How to get Multiple Disc games to work with Additional Apps

[tgotr]

I have been googling and searching the forum for clear answers on how to get multi-disc games to play where I can change the disc when needed. I know you have to have daemon tools and to make a batch file, and that's about it. I know with PS1, you just need retroarch and to make a .m3u playlist file, I am looking for 3DO, Saturn, Dreamcast, Gamecube and the like

[Zombeaver]

PSX and Saturn are covered under Mednafen so you can (and should) use .m3us for them. All you need to do for those is create a text file with the name of each .cue, in order, one per line, and then save it and rename the file extension from .txt to .m3u and then use the .m3u as your "rom" in LB. In RA you then need to assign buttons to the open/close disc tray, next disc, and previous disc functions. When prompted to insert the next disc, you press the open/close button, the next disc button, and then the open/close button again and then continue on.

Quote

Disc 1 Name.cue

Disc 2 Name.cue

Disc 3 Name.cue

I've never tested multi-disc 3DO games, but I found this post regarding them as it pertains to 4DO. It sounds like you should be able to just "eject" the disc and then put in the next one.

For Dreamcast via Demul, you go to Config -> GD-Rom, click "Eject", select your next disc, and then select Ok.

For Gamecube, pull up the Dolphin UI and then go to File -> Change Disc and select the second disc image and press open.

2 hours ago, tgotr said:

I know you have to have daemon tools and to make a batch file

This isn't necessary for any of the methods mentioned above. The only thing you need DT and potentially a batch file for is for use with SSF. If you're able to use Mednafen Saturn you should definitely go that route.

None of these involve additional apps, mind you. You need to understand that there are limitations to additional apps when it comes to multi-disc games. If you have multiple disc images setup as additional apps, the only thing launching one of them through that method is doing is launching the emulator with that specific disc image, just like it was a separate game. It's not swapping anything. All it's doing is allowing you to start the emulator with a different disc image. In nearly all cases this isn't ideal because even in the best of cases, it means the game has prompted you to save your game as part of the disc swap, you save, you exit the emulator, launch with the next disc as an additional app, and then load your game. In the instances where a game doesn't prompt you to save your game as part of the swap, this won't work at all (unless you get a bit creative with save states). In pretty much all cases you're going to want to swap discs through the emulator itself. There are cases where additional app separation of discs works well but that's basically just for games that have multiple discs but you're not actually swapping between them - things like Resident Evil 2, Gran Turismo 2, and Rival Schools. Those games have multiple discs but they're separate and independently playable.

[tgotr]

Is the Saturn mednafen emulator in Retroarch?

[Zombeaver]

Yep.

[tgotr]

Well that makes things easier.

There is a solution for the 3DO thing...use PS1 or Saturn Ports.

In the hotkeys menu of Dolphin, you can assign a disk swap button, but I can't get it to save what I put. That just leaves PS2 and Dreamcast

 

[Zombeaver]

I gave instructions on Demul above for Dreamcast.

PCSX2 is essentially the same thing - in PCSX2 go to CDVD -> Iso Selector and then select the next disc image.

[tgotr]

2 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

I have never used Demul, are there hot keys for swapping discs?

 

[Zombeaver]

I don't believe there are, no.

Demul is about the only DC emu worth using; it's not perfect by any stretch but it's a lot better than nullDC or Reicast.

[tgotr]

Well Dreamcast isn't tooo big of a deal. Most of the games I have played have you save before the start of the next discs, I think it was because the Dreamcast shut down the program when the lid was open.

[Zombeaver]

15 minutes ago, tgotr said:

I think it was because the Dreamcast shut down the program when the lid was open

Not necessarily. D2 for example, doesn't. It doesn't prompt you to save for each disc swap either. Most games do though. The complication is that the way different games implement disc swap detection is different from game to game - some do it based on reading the lid open/close state and others do it by detecting read errors to see if the disc it's expecting is in the drive or not (D2 and RE: Code Veronica do this).

[tgotr]

Shows how long it's been since I've played both those games to completion.

[tgotr]

I'm slowly getting it to work. heh

[nietzsche666]

Sorry for re-opening this, but I have a noob question for simple older windows games. I want to try to make Launchbox launch all of them completely easily by clicking on the cover in the frontend with none of any secondary crap to have to think about: automatic xpadder settings, automatic image/iso settings through daemon tools etc. I think I already have a clue how to use additional apps to do this. But if an old PC game wants me to swap isos, unable to read it off another letter pre-set up DTlite image virtual drive, what can I do? Maybe I can get back to Windows by Windows key and manually swap DTlite to the next iso. But I'm not sure whether this works in any case or may break the game in some cases. For the few games that should pose this problem, there aren't proper NoCD-patches around. They are made to pull data from multiple CDs in any case.

Sorry if I'm ignoring anything obvious here, as I said: still a noob to LB and I haven't been able to practically test this theoretical usage yet, have to wait till I get back to my launchbox set-up PC tomorrow to test how this all works up.    

[Zombeaver]

2 minutes ago, nietzsche666 said:

automatic xpadder settings

This is between you and Xpadder. LB has no direct interaction with Xpadder whatsoever. If memory serves, you can setup per-application profiles in Xpadder, but again that's handled within Xpadder itself.

5 minutes ago, nietzsche666 said:

automatic image/iso settings through daemon tools etc

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this. If you setup your disc image as your "rom", blank out your emulator entry, and then add an additional app for the game .exe and tell it to "automatically start after main application" what will happen when you start the game is DT will mount the image and then the game .exe will start once complete.

7 minutes ago, nietzsche666 said:

But if an old PC game wants me to swap isos, unable to read it off another letter pre-set up DTlite image virtual drive, what can I do? Maybe I can get back to Windows by Windows key and manually swap DTlite to the next iso. But I'm not sure whether this works in any case or may break the game in some cases. For the few games that should pose this problem, there aren't proper NoCD-patches around. They are made to pull data from multiple CDs in any case.

The only way I know to do this is to setup discs 2, 3 etc. as additional apps, and when prompted to swap discs in game, alt-tab, right-click on the game entry and launch them. They'll then replace your existing mounted image, you can alt-tab back in game, and continue.

[nietzsche666]

Thanks a lot for the reply. Yes, I was thinking of using the additional apps feature in Launchbox for easy usage of PC windows games. Usage I have in mind is a) for automatic xpadder -profile launch and quit after game quit and b) automatic iso mount and unmount through DTlite.

 

As I understand it so far, I should use additional apps feature for this, adding Xpadder commands, one for run before, the other for run after application. It was explained very well here in the forum in the Script Xpadder / NoMousy-Thread, I'll try to follow those steps. I know I have to setup a profile seperately from within Xpadder before, it's just about making it start automatically within LB,

 

Just the same I would use DT-Lite & mount/unmount command line parameters to run before and after application with a specific iso.

 

Now for swapping iso-files within Windows games: You say I can just use alt-tab within the game and it will take me to launchbox settings, where I can launch other isos as further additional apps? This would be just perfect, exactly what I had in mind. I'll have to test that tonight on my Launchbox install on my other pc.

Edited July 24, 2017 by nietzsche666
Try to make it more clear

[Zombeaver]

3 minutes ago, nietzsche666 said:

As I understand it so far, I should use additional apps feature for this, adding Xpadder commands, one for run before, the other for run after application. It was explained very well here in the forum in the Script Xpadder / NoMousy-Thread, I'll try to follow those steps.

 

Just the same I would use DT-Lite & mount/unmount command line parameters to run before and after application with a specific iso.

Yep, that's certainly an option. You can specify command line parameters for each additional app individually.

4 minutes ago, nietzsche666 said:

Now for swapping iso-files within Windows games: You say I can just use alt-tab within the game and it will take me to launchbox settings, where I can launch other isos as further additional apps? This would be just perfect, exactly what I had in mind. I'll have to test that tonight on my Launchbox install on my other pc.

Yes, so long as your computer is setup to automatically mount your disc images via double-click (in other words, your disc images have a file association with DT) that's how it'll work. It's no different than if you were to go into the folder where the disc images were located, double-clicked on the next disc image and it then replaced the previously mounted image (this is the default behavior). Launchbox is essentially a visually-appealing, easily-organizable collection of Windows shortcuts. If you indicate an emulator that you want to use, it's no different than if you were to direct one file at another file via the target field of a Windows shortcut. If you don't specify another file (emulator) that you want to direct it to, it's no different than if you had simply double-clicked on that file on your computer.

[Hatbuckle]

I don't understand what I am doing wrong. I've created the .m3u playlist with the .cue files listed in disc order and added it to LB as a rom. When I try to run it, it gives me a c++ runtime error for retroarch.

[neil9000]

8 minutes ago, Hatbuckle said:

I don't understand what I am doing wrong. I've created the .m3u playlist with the .cue files listed in disc order and added it to LB as a rom. When I try to run it, it gives me a c++ runtime error for retroarch.

Does retroarch open ok just by itself?

 

[Hatbuckle]

6 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Does retroarch open ok just by itself?

 

I know whats wrong, I can't seem to create a working .cue for the .bin that I don't have them for. It is either that or the file is corrupt somehow.

[Hatbuckle]

Nope, I tested Grandia Disc 1 as a .cue launching from LB into RA with mednafen and it worked fine. Then I removed the game added disc 2's .bin and .cue file to the folder. I created the Grandia.m3u with the lines:

Grandia (USA) (Disc1).cue
Grandia (USA) (Disc2).cue

It then gave me the alert and didn't do anything else.