you.

[Jazzphone]

Yes RocketLauncher makes life a lot easier when it comes to seamlessly integrating all of the systems together without seeing any windows popping up.

[Ztox]

hey updated script to also hide mouse and taskbar and restore on exit works really well 

DetectHiddenWindows, On



DetectHiddenText, On



;hidemouse

 If (BlockMouse := !BlockMouse) {



      MouseMove 9999,9999,0

      BlockInput MouseMove

	  

    } Else {

      

	  BlockInput MouseMoveOff

      MouseMove -A_ScreenWidth/2,-A_ScreenHeight/2, 5, R

    }

;hidetaskbar

If WinExist("ahk_class Shell_TrayWnd")

	{

		WinHide, ahk_class Shell_TrayWnd

		WinHide, Start ahk_class Button

	}



;hidedolphinwindow

Run, Dolphin.exe "%1%" "%2%", , Hide Sleep 3000



WinShow, Dolphin



WinActivate, Dolphin



$Esc::



	{



		WinActivate, LaunchBox Big Box Sleep, 100

		WinShow, ahk_class Shell_TrayWnd

		WinShow, Start ahk_class Button

	

		Process, Close, Dolphin.exe

             	MouseMove A_ScreenWidth/2,A_ScreenHeight/2

		ExitApp



	}

 

Edited August 19, 2016 by Ztox

[Shaeree]

This is totally doable without AHK, so you can use this with other frontends as well.  Here's how I did it:

1. In Dolphin: Graphics Configuration -> un-tick Render to Main Window
2. Create Dolphin.vbs in Dolphin's folder, with this in it:

   
   scriptFolder = Left(WScript.ScriptFullName,InstrRev(WScript.ScriptFullName,"\")-1)
   
   Set shell    = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
   
   Set regex    = New RegExp
   
   Dim args()
   
   regex.Pattern = "^[\/\-]"
   
   
   
   For i = 0 to WScript.Arguments.Count-1
   
   	ReDim Preserve args(i)
   
   	If regex.Test(WScript.Arguments(i))	Then
   
   		args(i) = WScript.Arguments(i)
   
   	Else
   
   		args(i) = """" & WScript.Arguments(i) & """"
   
   	End If
   
   Next
   
   
   
   shell.Run scriptFolder &  "\Dolphin.exe " & Join (args), 2

    

3. In LaunchBox, change Dolphin's Emulator Application Path to C:\Windows\System32\wscript.exe and the Default Command-Line Parameters to X:\Path\to\Dolphin\Dolphin.vbs /b /e

The most important bits are the "Render to Main Window" option, which lets you use a different window activation/show state than the one you want to use for the games, and the "2" at the very end of the script which tells Dolphin to launch "Minimized but active".  I'd use Powershell, except it's got the same problem as Dolphin, with the annoying window popups!

 

Edited January 12, 2017 by Shaeree

[Styphelus]

Rocketlauncher is what you are looking for.

[Kryptic3001]

On Windows you can just create a Shortcut that starts Dolphin minimized and direct launchbox to that shortcut.  Works for me in 5.0

[Michelle911]

these solutions just keep getting easier ?