Copying "Hybrid" Install?

[Squeeth]

Hey everyone, somewhat new to Launchbox here (have used and tinkered a little on a friends setup) and I'm hoping that the question I'm about to ask isn't too "noobish" lol ?

So I recently setup a "hybrid" install of Launchbox on my home desktop, and was looking to see if my ideology on making this work on my laptop makes sense. What I mean by "hybrid" install is that I have Launchbox itself installed on a local disk in my desktop (C:) and then have all of my ROMS and emulators living on a mapped network drive (X:) that lives on my Unraid server at home. I do have everything setup on my home firewall to VPN in from my laptop and have my network drives mapped on my laptop so if I'm way from home, my network share drives are accessible from my laptop.

I've done some reading around and I have seen an overwhelming amount of people say that installing all emulators and ROMS to the Launchbox folder is best practice since it essentially makes it 100% portable, as Launchbox has everything contained in its own folder and it knows where to go for everything needed. So my question is that (in theory) I should be able to copy my Launchbox folder from my home desktop C drive to my laptop C drive, ensure that the X drive where all my emulators and ROMS reside is mapped and accessible as X on my laptop, and everything should work as it does on my desktop, without needing to reconfigure much...if anything?

Additionally another thought I had was that once I get everything configured properly... could I copy my locally configured Launchbox folder to my mapped drive so someone who comes over may copy that Launchbox folder to their laptop or PC, and essentially have it be "plug n' play"?

Thank you in advance for any help that can be given!   ?  

 

I'll answer a few questions now just in case they may get asked in replies, just to save a bit of everyone's time

Q: Why not put everything in the Launchbox folder locally?
A: I am planning on backing up a lot of my XBOX, PS2, PS3, XBOX 360, etc. games and those will take up a lot of space that I don't have available on my desktop locally. I also just wanted a mapped drive dedicated to my library (500GB+ and counting) to keep everything organized with parity protection. I also read a bit before setting it up this way that said mapped network drives weren't an issue for ROMS, so I'm just looking to get a definite answer to my specific config/intentions to make sure I'm not thinking crazy lol. Additionally I figured with this config, it'd make it possible to provide anyone who comes over with the ability to just essentially "plug in and play", which I thought would be neat

Q: How do you currently have it configured in Launchbox, and is it completely setup?
A: Nothing was moved after installing Launchbox and all of the ROMS and emulators were in place on my mapped drive before touching Launchbox, just to ensure that Launchbox would have no confusion. As for being completely setup, no. I have it up and running testing Project64 and confirmed working very well, but have not yet tested my NES, SNES, Genesis, GB, GBC, or GBA emulation. I do think though in theory that once I do the initial config of each emulator though, that everything should run as well as Project64...*fingers crossed*

Q: Are you trying to move it now?
A: No, and don't plan to until I have everything properly setup and configured on my desktop. Once I have my library completely copied to the network share and have Launchbox running everything properly on my desktop, that is when I plan to copy the Launchbox folder to my laptop.

Any other questions, please ask! I'm having a TON of fun setting this up and learning how it all does (or maybe doesn't) work, so any knowledge or insight to my configuration is greatly appreciated.
Thanks again!

[dmaker]

This should work if your X drive mapping is present. 

Adding a VPN to the mix will produce some latency, however. Whether or not it will be too much, I cannot say. I've never tried Launchbox with anything but locally stored ROMS. But, yes, in theory, this should work fine. 

 

[Squeeth]

48 minutes ago, dmaker said:

This should work if your X drive mapping is present. 

Adding a VPN to the mix will produce some latency, however. Whether or not it will be too much, I cannot say. I've never tried Launchbox with anything but locally stored ROMS. But, yes, in theory, this should work fine. 

 

Didn't even think about the latency with the VPN...very good point to consider! I guess I'll just have to wait until everything is fully setup to test it out.

Thanks for the reply! :)

[dmaker]

A good question would be if Launchbox pulls the whole rom from the location for use when playing it, or does it continuously access it during play. If it pulls the whole rom before playing, then you may see a short delay while launching a game, but then fine after that. Bear in mind this would be minimal for 8bit or 16 bit games, but if you try to pull an entire PS2 iso or something, that could take some time. 

Can't really say, as I don't know exactly how Launchbox accesses the rom file during play.

There may be others here who play directly from cloud type services such as Good Drive, OneDrive, etc.  Your experience should be pretty similar to something like that. 

 

This Reddit thread seems to discuss using Launchbox with cloud drives. There may be useful information in it that's applicable to your intentions:

Hmmm, actually after skimming through that thread a bit it seems to mostly focus on the legality, policy considerations when using commercial cloud drives, less on any latency concerns. With your vpn based solution where you host the roms on your own server in your home, then those policy concerns are moot. 

 

 

Edited June 24, 2021 by dmaker

[neil9000]

21 minutes ago, dmaker said:

Can't really say, as I don't know exactly how Launchbox accesses the rom file during play.

Launchbox doesnt at all, but of course the emulator itself will.

[dmaker]

Right, that makes sense. When I say Launchbox, in my head I mean whatever is involved in the whole process without separating things between front end and emulator. But yes, it would be whatever emulator in use that pulls the rom.

[Squeeth]

Now I'm sure I could probably find the answer with a quick Google search but with one of the posts I read in the forums here regarding emulating from a network drive, people were saying that loading ROMS from network is fine but loading Launchbox is not. I kind of assumed that's because Launchbox has numerous files to access during operation where the ROM itself is essentially "loaded" and "read" once and then good from there. So I guess I'm curious if the ROM file is continuously accessed during play or if it gets loaded into the emulator, and then that's about it?

If that's the case the case then I might end up migrating the emulators to the local Launchbox folder and point Launchbox into that, as now that I've read these replies I'm starting to kind of have the "ohhhh duhhh" moment of realizing that the emulators themselves are probably continuously accessed during emulation.

[dmaker]

In this thread, one person mentions that using cloud drives caused some corruption in rom files. Something to bear in mind for your proposed setup as well.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/launchbox/comments/he7m1l/portable_setup/

[dmaker]

In your case, though, you are not proposing running Launchbox remotely, just the roms. I think? 

[neil9000]

3 minutes ago, Squeeth said:

people were saying that loading ROMS from network is fine but loading Launchbox is not. I kind of assumed that's because Launchbox has numerous files to access during operation where the ROM itself is essentially "loaded" and "read" once and then good from there.

Correct.

 

3 minutes ago, Squeeth said:

So I guess I'm curious if the ROM file is continuously accessed during play or if it gets loaded into the emulator, and then that's about it?

Depends on the emulator, cart systems are fully loaded, disc systems can usually be "Pre-cached" into ram, or read on the fly.

3 minutes ago, Squeeth said:

If that's the case the case then I might end up migrating the emulators to the local Launchbox folder and point Launchbox into that,

Yes, that would be the recommended way, pull the files from the network but keep everything else local.

[Squeeth]

9 minutes ago, dmaker said:

In your case, though, you are not proposing running Launchbox remotely, just the roms. I think? 

Correct. After your guys input here I think I'm going to be hosting the ROMS and ISO's remotely on my network and the emulators locally. The only thing I'd host remotely as far as software goes is going to be the Launchbox folder itself to allow the portable deployment to systems local disks if they want to use Launchbox at my house. Copy the fully configured Launchbox folder to their system that I'll put on the network once I'm completely done configuring it, and then hopefully have it working like that.

Edit: And ensure they have the correct network share mapped properly  
 

 

7 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Correct.

 

Depends on the emulator, cart systems are fully loaded, disc systems can usually be "Pre-cached" into ram, are read on the fly.

Yes, that would be the recommended way, pull the files from the network but keep everything else local.

Awesome, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and verifying that I'm not thinking crazy  Glad to know that even though I'm a total noob to all of this, I've read and understood enough to come up with a seemingly workable solution for my crazy ideas ?

Edited June 24, 2021 by Squeeth