RocketLauncher use..?

[DaveZ]

Just wondering and looking for opinions before I get to far into my collections upgrades/updates and re-organizing shenanigans. Is there much point in using RL with LB these days?

Like any unforeseen benefits, or what have you? Is there any sets/systems out in the wild that LB has issues with still, or just plain does not support?

And as a side question, what would be the point of adding all my xbox original, ps3, and perhaps xbox360 stuff like I have seen many do, if we can't even emulate it yet?

 

CHEERS

 

Edited January 5, 2018 by DaveZ

[Lordmonkus]

You can use RocketLauncher if you want and there are certain benefits to using it, exactly how beneficial is up to you and how much you care about the extra functionality it will give. For me personally I have no use for it but there are others around here who love it for what it can do. You will get very little support in helping set it up from the moderators around here only because most of us do not use it at all. You will have to rely on other users, the RocketLauncher forums or Youtube tutorials on how to set it all up.

There is very few emulators if any that Launchbox won't work with, I can't think of any off the top of my head that don't work but there are a couple that will require some extra legwork like SSF requiring a batch file for mounting disk images or Daphne but they will work.

As for adding games like Xbox, Xbox 360 and PS3 that's up to you. Xbox 360 and PS3 does have emulators at least capable of loading and playing some games at some level.

[DaveZ]

I was actually hoping that most things could be done without, so this is good to hear then me thinks. :-)

Less software, means less to go wrong, means happy old fart named DaveZ :-)

Also isn't is weird how old school xbox is less emulated than then the other two mentioned systems? Kinda

muddies up my brain just a little LOL

Working on getting my WII-U titles in order and added which is strange since i would think it to be so much more

complicated of a system then the ol' xbox

Edited January 5, 2018 by DaveZ

[Retro808]

@Lordmonkus is spot on. It is a bit of a pain to learn, but it has some nice features like fade in and out of games, bezels, pause screen that allows viewing things like images, manuals, and other media. I only recently got back into learning it just to give me something new to mess with. In my main arcade though I have not put it in place and likely will not. Its just on my test machine to learn. It is one less layer to have something break and go hunting for. 

That is not a knock on it. In fact it is very useful. Just a personal preference and not a need. 

Edited January 5, 2018 by Retro808

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah you don't need RocketLauncher for anything beyond some cosmetic features like fade and pause screens though I know right now some of the RL users will be in here to point out all the cool stuff you can do with it. For me it's just not worth the hassle to learn how to use it and making sure the the "modules" for it work with the version of the emulators you are using.

If you aren't already accustomed to using it it has a steep learning curve.

[bundangdon]

It's a matter of preference, but if you have your emulators already configured with rocketlauncher, or are migrating from another frontend (such as hyperspin), then it's very convenient to continue using it. Every time you add a new system in launchbox, you can just point the chosen emulator to rocketlauncher, and don't have to worry about any other configurations. Also, having the ability to use the "pause" screen, fade screens, and bezels are very nice extras

Edited January 5, 2018 by bundangdon

[fromlostdays]

Long time Rocketlauncher user. 

If you're not running multiple front ends, the useful of Rocketlauncher is dwindling  specifically because of launchbox. Other front ends still rely on it heavily.

It's list of exclusive features used to be pretty comprehensive, including things like unzipping roms , rom mapping, and keymapping program organization. Launchbox now does all of this (though handling keymappers is the one thing that I think is easier in RL than in Launchbox). Bezels are now better handled by RetroArch (for systems that it supports), so RL Bezel is only exclusive for systems that have emulators that don't support it natively. RA covers a lot of systems, and well, so for average use it is the better alternative for bezels.

Rocketlauncher can also introduce more problems to your setup. If you don't have or want to have at least a working knowledge of AHK, you'll probably run into some road blocks along the way (ironically, mostly with RetroArch). The RL Module that handles RetroArch is, as one would expect for such a comprehensive emulator, complex. I've had to edit it myself a couple of times now. Not huge edits, but an example would be that the RL module for RetroArch doesn't recognize the system name "Arcade", only "MAME". So I had to go in and edit the module (which is an ahk script) to include Arcade. Not too difficult, but definitely not something you have to do if you just use launchbox.

It still has some exclusive features:

Extremely customizeable fade screens. You can basically do anything you want with fade. It supports animations, so you can set it to display a progress bar for unzipping roms., animated loading screens, spinning discs etc. You can also have custom sounds  during the fade in. (Not for fade out yet, but I read the other day they are trying to implement it). Example, I found a soundbyte of a bunch of people yelling "start the game already!" and it plays when the fade in screen disappears and the emulator launches. It's actually annoying and I'm getting rid of it.

Suspend Front End. You can have rocketlauncher suspend launchbox or any other supported front end when a game is launched. It frees up computer resources, however, I find this feature can sometimes cause launchbox to lose focus when a game is closed. I basically only use it for new steam games which are resource intensive.

Pause. I think people understate how cool this one is . The Pause menu is  also completely customizable, but some of the things it can do: Pause any emulator any time, load up artwork directly from launchbox directories (Thanks to both Jason and the RL Dev for making these two programs sync so well), look at and zoom in and out of manuals, guides etc (my favorite feature), save a state directly from the pause menu or load one (it populates a list of states for you).  You can have it play game specific music, or a single default song every time, same with all of the art etc. It's pretty nifty and if you enjoying the actual setup of this stuff, it's pretty fun to mess around with it. 

Multidisc screen. If set up, RL will display an interactive screen for multi disc games on game launch, allowing you to choose which disc to load. 

Instruction Cards. These operate along with Bezels, mostly for Arcade games. You can have an instruction card pop up with extra information (typically people will use this for arcade key binding information etc.) 

Another overlooked feature is the log viewer. You can set RL to make extensive logs on launch. This doesn't interface directly with an emulators logs, but once you get used to using them, it can be a very useful tool for troubleshoot emulators regardless.

Automatic mount/dismount isos. I never use this so I actually don't know how launchbox or Rocketlauncher handles it.

There are a few really niche things RL can do on a per system basis, but you have to find these things yourself most of the time. For instance, I use RL to launch exodos games straight from the zip files, which launchbox can't do. It wasn't easy to set that up though.

In summation, there are some really cool cosmetic stuff that is RL exclusive and fun to mess with. However, it is a time sink, and is an extra layer where something can go wrong. You do not need Rocketlauncher to get the full launchbox experience, and launchbox is natively much simpler to use.  If you're going to hardcore build a cabinet and you're wanting to get the bells and whistles and go the extra mile, I'd recommend  learning RL. If you're a casual or even serious retrogamer that wants to set up it up quick and streamlined and get started playing awesome games, skip RL.

That said, I'm here if you have any questions.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

[damageinc86]

Yes absolutely great tool for some fun cosmetic things like the fade screens and bezels.  The  PAUSE menu is one of the top reasons I use it, especially for the savestate feature in there. Once you set up whatever key presses are used for the emulator to save and load (ahk) via the GUI or text file editing, you can just select the slot from the list and it sends those to the emulator for you.  Much easier than trying to remember which key combo is the load and save for each emulator.

the other biggest reason for me has been the ease of setting up joy2key profiles for my msdos games within the RLGUI. It opens joy2key, you edit your profile, save it, and then from that point RL will load that profile anytime that specific game is launched.  And it's based off the name of the game in the database, so you can have game specific profiles, instead of only being able to launch one profile based off of when the EXE is started.

if those features were to make their way into launchbox someday, then there would never be a reason for me to use it again.  But for now it's really Nice to have.  And like anything, once you spend a little time getting used to it, it really does become a breeze to upkeep and use from then on out.

[DaveZ]

Cheers guys... learned enough outa all this to write me own darn wiki!!! lol But all in all it doesn't sound to me that it

is something I need in my current rendition. Just doesn't offer anything I need extra to the experience.

LB for the win! ;-)

Edited January 6, 2018 by DaveZ

[fromlostdays]

The question is asked a lot, so we're used to answering it.

[bkart]

 Somewhat related question from a user new to launchbox. I have a painstakingly curated mame.xml in rocketlauncher with 300 or so games. So in hyperspin I see only those games and not thousands.  I dont have those 300 games in their own folder, I have the full mame set. Question is whats the least painful way to get only those games into launchbox? It looks like I’ll need to copy those 300 games to a separate folder and then import that folder into LB. Is that correct and is there an automated way to do so?

Edited January 7, 2018 by bkart

[Lordmonkus]

The easiest way I can think of is to just make a playlist with those same games, no need to pull out a set of roms at all. Will take a little bit of time to go through your list and get all your games but just go through them and every game you want just right click and add it to the playlist.

[damageinc86]

I know I found a program a long time ago that compared your xml to the rom directory and copied them over to another directory. Rom2dir maybe? Something like that.  I used it to delete all the crap like fruit machines and mahjong from my mame set and just leave it with what matched the hyperspin xml.  Other than that, I think it's only making a playlist one by one.

[DaveZ]

@bkart

So judging from the previous few post then, (and a quick google ) You should be able to select the entire contents of your folder which you said was already stripped down to just the 300, and drop them onto the launchbox window?

Edited January 8, 2018 by DaveZ

[fromlostdays]

I think his problem is that he's using just the xml to filter, but has a full set. Just like Launchbox, Hyperspin is reading the xml and ignoring the rest of the games.

So, step 1. Rename the directory you keep your mame rom sin. Example, if its C:\Games\MAME rename it to C:\Games\MAME1

Create a new empty folder named the previous way. So now you have a MAME1 folder with your roms, and an empty MAME folder.

Use Clrmamepro or Don's Hyperspin tools (rom renamer), have the program read the xml and then search your mame1 directory

Neither should have trouble finding the roms since they are named correctly, but I think both have an option to "copy the renamed files" to a new directory. You'll want to copy the 300 roms to the empty MAME directory.

Once they are there, import that directory into launchbox and confirm that all of them import correctly.

Lastly, just drag the rest of the games in the MAME1 directory back into the MAME directory and viola, you've imported your 300 games from the correct directory and your set remains complete.

Edit: I just tested this with Don's HyperSpin Tools (Rom Renamer). I used my old hyperspin AAE xml and used the program to move just AAE roms from my main mame into a different folder, so I know this one works. You can download it here: http://hyperspin-fe.com/files/file/11125-dons-hyperspin-tools-43-beta-significant-rom-renamer/ Just bear in mind that you're using the exe called "Rom Renamer" and that when you point it to your mame directory, and again when you scan, you may have to wait a few minutes. Took almost 10 minutes for me to scan, as MAME is so big.  

 

Edited January 8, 2018 by fromlostdays

[pitaru]

The only reason I use RL in 2019 is because other smart people put up some good setups out there. Colpipes is what I use and RL worls great with BigBox. If I had no access to pre-made setups to start building on, I'd most likely just use BigBox with the beautiful themes the community made for the rest of us, technically challenged people. Ilike the fades and the bezels.

[nikeymikey]

I  use RL becasue i migrated from HyperSpin to LaunchBox and i made the switch over easy as all i had to do was setup RL as an emulator in LB and then import my roms and i was good to go.  I know how to use most of the features in RL so its easy for me

I think it pretty simple once to get to grips with it and it makes setting up a new system as easy as pie.

RL hasnt had any updates for aaaaaaages so it can be a bit of a pain chasing down the updated modules and those are the lifeblood of the RL system.... i keep reading over at the RL forums that thers somethingbig coming in the form of a new feature but nothing has happened yet... fingers crossed tho as i do love my RL setup.

[jackst333]

On 1/13/2019 at 1:18 PM, nikeymikey said:

I  use RL becasue i migrated from HyperSpin to LaunchBox and i made the switch over easy as all i had to do was setup RL as an emulator in LB and then import my roms and i was good to go.  I know how to use most of the features in RL so its easy for me

I think it pretty simple once to get to grips with it and it makes setting up a new system as easy as pie.

RL hasnt had any updates for aaaaaaages so it can be a bit of a pain chasing down the updated modules and those are the lifeblood of the RL system.... i keep reading over at the RL forums that thers somethingbig coming in the form of a new feature but nothing has happened yet... fingers crossed tho as i do love my RL setup.

 

[jackst333]

1 minute ago, jackst333 said:

I did the same and used RL as my emulator to LaunchBox, But I have to ask how in the world did you get all the Icons, Fades, Videos over. I am just now trying the Emumovies approach and that is slow as any thing. So can you give me some advice on what steps you took. I feel that there is a step missing from what you are trying to describe here. Yes I am new here but have been trying my best to get my working copy of HS to LaunchBox. Thanks in advance.