CD-i Emulator Fullscreen

[MCF]

Hey all

I had been using MAME to emulate CD-i, but it had many drawbacks such as the lack of proper fullscreen, the annoying CD-i text at the top of the screen, and needing to press a button to actually start the game.

And I REALLY wanted to play Mutant Rampage Body Slam, which couldn't load in MAME.

So I went off to try the CD-i Emulator, and unfortunately it has neither keyboard nor gamepad support, and controls are restricted only to using the mouse. And switching it to fullscreen requires actually clicking options in the menu bar. And it's not even really fullscreen, it just maximizes the window.

AHK and JoyToKey to the rescue for a proper fullscreen + gamepad solution!

Please refer to the Launchbox-specific instructions below.

1. Download CD-i emulator
2. Download JoyToKey
3. Look for and download the required BIOS cdimono1.zip
4. Download the file attached to this post
5. Extract everything to the same folder
6. Ensure cdirunner.exe, JoyToKey.exe, VistaAPI.dll, cdi200.rom, cdi220.rom, and cdi220b.rom are in the same folder as wcdiemu-v053b3.exe
7. Rename wcdiemu-v053b3.exe to wcdiemu.exe. This is to ensure this AHK app doesn't need to be edited and recompiled if the emulator needs to be updated to other versions in the future.
8. Launch JoyToKey and configure a profile for CD-i with the following button mapping suggestions
   
9. Configure a new emulator in Launchbox, set it to cdirunner.exe
   
10. Ensure your CD-i ISOs are in ISO format, for some reason I couldn't get this to work with BIN+CUE or CHD. IsoBuster is my tool of choice to convert the CD images to ISO
11. Import your CD-i game of choice to Launchbox, and enjoy!

FEATURES AND RESTRICTIONS

• Both the original AHK source and the EXE executable are in the ZIP file
• The CD-i emulator will launch in proper fullscreen, like all other normal emulators
• The EXE was created using AHK2EXE, and is designed for 64-bit Windows only. If you're running 32-bit Windows, you will need to use AHK2EXE to recompile the AHK script to an EXE executable
• Press ESC to exit the emulator and kill all the associated processes, so there's no need to manually configure the Running AutoHotkey Script for the emulator in Launchbox
• All game file names must be one word, i.e. "Hotel Mario.iso" must be renamed to "HotelMario.iso" or "Hotel_Mario.iso"

 

CDI Fullscreen.zip

Edited April 14, 2020 by MCF
Corrections to instructions and also updated the application

[sundogak]

Good to see another option. 

For the MAME issue of CDI Text and full screen issue that can be addressed by going into the setup menu in MAME.  So TAB, Video Options and then select MAIN SCREEN only and not Main + LCD.  MAME is emulating the LCD screen on the front of the CD-i player which is on by default but with that step will get rid of it. That also addresses the second item which gives you a full screen.  There is no way I know for MAME to resolve the third issue which is the button push at the start screen. 

[MCF]

3 hours ago, sundogak said:

Good to see another option. 

For the MAME issue of CDI Text and full screen issue that can be addressed by going into the setup menu in MAME.  So TAB, Video Options and then select MAIN SCREEN only and not Main + LCD.  MAME is emulating the LCD screen on the front of the CD-i player which is on by default but with that step will get rid of it. That also addresses the second item which gives you a full screen.  There is no way I know for MAME to resolve the third issue which is the button push at the start screen. 

Thanks for the MAME tip. Will have to check it out!

I am maintaining both emulators to run CD-i games since some games only work on MAME and vice versa