Exit any emulator

[Soulchip]

Is there any way to set all emulators to exit with the same key? Not all emulatores exit with esc and some of them cannot be changed. some exit with weird combinations like crtl+f11 etc... all of them exit using alt+f4, but i do not have that on my arcade.

I had an option on maximus arcade to exit all emulators pressing x key + y key for z amount of seconds and the emulator will exit no matter in what state it is. I would like to have something like this.

[Lordmonkus]

The premium version of Launchbox has the option to set a key combo to close an emulator out. It's in BigBox mode in Options > Controller Automation.

[Soulchip]

I have premium and that only works for controllers, p[eople with arcade do not use controllers, we use keys from the keyboard with hardware like ultimarc's ipac. So, that options does nothing for us

[Lordmonkus]

Ahh, gotcha. I have an X-Arcade stick but I have not tried to set it up to work through Launchbox yet so I haven't delved into those settings but i'd imagine there is a way to do it. Hopefully @Jason Carror someone else who has set it up with an arcade stick using keyboard inputs can chime in with a solution. I will have to get my Tankstick hooked up again and play around with it. When I last had it hooked up I only used it for Mame and not other controller which made it super simple to close out with a button combo.

[Soulchip]

I tried to set keys but it doesnt let me. and the EXIT key does nothing while in an emulator. (on bigbox it closes bigbox)

[Lordmonkus]

Well like I said I have not tried setting that up with an arcade stick that uses keyboard presses and I take your word that it's not working and if that is the case then Jason needs to get on that shit and we can start up a riot if you like

[Jason Carr]

This is still a pain currently, unfortunately. First and foremost, I'd recommend getting a controller that has a dedicated Escape button. I find the Tanksticks to be very unfriendly compared to Rec Room Masters' Emulator Edition. What I've done in the past is just configured Retroarch and MAME to handle this themselves. Believe it or not, MAME will take a button combination to exit directly in the MAME settings, and you can do this with Retroarch too using their own button combination system. I don't have a solution currently for other emulators though...but I know this is something we need to add into LaunchBox yet.

[Soulchip]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

This is still a pain currently, unfortunately. First and foremost, I'd recommend getting a controller that has a dedicated Escape button. I find the Tanksticks to be very unfriendly compared to Rec Room Masters' Emulator Edition. What I've done in the past is just configured Retroarch and MAME to handle this themselves. Believe it or not, MAME will take a button combination to exit directly in the MAME settings, and you can do this with Retroarch too using their own button combination system. I don't have a solution currently for other emulators though...but I know this is something we need to add into LaunchBox yet.

I hope it gets added, since I do not use retroarch because it is not a good emulator, it is always better to use the real emulator for arcades with real arcade monitors and low specs.

Is it posible to add to launchbox and bigbox a ALT+F4 key? a key that you can configure, like, for example, press 3 on the keyboard and that activates ALT+F4, simple, it will make the job.

I use one of the most well known hardware for arcade controllers, ipac4.

Edited November 6, 2016 by Soulchip

[Soulchip]

38 minutes ago, bundangdon said:

If you really want to do this, probably the most consistent way is by using rocketlauncher, which is a (3rd party) backend program that adds a lot of other useful functions such as fade-in, fade-out, and pause screens in addition to the ability to use the "esc" key to exit any emulator. However, it seems to have issues lately with the most recent version of launchbox since the xml structure has been changed. Hopefully that will be fixed soon though

This is not a good option in my opinion, it is more like a band aid. Using a launcher inside another launcher... it's like using retroarch, a frankenstein that just add more complexity to something that should be very simple, I always prefer to use the real emulator with no add ons.

Besides, i already have 44 systems working on bigbox, no way i'm going to configure them all again for rocketlauncher.
We are building a full featured frontend here, Jason is active and reads us, it is better to ask for this things instead of relying on other programs to do the job. The more complete launchbox is the better.

Edited November 6, 2016 by Soulchip

[Lordmonkus]

If you are just using Mame for arcade stuff setting up an exit key combo is ridiculously easy in Mame itself.

Its the other stand alone emulators that are a pain in the ass.

As far as the quality of emulation in Retroarch is concerned that just depends on the systems (cores). Genesis, Playstation, TurboGrafx and NES for example are all just as good as the stand alone emulators for those systems. Now obviously some systems the stand alones are indeed much better like Dreamcast and PSP.

[Soulchip]

8 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

If you are just using Mame for arcade stuff setting up an exit key combo is ridiculously easy in Mame itself.

Its the other stand alone emulators that are a pain in the ass.

As far as the quality of emulation in Retroarch is concerned that just depends on the systems (cores). Genesis, Playstation, TurboGrafx and NES for example are all just as good as the stand alone emulators for those systems. Now obviously some systems the stand alones are indeed much better like Dreamcast and PSP.

Yes, most of the emulators exit very easily and are set to exit with esc by default (mame for example) so those are working ok, but some of them do not exit no matter what, like amiga cd32 winuae, 4do, my nes emulator (esc opens a menu, i have a trackball so i can go to exit from there but it is ugly).

I tried retroarch and it was so painful... never looked back again.

is it possible to have an alt+f4 key that stays on the foreground while the emulator is still working?

[Lordmonkus]

There is no doubt that certain emulators are going to be a pain in the ass and hopefully Jason can come up with a solution for what you are asking.

Retroarch though is worth the effort to get it working, yeah the menus can be a bit daunting but there are some features in RA that make the effort very much worth it. Shaders (if you are using a modern display), Hard GPU Sync which reduces input latency quite a lot and Audio Latency can be reduced quite a bit as well.

If you are willing to give it another go I and others here are always willing to help you get it up and running.

One thing to try is something like x-padder though I am not sure if that it work well with a joystick controller that uses keyboard presses. Keep in mind this is something I have not done and I don't use it for much so my knowledge of it is very limited so it may not be an option.

[Soulchip]

1 minute ago, lordmonkus said:

There is no doubt that certain emulators are going to be a pain in the ass and hopefully Jason can come up with a solution for what you are asking.

Retroarch though is worth the effort to get it working, yeah the menus can be a bit daunting but there are some features in RA that make the effort very much worth it. Shaders (if you are using a modern display), Hard GPU Sync which reduces input latency quite a lot and Audio Latency can be reduced quite a bit as well.

If you are willing to give it another go I and others here are always willing to help you get it up and running.

One thing to try is something like x-padder though I am not sure if that it work well with a joystick controller that uses keyboard presses. Keep in mind this is something I have not done and I don't use it for much so my knowledge of it is very limited so it may not be an option.

My arcade has a real arcade monitor, so I use real arcade and console resolutions with no effects added for pure emulation.
I'm reading about AutoHotKey now, it seems that i can make a script to change any key to alt+f4 and make an exe, this .exe can be added to windows registry to be loaded always on memory and use this key to close anything.

I'm going to try that now.

[Lordmonkus]

Ok, it's good you don't need shaders but the other things I mentioned about Retroarch like Hard GPU Sync and Audio Latency are still very useful to anyone emulating to reduce the input lag due to emulation.

Hopefully the AUtohotkey works out for you and this is essentially what RocketLauncher uses anyways so it should be doable.

[Soulchip]

So I installed autohotkey and made this little script

z::!F4
Return

This transforms my z key in alt+f4, you save this file to .ahk, then compile it to an exe and that's it, execute this baby and you are ready to close everything there is...ofcourse, do not touch this key while in bigbox, it will close it too hahaaha.

I'm adding this to my registry now so it loads with windows.

[Lordmonkus]

Very nice work

[DOS76]

Couldn't you make your script use a button combo and then you couldn't close it as easily by mistake

[Soulchip]

1 minute ago, DOS76 said:

Couldn't you make your script use a button combo and then you couldn't close it as easily by mistake

That key is my exit key on the arcade  I cannot press it by accident, but I see your point, I will investigate to see if you can add a timer to it, so you need to press it for x seconds to make it work (like maximus arcade)

[Soulchip]

So I fixed the script, now you must press the Z key (you can change that) for 3 seconds to activate the ALT+F4, if the key Z is pressed less than that, nothing will happen.

z::
    duration := 0
    If GetKeyState("z","p")
    {
        start := A_TickCount
        While GetKeyState("z")
            Sleep, 1
        duration := A_TickCount - start
    if (duration > 3000)
        Send !+{F4}
    }
Return

This script has only one problem (not for me, but maybe someone else), the key Z cannot be used for anything else, if you press Z for less than 3 seconds literally NOTHING will happen, not even they key stroke. I'm now trying to make the Z key to be executed normally if the Z key is pressed for less than 3 seconds.

[Soulchip]

ok, finally fixed, this autohotkey script will fix everybody problems. just compile it to .exe and execute this before bigbox.

z::
    duration := 0
    If GetKeyState("z","p")
    {
        start := A_TickCount
        While GetKeyState("z")
            Sleep, 1
        duration := A_TickCount - start
    if (duration > 3000)
        Send !+{F4}
else
    if (duration < 3000)
        z::z
    }
Return

You can change the Z key for any key you need, this will

If you press z for less than 3 seconds just press z on the keyboard (or your arcade hardware like ipac)

If you press z for more than 3 seconds it will press alt+f4 and close any emulator.

 

Have fun.