Chadmando's Super Pause Menu (64bit windows)

[Chadmando]

Chadmando's Super Pause Menu! Please scroll down for further information, the latest updates, as well as installation instructions. Thank you!

Latest version can be downloaded here:

 

Introducing Chadmando's Super Pause Menu... A feature rich pause menu plugin for launchbox.
Features:

• Highly customizable
• By default, nice large text for large monitors and television screens
• No autohotkey coding neccesary if simply needing to send keys (Auto detection of keys)
• AutoHotkey injection option
• Clock (I call this a feature because I lose track of time playing games)
• Multiple save states (up to 100 if wanted!), with accompanied timestamps and screenshots
• Manual launched internally and saves your page within current play session thanks to xpdf tools (Takes a few seconds to load upon first launch, then instantly after that)
• Currently compatible with loading/game over screens with launchbox 11.9 13.14
• Preloaded with suggested settings for Demul, Dolphin 5.0, Sega Model 2, ePSXe, Mame, Mednafen, PCSX2 (v1.6.0) Project 64, Retroarch, SNES9x, Sega Model 2, Supermodel 3, Visual boy advance-M and Visual boy advance-M Git, plus any you want to add in manually with easy setup using default settings.
•  Theme profile switcher. Great for multi-platform emulators such as retroarch.
• Ability to use animated gif backgrounds.
• Includes a controls menu when a controller image is found within the folders- Super pause menu\Images\Controls\[Platform]\ or Super pause menu\Images\Controls\[Platform]\[Game Name]\ Game controls images override platform control images.

Screenshots:

Quick install and setup:

-Download the latest Pause menu compressed zip file from the top of the post.

-Once downloaded right click on the zip file, go to properties and click on the box "Unblock" then click "apply" and close the dialog.

-Next right click on the file again and choose: Extract All.. when the browse menu pops up choose your launchbox directory and click extract. A dialog will pop up asking you you to merge the plugins folder, choose "Yes".
You will now have a new folder in the launchbox directory labeled Super pause menu, and a dll file in the Plugins folder named Super Pause Menu.dll
Installation is complete.

 

-Quick Setup/Change default hotkeys

If your emulator is on the list it is enabled by default with the default menu hotkeys, and the given default hotkeys of the emulator.
Launch pause menu (quick press): Shift or Xbox Guide button
Navigate pause menu: Up down arrows, or Up down on player 1 Xinput's D pad controller
Menu select item: Enter, or A on player 1 Xinput's D pad controller
Back: Backspace, or B on player 1 Xinput's D pad controller
Menu navigation keys are universal and shared among all emulators.

You may need to change your video settings within the emulator itself for the pause menu to work. If Launchbox's pause menu already works with the specified emulator, so should this. The best video settings are borderless window mode using a direct3d plugin. For dolphin specifically you'll probably need to match this. See the notes section in my settings program for my recommended settings. Some settings may not work for your system/graphics card in which you will want to play with the "Emulator Settings" page of my Settings program. I personally tested my settings on a nvidia gtx 970 card. The same settings don't all work using my sons computer with a AMD card, but I was able to tweak some minor settings and had them all working.

If you would like to change the default menu navigation keys or any other settings, a new menu item is now added into launchbox. Open up launchbox, click on the settings icon-> Tools-> Super Pause Menu Settings

Once the menu is loaded click on the checkboxes to enable/ disable any of the default emulator settings. If the emulator selection box come up blank try and hit the Refresh List button.

Next, double click on emulator of choice to change settings. The emulator name and executable will show up at the top when loaded.

Click on the  "Menu keys" button on the left side. Double click on the hotkey form (white square) to change the desired hotkey. When the menu pops up hold down your key of choice and click on the "submit" box. ***If using an Xbox controller ensure to use the "Xinput" choice or it will not work properly** The pause menu is Xbox guide button compatible and I highly recommend it. The program is designed to be launched with a quick press of button, so that if you decided to use an Xbox button you can turn off the controller without activating the menu. Once you are happy with your menu keys,  click on save. When you are done with the settings you can close the window.
Start a game with Bigbox or launchbox, let it run for a few seconds (the program needs a few seconds to initialize) and quick press your chosen pause key, the menu should now pop up! Pressing the pause key again, or selecting "Resume" will bring you back to the game.

 

Customization:There are several customization options available, feel free to play around with them. One thing you may find weird is I made all my sizings based on on percent of your screen width and height. This is because I wanted the pause menu to be compatible with any resolution, to look the same no matter which monitor you are using. If the pause menu is not looking right/ any scaling issues you can force a specific resolution on the "Emulator Scaling/DPI Settings" page.
 

Update Log:

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v1.9.8

Added the ability to add up to 20 custom pictures anywhere on any custom profile, or to use some of launchbox's resources if wanted instead. Launch super Pause Menu Settings from launchbox's tools, when the settings program opens choose your emulator of choice, click on "Customize Menu",  you will find Additional Images drop down menu to select an existing or new (blank) image for the profile, then click on the EDIT/ADD/Remove button
Added an alignment calculator to get more precise image alignments in both the main menu, and also in the additional images menu. When launched from the additional images menu it will grab the current profile's background image's width and height, as well as the current custom selected image sizing attributes. You can use this to help make more pixel precise alignment measurements, using the pixel sizing of the background image to convert your custom image measurements into a percentage (so it will look the same on different resolutions). This program is independent of the settings program and you can launch as many as needed.
Cleaner layout on the "Customize menu" options in the settings program.
Updated all my default profiles to include images except for the arcade profile
Changed font for gameboy advance emulator
Re-fixed menu flickering by adding double buffering
Updated the addons .DLL to include more Launchbox/Bigbox images
Tested on launchbox/bigbox 13.14 on windows 11

v1.9.7

Fixed Dinput joystick support, added XY axis input for dinput analog sticks. Added anti-lockup measures to suspended emulators. If the emulator is unable to resume after a suspension, the pause menu will force kill the emulator after 5 seconds. Tweaked the behavior of the pause menu to resume games for better compatibility. Tested in launchbox/BigBox version 11.11.

v1.9.6

Changed the way the menu launches for better compatibility. Re-compiled the .dll, should have fixed issue where the settings program sometimes would not launch from the tools menu of launchbox. Tested in launchbox version 11.11.

v1.9.5

Added multiple monitor support! The pause menu will now detect whichever monitor your emulator is running (if it is the active application) and will automatically open up on that monitor. This came with much more hurdles to overcome with font scaling issues, but I am pleased with the end result.

Added a mute emulator option in the settings program under the "Emulator Settings" page.

The Pause menu is now more bigbox/launchbox aware, when opened with these launchers it will ignore and not latch on to any external running emulators.

Semi-fixed a weird issue where the menu would not launch if the a game was launched twice. I think this is a restriction with of how launchbox handles opening applications before starting a game. Since I am not so saavy with visual basic, I opted for a workaround. The menu will now remain silently open after closing a game. If it detects another launch of the same emulator it will assume it is that same game and reload itself with the same profile, images , layout, etc. From my limited testing so far I have had no issues with the menu not opening anymore. This comes with the added bonus of launching the manual instantly on the second launch.

Added context menu items for the pause menu icon in the notification area. Reload, and Settings.

Added a Launch/reload Pause menu button to the settings program for testing out new layouts/hotkeys.

v1.9.0

Added the ability to simultaneously use the keyboard and joystick to control the menu! The "Menu Keys" menu within the settings program is now separated into two sections. The default joystick mapping is Xinput controller 1, the pause key is the guide button, up and down on the D pad for navigation, A for select and B is for back.

Added a sounds option within Customize Menu to disable/enable navigation sounds, and added a new profile theme for gameboy advance, where it uses the gameboy screen for the save/load screenshots. The background image is not my own creation, just wanted to add something new. I added the new theme to retroarch and visualboy advance emulators.

I think I finally ironed out all the DPI/Scaling issues. Since I have a 4K monitor myself I wanted to make sure it looks the same in 4K as it did in any other resolution. The pause menu should now detect the dpi settings of the monitor of the active window, and adjust accordingly. While testing out I was able to switch resolutions/text scaling on the fly and the menu looked the same after every launch.

v1.8.0

Added a controls menu! When an image exists, a new Controls item will be added to your pause menu. The menu will look for images placed in \LaunchBox\Super pause menu\Images\Controls\[Platform Name]\ or \LaunchBox\Super pause menu\Images\Controls\[Platform Name]\[Game Name]\ . The images can be any filename with a png, gif, jpg, or jpeg extension. If multiple images exist within the same folder, one will be selected at random. This new setting can be disabled within the settings program. I have personally found the best look is to have a transparent background.

I also added a new option to use the Cart/Disk 3D or 2D image to replace the menu title.

v1.7.1

Fixed some clock flickering issues that were really bad with 4k resolutions, changed the Default background to Default.png for better consistency, fixed a window sizing issue at the launch of the menu.

v1.7.0

Added sounds to the menu navigation to give it a little more life. The sounds folder is located in Launchbox/Super pause menu/Sounds/Default. Currently the three sound files are for Back, Move, and select. You can replace these files if you like, or if you prefer to have no sounds you can delete this folder altogether. I plan on adding some settings options for this feature in the future.

v1.6.0

Added animated gif support to backgrounds using activeX IE plugin, requested by Krakerman a while back. Semi-fixed broken platform image title option in "Customize menu -> Replace menu title with image if it exists".  When used it will look for your platforms clear logo image in \LaunchBox\Images\Platforms\[Platform Name]\Clear Logo\[Platform Name].png, jpeg, or jpg.

v1.5 Fixed

Super Pause Menu wasn't working at all in Launchbox 11.9, but was working in the 11.10-2 beta. The new dll in this version works for both versions of Launchbox.

v1.5

Added Customized Menu profile switcher

V1.4

New update, Super Pause Menu V1.4. Changed it so the menu keys are now universal and not on a per emulator basis. Once updated make sure to change your menu keys settings, as they will be set to the default settings. Also, as requested, I added a new game/platform background setting in the "Customize menu" section that is enabled by default.

If this settings is enabled, any platform images, (no matter the filename) placed in the "Launchbox/Super pause menu/Backgrounds/<PLATFORM NAME>/" will randomly be used as the background image. Likewise with game titles placed in the folder "Launchbox/Super pause menu/Backgrounds/<PLATFORM NAME>/<GAME TITLE>". Game title images (if any exists), will take priority over platform image, and platform image will take priority over any other chosen background.
The folder names for the game titles need to not have any special characters (such as ":") and are typically replaced with underscores. To assist the user having try and type out and convert the folder names themselves, a new folder is created for both the platform and game title every time the pause menu is launched, as long as the emulator is enabled in the pause menu settings.

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Older versions:

V1.50 and newer can be found on the new download page:

https://forums.launchbox-app.com/files/file/2842-super-pause-menu/

Super pause menu V1.4.zip

Super pause menu V1.3.zip

Even older versions here:

https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/48306-chadmandos-super-pause-menu-for-windows-update-v10-released/

 

 

Edited June 7 by Chadmando
Update! v1.9.8

[Chadmando]

Bump, I made some last minute changes to V1 and found some issues with startup screens. I am updating this to version 1.2... and now up to 1.3 sorry, I think that should be the last update for a while now.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Chadmando

[Kondorito]

States with image previews and saved date? Oh yes! I need to try this tomorrow!

Thank you @Chadmando for sharing! Looks awesome.

[Chadmando]

31 minutes ago, Kondorito said:

States with image previews and saved date? Oh yes! I need to try this tomorrow!

Thank you @Chadmando for sharing! Looks awesome.

Thanks, let me know how it works for you. I'm going to focus on allowing multiple navigation input devices next, it's been driving a little crazy with my multiple controller setup.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Chadmando

[Krakerman]

Is it possible for each system/game to have it's own custom pause background?

So under the Super pause menu\Backgrounds folder could be organized like Atari 2600\Adventure-01 ect ect.. and so we could create our own backgrounds for each game ... for each system.

Edited May 28, 2020 by Krakerman

[Chadmando]

On 5/28/2020 at 2:10 PM, Krakerman said:

Is it possible for each system/game to have it's own custom pause background?

So under the Super pause menu\Backgrounds folder could be organized like Atari 2600\Adventure-01 ect ect.. and so we could create our own backgrounds for each game ... for each system.

Been PMing with Krakerman, but just to put it out there, I'll add this into my next update since it is fairly easy to do, and in the future I'll add options to the settings program to manage themes and backgrounds.

Edited May 30, 2020 by Chadmando

[Chadmando]

Bump for my new update!

[Cypher]

Visible save and load slots? I gotta test this out!

[ALIE]

@Chadmando decided too finally play around with this now that i have the time. but in setting it up i ran into a problem when i do step (open LB tool super pause it says "can not find settings exe"

[Chadmando]

I just downloaded the latest version of launchbox (haven't used it in a while) and I got the same error. @jayjay made the dll for me that links to the settings file, I'll check with him to see if he can maybe help!

EDIT: Ok Alie, I got a quick fix for now, I hope all the features still work properly... move the /Launchbox/Super pause menu/ folder to Launchbox/Core/Super pause menu

Edited September 26, 2020 by Chadmando

[ALIE]

On 9/26/2020 at 9:48 PM, Chadmando said:

I just downloaded the latest version of launchbox (haven't used it in a while) and I got the same error. @jayjay made the dll for me that links to the settings file, I'll check with him to see if he can maybe help!

EDIT: Ok Alie, I got a quick fix for now, I hope all the features still work properly... move the /Launchbox/Super pause menu/ folder to Launchbox/Core/Super pause menu

yes out doing any configuration the RetroArch systems pause out issue..  Thanks now to set it up in detail ✌️

[Chadmando]

You're welcome, you'll probably need to use a direct3D video plugin with fullscreen windowed mode for retroarch.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Chadmando

[ALIE]

one question is it possible for every system to have a background image fitting the console when using RetroArch. edit - in the backgrounds folder i see you have images whitch i assume is for just that but with playstation using RetroArch it just loads the default...

 

Edit - Got it working i saw that each system got a folder once a game was loaded and each game loaded got its own folder within  that folder. didn't realize until now that the platform images had to be put in the system folder.

Edited September 28, 2020 by ALIE

[Chadmando]

4 hours ago, ALIE said:

Got it working i saw that each system got a folder once a game was loaded and each game loaded got its own folder within  that folder. didn't realize until now that the platform images had to be put in the system folder

Yep you got it. I didn't initially design this with multi system emulators in mind. The next update will have a profile switcher which will allow emulators to share the same platform specific menu customizations, and each platform can be customized entirely different from eachother (the ideal solution for mutli platform emus like retroarch). I stopped working on it for a while because it was taking so much of my free time, but I will try to get back to it and finish it off sometime before the end of the year.

Edited September 29, 2020 by Chadmando

[Fredator]

When I go to "tools" and "Super Pause Menu Settings" i have the prompt "cannot find settings.exe". Anyway I can launch settings.exe by clicking it but once I configured it with the right emulator path, the pause menu doesn't show up with shift. It doesn't show up at all.

Edited December 22, 2020 by Fredator

[Chadmando]

On 12/22/2020 at 8:12 AM, Fredator said:

When I go to "tools" and "Super Pause Menu Settings" i have the prompt "cannot find settings.exe". Anyway I can launch settings.exe by clicking it but once I configured it with the right emulator path, the pause menu doesn't show up with shift. It doesn't show up at all.

Hello, please try out my latest update! Be sure to delete the old .dll in the plugins folder and delete the old Super pause menu folder. The old version doesn't seem to work at all with launchbox's recent updates. I tested this new one with launchbox version 11.10 beta 2, and it worked for me.

[bcpenney]

Version 1.5 does not show up in the Tools menu for LaunchBox 11.9. It does work on LB 11.10 beta 2 though. Just bringing that to your attention in case you're unaware. I don't generally use the betas.

[Chadmando]

59 minutes ago, bcpenney said:

Version 1.5 does not show up in the Tools menu for LaunchBox 11.9. It does work on LB 11.10 beta 2 though. Just bringing that to your attention in case you're unaware. I don't generally use the betas.

Oh damn, I didn't know. Thank you. I'll check into it, I might wait to see what happens with the next version of LB.

[Chadmando]

21 hours ago, bcpenney said:

Version 1.5 does not show up in the Tools menu for LaunchBox 11.9. It does work on LB 11.10 beta 2 though. Just bringing that to your attention in case you're unaware. I don't generally use the betas.

Ok I think I fixed it, I got it to work with version 11.9 on a virtual machine. Uploaded a new version V1.5 FIXED, the download link is at the top of the page. Thanks again!

Edited February 28, 2021 by Chadmando

[bcpenney]

5 minutes ago, Chadmando said:

Ok I think I fixed it, I got it to work with version 11.9 on a virtual machine. Uploaded a new version V1.5 FIXED, the download link is at the top of the page. Thanks again!

Yep, that did the trick, thanks.