Daniel15 Posted June 6, 2021 Share Posted June 6, 2021 Hi! I have a Nintendo 64 where each game is archived as a .7z file, and all the alternate versions (eg. regions, updated revisions, ROM hacks, etc) are all bundled into a single .7z file. I added my N64 ROMs to LaunchBox and configured Project64, but when I select a game, it just starts playing some random file from the .7z (like a random ROM hack) rather than prompting for which file to use. Is it possible to display all the variants in LaunchBox itself, similar to what it does for MAME games? Or do I need to figure out how to do that with Project64? I could extract the 'main' game from each archive and have a directory just with those, but that'll take me a while to do. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted June 6, 2021 Share Posted June 6, 2021 12 minutes ago, Daniel15 said: Is it possible to display all the variants in LaunchBox itself, similar to what it does for MAME games? Or do I need to figure out how to do that with Project64? Not from within a archive no. If the games were just separate .n64 or .z64 files then games with the same name would be combined into one entry in Launchbox and the right click menu would allow you to choose the file to load. To be honest having multiple roms inside of one archive like that is a bad way to do things and will cause you issues. I'd just unzip everything personally, but then i wouldndt have hacks and the like to start with, but thats just me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel15 Posted June 6, 2021 Author Share Posted June 6, 2021 (edited) 7 minutes ago, neil9000 said: To be honest having multiple roms inside of one archive like that is a bad way to do things and will cause you issues I don't disagree with you, but this is very common for "full" ROM sets that include every known version / hack, as the compression works very well given most of the ROMs will largely be the same (so having every version of a ROM doesn't take up much more space than just having one version). eg my Super Mario 64.7z has a bunch of files in it but it's only 10 MB. I have quite a few complete ROM sets that are full of files like this. In any case, I think I'll just unzip the ROMs I care about. Thanks for the reply Edited June 6, 2021 by Daniel15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted June 6, 2021 Share Posted June 6, 2021 Just now, Daniel15 said: but this is very common for "full" ROM sets that include every known version / hack, Not the "good" romsets. The term "goodset" is a oxymoron its not good at all. "No Intro" romsets is what you ideally want, they are just the best known dumps of the games, no hacks, no crack group intros, just pure working roms and one of each. You are of course free to use any roms you want, but if they come in ways that are not useful for a frontend then you will have to work around those restrictions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Your Friendly A.I Overlord Posted June 6, 2021 Share Posted June 6, 2021 Someone created a plugin that can extract archives and then loads a preferred rom. I haven't used it myself, but I think it does what you want. https://forums.launchbox-app.com/files/file/234-archive-cache-manager/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted June 6, 2021 Share Posted June 6, 2021 I believe that is to specify file types and not specific file names, but i could be wrong, i often am. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Your Friendly A.I Overlord Posted June 6, 2021 Share Posted June 6, 2021 1 minute ago, neil9000 said: I believe that is to specify file types and not specific file names, but i could be wrong, i often am. As I haven't used it myself, I am also not sure. Then @Daniel15 has to do some testing to find out I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted June 6, 2021 Share Posted June 6, 2021 Just now, Koroth said: As I haven't used it myself, I am also not sure. Then @Daniel15 has to do some testing to find out I guess. Yeah i havent used it either, no need as my roms are all unarchived. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel15 Posted June 6, 2021 Author Share Posted June 6, 2021 14 minutes ago, neil9000 said: just pure working roms and one of each. Which one though? American, European or Japanese version? Original release or a later patched version? That's why having a full set is sometimes useful, since you have all versions. I downloaded some of these ROM sets (like NES) literally 15 years ago so it's possible everyone has switched to using these "no intro" sets since then, but back then the full good sets were very popular. 9 minutes ago, Koroth said: Someone created a plugin that can extract archives and then loads a preferred rom. Based on the description under "Selecting and Playing Individual ROMs From an Archive", this sounds like it'll be very useful for me! I'll try it out when I get some free time. Thanks for the link! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 1 hour ago, Daniel15 said: Which one though? American, European or Japanese version? Usually it prioritizes the US roms and fills in with European and Japan regional roms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniel15 Posted June 7, 2021 Author Share Posted June 7, 2021 I just tried the plugin mentioned by @Koroth and it works perfectly for this use case. Thanks! I think eventually I'll write a script that goes through all my .7z archives and extracts the "best" version, then just use those extracted ROMs instead. But for now, this works well for me. Thanks for the quick responses. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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