Does the pause menu support disc swaps in RetroArch?

[SpaceMidget75]

As per the title really. Would like to swap discs from the menu for PSX games in Retro Arch. Note: The latest versions of RA have changed the disc eject UI.

[kmoney]

2 hours ago, SpaceMidget75 said:

As per the title really. Would like to swap discs from the menu for PSX games in Retro Arch. Note: The latest versions of RA have changed the disc eject UI.

The Pause menu does support disc swapping , but if I remember correctly @Jason Carr said that an ahk script would have to be written in order for it to work.

[SpaceMidget75]

I see. So it sounds like you can add items to the menu and associated a AHK with them? I fired off the Pause menu on a PSX game that was loaded using an M3U and didn't see anything in the default menu options.

[Jason Carr]

For this to work, you need to populate the Swap Discs AutoHotkey script under the Retroarch emulator in LaunchBox. You can get there by going to Tools > Manage Emulators > Retroarch > Pause Screen > Swap Discs. The AutoHotkey script will simply need to fire off the keyboard shortcut in Retroarch to swap discs. I'm not sure what that is for the moment, but I could help get a script written if we can find out.

[SpaceMidget75]

Thanks Jason, I'll check it out.

[kmoney]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

For this to work, you need to populate the Swap Discs AutoHotkey script under the Retroarch emulator in LaunchBox. You can get there by going to Tools > Manage Emulators > Retroarch > Pause Screen > Swap Discs. The AutoHotkey script will simply need to fire off the keyboard shortcut in Retroarch to swap discs. I'm not sure what that is for the moment, but I could help get a script written if we can find out.

There is not currently a default hotkey set for disc eject toggle in the Retroarch settings as they leave that up to the end user to set whatever hotkey they want for that option. The good news is they do have a disc eject toggle hotkey setting just not a default key set.

[Jason Carr]

12 minutes ago, kmoney said:

There is not currently a default hotkey set for disc eject toggle in the Retroarch settings as they leave that up to the end user to set whatever hotkey they want for that option. The good news is they do have a disc eject toggle hotkey setting just not a default key set.

Gotcha, so unfortunately that means we can't add a default script (probably the reason we didn't in the first place). Once you add a binding though, you can easily add the script just by copying the default Load State script and changing the two key values to the correct key:

Send {F4 down}
Sleep 50
Send {F4 up}

 

[SpaceMidget75]

So I've mapped "j" to OPEN/CLOSE TRAY and "d" to CYCLE DISCS. The current way of swapping discs in RA is to OPEN TRAY, CYCLE, CLOSE TRAY.

So would that be:

Send {j down}
Sleep 50
Send {j up}

Sleep 50
Send {d down}
Sleep 50
Send {d down}

Sleep 50
Send {j down}
Sleep 50
Send {j up}

Edited February 1, 2020 by SpaceMidget75

[Jason Carr]

Lol, because, you know, there's no reason to make it easier with a single key press. Sometimes the design decisions...

Good thing we built full AutoHotkey script for that stuff, I guess.

[SpaceMidget75]

I've just checked this and the above script worked perfectly, should anyone else need it. Of course if you need to select a specific disc, and not just the next one, we're out of luck.

Thanks for the help and the feature!

[Wally]

Hmmm...I would love something that could bind Combine disks of Launchbox with Pause Menu Swap Disk when using RetroArch cores

[robbforce]

I don't mean to raise the dead, but I've run into this problem of changing discs in the mednafen core of retroarch. I used the script from SpaceMidget75 (thank you) in the swap disc section of the emulation settings in Launchbox, but hcould only find a key mapping for next disc in retroarch, specifically input_disk_next = "d", which works to get me to the next disc from the pause menu just fine, but it doesn't loop back to the first disc. Is there another configuration setting for a loop? I ask because GTA London prompts immediately for the GTA1 disc, so I created a m3u with both chds for the swap, but then once it reads it, it asks for the London disc again, which I'd have to go through the retroarch UI to do.

Seems like a solution would be to loop back to the first disc in the index on a next, or split the swap disc script in Launchbox to swap next and swap previous.

[SpaceMidget75]

I don't have time to check this out at the moment as I'm super busy with work, but this sounds like Mednafen isn't implementing the cycle feature of the RA API correctly. Have you confirmed that cycle takes you back to the first disc on a non-Mednafen core? I believe that is the expected behaviour.

[robbforce]

Hmm. I'm trying to think if I'm using anything other than Mednafen for a disc based system. haha

Flycast and Genesis Plus, but all the Dreamcast and Sega CD games I have are single disc. I'll have to look for something on either of those to test your theory.

[Nulion]

Apologies for bumping this thread, but...I tried out this script, and then went into RetroArch to change the hotkey binds for swapping discs, and it did nothing. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get this script working so I can swap discs in the pause menu.

[SpaceMidget75]

Have you created an m3u file with the disc filenames in and the set that as the launch rom?

[Nulion]

I have, yes. I put each of the multi-disc roms into a folder (for example, I put Xenogears (USA) (Disc 1).img/cue and Xenogears (USA) (Disc 2).img/cue into a folder, made a .txt file, put "Xenogears (Disc 1).cue and Xenogears (Disc 2).cue) in there, renamed the file extension to m3u, and then changed the launch path within Launchbox to boot up the m3u file.

The games start like normal, but when I go into the pause menu and press Swap Disc, nothing happens. Even if I go and do it manually (start the game, go into RetroArch's menu for the mednafen_psx_libretro core I'm using, and Eject Disc, then put in Disc 2), it STILL only somewhat works; the disc just doesn't seem to change when I want it to change, and only seems to do so *sometimes*. It's hard to explain, but it just doesn't work on command like I'd want it to.

[SpaceMidget75]

Yep. I've just checked and it seems to be an RA problem. I'll see if I can play around with it but wont be for a couple of days at the moment. Might be worth asking in the RA forums. Basically if you can get it working in RA with just hotkeys then we can modify the AHK script to match.

[Nulion]

Thank you so much for even offering to look into it  I'll keep poking around myself at the RA forums and see if I can find anything, and checking back here in case you find something. Thanks again!

[Nulion]

I did find a strange thing that LaunchBox itself is doing that may be related to this; whenever I reboot LaunchBox, all of my PlayStation games that have more than one disc have their launch path changed from the m3u file I created back to the cue file. Even when I change them all back to the m3u file, it only lasts until I reboot LaunchBox...and then it'll have all my PSX games back to loading from the .cue instead of the .m3u. I am using the Beetle PSX/Mednafen emulator (not the HW one) for this, and I made sure to go into Tools/Manage/Emulators/RetroArch/Edit/Associated Platforms and I disabled the "Use M3U Playlists for Multiple Discs" option, since I'm aware that auto-generates a temporary m3u file somewhere else, and I don't want that.

How it works when I load the game up itself, regardless if it's a m3u or a cue that it's loading (and I do have a save file where the disc transfer occurs) is the following;

 

1. I load the game up, load my save file, I see "Please Insert Disc 2" (Of note: for some reason it takes two tries for the game to recognize that I have save data. It shouldn't do this, and I'm not sure why this is)

2. I go into RA's menu, go to Disc Control, hit Eject Disc, and then I back out of the menu, resuming the game. (I read that Beetle PSX/Mednafen is sensitive to this, and it needs done for some reason)

3. I go back into RA's menu again, and what's SUPPOSED to happen is that I change the Disc value from 1 to 2...then close the disc tray, and resume. What instead happens is that there is no Disc 2 listed there. I need to instead load Disc 2 as though I had to remind RA that Disc 2 even existed (isn't that what the m3u is supposed to be for?) and THEN switch the value to 2, and close the disc tray. If for whatever reason I try doing this a third time, then it will allow me to choose "3" on the disc value, somehow. There aren't 3 discs on this game.  

4. What ends up happening no matter what I do is that Disc 2 is not loaded. It stays stuck on Disc 1....until occasionally, when I'm rebooting the game to try again, it reboots somehow with Disc 2 loaded up instead of Disc 1.

 

I'm at a total loss for what's happening here.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Nulion