9.8-beta-1 Released

[damageinc86]

2 hours ago, GreenGriffon said:

I've brought this up before, but with pause screens on the way, now seems like a good time to make the request again.

Please - I'm begging you - allow us the ability to set a particular image (or perhaps a new image category?) as the pause screen for each rom.

If we can't easily do this as a startup screen, being able to press a button mid-game to see the controls would be the next best option.

Thank you!

This is especially useful for all the different arcade games with unique buttons.  Come to think of it, it would probably be just as useful for consoles if someone were to go into the game's manual and then make an image with what each button did like your example. 

[SpaceMidget75]

35 minutes ago, damageinc86 said:

Hopefully they can figure out how to send ahk key presses to the emulator.  That's all that rocketlauncher does.  There is a setup screen for your specific emulator and you just type in what the key presses are for save and load.  Example:  {F5}{down}{F5}{up}{1}{down}{1}{up}.  That sends a press of F5, and then when the emulator wants the slot number to save, it then sends a 1 keypress for that.  you can set the delay to be whatever you want in milliseconds, so there's enough of a pause in between the keypresses, and then bam, you see everything flash on the screen as if you had pressed the keys yourself, and your save goes through.

I actually wrote a controller based menu system that would pop-up and allow you to fire of key presses  (and scripts) to background applications like emulators. The problem was that RetroArch would listen to  the controller presses even when not the focused app so gave up on the project. I'd love to know how it's working in RL/AHK.

 

 

[eatkinola]

5 hours ago, SpaceMidget75 said:

I actually wrote a controller based menu system that would pop-up and allow you to fire of key presses  (and scripts) to background applications like emulators. The problem was that RetroArch would listen to  the controller presses even when not the focused app so gave up on the project. I'd love to know how it's working in RL/AHK.

You'd probably want to pause the emulator before sending the other commands via autohotkey. Then, when you are done sending commands, unpause the emu. AHK can also issue the pause/unpause commands, so this could all be seamless.

[GreenGriffon]

6 hours ago, damageinc86 said:

This is especially useful for all the different arcade games with unique buttons.  Come to think of it, it would probably be just as useful for consoles if someone were to go into the game's manual and then make an image with what each button did like your example. 

I've actually done this by system as well for the home consoles on my setup. The arcade games are the only ones I have a unique per-game control scheme image for at the moment, but I'm slowly making more.

I've had dozens of people play on my arcade cabinet, and it's always the same problem. They start a game, then turn to me and ask, "Hey, how do I play this game?".

It's not a problem with my RetroPie setup, as you can set unique launching images for each rom. They just have to be named a certain way.

[SpaceMidget75]

49 minutes ago, eatkinola said:

You'd probably want to pause the emulator before sending the other commands via autohotkey. Then, when you are done sending commands, unpause the emu. AHK can also issue the pause/unpause commands, so this could all be seamless.

Yes, that could work providing  the Emu pause doesn't bring up a menu which should be fine with RA. The problem I had was that my menu system was xml based and could be nested so for example you could tap Down, Down, A to go to a sub menu and the Down, Down, Down, A to select an item (or B to go back). Meanwhile RA was still navigating its OWN menu using the same commands so when my menu was ready to fire off commands to navigate RA, the cursor could be anywhere!

I may well revisit this if I get the time as it would have been pretty powerful.

 

[damageinc86]

8 hours ago, SpaceMidget75 said:

I actually wrote a controller based menu system that would pop-up and allow you to fire of key presses  (and scripts) to background applications like emulators. The problem was that RetroArch would listen to  the controller presses even when not the focused app so gave up on the project. I'd love to know how it's working in RL/AHK.

I really don't know exactly how they get it to work, even with RA, all I know is I type that stuff in, and then it works.

 

[guyverjay]

Are we ever going to get the ability to hide platforms? I'm pretty sure this has been requested a few times over the last 2 years lol

Edited April 17, 2019 by guyverjay

[neil9000]

9 hours ago, guyverjay said:

Are we ever going to get the ability to hide platforms? I'm pretty sure this has been requested a few times over the last 2 years lol

I may be missing something here, but why would you want to hide platforms? If you dont want to see a platform then don't import it right? Or as i say am i missing something here?

[darreldearth]

1 hour ago, neil9000 said:

I may be missing something here, but why would you want to hide platforms? If you dont want to see a platform then don't import it right? Or as i say am i missing something here?

Good example of a reason you'd want to hide a platform is when you want to split a platform up into different playlists/categories such as (top level category <system>, then Japanese games, European games and usa games as categories under that, then multi disc games & single disc games under each of the 3 region categories as playlists) And then hide the original platform which has everything clumped together to make everything look pretty.

That's just one example I could have used before, but I had to find a work around by making multiple platforms instead of just having 1 and using playlists. 

Still would make things waaaaaaay easier if any games with (disc 1), (disc 2) etc. In the title wrapped in parentheses could have separate entries in launchbox based off their disc number, similar to how launchbox pulls the region from parentheses, accept this would just keep the games consolidated under seperate listings based off their disc number. Currently I've had to add "- (Disc x)" to every game which was a multi disc game in the data files to keep them separate. Needless to say it forever.

[neil9000]

2 hours ago, darreldearth said:

Still would make things waaaaaaay easier if any games with (disc 1), (disc 2) etc. In the title wrapped in parentheses could have separate entries in launchbox based off their disc number, similar to how launchbox pulls the region from parentheses, accept this would just keep the games consolidated under seperate listings based off their disc number. Currently I've had to add "- (Disc x)" to every game which was a multi disc game in the data files to keep them separate. Needless to say it forever.

The way it currently works is multi disks are combined together and they are named the way you are wanting in the right click menu.

[eatkinola]

15 hours ago, guyverjay said:

Are we ever going to get the ability to hide platforms? I'm pretty sure this has been requested a few times over the last 2 years lol

When I've wanted to hide a platform, I just remove it's xaml file from the data folder, or place it in a subfolder I just call 'Inactive'. That works well for me. It'd be nice to have a little toggle in LB to show/hide a platform and probably (?) a simple addition, but I've made do fine without it.

[GreenGriffon]

There are plenty of use cases for being able to hide platform.

Just in my own situation, there are platforms that I've added before I've properly configured the emulator. I wouldn't want people browsing that platform in BigBox and trying to load a game that isn't ready to play yet.

 

[Jason Carr]

Just now, GreenGriffon said:

There are plenty of use cases for being able to hide platform.

Just in my own situation, there are platforms that I've added before I've properly configured the emulator. I wouldn't want people browsing that platform in BigBox and trying to load a game that isn't ready to play yet.

 

It's easy as pie to hide all the games for a platform, so that's not really an issue at all. The only use case that you can't really do currently is if you want to hide a platform for some reason, but still use that platform's games in a playlist, or something of that nature. I'm noting this on my list. It hasn't been all that common of a request, so it's not exactly at the top of the list though. It'll probably end up on the next community poll.

[Jason Carr]

Pause screen development is coming along well, but the next beta probably won't be out until some time next week. The first beta will be very minimal on features, and we'll look to add various things after that. My initial goal is to support Retroarch and MAME, and just get the pause screens showing and hiding properly. Needless to say, the first beta won't blow you away, similar to the first beta of startup screens.

[SpaceMidget75]

No problem Jason. Lots of developers in this community so we all know how it goes!

[ALIE]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Pause screen development is coming along well, but the next beta probably won't be out until some time next week. The first beta will be very minimal on features, and we'll look to add various things after that. My initial goal is to support Retroarch and MAME, and just get the pause screens showing and hiding properly. Needless to say, the first beta won't blow you away, similar to the first beta of startup screens.

Sounds great personally I was pretty impressed with the first release of the start up screens.  Support for more emulators later is that on you alone or something the community can do with plug ins?... 

[RULLUR]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

It's easy as pie to hide all the games for a platform, so that's not really an issue at all. The only use case that you can't really do currently is if you want to hide a platform for some reason, but still use that platform's games in a playlist, or something of that nature. I'm noting this on my list. It hasn't been all that common of a request, so it's not exactly at the top of the list though. It'll probably end up on the next community poll.

I'm still interested in something sort of like that, but where I can add a Clear Logo and all that to a Series or Developer, Publisher & etc like I can already do with the Platforms or Platform Categories in BigBox. I have much of that ready to go when it is available instead of just making a Playlist. I know it may be way low on the list, but it's something worth anticipating I'm sure

[wallmachine]

6 hours ago, neil9000 said:

The way it currently works is multi disks are combined together and they are named the way you are wanting in the right click menu.

but if you rename then scrape new metadata it removes your entry and puts it back to the games database as mentioned here.

 

[neil9000]

35 minutes ago, wallmachine said:

but if you rename then scrape new metadata it removes your entry and puts it back to the games database as mentioned here.

Isnt that the point?? If you rename a game then scrape again it will of course try to match it.

[wallmachine]

12 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Isnt that the point?? If you rename a game then scrape again it will of course try to match it.

then why have the option to rename the title to what you want if when you re-scrape to obtain the upto date metadata it renames it back for you and then you have to start again?

Edited April 18, 2019 by wallmachine