Pause Screen

[Retro808]

5 minutes ago, vaderag said:

Wonder if anyone can help - after some messing about I got my pause screen working in MAME today (the settings are as they were but they didn't work initially but now they do... go figure!)

Anyway, I have another issue - I can't select any of the items with anthing but the enter key - however the enter key is not used on my arcade stick. Is there any way to change the mapping of what selects in the pause menu to something else?

It should use whatever you have mapped in your LB/BB mappings for the "Select" option. 

[vaderag]

30 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

It should use whatever you have mapped in your LB/BB mappings for the "Select" option. 

Ah okay. I hadn't got around to setting up BB yet and haven't changed anything in LB. Will have a look for the keys in LB!

[TBachVanWa]

I too am having issues with being able to use the pause screen when I play MAME games through Big Box. When I try to use pause screen in Big Box while playing a MAME game the screen goes black very similar to what other users have described within the topic string, I can, however, get the pause screen to successfully work when I pause in Launchbox. I also can successfully enable the pause screen in other emulators like Retroarch, Daphne, Project64, etc, while running BigBox. I tried using this code "WinActivate, ahk_exe mame64.exe" under LB Manage emulators/PauseScreen/Startupscreen with not luck to get the pause screen to also work while running MAME through BB. I have "Forceful Pause Screen Activation" selected in BB and LB. I can successfully hit pause when I only have MAME running with MAME's  pause feature. I'm not using Rocketlauncher with my LB/BB.

My work around is to have the enable pause screen option disabled in Big Box but have the Keyboard Automation option set up to show the pause screen with a hold button combination. So when I want to pause in MAME I hit the "p" key and MAME will pause (just freezes the game). But with other emulators I use the hold key combo to get the pause screen to show up.

Now here's another quagmire - when I'm in the pause screen with those other emulators, I cannot use my chosen default joystick to move the selection from Resume Game to Load State, Save State, Edit,  etc. I can only use the up and down arrow keys on my keyboard to move selections. However, my joystick works fine when I'm in the Big Box menu to select games, platforms, system options and to play the games. Go figure.

 

 

[skizzosjt]

On 12/12/2022 at 8:40 PM, TBachVanWa said:

I too am having issues with being able to use the pause screen when I play MAME games through Big Box. When I try to use pause screen in Big Box while playing a MAME game the screen goes black very similar to what other users have described within the topic string, I can, however, get the pause screen to successfully work when I pause in Launchbox. I also can successfully enable the pause screen in other emulators like Retroarch, Daphne, Project64, etc, while running BigBox. I tried using this code "WinActivate, ahk_exe mame64.exe" under LB Manage emulators/PauseScreen/Startupscreen with not luck to get the pause screen to also work while running MAME through BB. I have "Forceful Pause Screen Activation" selected in BB and LB. I can successfully hit pause when I only have MAME running with MAME's  pause feature. I'm not using Rocketlauncher with my LB/BB.

My work around is to have the enable pause screen option disabled in Big Box but have the Keyboard Automation option set up to show the pause screen with a hold button combination. So when I want to pause in MAME I hit the "p" key and MAME will pause (just freezes the game). But with other emulators I use the hold key combo to get the pause screen to show up.

Now here's another quagmire - when I'm in the pause screen with those other emulators, I cannot use my chosen default joystick to move the selection from Resume Game to Load State, Save State, Edit,  etc. I can only use the up and down arrow keys on my keyboard to move selections. However, my joystick works fine when I'm in the Big Box menu to select games, platforms, system options and to play the games. Go figure.

 

 

 

I am experiencing similar difficulties, tried to test it out some more. I can technically use the Pause Screen with Arcade games whether using Retroarch or MAME, but it's not 100%. Retroarch is working better by comparison, perfectly fine actually in both LB and BB. MAME on the other hand seems to have issues actually DISPLAYING the Pause Screen under certain circumstances. I was able to reach (see) the Pause Screen if I have MAME in WINDOWED mode in LB or BB. I could do it both with a controller and keyboard. If MAME was in FULLSCREEN mode I could not actually see the Pause Screen. BUT....it was there. For starters it's clearly "pausing" the game/emulator, and for what it's worth I'm under the impression the Pause Screen actually suspends the emulators process. So it is working in that sense, it does pause the game, but the actual Pause Screen is not visible. It's just hidden behind the MAME window that is fullscreen. I can hear the clicks of moving the highlighted selection around blindly and can still use them blindly. I'm not sure if we are doing something wrong, but I'm actually leaning towards the Pause Screen function is not working as intended with standalone MAME when MAME is in fullscreen. Others will need to confirm my suspicions. I will say this, you def do not need that code in the "Pause Script" field. There are notes the devs put there by default, for ex: "; No script is required for pausing MAME" . You wouldn't want the emulator to be activated, aka pulling that window to the front when you hit the Pause Screen key

 

I was able to mostly recreate the joystick issue you described, I think. Launching an Arcade game, irregardless of using MAME or Retroarch in LAUNCHBOX, the joystick didn't work on the Pause Screen. If I launch an Arcade game through BB, again irregardless of the emulator, the joystick works on the Pause Screen. This perhaps makes sense because the left joystick would normally be controlling the mouse in LaunchBox, so could explain why it doesn't function like up/down in the Pause Screen for LaunchBox. However in Big Box, the joystick does act like up/down, so works in Big Box.  I would think you would have the same results

[vaderag]

I have a very odd issue which I'm sure I've seen people mention before but darned if I can find the posts...

My pause screens work absolutely fine if I launch games from Launchbox - I've been spending time setting up there as you'd expect and everything works as I would expect

However, if I launch from BigBox (which is my goal on the arcade cab), pause screens do not work on either Mame or Retroarch... the game pauses but the overlay does not show

BigBox vs LB is the only differentiator here, nothing else changes...

Any thoughts how to troubleshoot? 

[Retro808]

2 minutes ago, vaderag said:

I have a very odd issue which I'm sure I've seen people mention before but darned if I can find the posts...

My pause screens work absolutely fine if I launch games from Launchbox - I've been spending time setting up there as you'd expect and everything works as I would expect

However, if I launch from BigBox (which is my goal on the arcade cab), pause screens do not work on either Mame or Retroarch... the game pauses but the overlay does not show

BigBox vs LB is the only differentiator here, nothing else changes...

Any thoughts how to troubleshoot? 

Did you map your "Pause" button/key in BB? LB and BB have separate mappings for this. 

[vaderag]

8 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

Did you map your "Pause" button/key in BB? LB and BB have separate mappings for this. 

No, no i did not... 🤦‍♂️