How can I launch a game directly from within Launchbox (not the emulator then the game)?

[vince16]

Hi everyone,

I've been encountering a problem with some emulators (namely Supermodel for Sega Model 3 games, MesenDeWin for NES games, and Demul for Naomi 2 games), and my problem is that when I launch these emulators, Launchbox doesn't launch the game but simply starts the emulator, I then have to select the game I wanna play, which is cumbersome and not practical at all, esp. in Demul where I have to squint to see which one of those tiny lines has the game I want.

In Mesen it's worse, I have to double-click on the screen with the mouse to enable full screen, and I can't even quit the game by pressing escape, it pauses the game, so I have to double-click with the mouse again to enable windowed then press escape.

I have no solution for this at all, so if anyone has one, I'd be glad to hear it.

[JoeViking245]

How do you have them currently setup in LaunchBox?

In LB go to >Tools>Manage Emulators and edit your <emulator_in_question>. Post the following pict:
1. Pic of the Details tab.
 

Then Right Click and Edit a game that uses the emulator_in_question. Post the following pics:
1. Pic of the Launching page.
2. Pic of the Emulation page.

This will help us to see where something might be wrong in your setup.  (nothing personal. just need a little more detail.)

[Headrush69]

Sounds like all standalone emulators. Have you added any command line parameters for these emulators?

[vince16]

2 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

How do you have them currently setup in LaunchBox?

In LB go to >Tools>Manage Emulators and edit your <emulator_in_question>. Post the following pict:
1. Pic of the Details tab.
 

Then Right Click and Edit a game that uses the emulator_in_question. Post the following pics:
1. Pic of the Launching page.
2. Pic of the Emulation page.

This will help us to see where something might be wrong in your setup.  (nothing personal. just need a little more detail.)

Hope this answers your query

@ Headrush69 yes, these are standalone emulators. Some emulators, for whatever reason, work fine as standalone on my PC, but their equivalent in RetroArch don't, like Mesen or Dolphin.

No, I haven't added any command line parameters, as you can probably see on these pics.

[Your Friendly A.I Overlord]

In Demul > Config > Plugins and Paths > Roms and Bioses Paths, add the paths to your (Naomi 2) roms and bioses.

Then in LaunchBox add the command-line parameters: -run=naomi -rom=

and tick all three checkboxes beneath.

For Model 3 point to supermodel.exe as the emulator.

[vince16]

Thank you for your help Koroth.

So, I decided to tackle one thing at a time and tried to resolve the Supermodel problem first (the easier stuff first, that's so unlike me, lol), aaand... it works. More or less. I now get this error message when launching some versions of some games. I never got these before.

I know I probably shouldn't have a folder for my Model 3 roms aside from my MAME roms folder, but this is how I made it initially, and I dare not touch it again since a few days ago when I tried to change the path of some of these roms to point the emulator to the ones found in my MAME folder so I could get rid of that Supermodel roms' folder that's eating (a bit of) HDD space for nothing, Windows firewall woke up and gave me hell. Seriously I had to fight it like it was some skynet minion, it had decided to remove supermodel.exe on the account that it was supposedly dangerous and would not let me reinstall it. Stuff of a freakin' nightmare.

Anyway, all these Model 3 roms used to work fine before, regardless of the fact they're in a different folder than MAME roms' folder, so I wonder why I get this all of a sudden. Mind you, I don't have all Model 3 roms in that separate folder, maybe it has something to do with it, but it was this way before when using the UI.exe and I never ran into this problem.

 

Any suggestion?

Edited August 30, 2021 by vince16

[Lordmonkus]

That's rom error, you aren't using the correct rom that the emulator expects.

[vince16]

5 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

That's rom error, you aren't using the correct rom that the emulator expects.

Funny that... what did the emulator expect?

Right now I tried to change the path for Emergency Call Ambulance (Japan) which had stopped working ever since I did as Skoroth said, it was pointing to the rom found in MAME's folder and I changed it to the very same rom found in the Supermodel roms' folder, and it works again... Go figure.

[Lordmonkus]

When it comes to arcade emulation you typically need to match the roms to the emulator version and when you use a mismatched set and emulator you get those kinds of messages. It even says so in the error message where it says it's looking for a specific file with a specific crc 32 (which is like an ID number) but it's not finding it.

[Your Friendly A.I Overlord]

You can download the latest version of Supermodel from the Supermodel forum https://www.supermodel3.com/Forum/ (You need to register first.)

4 hours ago, vince16 said:

Funny that... what did the emulator expect?

I will start with your second error:

It is like Lordmonkus explains, because you have rom versions that are not matched to your emulator version. Generally speaking you want recent roms with a recent version of Supermodel.

Your first error:

In Supermodel\Config\Games.xml there is a list with which roms each game .zip must contain. Supermodel checks the game upon starting, including a crc check. Some games need some extra roms not found in the Mame sets. (Needed for force feedback.)  Emergency Call Ambulance and Dirt Devils want epr-19338a.bin found in scud.zip. You can unzip those games and copy epr-19338a.bin from the scud folder to the eca and dirtdvls folder. Then rezip the roms in the eca and dirtdvls folders to eca.zip and dirtdvls.zip. Le Mans 24 needs epr-18261.ic9 found in the Model 2 game Sega Touring Car Championship (stcc.zip). 

[vince16]

7 hours ago, Koroth said:

You can download the latest version of Supermodel from the Supermodel forum https://www.supermodel3.com/Forum/ (You need to register first.)

I will start with your second error:

It is like Lordmonkus explains, because you have rom versions that are not matched to your emulator version. Generally speaking you want recent roms with a recent version of Supermodel.

Your first error:

In Supermodel\Config\Games.xml there is a list with which roms each game .zip must contain. Supermodel checks the game upon starting, including a crc check. Some games need some extra roms not found in the Mame sets. (Needed for force feedback.)  Emergency Call Ambulance and Dirt Devils want epr-19338a.bin found in scud.zip. You can unzip those games and copy epr-19338a.bin from the scud folder to the eca and dirtdvls folder. Then rezip the roms in the eca and dirtdvls folders to eca.zip and dirtdvls.zip. Le Mans 24 needs epr-18261.ic9 found in the Model 2 game Sega Touring Car Championship (stcc.zip). 

All right, I get that, but what I don't get is why the very same roms, when their path points to my MAME roms' folder, stop working when, when their path points to the Supermodel roms' folder I had created, they work fine. Right now I just tried again to change the path to the MAME roms' folder and it stopped working again...Gosh, I'll just leave it pointed to the Supermodel roms' folder. It's only what, 1,75GB after all.

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, vince16 said:

when their path points to my MAME roms' folder, stop working

[ONLY if you want to dig into it more]

Looking at srally2pa (using your error image above).  In your Supermodel/roms folder, you have

segabill.zip
srally2.zip
srally2pa.zip

Are all 3 of those files in your mameui/roms folder too?

Look in both of those roms folders again, do they also both have "srally2p.zip"?

If you answered yes to both questions, then dang. lol  But if so, you could try copying (not 'moving') those 4 files from your Supermodel/ROMs folder to your MAMEUI/Roms folder (backup the existing 4 files in MAMEUI/Roms 1st. At your discretion) and then try launching srally2pe.zip (and srally2p.zip and srally2.zip for that matter) from the MAMEUI/Rroms folder again.  And if they still won't run from there, then I guess go back to:

2 hours ago, vince16 said:

I'll just leave it pointed to the Supermodel roms' folder

[side note regarding Sega Rally 2] Unless you're someone who "has to have them all" (and that's OK) srally2p and srally2pa are merely the prototypes for srally2.  Do they run/look different? Possibly.  Do they run better [than srally2]? Probably not.  So if you don't "have to have them" [the prototypes], you could shave off a whopping 114MB from you 1.75GB by removing srally2p.zip and srally2pa.zip.    "Sega Rally 2 (Export)"  [aka srally2.zip] only needs segabill.zip and srally2.zip to run.

[vince16]

49 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

[ONLY if you want to dig into it more]

Looking at srally2pa (using your error image above).  In your Supermodel/roms folder, you have

segabill.zip
srally2.zip
srally2pa.zip

Are all 3 of those files in your mameui/roms folder too?

Look in both of those roms folders again, do they also both have "srally2p.zip"?

If you answered yes to both questions, then dang. lol  But if so, you could try copying (not 'moving') those 4 files from your Supermodel/ROMs folder to your MAMEUI/Roms folder (backup the existing 4 files in MAMEUI/Roms 1st. At your discretion) and then try launching srally2pe.zip (and srally2p.zip and srally2.zip for that matter) from the MAMEUI/Rroms folder again.  And if they still won't run from there, then I guess go back to:

[side note regarding Sega Rally 2] Unless you're someone who "has to have them all" (and that's OK) srally2p and srally2pa are merely the prototypes for srally2.  Do they run/look different? Possibly.  Do they run better [than srally2]? Probably not.  So if you don't "have to have them" [the prototypes], you could shave off a whopping 114MB from you 1.75GB by removing srally2p.zip and srally2pa.zip.    "Sega Rally 2 (Export)"  [aka srally2.zip] only needs segabill.zip and srally2.zip to run.

I'm just gonna let that alone for the time being before I have a nervous breakdown, lol. For the most part It's working again the way it is with the path pointing to the Supermodel roms' folder, let's just leave it at that. But I do think Launchbox should be able to tell more MAME roms apart when we import our MAME set the first time, so I wouldn't have had to create a separate folder for Sega Model 3 games, Naomi games, Atomiswave games, etc. and import those games one by freakin' one. What a chore it was. And I'm not entirely done with it at that.

Sega Rally 2 runs OK (some versions at least), but the cars have no sound, or something like a slight vacuum cleaner sound. Is it the same with you? I thought I'd just resort to playing the Dreamcast version but it runs way worse with Flycast (either standalone or in Retroarch), and I can't get Demul to run it...

Speaking of Demul, let's see if I can get it to start the games from within Launchbox as Koroth said...

 

Edit: [side note regarding Sega Rally 2] Unless you're someone who "has to have them all" (and that's OK)

Well, I kinda have to now. The first time I imported my MAME full set in Launchbox, I had something like 4000-ish roms, a farcry from the 37571 roms found in my MAME folder. Now I know a good 2/3rd of those MAME roms are deemed "not working" (or "preliminary" as it is put in LB), but still, I was surprised, not to say shocked by the number of roms that had been left behind by LB.  It proved to be a real problem when I tried to play some games that, for whatever reason, started just fine in MAME but didn't start at all from Launchbox, I didn't have any other version to run. So this summer I deleted it all, and re-imported my MAME full set, except this time I didn't tick any box during the importing process: all the roms, all the mahjong games (otherwise it's not even possible to have a full neo geo set, for example), all the slot machines (don't know how many of those are actually playable, though), all the non-working games, all the mature games (no change for that one though, haha  )...

To my surprise, it was not 35751 roms Launchbox imported, but something like 44000-ish roms. Go figure.

I probably should have let LB import them the way it was suggested, i.e. clones as additional versions, but I didn't know if there would be an easy way to select which version of the game I would like to play in LB, so I imported all the clones as separate games. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by vince16

[JoeViking245]

58 minutes ago, vince16 said:

I do think Launchbox should be able to tell more MAME roms apart when we import our MAME set

The 'issue' here is that LaunchBox relies on MAME ("mame.exe -listxml" [or something like that]) to get which games are "playable".  Per MAME, using mame.exe, Sega Model 3 machines (games) are unplayable and are 'tagged' as such.  

An interim workaround to importing MAME's Sega M3, Naomi and such is to use a plugin a community member created.  This way you can do your full import while leaving all (but one ) of the check boxes checked. Then using the plugin, import the machines that don't work in MAME, but do in another emulator.  Here's some discussion about the plugin from just the other day.

1 hour ago, vince16 said:

Sega Rally 2

I personally don't know if it's supposed to have car sounds or not.  All I here is music and the dude telling me what kind of turn is coming up.  Honestly, your best option is look through the Supermodel3 forums.  Tons of good information about Supermodel3 itself and about the machines it can run and what's needed to run them, if anything. (i.e. what Koroth was talking about for Emergency Call Ambulance and Dirt Devils)

[Your Friendly A.I Overlord]

4 hours ago, vince16 said:

Sega Rally 2 runs OK (some versions at least), but the cars have no sound, or something like a slight vacuum cleaner sound.

Update to the latest version of Supermodel. Newer versions of emulators tend to have more bugfixes. To fix the graphical glitches in Sega Rally 2, in Supermodel.ini put:

[srally2]
PowerPCFrequency=100

Where the name of the rom goes between the square brackets.

BTW. I only import the parent version of games into LaunchBox. For me having every version of a game only clutters BigBox / LaunchBox while I never play them. (I make an exception if there are some major differences. For example Scud Race / Scud Race Plus.)

[vince16]

Thank you for your help (again). I'll try that.

I understand your point of view on the matter, I have to admit that it doesn't look too cool to have a gazillion different versions for one game, but I finally managed to enable scanlines and bezels in MAME this summer, and I thought it would be better to have access to different versions of a game. For example I have Street Fighter II in widescreen without scanlines, or Street Fighter II with a nice realistic bezel and scanlines, some neo geo games with this bezel (with Art of Fighting), but the game screen needs resizing quite a bit to fit this bezel, and I can't be doing that all the time when I also have this bezel for all my NEO GEO games (with the blank screen), etc.

And I didn't know (as a matter of fact still don't know) if it's possible to easily switch between the different versions of a game in Launchbox, or how it's done if possible, so yep, I just imported everything as different games. This way I'm almost sure not to miss out on anything

Edited August 30, 2021 by vince16

[vince16]

On 8/29/2021 at 11:46 PM, Koroth said:

In Demul > Config > Plugins and Paths > Roms and Bioses Paths, add the paths to your (Naomi 2) roms and bioses.

Then in LaunchBox add the command-line parameters: -run=naomi -rom=

and tick all three checkboxes beneath.

For Model 3 point to supermodel.exe as the emulator.

Thanks for your help with that too Koroth, it worked!

Demul stays there for a little while, and I get the message "Demul doesn't respond" or w/e, but in the end it works.

Turns out it was a lot easier to resolve this problem than the one with Model3 games, after all. But I certainly wouldn't have found the solution by myself.

How the hell did you come up with that "-run=naomi -run=" stuff??? lol

Say, since you seem to be so savvy with that emulator, you wouldn't happen to know the reason of that horrible distorted sound I (and many other people on the internet, apparently) get with Demul nowadays, by any chance? Some people say it's due to a lack of power of the PC used, but over 10 years ago I was using Demul (albeit with my DualShock 3, not 4), without any sound problem, and that PC was a lot less capable than the one I'm currently using for my emulation endeavors, so I very much doubt that's the reason. 

 

 

Edited August 31, 2021 by vince16

[Your Friendly A.I Overlord]

1 hour ago, vince16 said:

Demul stays there for a little while, and I get the message "Demul doesn't respond" or w/e, but in the end it works.

It could be because the first time an arcade games starts, the emulators creates a "nvram" files. Basically a file with the arcade boards bios / service menu settings. But anyway, you can hide that by using the LaunchBox startup screens.

1 hour ago, vince16 said:

How the hell did you come up with that "-run=naomi -run=" stuff??? lol

Not only is it mentioned quite a lot on this forum, but other forums as well. But if you want to know what command-line parameters an emulator supports, open a command prompt and go to the emulators folder. In the case of Demul type: demul -h (or demul -help) and Demul lists which command-line parameters it supports.

1 hour ago, vince16 said:

Say, since you seem to be so savvy with that emulator, you wouldn't happen to know the reason of that horrible distorted sound I (and many other people on the internet, apparently) get with Demul nowadays, by any chance? Some people say it's due to a lack of power of the PC used, but over 10 years ago I was using Demul (albeit with my DualShock 3, not 4), without any sound problem, and that PC was a lot less capable than the one I'm currently using for my emulation endeavors, so I very much doubt that's the reason. 

I don't have any issues with Demuls sound. But I would start by verifying that Demul indeed runs at 60 fps (or 60 hz). In Arcade / Consoles systems sound is quite often linked to the game's framerate. So if the emulator does not reach the game's framerate it can sound garbled. This not necessarily has to be because your pc is not fast enough, but there could be a slew of other causes.

- First the emulator configuration. Demul has 2 graphics plugins. gpuDX11 and gpuDX11old. I use the first one. Also there is a video setting called "Max Layers" . I have it set to 64, but having it on 128 can be demanding.

- Then you have the Windows power management settings.

- But maybe more important are the power settings in your graphics card control panel. In my case the Nvidia control panel > Manage 3D Settings > Program Settings > Demul.  The Nvidia default nowadays is "Optimal Power" but in fact is quite aggressive in forcing graphics cards in their lowest clock state. Which is fine for browsing but for gaming "Adaptive" is better. (Sometimes even "Prefer Maximum Performance".)

- And lastly, Demul hasn't been updated in over three years. Since Demul is a closed source emulator and seemingly not being developed anymore, I consider Demul a dead emulator. For Dreamcast, Naomi and Atomiswave I use the RetroArch Flycast core and only use Demul for systems that have no other emulator.