Retroarch 1.7.3 not working on LaunchBox

[d_dearlet]

Hi, first off thanks for all the hard work,  love LaunchBox! I've been trying to set Retroarch (newest 1.7.3) to work through LaunchBox (8.2) to no avail.  I've followed several video guides and scoured the forums for an answer and nothing. I don't know what I'm missing or doing wrong. I'm concentrating on running NES games. They are running fine directly on Retroarch with the nestopia core (and other cores). On LaunchBox I've made sure I have the correct core on the Associated Platforms (pointing to the one downloaded on RetroArch) as well as the same name for the platform on the left side in LaunchBox, but when I click on the imported ROMS nothing happens. I've tried with other cores such as bnes, FCEUmm, Mesen, and still nothing. I've tried with some SNES cores too for SNES games, and the same. All of these cores are running the ROMS fine directly on RetroArch. On LaunchBox I've been able to run the ROMS using standalone emulators (Nestopia and SNES9X), but I can't get Retroarch to work. I guess I could stick to the standalones, but personally I've found Retroarch much more convenient. And the LaunchBox + Retroarch combo is just perfect. Any help is truly appreciated. Thank you!

[neil9000]

Were you previously using a different emulator for those systems?

[d_dearlet]

No. When I installed LaunchBox I went directly to set up RetroArch to work with it, but nothing. I tried the standalone emulators (Nestopia and Snes9x) next just to make sure I could run some games through LaunchBox at all.

Edit: Outside of LaunchBox I've been using RetroArch all along.

Edited May 15, 2018 by d_dearlet
Clarification

[Vampireslug]

I don't know if this applies to you or not but I have a full NES romset which has multiple versions of individual games which, in my Launchbox, merges them all into a single entry.  For example, I have 14 versions of Contra and to run it in Launchbox (Using the Nestopia core), I have to right-click on the game which brings up this menu:

And then I have to choose which of the versions I want to play.  This isn't the case for all of my games but I now right-click to run all NES games just to save time... at least until I go through and remove a TON of the redundant ROMs.

[neil9000]

Is your retroarch still in the launchbox/emulators folder like the image shows? Because looking at your images everything seems correct, and you say that they work directly in Retroarch so they should also work through Launchbox, unless your emulator or rom paths have been changed since you imported your roms. Did you have Launchbox move the roms on import?

[neil9000]

Just now, Vampireslug said:

I don't know if this applies to you or not but I have a full NES romset which has multiple versions of individual games which, in my Launchbox, merges them all into a single entry.  For example, I have 14 versions of Contra and to run it in Launchbox (Using the Nestopia core), I have to right-click on the game which brings up this menu:

And then I have to choose which of the versions I want to play.  This isn't the case for all of my games but I now right-click to run all NES games just to save time... at least until I go through and remove a TON of the redundant ROMs.

For situations like that you can right click the game and go to edit, then go to the additional apps tab, click on the one you want to launch by default and click the "Make Default" button then that will launch with a normal double click or right click play.

[d_dearlet]

2 minutes ago, Vampireslug said:

I don't know if this applies to you or not but I have a full NES romset which has multiple versions of individual games which, in my Launchbox, merges them all into a single entry.  For example, I have 14 versions of Contra and to run it in Launchbox (Using the Nestopia core), I have to right-click on the game which brings up this menu:

And then I have to choose which of the versions I want to play.  This isn't the case for all of my games but I now right-click to run all NES games just to save time... at least until I go through and remove a TON of the redundant ROMs.

Only one version per ROM. I did think maybe there is something wrong with my ROM files, but I can run them using Nestopia through LaunchBox just fine.

[d_dearlet]

17 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Is your retroarch still in the launchbox/emulators folder like the image shows? Because looking at your images everything seems correct, and you say that they work directly in Retroarch so they should also work through Launchbox, unless your emulator or rom paths have been changed since you imported your roms. Did you have Launchbox move the roms on import?

Yes it is still in there. When I right click on a game and choose the "Open RetroArch..." option RetroArch opens just fine. Regarding the roms upon importing them I've tried the three options LaunchBox gives you trying to fix this issue. I've also right clicked on the games, chose Edit and made sure the path for the ROM was correct. When I change the emulator to Nestopia instead they run fine.

Edit: I've tried to run the games from different locations, i.e the games folder from within LaunchBox, the Desktop, and others. I've double checked the path to the rom files is correct.

Edit2: I've reinstalled everything from scratch (LaunchBox and RetroArch) and still nothing.

 

 

Edited May 15, 2018 by d_dearlet
Clarification

[d_dearlet]

Can any one confirm RetroArch 1.7.3 is running through LaunchBox? The tutorials I've found online to setup RetroArch inside of LaunchBox use RetroArch 1.7.0 as the newest iteration. 

[neil9000]

6 minutes ago, d_dearlet said:

Can any one confirm RetroArch 1.7.3 is running through LaunchBox? The tutorials I've found online to setup RetroArch inside of LaunchBox use RetroArch 1.7.0 as the newest iteration. 

Yes I am running 1.7.3 just fine myself.

Can you click a nes game then ctrl A to highlight the all, then go to tools/change roms folder path and point it at your roms folder. Then see if that works.

I think its a path issue somewhere as your games work in Retroarch, the retroarch emulator looks setup correctly and I can personally confirm that 1.7.3 works just fine as that is what I am running.

[neil9000]

And here is a quick video of me launching a nes game from bigbox using retroarch 1.7.3, as you can see I even go into the retroarch menu which says 1.7.3.

NES Retroarch.mp4

[d_dearlet]

13 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Yes I am running 1.7.3 just fine myself.

Can you click a nes game then ctrl A to highlight the all, then go to tools/change roms folder path and point it at your roms folder. Then see if that works.

I think its a path issue somewhere as your games work in Retroarch, the retroarch emulator looks setup correctly and I can personally confirm that 1.7.3 works just fine as that is what I am running.

Great! That gets my hopes up. If it where a path problem for the rom wouldn't the Nestopia emulator (through LaunchBox) fail to load the game? It is not. Anyway I followed your suggestion. First I copied the rom (through windows explorer) "Castlevania III - Dracula's Curse (U) [!].nes" to c:\nes to keep things simple. Then I clicked the game went to tools/change roms folder path and pointed to the new folder. Still not running.

[d_dearlet]

4 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

And here is a quick video of me launching a nes game from bigbox using retroarch 1.7.3, as you can see I even go into the retroarch menu which says 1.7.3.

NES Retroarch.mp4

Wow! Bigbox looks niiiiiice. I really hope I can solve this issue and jump into to the bigbox bandwagon.

[neil9000]

Something is not right there, you moved the rom into C:\Nes but if you look at your 3rd image above it says the rom path is ..\..\..\..\Nes\castlevania, so its many folders deep which it shouldn't be if its on the root of C:

[d_dearlet]

8 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Something is not right there, you moved the rom into C:\Nes but if you look at your 3rd image above it says the rom path is ..\..\..\..\Nes\castlevania, so its many folders deep which it shouldn't be if its on the root of C:

Yes that rom path looks wrong, but that is what LaunBox did automatically. OK, I've clicked edit on the game and changed it manually. I also double checked the rom is indeed in c:\nes. And still not running.

[d_dearlet]

Again, to make sure there is nothing wrong with the rom path or rom file I clicked edit on the game and on the Emulation tab switched the emulator from Retroarch to Nestopia and the rom launched ok.

[neil9000]

If you right click a game using Retroarch and pick the "Open Retroarch" option does retroarch open?

[d_dearlet]

Just now, neil9000 said:

If you right click a game using Retroarch and pick the "Open Retroarch" option does retroarch open?

Yes it does! And that's what it seems so odd to me. Retroarch launches through the "Open Retroarch" option, the rom path is fine (as it launches through Nestopia), but the game won't run when clicking directly on it.

[neil9000]

Yeah I'm really confused. OK we are going to delete and re-import the platform, don't worry it will only take a couple of minutes as you will already have all the images.

Right click the platform in the left bar and delete. Then go to tools/import go through the wizard as normal, when you get to the image download window click the "select none" button as you don't need any of it this time, when you get to the option to move or copy your roms click the "use in current location" option and let it import. then try one.

[Zombeaver]

Just out of curiosity, what happens if you rename your rom to Castlevania3.nes and update your path in LB?

The only thing I've ever had any issues out of when it comes to special characters in the filename (brackets, apostrophe, etc.) of games launched through LB is with CCS64, but seeing that filename and nothing else that looks particularly out of place makes me curious.