9.8-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

9 hours ago, Omen said:

@Jason Carr would it be possible to add a custom AHK script area for Pause screens, similar to the exit, save, and load options? Except with an option to name the entry. Some emulators have extra commands that would be nice to access from Pause. For example I would love to have a “Next Bezel” option on pause, that would send the hotkey for Next Bezel in RetroArch. I think having one or two custom script areas would allow for anyone to add to the pause screen without having to make specific feature requests. Or is this already possible with themes? I’m still a noob at theming.

I don't think that in particular is possible with themes, at least not without a plugin. We can probably add this in eventually but I can't immediately prioritize it unfortunately.

[Tomkun]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

I've added the request to my list, but it's all about priorities. It's difficult to prioritize one person's request over features from the poll that have a whole bunch of votes. Something this custom may be best implemented via a plugin.

Thank you. Perhaps I can take a look at creating a plugin then. Is there any documentation or examples?

[Omen]

13 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

I don't think that in particular is possible with themes, at least not without a plugin. We can probably add this in eventually but I can't immediately prioritize it unfortunately.

Ok no worries. I wish I would have learned how to code long ago, maybe I should finally get to it. I know AHK pretty well, and from what I understand coding is pretty similar, am I correct? Do you have any tips for a complete noob?

[Jason Carr]

13 hours ago, Tomkun said:

Thank you. Perhaps I can take a look at creating a plugin then. Is there any documentation or examples?

There are some good examples provided by the community on Github:

https://github.com/slipsystem/LaunchBox-Plugin-Examples

https://github.com/daerlnaxe/LaunchBox-Plugins

I know there's more as well, but those are what I could immediately find. The official API documentation is here:

http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/4cf923f7-940c-5735-83de-04107a6ae0e6.htm

1 hour ago, Omen said:

Ok no worries. I wish I would have learned how to code long ago, maybe I should finally get to it. I know AHK pretty well, and from what I understand coding is pretty similar, am I correct? Do you have any tips for a complete noob?

The above documentation and examples are a good start.

LaunchBox plugins are written either in C#  (recommended) or Visual Basic (easier, but not a great language). Any .NET language is supported, and there are other options as well, but I wouldn't recommend them. So step #1 is to learn either C# or Visual Basic.

[Omen]

6 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

There are some good examples provided by the community on Github:

https://github.com/slipsystem/LaunchBox-Plugin-Examples

https://github.com/daerlnaxe/LaunchBox-Plugins

I know there's more as well, but those are what I could immediately find. The official API documentation is here:

http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/4cf923f7-940c-5735-83de-04107a6ae0e6.htm

The above documentation and examples are a good start.

LaunchBox plugins are written either in C#  (recommended) or Visual Basic (easier, but not a great language). Any .NET language is supported, and there are other options as well, but I wouldn't recommend them. So step #1 is to learn either C# or Visual Basic.

Awesome! I'll start checking out the documentation, and some C# lessons. I might as well go with C# since you recommend it over the other languages. Thanks man

[Dingo]

There is any way to bind a button for the pause menu without the need of the holding button?

[Retro808]

3 minutes ago, Álvaro Maia said:

There is any way to bind a button for the pause menu without the need of the holding button?

To quote Jason

16 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

... Yes, ...There are separate settings in both LaunchBox and Big Box for a single key press to trigger the pause screens (under Game Pause).

 

[Dingo]

4 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

To quote Jason

 

I tried to pick a joystick button for this option but it was not possible. Keyboard only.

[Retro808]

1 minute ago, Álvaro Maia said:

I tried to pick a joystick button for this option but it was not possible. Keyboard only.

in LaunchBox or BigBox?

[Dingo]

2 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

in LaunchBox or BigBox?

Launchbox. I will try it on bigbox. Thank you.

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, Álvaro Maia said:

Launchbox. I will try it on bigbox. Thank you.

Yes, the pause binding that does not use automation only works with the keyboard. It's not expected that folks will be able to have a dedicated button on their handheld game controller, and most arcade boards use keyboard keys in the backend. We might add single button support for game controllers eventually, but as of right now you have to do it with controller automation.

[tsetsefly]

On 5/27/2019 at 9:30 PM, Jason Carr said:

#1 is most likely because you're not using default keyboard binding settings, as I previously stated. You can change the key that the scripts send for MAME.

#2 I've seen before, and it was always because I had another app running that background that was somehow conflicting. For me, instances of Remote Desktop were causing it for some crazy reason. We're just using Windows APIs, but sadly they can be finicky with some apps running in background I've noted. Do make sure you don't have forceful activation checked in your MAME emulator settings as well, as that should be unnecessary for MAME and could be causing it.

#3 I've never been able to replicate this, and I just tried with those games and it seems to be working fine. So my guess would be that there's some kind of MAME configuration setting that is different that is causing it. If we can figure out what that is, I can look into it. Maybe try backing up your MAME settings and resetting them to the defaults to see if that fixes it?

#4 Yes, both keyboard and controller automation do require the hold key. There are separate settings in both LaunchBox and Big Box for a single key press to trigger the pause screens (under Game Pause).

#1 Exit option on Pause menu its not a big deal , just trying to track down why.  I am expecting when selecting Exit on the Pause menu the game would exit , but am seeing the Pause menu just return to the game (same effect as Resume ).

I had , thought maybe I needed the default exit key of ESC mapped to UI_CANCEL as I had a button (cabinet setup)

in mame cfg/default.cfg I had
<port type="UI_CANCEL">
    <newseq type="standard">
        JOYCODE_2_BUTTON7

I added ESC but still the Exit on the Pause menu just goes back to the game from the Pause screen (doesn't exit the game)
    JOYCODE_2_BUTTON7 OR KEYCODE_ESC                
I checked the mame settings in game with tab menu-> Input (General) and "UI Cancel" has Joy 2 Button 6 or ESC

 

#3 (vector games pause screen not coming up) solved this issue

I had in mame.ini
  video d3d
  bgfx_screen_chains hlsl
  filter 1

 in the mame ini folder there was a ini file for each vector game with the following. 
  [vector game rom].ini
   video           opengl
   hlsl_enable     0

I remove this game specific ini file and the pause screen came up.  So seems it was opengl or some combo of other mame.ini settings with opengl in the vector game specific ini files preventing the Pause screen from showing 

with removing those ini files the vector graphic games were very "glowy" i.e. didn't look right.  I then changed some settings in those vector game specific ini files and it looked better
and the Pause screen comes up
[vector game rom].ini
video d3d
filter 0
hlsl_enable 0

[Jason Carr]

15 hours ago, tsetsefly said:

#1 Exit option on Pause menu its not a big deal , just trying to track down why.  I am expecting when selecting Exit on the Pause menu the game would exit , but am seeing the Pause menu just return to the game (same effect as Resume ).

I had , thought maybe I needed the default exit key of ESC mapped to UI_CANCEL as I had a button (cabinet setup)

in mame cfg/default.cfg I had
<port type="UI_CANCEL">
    <newseq type="standard">
        JOYCODE_2_BUTTON7

I added ESC but still the Exit on the Pause menu just goes back to the game from the Pause screen (doesn't exit the game)
    JOYCODE_2_BUTTON7 OR KEYCODE_ESC                
I checked the mame settings in game with tab menu-> Input (General) and "UI Cancel" has Joy 2 Button 6 or ESC

 

#3 (vector games pause screen not coming up) solved this issue

I had in mame.ini
  video d3d
  bgfx_screen_chains hlsl
  filter 1

 in the mame ini folder there was a ini file for each vector game with the following. 
  [vector game rom].ini
   video           opengl
   hlsl_enable     0

I remove this game specific ini file and the pause screen came up.  So seems it was opengl or some combo of other mame.ini settings with opengl in the vector game specific ini files preventing the Pause screen from showing 

with removing those ini files the vector graphic games were very "glowy" i.e. didn't look right.  I then changed some settings in those vector game specific ini files and it looked better
and the Pause screen comes up
[vector game rom].ini
video d3d
filter 0
hlsl_enable 0

Gotcha. What version of MAME are you running? Do you have the "-keyboardprovider dinput" command-line parameters in the MAME emulator settings in LaunchBox?

Per #3, all makes sense. Most likely there's something problematic with video drivers or something of that nature, and switching the renderer fixes it. It might be worth trying to update your video drivers to see if that helps as well.

[tsetsefly]

7 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Gotcha. What version of MAME are you running? Do you have the "-keyboardprovider dinput" command-line parameters in the MAME emulator settings in LaunchBox?

Per #3, all makes sense. Most likely there's something problematic with video drivers or something of that nature, and switching the renderer fixes it. It might be worth trying to update your video drivers to see if that helps as well.

#1 Exit option on Pause menu  Solved this one now

earlier on someone had suggested removing -keyboardprovider dinput when I was having problems (but that was probably when I had only JOYCODE_2_BUTTON7 in UI_CANCEL

when I added in JOYCODE_2_BUTTON7 OR KEYCODE_ESC, I needed to also add back -keyboardprovider dinput to command line arguments.

thanks for all the quick and helpful replies on this

[Omen]

@Jason Carr I've come across a conflict between Startup and Pause screens. Let's say for example you have a startup screen time of 20 seconds for Retroarch, but Retroarch launches after 5 seconds (full screen so it takes over startup screens). If you invoke pause before the remaining 15 seconds, the startup screens will come up instead of pause. Sometimes only a black screen comes up, which can only be removed by closing RA via the task manager. Would it be possible to make pause cancel out startup screens once invoked?

[Jason Carr]

On 5/31/2019 at 10:15 AM, Omen said:

@Jason Carr I've come across a conflict between Startup and Pause screens. Let's say for example you have a startup screen time of 20 seconds for Retroarch, but Retroarch launches after 5 seconds (full screen so it takes over startup screens). If you invoke pause before the remaining 15 seconds, the startup screens will come up instead of pause. Sometimes only a black screen comes up, which can only be removed by closing RA via the task manager. Would it be possible to make pause cancel out startup screens once invoked?

Ideally, if Retroarch launches successfully in 5 seconds, then you would set that startup screen time to 5 seconds instead of 20. That is a known issue, but if the emulator is properly configured, it really shouldn't be much of an issue.

Regardless, I'll take a look at some point here to see if there's a way to handle that.

[Omen]

3 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Ideally, if Retroarch launches successfully in 5 seconds, then you would set that startup screen time to 5 seconds instead of 20. That is a known issue, but if the emulator is properly configured, it really shouldn't be much of an issue.

Regardless, I'll take a look at some point here to see if there's a way to handle that.

Thanks man. Usually RetroArch launches immediately, but I have a long delay for times when my HDD is asleep and it needs to spin up.

[Jason Carr]

The first 9.9 beta is out: