c64 C64 Dreams (massive curated C64 collection)

[marcosgaming]

I hope that you finish soon this fantastic collection complete of cover and video snaps and ready to import in Launchbox. It's my dream! 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

[Zombeaver]

25 minutes ago, marcosgaming said:

I hope that you finish soon this fantastic collection complete of cover and video snaps and ready to import in Launchbox. It's my dream! 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

The covers are complete for everything. That's what I spent the last several weeks doing. Every game in the collection has a cover/3D box now. As far as video snaps that's way, way off at this point since that's a premium-only feature and, as result, wouldn't be usable in the version that I distribute. It's something I'll get around to eventually but very low on the priority list since I'm not super motivated to dedicate the time to that that would be necessary only for them to be unusable without a premium license. That's energy that would be better directed elsewhere for the time being since there's no shortage of work left to do. As far as importing into your own Launchbox library, that's doable, and has been since the beginning. I wouldn't recommend it for the current "beta" but once v0.45 proper is out in a couple weeks, go for it.

If by "finish" you mean v1.0, however, well you're going to be waiting a while. I'm 3+ years in at this point and likely have about that same amount of time left to go before everything I want to do is "done". This is something that will likely never be truly finished as new games, demos, and SID tracks are released all the time, but the main goal is to at least parse through 100% of GB64 and I'm currently about halfway there.

[JoJoJuJu59]

Wow, so happy to see 2 of my favorite ports for the C64 - Starflight and Dragon Wars - included in v0.45 so thanks for that.  Now literally every game I ever enjoyed on my C64 has been collected  into one frontend/emu experience.  However, the test build causes massive system instability for some reason on my Windows 10 box.  I play around with a game in v0.45 using my Xbox-emulated DS4Windows DS4 controller (very nice that we can use a pre-configured xinput pad in this, btw) and after I return to my desktop, my keyboard no longer works reliably and goes wonky, and sometimes I can't mouse-click and switch browser tabs.  I didn't have this issue in v0.35.  Could it be some autohotkey script that forgets to unload when I exit C64 Dreams, I wonder?

Edited January 2, 2022 by JoJoJuJu59

[Zombeaver]

The scripts don't really change much on the keyboard barring a handful of exceptions like Lords of Midnight that add in some custom keyboard controls to the NumPad. That and adding in the manual swap function. They don't do anything with the mouse at all. You can check for yourself if they're still running afterwards by looking in your systray, they have their own icons. There's also a StopAll.exe in C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams that forcibly kills any of the running scripts. Unless something bizarre is happening on your system though, they should always close themselves automatically when you exit a game. I don't know if you're using any third party AV software but if so you may need to add C64 Dreams to your exception list as they don't always like compiled AHK scripts. If that still doesn't work you could try changing out the manual swapper for the one that was in v0.35 which is included in the Retroarch folder in the !Manual Switcher subfolder. That's the only script that's undergone major changes. V1 is what was used in v0.35. V3 is the default in v0.45.

[JoJoJuJu59]

3 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

The scripts don't really change much on the keyboard barring a handful of exceptions like Lords of Midnight that add in some custom keyboard controls to the NumPad. That and adding in the manual swap function. They don't do anything with the mouse at all. You can check for yourself if they're still running afterwards by looking in your systray, they have their own icons. There's also a StopAll.exe in C64 Dreams\C64 Dreams that forcibly kills any of the running scripts. Unless something bizarre is happening on your system though, they should always close themselves automatically when you exit a game. I don't know if you're using any third party AV software but if so you may need to add C64 Dreams to your exception list as they don't always like compiled AHK scripts. If that still doesn't work you could try changing out the manual swapper for the one that was in v0.35 which is included in the Retroarch folder in the !Manual Switcher subfolder. That's the only script that's undergone major changes. V1 is what was used in v0.35. V3 is the default in v0.45.

It turns out the issue was hardware related.  I had installed C64 Dreams to one of my USB 3.0 Ext  drives and I was also downloading to it at the same time.  External USB drive bottlenecks  have always had strange effects on my system, causing massive OS instability.  I now have C64 Dreams on one of my SSDs in a place of honor.  Question:  how do I bring up the retroarch menu while in-game?  I want to customize a couple of things like volume levels and C64 color palettes; strictly for my own use, of course  

[Zombeaver]

5 minutes ago, JoJoJuJu59 said:

It turns out the issue was hardware related.  I had installed C64 Dreams to one of my USB 3.0 Ext  drives and I was also downloading to it at the same time.  External USB drive bottlenecks  have always had strange effects on my system, causing massive OS instability.  I now have C64 Dreams on one of my SSDs in a place of honor.  Question:  how do I bring up the retroarch menu while in-game?  I want to customize a couple of things like volume levels and C64 color palettes; strictly for my own use, of course  

I'm really relieved to hear this, you had me kinda worried there haha

You can pull up the RA UI via either Numpad Minus + F1 or Back + Xbox on an Xbox controller. I picked up an 8bitdo Pro 2 recently and have noticed that RA doesn't recognize the home button in place of the Xbox button so I may end up changing it to Back + L3 as a default, just to be able to account for a wider range of controllers. I have a note about this in the config editor - if you open up the Configurator.exe and then start the Config Editor shortcut at the bottom the button in question is listed on line 9. The default value of 10 is for the Xbox button, 8 would be L3.

[Zombeaver]

I should also mention that if you want to change the default volume across the board, that's listed in the config editor as well. If you change the volume value there it'll apply to everything. Note however that there are a handful of games that have this value specified in overrides, namely ones that have something weird going on with their audio like audio samples that are extremely loud by default.

[Zombeaver]

You should also be aware that changing palette settings across the board isn't that simple - that's something that's handled via the core options, and there are hundreds of those for various games. Simply changing it in retroarch-core-options.cfg will only affect games that don't already have their own .opt files in config\VICE x64. For those you'd have to open them all in a text editor and do a mass find and replace.

 

[JoJoJuJu59]

I just discovered that my issue with my keyboard going bonkers after running C64 Dreams is possibly related to the 360 controller emulation I use for my DS4 controller.  I use DS4Windows to emulate an Xbox 360/xbone controller.  Normally, it works flawlessly, especially after i started using an app called HidHide that allowed me to run my DS4 controller in exclusive mode.  However, C64 Dreams & retroarch will not see my DS4 controller as a true Xbox 360/Xbone controller even with DS4Windows so I get the message at the beginning of any C64 game I run: "Xbox controller not properly configured, using fallback" or something like that.  It seems to work fine as an Xbox controller when in actual usage with a C64 game though, but as soon as I exit C64 Dreams, the system keyboard and mouse clicking instability starts and I have to log-off my windows user account then back on again to get things back to normal.  I tested C64 Dreams with a real xbox controller and had no issues, and got the retroarch msg "Xbox controller is properly configured."  So it's weirdness with my Xbox controller emulation and retroarch going on here, I think.  Unless someone here that also uses DS4Windows with C64 Dreams has a fix for this, I may just need to use my authentic Xbox One controller to avoid troubles.  I much prefer the ergonomics and extra re-mapping abilities of the DS4 controller but if I have to use an Xbone controller for C64 Dreams I will.

[Zombeaver]

That sounds like an issue with DS4Windows and not necessarily something in C64 Dreams to me, especially if it's something that's taking place after quitting a game. Once a game exits, any scripts that are launched at startup are closed - they're not doing anything to your keyboard, mouse, or anything else at that point. There's not a whole lot I can do if DS4Windows doesn't like Antimicro, Retroarch, or some combination thereof.

[Zombeaver]

I just asked on my Discord if anybody uses DS4Windows and someone said that they used SCPToolkit instead and didn't have any issues with C64 Dreams.

[JoJoJuJu59]

2 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

That sounds like an issue with DS4Windows and not necessarily something in C64 Dreams to me, especially if it's something that's taking place after quitting a game. Once a game exits, any scripts that are launched at startup are closed - they're not doing anything to your keyboard, mouse, or anything else at that point. There's not a whole lot I can do if DS4Windows doesn't like Antimicro, Retroarch, or some combination thereof.

Well, this is interesting.  I copied an old version of retroarch & its required DLLs (v1.7.6) which I use for my Hyperspin collection and replaced the updated version in C64 Dreams and left all the config files.  Still using DS4Windows and my DS4 controller, the issue went away, and now I get the message in retroarch when I launch a game that an xbox controller is properly configured.  Everything seems to work correctly except I'm missing the CRT-EasyMode filter which is no bigger since I can just reconfigure it .  Is there anything in C64 Dreams that requires an updated retroarch?  The manuals and disk swapping work as they should, which is very important to me.

Edited January 3, 2022 by JoJoJuJu59

[Zombeaver]

There are bugfixes in later versions of Retroarch that are necessary for some things to work as they should, yes. You could try the included copy of 1.9.13 that's in the Retroarch\! Retroarch Versions folder. 1.9.4 is what was tested with v0.45 but I included a compiled version of 1.9.13 (which includes .cg support) in that folder. It's untested but should be fine. I would not recommend using 1.7.6 as you will eventually run into problems.

[JoJoJuJu59]

25 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

There are bugfixes in later versions of Retroarch that are necessary for some things to work as they should, yes. You could try the included copy of 1.9.13 that's in the Retroarch\! Retroarch Versions folder. 1.9.4 is what was tested with v0.45 but I included a compiled version of 1.9.13 (which includes .cg support) in that folder. It's untested but should be fine. I would not recommend using 1.7.6 as you will eventually run into problems.

Thanks for the info but I spoke too soon about older versions of Retroarch solving my woes.  I've been using a Notepad++ text file on my desktop for quick & dirty testing of this stability problem.  Usually all I have to do is click on the text file and some other program will open instead.  But it's not a reliable test as i've discovered.  System is still unstable if i use C64 dreams with DS4Windows then exit no matter what.  I don't want to use SCP instead because DS4Windows has many additional and refined features I've gotten used to over the years.  But like I said earlier, this isn't a problem with you or C64 Dreams.  The vast majority of people enjoying C64 Dreams use an Xbox controller with no need for emulation and experience no issues, and I can always just switch over to my Xbox controller if I want to enjoy some good old C64 goodness in your package.  One slightly odd issue I am experiencing with my xbone controller, however,  is that I can't  open the retroarch console in-game using the Back + Guide button but it works fine with the DS4 controller under DS4Windows.  Go figure.

Edited January 3, 2022 by JoJoJuJu59

[darreldearth]

After spending tons of time trying to get the 30k c64 romset to be user friendly i came across your "c64 dreams" collection, and I love the work you've put into this. It's really clean compared to the set I had in launchbox already which wasn't very user friendly. Thanks for all the hard work, kuz I can only imagine the time you spent on this. Haven't noticed any bugs so far. Can't wait for your future updates!

[Zombeaver]

Quick status update on pending stuff for the release of v0.45. ✅ = complete 🅿️ = pending/WIP

✅ Finalize list for the last 100 games
✅ Source the last 100 games
✅ Source and edit manuals for the last 100 games
✅ Import the last 100 games into LB, pull metadata and media and verify accuracy
✅ Create fanart boxes for any of the last 100 games that don't have covers
✅ Create 3D boxes for the last 100 games
✅ Add in Zzap!64 reviews where present for the last 100 games in LB, and add those to the Zzap!64 playlist
✅ Update spreadsheet with info for the last 100 games
🅿️ Add in any remaining second and third Zzap!64 reviews in LB (about 30% complete)
🅿️ Test and configure the last 100 games
🅿️ Create and incorporate any new notes overlays as needed

I've also added in some failsafes for edge cases:

@Wally's case where the music was still playing when SumatraPDF was closed via clicking the x rather than pressing Esc - you would never see that x to begin with ordinarily (it starts in fullscreen and exits/closes with Esc) but if you were to put the magazines in the wrong place or if you were to accidentlly start the local review shortcut without having the magazine module installed you would, so now the music closes either way once SumatraPDF exits.

In the newest version of the Manuals script the audio from Retroarch smoothly fades back in when switching back from a manual to the game, but in the event that you were to switch back to Retroarch and then immediately exit, the volume for Retroarch would be permanently reduced (at the level it was at when it was closed while fading in) until you adjusted it back up in Windows' volume mixer. I've added in a function to always restore it back to 100% when a new game is launched. I can't imagine many people ever running into this (and in fact no one has actually reported it, it was just the result of my own testing / intentionally trying to break things) as you sortof have to go out of your way to make it happen, but this way there shouldn't be an issue regardless.

[darreldearth]

I tried creating a symbolic link for "C64 Dreams" in the root launchbox folder hoping I could have the games load from my NAS server the same way exodos is setup to run from an external network drive/server, but I get this error (Antimicro error: this applications failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "windows" in ""). aside from the error the games still load and play just fine, but i'd like to fix the error since it happens every time if you have any idea why its popping up. Everything works great if I don't use a symbolic link. Was just trying to save space on the launchbox drive.

Edited January 6, 2022 by darreldearth

[Zombeaver]

I haven't messed with it personally but someone on my Discord has. I posted the instructions from the eXoDOS Discord and he said it worked fine with C64 Dreams:

[darreldearth]

24 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

I haven't messed with it personally but someone on my Discord has. I posted the instructions from the eXoDOS Discord and he said it worked fine with C64 Dreams:

thanks. I already have the Symlinks setup the same way as in the link you sent, so not sure what antimicro is looking for, but ill try to track it down. The games all work fine with or without the symlinks. its just antimicro at this point. 

[Zombeaver]

The guy in Discord was getting the same error as you, followed the instructions, and it fixed it, so I don't know what to tell you beyond that.