Best way to launch control emulation program (or any other program) before launching a specific game

[Flope]

Hi, 

Setup: I have an arcade cabinet with bigbox. Controls: Ipac2. 

To be able to play some windows games with 2 players. I need to emulate a 360 controller with the keyboard (Ipac2) for the 2nd player. 

I managed to do that using UCR - Interception - ViGem. Now, I need to load UCR (with a specific parameter) before launching the game.

Is AHK the best way? I noticed that Launchbox comes with AHK. So, I should create an AHK script and make launchbox to launch the AHK script?
So, something like:

...
run, c:/UCR/UCR.exe -p "profile"
run, c:/Games/game.exe
.... 

I take a similar approach (AHK script) when I need to remap keys for a game that does not allow remapping. 

Thanks, 

Flope

Edited April 5, 2019 by Flope

[fromlostdays]

I have to admit, most of this is over my head, but I just wanted to make you aware of the "additional apps" feature, if you weren't already. It can start a program before launch.

I'm not at all sure this is what you need, but its worth investigating I think. You can access this on a per game basis by right clicking a game, going to "edit" and then "additional apps".

Edited April 5, 2019 by fromlostdays

[Flope]

thanks for the info. 

That is the reason I asked. I sounded familiar that something like that existed (based on some video I watched, I think) 

I will give it a try over the weekend and I will report back. 

[twobucks]

I am using UCR for some games and I use the additional apps feature to launch it. see below

 

Don't forget to create a batch file to close UCR after you exit the game or your keyboard controls will still emulate an xbox controller. 

 

[Flope]

Thanks, guys. 

I have done what you recommended to me.  Now, I can play smoothly in the arcade cabinet 2-players games when one of them is required to use a 360 controller.  

FYI, for whatever reason, my UCR looks for the pluggin subfolder in the working directory (directory in which I am executing UCR from). it would give me an error about not finding the pluggin folder if it wasn't executed from the UCR folder. Not sure if that was the intended behavior.  So, I had to use something like this in ahk to execute it. 

Run, C:\Users\flope\LaunchBox\UCR\UCR.exe, C:\Users\flope\LaunchBox\UCR

The 2nd parameter indicates the working directory.

Thanks

F