PSX Game Import - Launches Wrong Disc

[locvez]

Hi all,

I imported a large collection of psx games and previously to the latest stable version it aways started with Disc 1 (testing Final Fantasy VIII) but with V. 7.10 it has selected to start with Disc 4 instead. I was wondering if anyone else exprienced this issue?

 

I imported the games by navigating to the folder containing the psx game folders and used windows search for *.cue and dragged all cue sheets into LB

[neil9000]

That's strange it shouldn't of changed by itself. If you right click the game and choose edit, then go to additional apps, it should list the discs there click on disc 1, then click the make default button. That should fix it for you.

[locvez]

Sorry I didn't mean it changed on its own, I should have explained better, did a fresh install to test Google drive storage for my romSo. Just thought it was odd that launchbox selected disc 4 to start instead of disc 1

[neil9000]

Yeah it IS odd, launchbox should default to the first disc, unless you specifically change it manually which you say you haven't so i am at a bit of a loss to be honest. I don't recall hearing of this happening before, but i could be wrong. One thing i would check is that each disc is named exactly the same except for the disc number, it may be disc 4 has a capital letter the others don't or something like that, making it appear at the top of the list as it's a different name??

[locvez]

I installed LB on a new pc and imported the full REDUMP PSX (Europe) rom set and LB is using disc4 as default.

 

I will try import again but it takes aaaages using Google Drive to scan / import roms

[Zombeaver]

I'm not sure why it'd be using 4 as the default honestly. You can always change it after the fact by editing the entry, selecting a different disc in the additional apps section, and telling it to use disc 1 as the default.

Honestly though, you shouldn't be importing separate disc images anyway. It's not hurting anything to do that, but it's very far from ideal when it comes to actually playing the games themselves. Having them as individual discs in additional apps doesn't provide you with any sort of disc swapping functionality in-emulator. Basically you would have to save the game, exit the emulator, load up the second disc, and then load the game and continue. And this is assuming that the game prompts you to save as part of the disc swap (which nearly all do, to be fair, but not all). The only other option with separate images is to do some trickery with save stating. None of these options are ideal.

What you should be doing is using either .m3us or .pbps for your multi-disc games. These allow you to change discs in-emulator without ever having to exit - just like you would if you were playing an actual PSX. When you get to a section prompting you to swap discs, you press a key to "open/close tray", a key for "next disc" (or previous), and then "open/close tray" again and keep right on playing. You can import these as your "roms" for multidisc games in LB.

.m3u's just require you to create a text file with the name of each .cue and then rename the filetype from .txt to .m3u. I've got some instructions here.

.pbps are basically the same thing, but they're created using a program called PSX2PSP. You just indicate the discs you want it to use and then it'll export a .pbp file. These also provide a minor amount of compression which is nice. A few games seem to have some compatibility issues with these though. I use .m3us myself.

[neil9000]

Cheers @Zombeaver, you got more knowledge on this than me, i need to start my psx from scratch including grabbing the roms, so i will also look into the .m3u thing never done that before. I fact i have never created a .m3u period so ill check out your instructions also.  

[locvez]

Thanks Zombeaver,

 

I'll definitely check out your tutorial on the m3u file type. It seems that by searching for *.cue in windows explorer lists the file names in reverse order, this is the only reason I can think that it picks the last disc in the series as a boot disc.

Retrying now but will alpha sort the list first.

[Zombeaver]

Honestly it shouldn't matter how you're importing them as far as the disc that LB automatically picks as the default. Ordinarily it should be grabbing disc 1 as the default automatically. @Jason Carr might be able to shed some light on what would be causing it do choose differently as it's done on the backend. My experience has been that it's typically pretty good about picking the first disc correctly. Every once in a while it does seem to get a little bit confused (usually if there's some weird file naming involved) but it usually gets it right (for me anyway). I'm assuming there's some amount of logic where it's supposed to check for "Disc 1" or "Disk 1" or "Disk A" or "Side A" etc. but I'm not sure what the exact details are.

I'd definitely encourage you to consider doing the .m3u or .pbp method in any case; it just provides better functionality and a better experience. It literally takes less than a second while you're playing. I have (on the numpad) 0 bound to my "open/close tray" button, - bound to "previous disc", + bound to next disc, so when I need to change from disc 1 to 2, all I have to do is press 0, +, 0 and then keep right on going.

[locvez]

I will do, thanks.

Does the .mbu file require to be placed in the root and contain the path to the .cue file? I have all disc images in seperate folders within a PSX folder so for example will it require

Final Fantasy VII (Disc 1)/Final Fantasy VII (Disc 1).cue
Final Fantasy VII (Disc 2)/Final Fantasy VII (Disc 2).cue

?

Edited June 27, 2017 by locvez
typo

[Zombeaver]

Just now, locvez said:

Does the .mbu file require the path to the .cue file? I have all disc images in seperate folders within a PSX folder so for example will it require

Nope, and having them in folders like that is perfect. That's what I do as well. All you need to do for the .m3u is put in the filename (no paths necessary) of each .cue, in order, one per line:

Final Fantasy VII (Disc 1).cue
Final Fantasy VII (Disc 2).cue
Final Fantasy VII (Disc 3).cue

Obviously the .m3u has to be in the same location (folder) as the disc images though.

[locvez]

Cheers, will give it a try now. I take it the file just needs named Final Fantasy VIII.m3u ?

Edited June 27, 2017 by locvez
typo

[Zombeaver]

Yeah you can name it whatever you want as long as you have .m3u as the extension. So yeah, I just name it as the game title .m3u.

[locvez]

ok, cheers

[Zombeaver]

I guess I should also ask - what emulator are you using? I assumed Retroarch but not everybody uses Retroarch. .m3us and .pbps will work with both RA Mednafen and standalone Mednafen. I'm not sure if ePSXe accepts either.

If you're using Retroarch, don't forget to assign keys to the open/close, next disc, and previous disc functions in the input -> hotkeys section. Mednafen standalone has default keys to do it, but I don't recall what they are from memory.

[locvez]

I'm using ePSXe at the moment purely for testing load times from Google Drive, but will likely switch to RA

I just confirmed that sorting the files by name solved the issue with LB using the last disc as the launch disc. Sorting alphabetically A-Z Disc 1 became the launch disc

[Zombeaver]

30 minutes ago, locvez said:

I'm using ePSXe at the moment purely for testing load times from Google Drive, but will likely switch to RA

Based on some Googling I think ePSXe supports .pbp format, but I don't think it does .m3u.

I'm a Retroarch guy myself.

30 minutes ago, locvez said:

I just confirmed that sorting the files by name solved the issue with LB using the last disc as the launch disc. Sorting alphabetically A-Z Disc 1 became the launch disc

Interesting. I don't recall ever doing anything weird when I imported them - I was under the impression that it was automatically picking up the disc number and using the first one. I think that's what it's supposed to be doing anyway.