Additional Apps for Platforms or workaround to use LB+Joytokey?

[MartinC]

Hi @Jason Carr and all,

I was reading old posts about to use additional apps for games under a particular platform instead to having to configure game by game. Is that implemented yet or do we have a estimated date for that? I moved time go from HS to LB, and I am keep using RocketLauncher as a way to manage my joytokey profiles since I could not find a way to use Joytokey + LB directly yet. But honestly LB + RL is veeeery slow, and the most part of it is due to RL, so I really need to discard it ASAP.

So... is there any workarounds to edit additional apps for platform or at least a way to edit games in bulk? I edited one and searched for that change in the conf files, as an oportunity to script something and do it in a bulk that way, but I had no luck, it is not updated in a file but in the DB, apparently.

Well... any help to get this is veeeery appreciated guys. Thanks!

Martin

 

[proghodet]

This is not exactly an answer to your post, but what I do is associate profiles to emulator executables inside joytokey. Joytokey itself lunches when I start my pc, so it always runs in the background. 

Edited January 7, 2018 by proghodet
Curse you, autocorrect.

[MartinC]

Hi @proghodet and thanks for your reply.

But what do you do to change the profile depending on which emulator is running? That is what RL does, actually, and what I can't do without it. Well, I can do it, but for a single game... I have thousands of games and I would need a way to do it by platform at least, so I can run the joytokey profile related to a specific emulator and that way all the games will run well. But I don't think we have that chance on LB right now, so I am looking for an alternative.

@Jason Carr, that conf is not saved in conf files, right? just to confirm. Because if it is so, I could script something as a workaround to modify all the games automatically in few seconds.

Thanks!

Martin

 

[jayjay]

Per platform script would be good or bulk additional apps.

 

Per emulator script is available already in launchbox.

 

The Additional application settings are in Launchbox\Data\Platform\*.xml.

Scroll to bottom of xml and your find "<AdditionalApplication>". You can tell which app belongs to which game by the <gameID> field.

Edited January 7, 2018 by jayjay

[proghodet]

1 hour ago, MartinC said:

Hi @proghodet and thanks for your reply.

But what do you do to change the profile depending on which emulator is running? That is what RL does, actually, and what I can't do without it. Well, I can do it, but for a single game... I have thousands of games and I would need a way to do it by platform at least, so I can run the joytokey profile related to a specific emulator and that way all the games will run well. But I don't think we have that chance on LB right now, so I am looking for an alternative

In JoyToKey, go to settings -> Associate Profiles with Target Applications -> Add -> Give it a name, point it to the emulator executable, and choose which profile to use. JoyToKey will then switch to that profile each time that executable is launched. I have a default profile which I use for most emulators, and then for some of the more troublesome emulators, and windows / dos games I have individual profiles.

If you want to check that it works, you can go to Settings -> Preferences and check the "Notify via tasktray message" in the bottom left corner.

Edited January 7, 2018 by proghodet
Clarity

[MartinC]

Oh great! thanks @proghodet and @jayjay for the info. I will check both alternatives and I think I will be able to get it working for what I need.

Thanks again guys.

Martin

[Hank7_98]

Anyone ever get videos to work with marquees yet?  @Jason Carr can you set it up so we can put platform videos on the marquees?  And we can create marquee sized platform vids?

[proghodet]

4 minutes ago, Hank7_98 said:

Anyone ever get videos to work with marquees yet?  @Jason Carr can you set it up so we can put platform videos on the marquees?  And we can create marquee sized platform vids?

You should probably open your own thread about this - it's not really relevant to this thread

[Hank7_98]

16 minutes ago, proghodet said:

You should probably open your own thread about this - it's not really relevant to this thread

I thought we were talking marquees and dynamic marquees here. My apologies. 

[MartinC]

Hi there,

I was doing some testing with both alternatives and I found the following:

About to use joytokey profiles, it definetely works. BUT the problem is when you use an emulator for more than one platform. For example, I use RetroArch for all the Atari consoles, NES and so... and it that case it won't work since the profile is linked to the app name (the one you see in Task Manager), so no matter if you use different directories or even exe file names... it will always be called RetroArch in task manager, and JTK will load the first profile available in the list. So it is useful when you have different emulators but if you share one with different platforms, you have a problem.

The second one about to add Additional Apps (AP) manually in the XML file... when you add an AP for a game, that info is added to the platform XML file. I see every AP info has an ID field and the corresponding GAMEID field. I will add manually some lines there, leaving the ID as it is (it will be duplicated in every game for the platform) and replacing the GAMEID with the one corresponding to that game.

@Jason Carr, do you think it can work? I assume LB will search for the GAMEID field, and since the other fields apart of ID are exactly the same, I think it should work... am I wrong? It is not the best solution at all, but maybe I can use it while you add some new feature to LB (like AP for platforms or something similar).

Thanks a lot,

Martin

 

 

[proghodet]

Ah, yes, this is true. I dont use retroarch or any multiplatform emulator, so I didnt consider those..

[damageinc86]

RL lets you do profiles by their database name entry. Or "per game" , or like you said earlier, per platform, so you won't run into it not loading the right one for things like retroarch.  I haven't noticed much slowdown with mine, only the time I have set up for fade. Other than that it's snappy. I'd stick with that since you already have it working.

[Jason Carr]

@MartinC Honestly I'm not fully following, but I think it should work to manually add them to the XML, yes.

@Hank7_98 Unfortunately I believe that's still on my list. At the very least it should make it onto the next poll.

[alnyden]

One advantage of using Rocketlauncher -- you can assign joytokey profiles by emulator, platform and/or game.

[FreeSoftwareServers]

@MartinC I use cmd's for ALL my games, emulators included. The main reason was RetroArch had multiple configurations. Here is an exmaple script for N64. The Variable of the rom path gets passed to the script. Its made "tinkering" easier as once LB is setup, I can leave that alone and mess with the CMD.

 

::FreeSoftwareServers.com

set keymapperdir="G:\JoyToKey\"
set keymapper=JoyToKey.exe
set p1profile="G:\JoyToKey\RetroArch_N64.cfg"
set defaultprofile="G:\JoyToKey\Basic.cfg"

start /d %keymapperdir% %keymapper% %p1profile%
::start /d %keymapperdir% %keymapper% %defaultprofile%

::This gets the ROM from the CMD, try running this CMD directly and passing a "FULL\ROM\PATH"
set rom=%~1

set retroarchexe="G:\Emulators\Retroarch\RetroArch\retroarch.exe"
set flags=-D -f -L
set core="G:\Emulators\Retroarch\RetroArch\cores\mupen64plus_libretro.dll"

%retroarchexe% %flags% %core% "%rom%"

start /d %keymapperdir% %keymapper% %defaultprofile%

cmd /c "G:\Silent\hidejoytokey.cmd"

I had trouble getting joytokey to hide when I closed BigBox if anybody wants hidejoytokey.cmd let me know. Also, I run a "invisible.vbs" script which hides the CMD window lol. I used to have the windows open and just close them via the controller mapped to alt+f4 but it was accidentally closing BigBox. I spent hours figuring it out, but now  all the JoyToKey and CMD Windows etc is all silent/hidden to the user. I have a CMD for each paltform and a separate emulator for each platform but the only real difference for most emulators is the "core" part. You could (and I might) have one command that you pass both the "cores" and "rompath" to. @Jason Carr I've been thinking I'd like to do a write-up on everything when I get some time, its mostly finished now and working great. I had some issues with steam games and switching back to basicprofile after it closed but most computer games I just used "start /wait game.exe"
 

Edited February 10, 2018 by FreeSoftwareServers

[damageinc86]

On 1/15/2018 at 12:18 PM, alnyden said:

One advantage of using Rocketlauncher -- you can assign joytokey profiles by emulator, platform and/or game.

Yup.  per game is one of the best ones for me.  Especially with PC games, or dos games.  Before i struggled having xpadder or joy2key only being able to load profiles based on whenever the program .exe was launched.  Well, that leaves out a lot, since each game might need different controls.