My Hyperspin setup... and my questions

[DerHof2007]

Hey there,

So, I've been a HS user for years. Love it aside from the fact that its insanely over complicated and doesn't always work right.

I have a 4 player cab that I built. All lighted buttons with a spinner and lighted trackball. All of my controls are from Ultimarc and includes 2 servos to toggle the 1 and 2 player joysticks from 4way to 8way.
My lighting and servos are controlled by LEDBlinky.

My primary use is MAME probably 90% followed by Commodore 64 at 9% with a minimal use of Daphne, Bally Astrocade, and maybe some NES/SNES.
 

So my questions....
#1 Will I still be able to control all of my lighting the same way with LED Blinky? Including color specific lighting on a per game basis especially MAME where it automatically knows the original colors.

#2 I noticed in the demo I watched on youtube that the systems and games have themes. Will I be able to use any of my existing artwork and files that I spent way to much time putting together or will I have to reacquire all of this stuff for Launchbox?

#3 All of my controls are obviously assigned keyboard commands which is basically set up for MAME. However the Commodore 64 relied on the keyboard quite a bit for many games. So I had reassigned buttons to be used on specific C64 games using AHK files. So for example the game Spelunker would require the use of the D, F, and Space Bar buttons. So with the AHK file I could simply reassign a couple of the player one buttons to use this commands. Button 5 on my regular layout is Z... I could make that act as a D with the AHK file. I have an AHK file for each C64 game I need to do this with. Can I do this or something similar with LB?

#4 I'm not the type that wants 15 terabytes and 75000 roms on my machine. Safe to assume I can pick and choose games lists for each emulator and only display what I actually have roms for?

#5 How easy is Daphne to set up? I remember it being a PIA on HS.

#6 So there is Launchbox and now I see BigBox... how are these different.... how do they work together?

I'm sure I'll have many more questions if I make the change over and will be happy to purchase the forever license.
Just trying to get some reassurance that I wont have to invest another 1000 hours getting everything set up again.

[neil9000]

Hi @DerHof2007,

#1, I don't use it personally, but I believe yes you can.

#2 all your game artwork will work with launchbox, you just need to point it at your current collection.

#3 Possibly, launchbox does use autohotkey, but not something I use personally.

#4 Yes.

#5 Someone else will have to help you there, sorry.

#6 Launchbox is the desktop program, where you set everything up. Bigbox is the home theater environment, which is controller friendly and has all the bells and whistles you have probably seen, that's what you want on your cabinet.

Hope that helps you make a decision.

I'm sure many more knowledgeable than I will pop in here at some point. To help you out, and point out errors I made.  

Edited February 9, 2017 by neil9000

[DerHof2007]

Hey neil9000,

Thanks for the fast reply!
Definitely going to give it a shot.

As for the AHK files.... as of right now I don't know any other solution to that situation. But with C64 intense use of the keyboard on at least some games I would have to resort to a wireless keyboard no matter what.

Hopefully its as great as it looks and easy to set up.... if I get her up and running full blast I'll make a post in the Collections and Builds forum.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, DerHof2007 said:

Hey neil9000,

Thanks for the fast reply!
Definitely going to give it a shot.

As for the AHK files.... as of right now I don't know any other solution to that situation. But with C64 intense use of the keyboard on at least some games I would have to resort to a wireless keyboard no matter what.

Hopefully its as great as it looks and easy to set up.... if I get her up and running full blast I'll make a post in the Collections and Builds forum.

Well the launchbox part is free, so try setting up your mame collection, to see if you like it. Bigbox is what you want on a cab and that costs money, but once it is setup in launchbox it just works in bigbox. So try the free version, import a few mame zips and see what you think.

[neil9000]

RE, #2 When I say artwork, I mean logos, box art, flyers etc. Actuall themes are different here as they are videos, however @CriticalCid recorded all the hyperspin game themes to video and are available on emumovies. 

[DerHof2007]

Ok, cool. I'm set up at emumovies as well.

Checking out LB as we speak....

[neil9000]

Just now, DerHof2007 said:

Ok, cool. I'm set up at emumovies as well.

Checking out LB as we speak....

You can log into your emumovies account in lanchbox and it will scrape what you need.

[DerHof2007]

Loaded up a little over 100 MAME roms.

Ok, liking so far... even though many options are only available in premium.

I noticed I can simply right click on a game and delete it from the list. While I have my MAME collection whittled down quite a bit there are still going to be quite a few roms I will want to try and most likely delete. So I did that with a game and while it removed it from the list I see that the rom and artwork are still present. Is there a way for me to delete a game from the list AND all associated files including the rom as well?

[neil9000]

Not as such, You can in the settings toggle a delete rom when I delete from launchbox. it will double check with you also when you trigger it. In regards to the image data, you will have to manually delete that, its in launchbox/images/insertplatformnamehere\.

[neil9000]

Really surprised no one more knowledgeable than me has jumped in here yet!!! Its cool though we are a very friendly community, any further questions just ask.

 

[DerHof2007]

Got it. Maybe before I do a full blown MAME import I will do one and not download any artwork.... binge test all the roms and make all deletions first.

With the minimal time I have so far this seems like it will be so much more user friendly than HS.

Just imported my C64 collection... a few minor problems so far but that is because of the filename guidelines I've chosen. I don't follow the standard for this emulator... so adding some info in the editing tab and successfully copied appropriate artwork from my HS files. I'll have to get Winvice to launch in full screen and attempt a auto hotkey file.

I'll have to get back on it a little later though... time for the gym.

Thanks for the help, Bro. I appreciate it... from this and other posts I've glanced through it seems like a great forum :-)

 

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, DerHof2007 said:

Got it. Maybe before I do a full blown MAME import I will do one and not download any artwork.... binge test all the roms and make all deletions first.

With the minimal time I have so far this seems like it will be so much more user friendly than HS.

Just imported my C64 collection... a few minor problems so far but that is because of the filename guidelines I've chosen. I don't follow the standard for this emulator... so adding some info in the editing tab and successfully copied appropriate artwork from my HS files. I'll have to get Winvice to launch in full screen and attempt a auto hotkey file.

I'll have to get back on it a little later though... time for the gym.

Thanks for the help, Bro. I appreciate it... from this and other posts I've glanced through it seems like a great forum :-)

 

That's cool just dable with it, and any major issues just post and we will help as much as we can. Of course per original post if you want really good looking cab experience, you will need bigbox which is premium.

[spycat]

Hi @DerHof2007

Once you've deleted your games from LaunchBox , select Tools, Clean Up Images to remove all images for the deleted games.

[DOS76]

Also you may want to hold off on importing something there are some new features that will be out next week improving on how it imports multi-disk games it may fix your C64 issue if you have games with multiple disks with multiple sides

[spycat]

Hi @DerHof2007

As your main usage is MAME emulated arcade games, bear in mind that the 'Allow deleting ROMS when deleting games' option will only delete the game rom. If a game uses a CHD then you will have to delete this yourself.
For example, if you remove, say, Killer Instinct from LaunchBox, then kinst.zip will also be deleted, but the kinst folder with the CHD will not.
LaunchBox is not aware that a game uses a CHD, only MAME knows this.

[DerHof2007]

48 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

@spycat... awesome on the cleanup option. No worries about the CHD files... don't have too many of those and wont be deleting any.

@DOS76 thank for the heads  up. I'll hold off on the C64 in my cab but will probably mess with it a bit on my PC just to try and learn how to incorporate the AHK files.

Right now my primary testing will be to copy the Launchbox folder I've made with some MAME games and send them to the cab and see how easy it is to get LEDBlinky working.

The layout is kind of 'boring' at the moment... just box pic for each game and maybe a background pic.... should I assume for the full themed 'more HS like' appearance with videos and all that will have to wait until I upgrade to premium?

Thanks guys.

 

[neil9000]

Hope its all gone well?

[Rincewind]

Yes for those features to work BigBox is needed, in the download section under themes there are loads of screenshots and videos of how it would look

[Lordmonkus]

Since it looks like most of your questions have been answered here except the one about Daphne. Daphne is doable without too much effort but it does require some work, it's just how Daphne is.

There is this older thread.

Then there is this one as well.

The way I have done it though is this way, copied and pasted from previous thread.

Here's a quick and simple way to get your Daphne games working in Launchbox. It may not be an elegant solution but it is simple and it works as long as you have your games loading through the DaphneLoader.exe.

Step 1) Make a batch file for each game, call the batch file whatever you like. I made these batch files right in the directory which contains the daphne.exe

Step 2) This step will be repeated for each game. Open your DaphneLoader.exe and for each game you have and want to import into Launchbox  click the Configure button and go to the Advanced tab. The bottom drop down menu "Display command line", set this to Enabled, click apply and ok. Now when you start that game it is going to popup with a bunch of text, select it all and copy. The game will launch but just exit back out.

Step 3) Open the batch file you created for the game in notepad you just copied the command line information from and paste it in and save.

Step 4) Drag the bat file into Launchbox and put into whatever platform you choose. I use the platform Daphne.

Step 5) Right click the game and click edit. Go to the emulation tab and uncheck "Use an emulator to play this game". After you click apply it will popup with a message saying you need to specify and emulator do you want to do this now, click no.

Now you can go back into each game and reverse Step 2 to disable "Display command line"

When you launch a game from Launchbox if you get an error message repeat Step 5 just to double check it.

Like I said this may not be an elegant solution to this emulator and Launchbox but it is the simplest that I know of and it does work.

[neil9000]

woo hoo!! more intelligent people than I have arrived!!