Noob guide for setting up Sharp X68000 properly with multi-floppy builds using XM6 Type-G

[cleverest]

Just wanted to contribute more!...hope this helps someone.

 

Sharp X68000 - Ideal Launchbox Integration, using XM6-Type G
N00b friendly guide on How to set this up in LB for the smoothest experience possible

I chose the XM6-Type G emulator because it's considered the most "advanced/capable" for emulating the X68000 from what I've read online. I agree so far, from what I've seen of the competition. The steps here may also work for XM6 (the non-type-G one...)

Games come in typically 1 of 3 possible formats.

1. .Dim; I've only seen these for single disk games, you can just mount these and play like any game in Launchbox that uses one file...IDEAL

2. .Hdm (what I have mostly), are Floppy games ranging from 1 floppy disk, up to 6 (Super Street Fighter II), although most commonly they seem to be 2-3 disks in size...this is what this guide addresses the most. We want to set these up with MINIMAL (or in many cases, NO) disk swapping necessary.

3. .Hdf (hard drive) files....I haven't been able to utilize these at all. If you know how to and I'll update the guide, PLEASE let me know!



Summary of how it will perform.
For .DIM and .HDM games, once set up in Launchbox they are going to basically work like this:

*If it's a [single] disk or [2] disk game (once you complete the steps in this guide) you will simply double click and play. Easy and fun! Yay!
For [single] disk game, you are simply going to set it up like any other game in Launchbox....import that file, double-click to play. Cry joyful tears of Nostalgia.

Dry those tears though, cause many cool games use more than a [single] disk...but thankfully you can set up Launchbox to use these two disk games just like a single disk game. This is possible because the emulator supports loading two disks at once just like the original system did.

*For games that are [2] Disks, it's almost as easy, once done with the process and adding a single command line to Launchbox, you are just going to double-click to play that too and it will work without disk swapping needed, just like single disk games.

For games that are [3+] disks, things get trickier, BUT for some 3 disk games you can set them up to play just like 1 and 2 disk games! IDEAL! This is possible because some games only load the 2^nd or 3rd disk initially WITH the first disk to provide an intro or to load initial data, then have you swap to the other one and play from that point on....this is possible because, after the initial loading of the games floppies to get it started into the proper/playing two disk configuration, you will create a SAVE STATE right at the beginning of the game loading, and then change the ROM path from the original DISK A in Launchbox, to the SAVE STATE instead...so every time you open the game in Launchbox it will start the game…This works for all games, but is ideal for games that are 3-6 disks in size, as long as you follow the on-screen disk swapping instructions the first time you launch it… until the game starts. (more on that below).

So…the idea is to launch these games already set up as much as possible to avoid time taking to install the disks first to simply start the game.

This all works to get the game initially going, and for games like Super Street Fighter II that makes you load all disks until 6 first before it will even starts you will greatly appreciate it,  but even after setting this save state and using that, such games will still require you to swap disks as needed DURING gameplay, which is more likely going to happen in games that are 4+ disks big...thankfully the emulator makes this even easy, just look at the bottom FDD0 and FDD1 horizontal slots…they flash read while being red/green, while being “read” from, and will typically show no text there when they need something loaded…you can click on them to bring up the folder where your game floppies are.


Preparation
For all games before you import them, it's easier to have them moved in the folder already in your Launchbox\games\Sharp X68000 folder and into a subfolder per game:
EX:  L:\Games\Sharp X68000\Strider Hiryu (or wherever their final destination is), I keep my Launchbox on drive L, your drive letter is probably different.

(that's how I do it, because except for the disk 1 games, it's more than one file per game, so when you import you can say "DO NOT MOVE FILES", this ensures everything stays in the same place. Why confuse yourself, even when you choose to 'move files with same extensions' in the import wizard, you may miss something else...but if you want to do that, it’s fine, but regardless, it just makes some of the next steps easier when having the games in their own folders when browsing and mounting floppies during a game which some need…

-----

Launch the emulator XM6-Type G (with no game), and go to TOOLS / OPTIONS / SYSTEM and MAX OUT EVERYTHING. (MAIN RAM12MB, MPU CLOCK: 100MHZ, check Floating point unit). If something breaks with a specific game you can always lower these. (haven’t ran into this yet, but at the time of writing this I’ve only set up and tested 55 games).


IMPORTING AND CONFIGURING

For [1] disk games, simply import and play.  This will be Disk A,  or Disk 1, so smile and be happy. Yes, it’s that easy.

For [2] disk games, with all files uncompressed in the subfolder for that game, just import the first disk A (note: some games list this as Disk [1]) OR 'SYSTEM DISK' ... does not matter if you import more than that, unless there is a VARIATION/ALT you want to load as a possible version for DISK [A] (or disk 1) because you will never LAUNCH a game with DISK [2+]...

After import, right click and EDIT the [2]-Disk game in question...click on the EMULATION tab, enable 'use Custom Command-Line parameters' and type this there:
%romfile% <Drive>PATH TO  the SECOND FILE which will always be '' or '[2]'...

For example, for the [2]-disk game Strider Hiryu:
EX: %romfile% " L:\LaunchBox\Games\Sharp X68000\Strider Hiryu (Capcom)\Strider Hiryu (Disk 2).hdm"

OKAY out of the EDIT Game window and launch, both floppies will be mounted and the game will load/play. Yay!

For [3] disk games, follow exactly the instructions above. Generally, one of two things will happen when you launch to play the game after having the [2]/ floppy loaded just like you did with 2disk games…

    1. It will start playing and eventually (usually quickly, like when you press start or choose a level) ask you to put in Disk [3] / [C]…click the slot on bottom when it does for the drive it shows missing a disk (will usually show an A, B, C  OR 1, ,2, 3/'system' on screen mixed in with Japanese characters….so in this case: it will say, #$@#%#%% 3 %^$^$%^$%^$ or something like that, LOL, did you see the 3 in that?...sorry I don’t know Japanese or I would type some….but upon loading the third disk (or whatever disk combo it asks), the game resumes.

Here is an example (the pic with Japanese text) of one that tells you which disk go in each drive….system disk is fdd0, and data (disk 1) in fdd1

    2. The game starts to boot, but then crashes OR more likely gives an immediate message to load disk [3], as if 2 wasn’t needed yet…which is true, it wanted the first disk and the third all along, not the 2nd…so, in this case, go back to EDIT GAME, and change that custom command line parameter setting to load the C (or ‘3’) disk instead…which means at some point it’s going to ask you to load disk [2] /

AVOIDING DISK SWAPPING AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

For these 3+ disk games that require disk swapping BEFORE the game starts, and games that have more disks to swap BEFORE PLAY we can avoid doing any swapping after setting a game up by swapping them all early as they request the disk(s) and then before (ideally right before) the game starts we SAVE A SAVESTATE – we will then edit Launchbox to load that save state as the ROM, and CLEAR OUT (uncheck) the custom command-line parameters box…

TIPS: I’ve discovered some games take a while to load, but some load fairly fast after finishing the floppy swapping, so I recommend this on 3+ disk games…. especially 4+ disk ones….

1.      Right when you first launch a game, go to FILE / SAVE AS – name your file the name of the game, I like to do NAME + LAUNCHER - For example, I would do: ‘Strider Hiryu LAUNCHER’ and then SAVE. It doesn’t matter that it’s in the wrong time we want to save a file…we will save over in at the right time faster in a bit, now that we have it ready.  After doing this If the game is beyond where you want it to load when you start it, go to FILE / RESET to start over, your save file will be ready to save faster with the next step:

2.      Let the game boot, and do the final disk swap it asks for (for Super Street Fighter II this will be Disk 6) … for 3 disk games, it will be either [ 2], OR [3]/ or [C], then click FILE / SAVE – yes to overwrite the existing save image…Why do this? It saves a lot of time vs having to NAME a new save file quickly, which is why we created the earlier on, so we could quickly do FILE / SAVE, instead of SAVE AS…. we want to save it at the start of the game loading ideally, not at the title screen (unless that doesn’t bother you)
 

IMPORTANT: When you exit the emulator with ALT+F4 it will ask you to SAVE and overwrite the save state …this sucks because if you do this, it will overwrite the timing of the game you wanted, and start always there…so I suggest FILE / SAVE AS for a different save when actually playing games…we don’t want to mess up what LB uses to simply launch games…let’s avoid this prompt all together to be safe! Best way I’ve found to deal with this is to use the AHK script in the EMULATION tab / EDIT in LB to close on hitting ESC (default will HALT/PAUSE the game), go to ‘AutoHotKey Script’ tab and type in this one which makes the emulator EXIT on ESCAPE KEY instantly without the save prompt at all…

 

$Esc::

{

    Process, Close, {{{StartupEXE}}}

}

 

SEE picture here for place.


Save that, and have fun!! Press ESC to quickly exit, not save prompt to risk overwriting your launch save states! Let me know if I can help.

Edited May 9, 2018 by cleverest
formatting

[Lordmonkus]

Added this to the Guides & Tutorials thread.

[cleverest]

Thanks, wasn't sure where to put it, also fixed images/formatting some.

[garbanzo]

Do you have a link to the English version of this emulator? The official version is in Japanese.

Thanks.

[cleverest]

On 2/11/2019 at 1:59 PM, garbanzo said:

Do you have a link to the English version of this emulator? The official version is in Japanese.

Thanks.

Sorry, i've been away i'll look into how I got it and get back to you.

[breech]

I've hacked up an English version which does the job.

Edit: xm6_typeg_330L20_20161029.zip is no longer available from the dev's pages. It was not archived either.

 

Edited June 1, 2019 by breech

[cleverest]

1 minute ago, breech said:

I've hacked up an English version which does the job.

 

 

Sorry man, I totally spaced on this, good to hear you got it figured out...you hacked/programmed it?

[breech]

Yeah it was from 2016. It's just a text search/replace nothing special.

Edited June 1, 2019 by breech

[EvilHomer777]

Has anyone been able to get the Libreto px68k core working along with Launchbox? I get as far as launching the bios from Launchbox, but when looking to mount the actual disc for the game in question I just can't find the right path. I may be missing something, but I can't find a tutorial for Launchbox using the px68k core.  O_O

[Lordmonkus]

It works fine, I use it.

[EvilHomer777]

Any hints on why I may be having issues? Is there any custom command lines that need to be inside the Launchbox emulator set up? Do game roms need to be in the same Hd as the retroarch? Is there any specific set up guide for using the px68k core that one needs to follow? Are robots taking over? O_o?

 

Oh, and I did set the rom folder  path in StartDir as it says here:  https://docs.libretro.com/library/px68k/

Edited June 1, 2019 by EvilHomer777

[Lordmonkus]

Take a look at this thread here, it's a bit of a read but it covers a lot of stuff for it. I know the thread started out as a MESS / Mame thread but it evolved into a Retroarch one once that core came out.

 

[breech]

It looks like the latest version of XM6G (3.31)is correctly enabling English.

Note, if you attempt to start it without the correct roms you will probably get a Japanese version of this error message.

[EvilHomer777]

Aha! the path to the roms folder needed to have no names with spaces. Replaced space with an "_" and now it works.

[EvilHomer777]

Hello again Lordmonkus of the high order of seemingly angry avatar chimps,

I was trying to get Last Batallion working but can't seem to get it to boot using the cmd file with:

px68k "I:\LaunchBox\Games\Sharp_X68000\Last Batallion (1991)\Last Batallion (1991)(Sting)(Disk 1 of 2).dim" "I:\LaunchBox\Games\Sharp_X68000\Last Batallion (1991)\Last Batallion (1991)(Sting)(Disk 2 of 2).dim" 

It boots the first disk if I point to that path individualy, but not if using the cmd file method.

Have you had any luck?
 

[Lordmonkus]

I just messed around with it and neither the cmd or the m3u method works with Last Batallion for whatever reason. At first I thought maybe the cmd or m3u method got broken but that still works for other games so it's not that.

I did get the game to work by loading disk 1 and then using the disk swap feature in Retroarch to swap to disk 2.

[EvilHomer777]

Weird right? Oh well, I'll keep fidgin' with it. If I figure out why is not working I'll update here.

[garbanzo]

Do you need to use Joy2key or keypadder or something to use a controller? I tried setting my gamepad up in the options menu and everything works except the d-pad.

[SiriusVI]

Hey, sorry for digging up this thread. I use the Px68k retroarch core to emulate this system and I have a question regarding disk swapping through the original px68k menu which can be accessed by pressing the left trigger on your controller.

The game I'm testing this with is "Akumajou Dracula". It requires 2 disks.

If I boot the game via Launchbox, the game boots, but I need to insert the second disk to actually play it. So I bring up the emulator menu by pressing L2 on my controller. I can see that the first diskis loaded. The line reads:

"¥Akumajou Dracula (1993)(Konami)(Disk 1 of 2).dim" (take note of the yen sign "¥"

So I go to the second foppy frive and choose: "Akumajou Dracula (1993)(Konami)(Disk 2 of 2).dim", Now the line reads:
"Akumajou Dracula (1993)(Konami)(Disk 2 of 2).dim" (no yen sign)

However, the game still does not work. I hear the music playing but there is only a black screen. If I hit reset, the same thing happens.

I tried reloading the first disk as well, but if I choose "Akumajou Dracula (1993)(Konami)(Disk 1 of 2).dim" again, the line does not read anymore

"¥Akumajou Dracula (1993)(Konami)(Disk 1 of 2).dim"

but

"Akumajou Dracula (1993)(Konami)(Disk 1 of 2).dim" (no yen sign)

Now, the system doesn't even boot.

So as you can see, if I try to load disks from the emulator menue, the Yen sign "¥" is missing and somehow that seems to mean that the game is not properly mounted. If I launch the game using launchbox, the Yen sign "¥" is there and the game boots.

The next thing I tried is m3u playlists and sure enough, if I load an m3u playlist from Launchbox, both disks are properly mounted (with Yen signs) and the game works fine. The lines read:

"¥Akumajou Dracula (1993)(Konami)(Disk 1 of 2).dim"
"¥Akumajou Dracula (1993)(Konami)(Disk 2 of 2).dim"

The problem is however that there are many games with more than just 2 disks, so I NEED to be able to swap disks using the emulator menu. Does anyone have an Idea what I'm doing wrong here?

Edited April 21, 2020 by SiriusVI

[breech]

Subst the folder with your disk images and report back. Something screwy to do with paths, it looks like the emulator is inserting ¥  as \ when it shouldn't.

Edited April 22, 2020 by breech