Launchbox "initializing" MAME but then nothing...

[preachah8]

Windows 7 - 64bit
Never had a problem with Launchbox.  All roms loaded, everything points to the right place (as far as my knowledge tells me).

After updating tonight, every MAME game says "initializing" and then disappears back to Launchbox selection screen.  No error, no crash.

Any help appreciated!

 

PS - LOVE Launchbox and Big Box.  Well done folks!

 

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by preachah8

[Jason Carr]

This is probably caused by MAME not being able to find the ROM. Check your MAME.ini file to make sure that the ROMs path is correct.

[preachah8]

So... not to sound like an idiot (which I likely am) I only see one .ini file and it's in the same folder as MAME folder.

Running the game from MAME works as it should by the way... probably good information to have given you sooner.

[Jason Carr]

Yes, the MAME.ini file should be in the MAME folder. Check to make sure LaunchBox is using the correct version of MAME? If it works outside of LaunchBox, then that's my only guess as to what might be going on.

[preachah8]

ok.  I think I'm done beating on this thing tonight.  Ill fight another day tomorrow.  Thanks for the help thus far.  I'll follow up.

 

[preachah8]

HOLD UP.  Wait a minute.  Wtf?!

I don't know what I THOUGHT I saw... but it appears I do not have an ini file?!  How can that be?

Everything was running like a clock until an hour or so ago when I updated.

 

So... now what?!  Redownload MAME?

[Retro808]

What version of Mame are you running? command line Mame (the one actually from the mame site) or MameUI?

If the games run directly in Mame and not in Launchbox then you have something disconnected in your Launchbox set-up.

[preachah8]

I am running MAME from the mame download site.
Man... I've done this launchbox setup a bijillion times. 

Alright... I'll youtube the setup.

 

Thanks again!

[DOS76]

to generate an ini file from with in the UI just start MAME with no game loaded go to configure options and then save configuration it will create an ini file

 

[preachah8]

Holy hell gentlemen.

After a night (and half a day) of toil and "wtf's?"... I've found the issue.  There were 2 "game folders" (identical) in the MAME folder.  So, when poking around through Launchbox and looking for associations, it looked as if it was "pointed" to the correct place.  However, it was pointing at an identical folder.  

I cannot for the life of me figure out how that happened/can happen, without having "(copy)" after the name. 
I actually am not even able to replicate it.

Thank you for all your comments last night!  I appreciate the effort.

LAUNCHBOX IS BACK BABY!

 

[MisfitsGamer138]

Hey - What did you do to fix it in the end? Did you create a ini file or somehow change the path?

Same thing happened to me tonight after updating to 9.1 

[Lordmonkus]

Usually this problem is the mame.ini file being in the \ini folder of your Mame install folder, move it out to the main folder where the mame executable is.

[Lordmonkus]

Can you load the game outside of Launchbox using Mame on its own ? If not then I highly suggest you get that working first. If you need a guide on setting that up I did a full written guide on it here:

It's a little old now but all of information is the same and still applies.

[Inuic]

I have this issue. In LauncBox I can not start any mame emulation. I imported my MAME games fine. I have 3 main mame emulators and launchBox launches none. But the emulators work as expected independently of launchBox. What is not setup correctly in launchBox?

[Retro808]

2 minutes ago, Inuic said:

I have this issue. In LauncBox I can not start any mame emulation. I imported my MAME games fine. I have 3 main mame emulators and launchBox launches none. But the emulators work as expected independently of launchBox. What is not setup correctly in launchBox?

In the Associated Platform tab for the emulator did you add the platform name?

>Tools>Manage Emulators and edit your Mame. Check the Associated Platforms tab.

Sharing pics of your edit emulator screen would help. (Pic of the main details tab and the Associated Platforms tab).

Not sure why you have 3 Mame emulators, but since you do, you need to make sure the platform is listed in all of them in the Associated Platforms tab.

[Inuic]

Ok sending images. I have 3 versions of mame I use and even a 4th. Due to certain versions of mame playing games the others don't. I can't get one version of mame to play all my mame roms. So I wanted the cool launchbox front end where I could choose the rom and which emulator I needed to run it. But alas launchbox launches none of them, yet they all run as expected independently. It just does nothing in launchbox.

How can I get my plan to work?

[Retro808]

How old are those versions of Mame? That might be the issue if they are years old. Remove the line below from the default command line field and test.

-keyboardprovider dinput

 

[Inuic]

Yes, the second two MAME emulators were added after the first one failed, which is the one I just downloaded off the MAME website.  This issue occurred with the first install of MAME. The command line parameters are now only applied on that one. I'll report my results.

[youngpro88]

Hey what ever became of your issue