swap disk

[neogetter]

good morning..

very nice implement! re-imported the multi disk games, now i see them on additional app for every game, so, i added them as zip files, with option "extract rom", final fantasy vii ask me to insert anyway the second disk, do i need to press key combination for swap or it must be automatic?

thanks

[DOS76]

Swapping the disk is not handled by LaunchBox that has to be done by the emulator. I'm not sure what system you are referring to I'm guessing something Sony some emulators support playlist files in .m3u format and another form of conversion that allows combining of disk the file type name alludes me at the moment (both ePSXe and RA support m3u and either one or both support the other). I'm unsure how PCSX2 handles multidisc games actually I don't think I've ever tested disc swapping on it.  For other disc systems it all depends on the emulator RetroArch allows for disc swapping in most of their disc based emulator cores.

[neogetter]

i'm using epsxe, so..very clear now, thank you very much ^^

[DOS76]

Glad I could help.

[Crono141]

Can I piggy back on this thread?  What format or naming convention do your multidisk games need to be in order for the import to realize that they're all part of the same set?  I just tried to file import and selected both .cue files for a 2 disk game, and it imported them as separate games, not as one single game.  Running 6.8 premium.  Thanks!

[Zombeaver]

They should be (Disc 1) or (Disk 1) or (CD 1) etc. I believe brackets (so [Disc 1] for example) are now supported as well. I recall somebody else having an issue with .cues as well. I'm not sure if it's been addressed yet.

[Crono141]

Do I need to import both files still?  Or just Disk 1 and launchbox will pick up disk 2?

[DOS76]

Was (disc 1 of 2) [disc 1 of 2] (disc1of2) [disc1of2] ever included I have quite a few like that but really I imported my disc systems long ago and removed the dupes made all the additional apps for the 2nd discs.

Edited August 24, 2016 by DOS76

[Zombeaver]

It would still be both files. When you get to the final screen of the import wizard, the column to the far right is for "Disc" - if it's recognized the disc numbers you'll see "Disc 1", "Disc 2" etc in that field.

I'm not sure @DOS76. That's a good question though. That format certainly isn't uncommon.

[Crono141]

Thanks!  Now to go back to the original point of the thread: how does one switch disks on the fly in RetroArch?  As far as I can tell, even though it only shows up as one game in LaunchBox, we'll still need to append the second disc inside the emulator, before we can switch, right?  Would it be possible for LaunchBox to create m3u playlists for you, and pass those to the emulator when you launch, in addition to the current method of handling multi-disks?  Does that make sense?

Edited August 24, 2016 by Crono141

[orac31]

you have to make the m3u file then you add that to lb as the game when you run it and have to swap disks go into retroarch menu options then disk control if the m3u file is correct you can select the disk(think of it as a cue sheet for cue files)

[Zombeaver]

You don't actually have to go into the options menu at all. All you have to do is assign keys for "open/close tray", "next disc", and "previous disc". So long as your m3u is setup correctly and you've got your keys assigned you'll never have to go into the RA UI to do any swapping

I explain how to do this here.

[Crono141]

1 minute ago, orac31 said:

you have to make the m3u file then you add that to lb as the game when you run it and have to swap disks go into retroarch menu options then disk control if the m3u file is correct you can select the disk(think of it as a cue sheet for cue files)

Right, that's what I tried first.  But then it only shows the one game in LaunchBox without the option to launch as disk1, 2, etc.  Its an either/or situation.  To get the functionality I'm talking about, you'd need to create the m3u playlist, import the Disk1/Disk2/Disk3 files, and then manually change the pointer for the entry in launch box to point to your m3u file, instead of your disk1 file.  Seems something that would be relatively easy to automate at import time, since the frontend is already doing the work of cataloging which files to add to the "additional apps" section.  It could easily write those same lines to an m3u file, and then change the main romfile path to that m3u file.  At least for emulators that support m3u like RetroArch.  So maybe it would have to be a toggle switch option set at time of import in order to do this.

[Zombeaver]

Just now, Crono141 said:

It could easily write those same lines to an m3u file, and then change the main romfile path to that m3u file.  At least for emulators that support m3u like RetroArch.  So maybe it would have to be a toggle switch option set at time of import in order to do this.

I've already requested that specific feature here. Vote for it! 

[DOS76]

You could always search for *.m3u during import and it would only show your .m3u files you would import them 1st then run the regular importer and when it came across those games for the 2nd import it wouldn't add them unless you forced dupes in the wizard.

[Crono141]

5 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

I've already requested that specific feature here. Vote for it! 

Done!

[Zombeaver]

11 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

You could always search for *.m3u during import and it would only show your .m3u files you would import them 1st then run the regular importer and when it came across those games for the 2nd import it wouldn't add them unless you forced dupes in the wizard.

Right, but he's also asking for the m3u file creation itself to be automated through LB, rather than creating them manually. That's what I requested in that ticket.

Presumably it wouldn't be too hard to implement since, like Crono said, it's already doing the work of recognizing separate discs via the importer. I made the same point in the ticket description 

As far as having both m3u and additional apps discs on a single game entry in LB, I'm not sure if what you mentioned would work since separate imports like that would probably either not import anything at all on the second import (because it already sees an entry with that game name and would consider it a dupe) or import it as a separate entry if you forced it to include dupes. I don't think it would append the separate discs as additional apps to an existing game entry.

[DOS76]

Ah I must have misread something there because I completely missed that part of it that would be great if LB automated the process as I haven't gotten around to doing it yet.

Yeah I also wasn't considering the part about still needing the additional apps for these games seems redundant if using the .m3u but to each his own.

Edited August 24, 2016 by DOS76

[Zombeaver]

Yeah I'd love to see it implemented as I'm a big PSX guy and there are tons of multi-disc PSX games. I've already taken the time to create m3us where applicable for everything in my library, but this would have saved a huge amount of time. It'd definitely make things a lot easier for new users.

It should be mentioned that for PSX, specifically, PBP files created via PSX2PSP for multi-disc games are functionally identical to .m3us in RA, but I don't use them myself. The conversion process is more time consuming than just manually creating a .m3u file  If someone already had a bunch of PBP files though, they work fine in RA/Mednafen using the same open -> next -> close method as .m3us.

[DOS76]

Isn't another Pro of PBP that it also save you disc space too.