Merge Platforms but keep original RA cores

[ejay81]

Hello,

I'm new to Launchbox and so far everything has been coming along fairly well.   My OCD is kicking in now though and really want to clean up one minor issues I have.   Within my Arcade section I have "Arcade and MAME".  Arcade is my FBNEO roms and MAME is my MAME2003 roms.   Beign they are all arcade games is there a way to merge the MAME roms into the arcade platform without changing the RA core from mame to fbneo?   I know you can move them and do this by a game by game basis but that would be very painful.   I tested one game and changed its platform from mame to arcade, it did move it to the folder but didn't boot as expected since the core changed and wasn't compatible with the rom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ejay81]

Screenshot of what I'm referring to. Want just "ARCADE" that includes both MAME and Arcade (FBNEO) roms.  The main Arcade category seems to have been created due to both FBNEO and MAME games being scrpped as "arcade" category.  I want this just not a breakout of each rom folder/platform.  I could see this becoming an issue with any large rom folder that requires various differenet cores to be used.  With having a platform tied to a single RA core the only way I've figured out how to overcome this is by creating multiple platforms as scene above.   That bring this issue where you have more or less emulators as platforms which isn't ideal.

Edited January 11, 2022 by ejay81

[neil9000]

Why do you have two old and non official romsets in the first place? All games in those two sets are in the normal mame romset, so you are already complicating matters somewhat. Just get the latest mame romset and matching emulator version or retroarch core and save yourself the hassle of managing two old, and unofficial romsets.

As for your actual question, i think the only way to do that from where you currently are is with a playlist, so you would still have the original platforms as well. The only other way is to delete and re-import both sets to the same platform, but specifying different emulators in the import wizard. Seriously though, just get the latest mame romset and save yourself some headaches.

[ejay81]

Appreciate the response, but then would have to find or update the romset.  I also really have all the arcade games filtered out to the ones that are worth playing.  I deleted the mame folder and system and tried to add it back in under the arcade platform, and chose retroarch for emulator.  I don't see anyway to change the core its using in the wizard, you can edit retroarch and put the mame2003.dll path in the command line field but then it uses that core for all arcade games again.  I guess this isn't possible, but a shame.  Really managing just two sets of roms isn't that big of a deal when they are broke out into two working emulators.  Take mame out of the picture how do you suggest folks manage this when brining in N64 or other various platforms.  There are always cores that work better with specific games and would require the same approach.

Now if I add Arcade as another platform in the emulator settings, I can then use a different core (mame2003).  Then move all those games into the arcade folder.  Problem is each time i run a mame2003 rom I will need to right click and then choose launch with mame2003 core as FBNEO is the default for arcade.  Is this really the only way to accomplish this?  

Edited January 11, 2022 by ejay81

[C-Beats]

Just create two emulator entries a "RetroArch" and a "RetroArch (Alternate Cores)" and then point each set to the other emulator. In your case first one would point to FBNeo and the second to Mame2003. When doing this both emulator records can point to the same application path as well. You don't need two separate RetroArch installs.

[ejay81]

Ok I got that setup thank you, that is a good workaround.  Now those games wont launch though, nothing happens when i select play even though it launched fine directly in RA.

[C-Beats]

1 minute ago, ejay81 said:

Ok I got that setup thank you, that is a good workaround.  Now those games wont launch though, nothing happens when i select play even though it launched fine directly in RA.

Make sure you updated the games to the correct emulator.

[ejay81]

I did, seems a bios issue or missing file per RA now, my prior comment was wrong.  I'm not sure what happened since all the BIOS files are in the systems folder and haven't touched them.

Question though, when creating the second emulator you can't set a default core since I already have arcades default core set to FBNEO under the main retroach emulator instance.  To get around this I just left that default check box unticked when creating retroarchmame2003.  Being that mame2003 core is the only one associated in that emulator will it still use it or do i need to do manually flip this for every game once imported?

I really appreciate your help!

Edited January 11, 2022 by ejay81

[ejay81]

Ok got this up and running thanks again!