Steam play together, Retroarch, and Launchbox

[Akaoni_Black]

Niche, I know, but I'm looking for full intergration of steam's version of Retroarch in launchbox so that once you import your games, you launch the specific game you want in steam's version of retroarch instead of the standalone version.

This is simply because I find the steam play together option a bit easier to use, especially since the other person doesnt need to fiddle with any setup, just accept the invite and bam playing together. You can get around the limited emulator coreselection just by manually adding them. The steam version doesnt block the missing emulator cores, just doesnt give an intergrated way to download them. funnilly enough just dropping in the regular retroarch files gives full access, or having launchbox direct to the install location will have the same results.

The problem? Just directing launchbox or otherwise manually executing the steam version's .exe file doesn't launch it with the steam overlay, and so removes the steam play together functionality, the very reason I bother with the steam version at all. For awhile you either had to launch the steam version of retroarch as though it were a steam game inside launchbox and then use retroarch's ui to launch the game you wanted if you wanted intergration through launchbox.

Another option that came up was to create a .bat file that launched the steam version of retroarch "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" -applaunch 1118310 %* then drop that file in the steam versions game folder with the retroarch.exe and then set the emulator inside launchbox to target the bat file. This would then cause it to launch the desired rom in the steam version with full features and did so flawlessly, even with updating retroarch....until it somehow broke with one of the recent updates.

So im wondering if theres been any changes recently that allow native intergration? or is there perhaps another workaround?

Edited March 13 by Akaoni_Black

[Akaoni_Black]

Found the solution, uncheck the "extract ROM archives before running" option and the bat file will work again. it will still work even with zipped archives. Not sure why but presumably retroarch may have had an update that added an unzipping feature when launched with steam and so was trying to unzip the file after launchbox unzipped it. or thats my theory

Edited March 13 by Akaoni_Black