Attempting a LaunchBox / RetroArch MAME cabinet setup

[sharp3d]

Hello everyone, first post.

Years ago I started a fullsize MAME arcade cabinet build. I bought a empty cabinet, bought a brand new 27" Wells-Gardner CRT, built a custom two player arcade joystick/button control panel with trackball and used an old gaming laptop to run everything. When I first got to the software side of things I was dead set on using Hyperspin. I got most of the 8-16 bit cartridge based systems working, but beyond that Hyperspin just proved to be too cumbersome. Life happened and I haven't touch the project again until just recently. I attempted to pick up where I left off, I read that Hyperspin was now easier to use now blah blah, but I once again ran into all the same roadblocks I remember from 5 or so years ago. 

So now I am here obviously because I am interested in using LaunchBox. At first glance it certainly seems easier to setup that Hyperspin. But before I spend money and deep dive into another software setup I have a few questions that hopefully can be answered. 

I'm going to list out my goals for the project, please chime in if anything isn't immediately doable with a low to moderate amount of effort and technical ability using LaunchBox and associated software.

1- Have my PC boot right into LaunchBox on startup

2 - Upon setup have all the software behave relatively seamlessly, ie no need to pull out keyboard, change config files etc. Just hop in and out of roms, switch systems and everything behave nicely

3 - All emulators run on my CRT monitors native 800x600 @ 60Hz and fill the whole screen, no borders

4 - All emulators mapped nicely to my control panel, 2 joysticks 6 buttons per player and trackball

 

This seems pretty standard from my initial research. I've watched several setup videos and read some forum posts. Initially I was confused, I thought LaunchBox did everything. It was the front end and some epic emulator that magically emulated every system. I then realized that people suggested using RetroArch with LaunchBox to do this very thing. I got excited because again I thought, ok Launchbox is the front end, looks easy to use and now this RetroArch software was this crazy badass emulator that could handle any system, wrong again. So... I'll need LaunchBox as my front end, RetroArch to manage my emulators and you still have to download and setup each emulator individually, make sure it plays nice with my CRT monitor, map controls etc... Seems like another potential Hyperspin fiasco. What am I missing here and how is this easier?    

 

Thanks for the help.

 

 

[Lordmonkus]

This is tough to cover it all but I will try here before heading off to bed.

1 hour ago, sharp3d said:

1- Have my PC boot right into LaunchBox on startup

Yes, this is possible, you can do this with any software and there are guides on the internet on doing so. You should Google this for the specific version of Windows you are using. This ranges from either just placing a shortcut in your systems startup folder up to shelling your system which is a bit more complex but cleaner.

1 hour ago, sharp3d said:

2 - Upon setup have all the software behave relatively seamlessly, ie no need to pull out keyboard, change config files etc. Just hop in and out of roms, switch systems and everything behave nicely

No matter how nicely you have things all setup you should always at least have a keyboard of some sort nearby. You are doing this on a PC after all and things will crash from time to time or some strange occurrence will happen where you will need a keyboard. This doesn't need to be one wired and hanging out of your cabinet, you can have a small wireless keyboard tucked away nearby for when needed.

1 hour ago, sharp3d said:

3 - All emulators run on my CRT monitors native 800x600 @ 60Hz and fill the whole screen, no borders

This will come down to the emulators you choose to use but 800x600@60 Hz should be perfectly doable if your monitor supports it. This is outside the scope of Launchbox.

1 hour ago, sharp3d said:

4 - All emulators mapped nicely to my control panel, 2 joysticks 6 buttons per player and trackball

Again this will come down to the emulators you choose to use but Mame and Retroarch do support these without issues, the trackball is just seen as a mouse.

1 hour ago, sharp3d said:

What am I missing here and how is this easier? 

Launchbox is much easier to get your roms and emulators up and running in. With HyperSpin you will have to learn how to use RocketLauncher which is the backend software of HyperSpin and it has a nasty learning curve. Launchbox does not require RocketLauncher at all though it can use it if the end user chooses to do so.

I will give you my personal experience here. Back when I was starting out with all of this I spent about a month with the help of a friend learning to set up RL + HS and it was a major hassle. One day I was looking around for something else and stumbled across Launchbox and within 5 minutes (no exaggeration) I had games imported and had them running with all the art and meta data.

There are a ton of tutorials on the Launchbox YouTube channel to help you get things running: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSIht6UXIEXIgz4eXAEShxA
We have an extremely active forum here with plenty of people willing to help you out along with written guides on some of the more obscure emulators and topics. We also have a very active and helpful Discord server https://discord.gg/kafNav

1 hour ago, sharp3d said:

I thought LaunchBox did everything. It was the front end and some epic emulator that magically emulated every system.

Nothing offers this all in one packaged. Retroarch and EmulationStation (which uses Libretro cores) on the Raspberry Pi come close but they don't emulate everything and sometimes the emulation it does is not as good as some stand alones which you may or may not need, it all depends on what you want to emulate and the power of the PC you are planning on using.

Now if all this seems like it is more hassle than you want to put in I would suggest checking out @ETAPRIMEs YouTube channel and more specifically this new video he just posted which explains how to install RetroPie on a PC or laptop. This will give you the closest thing to an all in one setup ready to go minus your roms which you will need to supply yourself of course.

 

[sharp3d]

Thanks for the quick reply. 

Getting the machine to boot right into Big Box will be one of my last steps, but good to know it's possible. I do have a wireless keyboard with a trackpad for operator functions and fixing things, I just had to use it alllll the time with Hyperspin, so hoping it's usage is minimized with this setup. I had trouble setting up my trackball in Hyperspin, glad to know it's simpler to recognize here. I'll checkout the discord server and yeah so far the community is proving to be very helpful. I was up pretty late setting up 4-5 systems on the external HDD. I have complete-ish ROMs sets for about 60 systems so fingers crossed I can get most of them setup. 

 

Since using LaunchBox and RetroArch I have a few more questions.

 

Right now I am pulling box art, logos etc from a non subscription account of emumovies which means, no video. If I decide to donate to gain access to their videos but I've already gone through the very long process of scraping all the other 2D stuff, is launchbox smart enough to know I already have the 2d assets and just pull the videos? Or is there a way to just tell it download the videos? When doing the ROM import, on the screens where it asks, "Would you like to download media from EmuMovies" there is no checkbox for videos that I can see. Will a video checkbox become available when I donate and unlock that feature or something?

Then on to controller mapping. This is my current setup just for future reference. I like how be default my controller mapping carries over to each emulator, however on some emulaters like for Neo Geo I would like to change the mapping just for that system. How do you go about doing that? Also when mapping buttons in RetroArch how do I set a particular key to "none" I couldnt figure it out.

I watched some of ETA Primes videos, good stuff, very well explained. In one of the videos he pointed out that when you go to tools > manage emulators > select RetroArch > Associated Platforms tab this displays a list of platforms and cores that play nice. But how up to date is this list? Are these definitely the best core for the system? Also some of my cores just flat out didn't work like for ColecoVision I have bluemsx_libretro because that's what the associated platforms list had, but since it doesn't work I want to switch it for another? Whats the quickest way to do this?

 

Thank you.

  

 

  

[Lordmonkus]

16 minutes ago, sharp3d said:

If I decide to donate to gain access to their videos but I've already gone through the very long process of scraping all the other 2D stuff, is launchbox smart enough to know I already have the 2d assets and just pull the videos? Or is there a way to just tell it download the videos? When doing the ROM import, on the screens where it asks, "Would you like to download media from EmuMovies" there is no checkbox for videos that I can see. Will a video checkbox become available when I donate and unlock that feature or something?

It shouldn't download media you already have but to be on the safe side you can uncheck the media that you already have.

18 minutes ago, sharp3d said:

Then on to controller mapping. This is my current setup just for future reference. I like how be default my controller mapping carries over to each emulator, however on some emulaters like for Neo Geo I would like to change the mapping just for that system. How do you go about doing that? Also when mapping buttons in RetroArch how do I set a particular key to "none" I couldnt figure it out.

You can setup pretty much everything in Retroarch on a per core or even per game basis, this is all done in Retroarch itself.

19 minutes ago, sharp3d said:

I watched some of ETA Primes videos, good stuff, very well explained. In one of the videos he pointed out that when you go to tools > manage emulators > select RetroArch > Associated Platforms tab this displays a list of platforms and cores that play nice. But how up to date is this list?

It's up to date, you can add and remove any platforms you need or don't want. The cores are up to date as long as you have your cores up to date.

20 minutes ago, sharp3d said:

Are these definitely the best core for the system?

Best is a subjective thing in emulation, it depends on your systems specs and your personal needs and tastes. For example Higan is technically "the best" SNES emulator because it cycle accurate but it requires a decent CPU to run it at full speed. Meanwhile Snes9x is not quite as accurate but it plays 99% of the games and runs amazing on lower end hardware. You will just have to decide for yourself what is best for you and we have threads with discussions about what cores people use.

23 minutes ago, sharp3d said:

Also some of my cores just flat out didn't work like for ColecoVision I have bluemsx_libretro because that's what the associated platforms list had, but since it doesn't work I want to switch it for another?

Some cores require extra files to function, you can find out the information you need here: https://docs.libretro.com/library/bios/

 

[sharp3d]

Ok, I'm off to a pretty good start setting everything up. Hitting a few annoying snags though.

 

Currently a few of my systems in the main systems menu don't have "clear logos" showing up for them, ColecoVision and Turbografx. I downloaded a clear logos pack to try and force it but not sure where to drop them or how to have Launchbox recheck for those. Also a few of my systems like SNES don't have clear logos for the games, but most all the other systems games do. What's the best way to fix a systems games whose clear logos arent showing up even after refreshing image cache etc? I should clarify, when I select "Image Group" > Clear Logos in launchbox everything appears to show up, but they dont show up in Big Box.  

 

Then something is weird with my NeoGeo roms, only half of the box art / metadata is showing up. If i click on a ROM whose box art isn't showing up and hit edit, Launchbox has given it the correct LaunchBox DB ID# and if I hit the download media/images button it will grab to correct media, but theres like 80 games not working. Such a tedious process to do it one at a time, but weird because launchbox is recognizing the roms correctly. Any ideas how to ix this?

 

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by sharp3d

[DOS76]

Its all in the naming I think TG-16 is looking for NEC TurboGrafix 16 not sure about Colecovision

[sharp3d]

20 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

Its all in the naming I think TG-16 is looking for NEC TurboGrafix 16 not sure about Colecovision

Sorry, can you clarify? Where would I rename the TurboGrafx to NEC TurboGrafx etc?

 

[DOS76]

you would go to Tools edit platform in LB and Pick TG16 double clicking it should open the edit Window there you can change the names.

[DOS76]

you would then need to go to tools and run the media downloader again

[sharp3d]

OK I gave this another go. As far as I can tell all the media has been downloaded and in is the right place.

So the platform naming for clear logos for TurboGrafx and ColecoVision appear to be correct, but their platform clear logos dont show up in Big Box. Am I looking in the right place?

and also for Super Nintendo all the game clear logos appear in LaunchBox when I tell the "Image Group" to show clear logos and the properties are pointing to the right folders where all the clear logos are sitting? But in Big Box I just see the game list. Same thing is happening for Sega CD and Atari 2600. Any ideas here?

Thanks