Thinking of changing to LaunchBox, but have a few queries before I take the leap

[Wayne100]

Hi all, obviously this is the first time I have posted on here (or any forum) for a while, so please bare with me! 

My 6 year old son and I have been slowly building up an arcade machine, based on a 1980's cabinet. We have have built up a fairly decent computer from scratch to run it. However, I am having a nightmare with setting up and configuring Hyperspin, and to be honest I have had enough of it - just can't get my head around it all, seems to complicated!

I have had a look at a few other Frontends, and LaunchBox (and ultimately BigBox),  seems to be fairly easy to set up, and looks pretty impressive actually.

I have a few queries though, before I take the plunge and remove Hyperspin, and was hoping one or two of you may be able to help:-

1. Can this be setup for actual arcade controls, not just gamepads etc?

2. Can it be set up for two players (our machine has two Joysticks, with 6 buttons per player)?

3. Can it be setup to recognise inputs such as 'Coin In', 'Player 1', 'Player 2' etc for the MAME side of it?

4. Can it be configured so that it launches straight away when the computer is switched on, and shuts down correctly when the computer is switched off?

5. Does it have any sort of 'Screensaver' or attract mode, ie if its idle for a while, it will show game previews etc?

Thanks in advance, any help much appreciated!

Edited January 24, 2017 by Wayne100

[DOS76]

Hey @Wayne100 let me see if I can answer  most of your questions here

1. Yes many of the users here are using arcade controls whether they be seen as keyboard input or gamepad
2. Yes having two controls shouldn't be an issue and if you have any issues I'm sure someone here will be able to get you sorted.
3. Yes you will be able to assign coin and player buttons through your emulators LB really won't be controlling that aspect of it.
4. It can be configured to launch at start by placing a shortcut in the start menu or more advanced botting the PC and using BigBox as the shell instead of Explorer. In the BigBox options menu their is optoin to shut the computer down.
5. BigBox has an attract mode feature built into it already

Hope this helps you make your decision.

[Wayne100]

Hi DOS76, thanks for the reply, much appreciated! I think that we will have a go at downloading and setting it up over the weekend, hopefully the roms that we have already installed for HyperSpin can be copied over for LaunchBox. Just need to sort emulaters.

Got to be easier then pulling my remaining hair out trying to sort out HyperSpin!

Cheers

 

[SentaiBrad]

A lot of this can be done, or is handeled by the emulator, LaunchBox just becomes the facilitator. I would suggest watching a tutorial or two for a system you want to try and test import. The SNES system tutorial is aimed at begginners, so I would suggest to start there as it also goes through a lot of LaunchBox stuff. It's a bit older, a lot of them are, but most of the info in all of them should still be good to go. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6pTDaHeAz-WMcNURVPU-1xLN_TVpT3FB

 

[SentaiBrad]

As for the games you already found, and the images, you can import the games from anywhere, they don't need to go in to your LaunchBox folder, but I suggest them at least being on the same hard drive so LaunchBox uses a relative path instead of an absolute path. If your games or emulators are kept on a different hard drive, it needs to assign a letter to the paths and it becomes less portable in the future. All of your images can be dropped in to the appropriate image folders, and as long as it matches the game name inside of LaunchBox or the rom file, it should automatically attach just fine. The LaunchBox Games Database is growing and has quite a lot though, and EmuMovies is a great compliment. They have music and movies too, but Premium is required for some things, so watch the EmuMovies tutorial.

[sasquatch]

I'm coming from a similar place.   I built a games machine at Christmas.   Gave LB a short look.....imported some games but didn't get them to run.   Moved to Hyperspin and made progress but it was slow.

 

Realising how much time Hyperspin was going to take to get to grips with I had another look at LB.   Followed the guide above and all went well.   It really is easy to use once you have imported a few platforms.   The support on here has been excellent too.

 

Do give it a try at the weekend and if you run into any problems then post on here.   Good Luck.

[Wayne100]

Hi, Santaibrad and sasquatch, thanks for the replies - when I get a minute, I will have a look through a few of the tutorials. I have found a spare 2tb HDD, so I intend now to keep Hyperspin untouched on one HDD, and just copy over all ROMS etc to the spare HDD. I can then install LaunchBox (and then BigBox at a later date) on to the same HDD, and keep it all nice and neat (in theory!)

sasquatch, do you mind me asking what systems you setup on your LaunchBox, and have you upgraded to BigBox at all?

Cheers

[sasquatch]

Started with NES.   Then added others that would also use retro arch so similar set up, ie Master system/Megadrive/Sega32X/Neo-Geo/N64/PS1/SNES/Atari 2600/Atari 7800/PC Engine/Capcom PSII.

Then Mame for arcade games.

Dolphin for gamecube.

PCSX2 for PS2.

Daphne for the Laserdisc stuff.

PPSSPP for PSP.

Sega Model 2 and Supermodel for the Sega Model arcades.

Spectaculator for Spectrum.

I'm going to try DeSuME for the nintendo ds this weekend.   You can throw together a system pretty quickly once you get going.

I have upgraded to Big Box, but stuck with LB for a while why I was deciding if I liked it.   Get everything working in LB before committing to BB.

[Wayne100]

Hi, sorry for not replying sooner, been manic with work! Thanks for that, much appreciated.

I think i will start with SNES or NES, however instead of using my old ROMS (which were downloaded about 4 years ago), I think I will start  from scratch. Had a look at EMUParadise, they seem to be pretty good.

I have not used RetroArch before, is it easy to install, set-up and configure?

Cheers

[Machello]

This is a good start. Credits to SentaiBrad!

[sasquatch]

I wouldn't say RetroArch was intuitive, but runs so many platforms that it's worth starting with it.

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah Retroarch isn't super intuitive but it's not bad once you get used to it and once you do get it setup the pay off is well worth it in the end.

[Thanos Reigns]

Plus, if you already have Hyperspin setup, I'm assuming you already are using RocketLauncher...well LaunchBox works with RL just fine. The only thing you will really have to do is import your roms to LB, RL will handle the launching.

[SentaiBrad]

I wouldn't get any roms from that site anymore, quite honestly. That was where I started originally too, but no, god no. Especially discs based systems, they have A LOT of bad rips... a lot. I would go for No-Intro, TOSEC, Trurip and then Redump sets. Don't go for Good Sets, they have too much crap in them. No-Intro is the set we suggest for every system that has a No-Intro set, hands down. That websites forums have some good threads for No-Intro sets if you want, but you can google around easily enough to find them. They're really not too hard to find. If you find a No-Intro set made within the last year or even two, then chances are you've got quality rips and most of the games.

If you want to break away from RL + HS, just try LaunchBox for a bit, go over some of the tutorials and see what comes of it. RetroArch is only tricky because it requires command lines to work, but it needs those command lines to know what system or core you are trying to load, same deal with MESS. So once you have the Command Lines set up in the Associated Platforms tab, the names match, the core name is correct and downloaded in RA, you get an idea for the process and it becomes a lot easier.

[Wayne100]

Hi all, thanks for the replies and help, much appreciated!