FS-UAE Exporter to create a folder structure for import into Launchbox

[Eirulan]

HM, I'm not sure I (as a non-whd user) completely understood the problem but it sounds like this is something that should be asked Frode Solheim..?

Edit 

Okay i see this has nothing to do with whdloads... 

Isn't it possible to set the ini file readonly so it does not get overwritten? 

Edited September 18, 2016 by Eirulan

[Eirulan]

11 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

This wouldn't be a huge deal if you used nothing but UUIDs because then you could just have them all in one folder and it would never change.

I've tried it out for myself now, it really is a problem, also for me who only uses uuids...

If I for instance load game A and make a save state, then exit and load game B game A's save state is also in the list of game B's save states because they are all in the same folder with no name attached to them, only "save state 1 2" etc. I don't think this is something that can be corrected from outside FS-UAE

 

EDIT

I think I found a way...

I tried this out in the cmd and it worked!!

If you start FS-UAE with this: Launcher.exe Configurations\5a431769-af86-557d-956f-247be96be00e.fs-uae 5a431769-af86-557d-956f-247be96be00e (that means passing two parameters: first the config.fs-uae and second the uuid) then the game starts AND uses the config name!!

What it needs is an empty dummy config file in the configurations sub-folder with the uuid-name and the ending *.fs-uae. But those could be generated by my app... Now I don't know if it is possible to configure Launchbox to send a command line like this. Do you know if it is possible to do this in Launchbox?

 

Cheers...

Edited September 18, 2016 by Eirulan

[Zombeaver]

Ah okay. Well that stinks

I did some additional testing and can confirm that creating individual configs does resolve the issue because it updates the config name in the ini and creates/searches for the appropriate save directory.

[Zombeaver]

24 minutes ago, Eirulan said:

EDIT

I think I found a way...

I tried this out in the cmd and it worked!!

If you start FS-UAE with this: Launcher.exe Configurations\5a431769-af86-557d-956f-247be96be00e.fs-uae 5a431769-af86-557d-956f-247be96be00e (that means passing two parameters: first the config.fs-uae and second the uuid) then the game starts AND uses the config name!!

What it needs is an empty dummy config file in the configurations sub-folder with the uuid-name and the ending *.fs-uae. But those could be generated by my app... Now I don't know if it is possible to configure Launchbox to send a command line like this. Do you know if it is possible to do this in Launchbox?

Interesting. Is the Configurations\5a431769-af86-557d-956f-247be96be00e.fs-uae static? Is the second UUID the only one that changes? If so, I think it could be done. All you should have to do is paste that section into the "default command line parameters" section of the emulator entry.

[orac31]

I think they would both be the same but different for each game?

 

ie Launcher.exe Configurations\5a431769-af86-557d-956f-247be96be00e.fs-uae is pointing to a config made for game say doom config

5a431769-af86-557d-956f-247be96be00e  is then running the game

so the command would have to put the different uuids in twice for each game

Edited September 18, 2016 by orac31

[Eirulan]

14 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

Interesting. Is the Configurations\5a431769-af86-557d-956f-247be96be00e.fs-uae static? Is the second UUID the only one that changes? If so, I think it could be done. All you should have to do is paste that section into the "default command line parameters" section of the emulator entry.

I configured Configurations\%File%.fs-uae as default command-line parameters.

But it doesn't work I think - FS-UAE is not switching configurations from one game to another... at least on my side.

It WOULD work if the launcher.exe would be first started with the dummy-config.fs-uae only, then closed and then started again with the uuid. But I don't think this can be done, or maybe with some sort of batch/vbs?

Edited September 18, 2016 by Eirulan

[Zombeaver]

3 minutes ago, Eirulan said:

I configured Configurations\%File%.fs-uae as default command-line parameters.

But it doesn't work I think - FS-UAE is not switching configurations from one game to another... at least on my side

%romname% is the switch in LB for pulling the rom file name. I'm not sure if it'll work in this specific scenario but you can try it.

[flores9]

Hi, i,m trying to use it with .ipf roms.

The program works perfectly, but when i try to launch the rom y fsuae it says that I dont have the ipf plugin installed.

I download the capsimg plugin dll, but it doesnt appear in the plugin windows. Do you know how to make it works??.

Thanks

[orac31]

hi you have to download the plugin then put the plugin with folder in plugin dir I had same problem(so the whole folder(CAPSImg) needs to go in pluhin dir

Also make sure its the upto date plugin

 

 

Edited September 18, 2016 by orac31

[Eirulan]

1 hour ago, orac31 said:

hi you have to download the plugin then put the plugin with folder in plugin dir I had same problem(so the whole folder(CAPSImg) needs to go in pluhin dir

Also make sure its the upto date plugin

 

 

Jepp, correct.

Has to look like this:

 

15 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

So I've run into a snag with this.

When you load a game like this it does not overwrite the "config_name" field in the settings.ini. The reason this is significant is that those are how FS-UAE divides up its save games. If you load up a game and the the "config name" that it has in the settings.ini is named "Default", it's going to search for your saves in (and save to) a folder structure of FS-UAE -> Save States -> Default -> DH0 -> [the name of your specific game]. This wouldn't be a huge deal if you used nothing but UUIDs because then you could just have them all in one folder and it would never change. The problem is that any time you A) simply click on a game title or a config in the FS-UAE UI or B) launch your own user-made config (for games that don't have a predefined one already) it updates that config name and now it's looking for/saving them in FS-UAE -> Save States -> [the name of your specific game/config] -> DH0 -> [the name of your specific game]. Since launching via UUID doesn't update the name, it'll search by whatever was in there previously... and now you've got a problem because it can't find them.

I'm not sure what to do about this, honestly. If you were using nothing but UUIDed games and you never used the FS-UAE UI itself (because like I said, it updates the name just by clicking on a different title) it would be okay, but that's not the case.

I guess one possible solution would be to create my own configs for every game that requires saving because those are the only ones that this affects and the "config_name" would update correctly in that scenario. That would kinda stink though

I found a solution for this - I'm doing a small app as launcher that does the job before launching FS-UAE - I have to do some coding and testing but nothing too complicated, will be out tuesday i think This launcher-app has to be set in LB instead of Launcher.exe then.

Cheers...

 

 

[orac31]

That would be great thanks

[Eirulan]

I also made a post in the official fs-uae support forum, maybe someone there can clarify...

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=1111974#post1111974

 

[flores9]

@orac31 and @Eirulan thanks!, now the plugin works!.

[Zombeaver]

8 hours ago, Eirulan said:

I found a solution for this - I'm doing a small app as launcher that does the job before launching FS-UAE - I have to do some coding and testing but nothing too complicated, will be out tuesday i think This launcher-app has to be set in LB instead of Launcher.exe then.

Awesome, sounds good. In the interim I've just been making individual configs for all the ones that actually need saves.

[kyoken]

If you download commodore amiga hyperlist database http://hyperlist.hyperspin-fe.com/, you have all you need :

-<game image="1" index="true" name="1000Miglia_v1.1b">

<description>1000 Miglia</description>

If we can do a batch to create a massive folders with <description> and then move all whdload files to respective folders, we have a winner, but i don´t know how can do this...... 

[Zombeaver]

5 hours ago, kyoken said:

If you download commodore amiga hyperlist database http://hyperlist.hyperspin-fe.com/, you have all you need :

-<game image="1" index="true" name="1000Miglia_v1.1b">

<description>1000 Miglia</description>

If we can do a batch to create a massive folders with <description> and then move all whdload files to respective folders, we have a winner, but i don´t know how can do this...... 

You're missing the point of this - it's not just to create folders for importing - it's to hook into FS-UAE's built-in configs for a very large number of games so that individual configuration isn't necessary. It takes the UUID associated with each one from the Open Amiga Game Database and dumps it to a blank file named after the UUID, and when launched via LB with "no quotes" and "no file extension" checked it launches not only the appropriate game, but the appropriate pre-made config to go with it. This benefits not only ADF versions but WHDLoad as well, because while WHDLoad games will technically launch by simply directing a zip to FS-UAE, without the corresponding config they normally won't run ideally. The PRELOAD WHDLoad argument needs to be added on nearly every WHDLoad game in order to keep the screen from flickering like crazy when it's loading data, some games need the BUTTONWAIT argument to keep the game from blasting through images faster than it should because WHDLoad games load significantly faster than ADF, and some games have custom viewport settings that are necessary for the screen to be the appropriate size; simply throwing a WHDLoad zip at FS-UAE won't do this. With this tool, you're hooking into all the premade configs so that you don't have to do any of this by hand. Granted, there are some games that aren't in the OAGD (typically some of the more obscure stuff that you may or may not care about) so those will still need to be configured manually, but a significant number of games are already covered.

[Eirulan]

On Monday, September 19, 2016 at 5:09 AM, Zombeaver said:

Awesome, sounds good. In the interim I've just been making individual configs for all the ones that actually need saves.

So here's the launcher app:

This one does the following:

• searches in FS-UAEs database for the game+variant name for the given uuid
• alters the "config_name" entry in the settings.ini to this value
• starts FS-UAEs launcher and passes the uuid
• closes itself

System requirements:

• This again uses .NET framework 4.5 but since you all are running Launchbox, all here should probably have that installed.
• This is ONLY tested with the latest dev builds!! I am running 2.7.16dev. UPDATE it's working with 2.8 stable too.
• You need to have logged in to FS-UAEs database
• You need to have a populated local FS-UAE database
• I think at the moment the program does not run properly if the settings.ini does not contain a "config_name = ..." line of code already. So be sure to have at least once started a game from within FS-UAE. I'll look into that.
• Program probably crashes if the below mentioned paths are not correct, at the moment there isn't much error handling built in.

The app does not need to be installed and can run anywhere, put it into the FS-UAE folder or not, doesn't matter.

Instructions how to use:

• Extract the archive attached to any location you like.
• IMPORTANT!! Open "Launcher_uuid.exe.config" with a text editor, you have to set the location of the launcher.exe, launcher.sqlite and settings.ini in here.
• 
• put the full path and file names here.
  • Launcher.exeis located in the FS-UAEs install directory
  • Launcher.sqlite is located in the "Data\Databases" subfolder in FS-UAEs install directory
  • Settings.ini is located in the "Data" subfolder in FS-UAEs install directory
• After that, just change your emulator entry in Launchbox and replace "Launcher.exe" with my EXE (launcher_uuid.exe). Be sure to keep "no quotes" and "file name only" settings.

Cheers...

 

Launcher_uuid.zip

Edited September 21, 2016 by Eirulan

[orac31]

well after making a few mistakes(by not reading your post right) it works thank you so much

[Zombeaver]

Awesome! Thanks @Eirulan, I'm looking forward to giving this a go tonight!

[Eirulan]

Well, there's not much to see here - it's totally unspectacular and only tries to deal with something that in my opinion is a bug in FS-UAE... Hopefully Frode Solheim fixes this in future releases so that those kinda hacky workarounds are no longer necessary...