Launchbox Integration with SCUMMVM

[JoeViking245]

Did some hands-on testing and learned a few things...

Using -c (scummvm.ini):

• If you start ScummVM without "scummvm.ini" in the same folder as the exe, it will be created in %AppData%.  And save states etc. will be saved there as well.
• If you use the -c parameter (or --config= ), regardless of what you set it to, Saves will be saved into the %AppData% folder.  Unless you use the --savepath= parameter as well.  Same with --logfile= and anything else that gets saved to disc.
• If you start ScummVM with "scummvm.ini" in the same folder as the exe, and no -c parameter, everything gets saved in a "portable" fashion.

 

Using -p:

When launching a game with the -p parameter, ScummVM will see it as a "new game" but still identify it (monkey2) correctly.  But it will then suffix the "new games" id with -1.  And since the scummvm.ini file doesn't contain a specific section for "[monkey2-1]", no custom settings you originally made will load.  This 'suffix thing' is the same with save states.  

If you manually edit the scummvm.ini and copy/paste the [monkey2] section and rename it [monkey2-1], upon launching with -p, ScummVM will again, find a "new game". This time suffixing it with -2.  ...We call this an uphill battle.

 

The Fix:

I tried this, that and the other thing to be able to load the saved game-specific settings and nothing worked.  Except 1.

• Open ScummVM
• Select the game you made specific changes to (Monkey Island 2)
• Click Game Options
• Make note of the ID (monkey2)
• Close ScummVM
• In LaunchBox, edit the game
• In the Emulation section
  • check the box Use Custom Command-line Parameters
  • In the space below it, put
    • -f monkey2 %noromfile%
  • (if you prefer, you can change -f to --fullscreen.  Same thing.)
• Click OK to save and close
• Wash, rinse and repeat for other games you've made custom settings for
• Play games

 

Final Note:

With that, you can revert the emulators Default Command-Line Parameters to -p %romfile% --auto-detect --fullscreen.  (removing the -c config parameter)

[Tsik]

59 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

When launching a game with the -p parameter, ScummVM will see it as a "new game" but still identify it (monkey2) correctly.  But it will then suffix the "new games" id with -1.  And since the scummvm.ini file doesn't contain a specific section for "[monkey2-1]", no custom settings you originally made will load.  This 'suffix thing' is the same with save states.  

If you manually edit the scummvm.ini and copy/paste the [monkey2] section and rename it [monkey2-1], upon launching with -p, ScummVM will again, find a "new game". This time suffixing it with -2.  ...We call this an uphill battle.

 That's true, I fell a lot of times in that id-1 hole in the past. The other way for avoiding the "id-1" change and also to the save games I think is to 1st add the games to ScummVM as normal as you importing them (making sure you use the same scummvm.ini file of course) and in addition to that (as I do in my own setup) I use a [id_name].scummvm file (a txt file with the id text inside and changed the extension to .scummvm) "as the rom" files instead of just the game folder, but all that are a bit more... you know... later stuff.
First I'm trying to help setting-up the basis as LaunchBox is intended to do ( *in a portable fashion) and then "build" from there. 😉

Edited yesterday at 05:42 PM by Tsik

[Ronen1984]

4 hours ago, Tsik said:

Its ok, just leave everything else for now and lets concentrate just to the steps I show you (I now they are baby steps but trust me on this).

Will wait for confirmation on the above steps and continue with more custom stuff.

Cheers 🙂

Thank you so much for your patience!

I did the steps above. baby steps indeed

You can write the rest of the process and i'll follow the instructions, I'm going AFK soon  

[Tsik]

4 hours ago, Ronen1984 said:

I did the steps above.

 

4 hours ago, Ronen1984 said:

You can write the rest of the process and i'll follow the instructions

That's perfect! So lets summarize:

• We have downloaded ScummVM from within LaunchBox
• We have imported the game into LaunchBox
• The game is playable through LaunchBox but the gui shows empty

Now check that there is indeed a scummvm.ini in LaunchBox\Emulators\ScummVM folder and no ScummVM folder at all in %Appdata%\Roaming because we are going to save some data on to it.
Attention there is no ini file either reinstall ScummVM from LaunchBox or just create an empty txt document call it scummvm and change the extension from .txt to .ini

Use the right-click 'Open ScummVM' option from the 'Monkey Island 2' game in LaunchBox 

and check the paths from the 'Global Options' the should point to LaunchBox\Emulators\ScummVM\scummvm.ini as below:

Now press the Apply and OK buttons without doing anything else and close scummVM gui.
If you did everything correctly there should be some options saved in that scummvm.ini file like below:

Next step is to import the game into scummVM itself because if you don't you might have issues with the games ID as @JoeViking245 already point out a few posts above. (scummVM adds a -1 if it restarts and uses the same game ID again using a suffix number e.g. monkey2-1

6 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

When launching a game with the -p parameter, ScummVM will see it as a "new game" but still identify it (monkey2) correctly.  But it will then suffix the "new games" id with -1.  And since the scummvm.ini file doesn't contain a specific section for "[monkey2-1]", no custom settings you originally made will load.  This 'suffix thing' is the same with save states.  

If you manually edit the scummvm.ini and copy/paste the [monkey2] section and rename it [monkey2-1], upon launching with -p, ScummVM will again, find a "new game". This time suffixing it with -2.  ...We call this an uphill battle.

Lets 'Open ScummVM' from the games right-click menu and choose Add Game from the ScummVM gui, navigate to the game folder (as usual) and select the game folder as below:

ScummVM now opens the game options window:

In this window the most important part is the ID of the game, make sure that it has no number suffix (-1,-2 etc) after the name! (if it does you can always edit and correct it unless you need two instances of the same game).

Leave everything else as is and hit OK and QUIT

Back to our scummvm.ini file now looks like this:

Notice that there are two sectors now [scummvm] and [monkey2] which are the Global Options and the Game Options respectively. (You may want some time in the future when filling sure to edit those if needed)

Edited 23 hours ago by Tsik

[Tsik]

For best practice about the ID suffix in my own setup I use a monkey2.summvm file in the game folder (which is actually a .txt file renamed [game_id].scummvm and edited it with notepad adding only the game ID e.g monkey2 inside it and save it). To this file I point LaunchBox to (as if it is a ROM):

[Tsik]

Now if everything went well you should have a working ScummVM set-up and a game fully imported.! 😅
BUT, unless you want all this effort go down the drain if something goes work from now on backup your scummvm.ini now so you can experiment safely with the options.

As a rule of thumb try to avoid starting ScummVM directly from LaunchBox\Emulators\ScummVM\scummvm.exe although we have the scummvm.ini there sometimes things might go wrong and put you in trouble trying to fix it again.

Your save games by default are saved in LaunchBox\Emulators\ScummVM\Saved games all together although I prefer to edit the individual game options and from the paths tab point to individuals folders for each game e.g. LaunchBox\Emulators\ScummVM\Saved games\Monkey Island 2. but that only my preference.

As for the save games suffix as said before if you open the gui (even within LaunchBox) and launch the game from there it saves different files than launching the game from LaunchBox normally, ScummVM thinks that it is some other monkey2 game and again puts -1, -2 in the save file e.g. monkey2-1.s01 as from the gui it saves as monkey2.s01. (Remember that a save game named monkey2-1.s01 and monkey2.s01 does not show up as saves together). If this is annoying for you use the fix as discribed by @JoeViking245  :

7 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

The Fix:

I tried this, that and the other thing to be able to load the saved game-specific settings and nothing worked.  Except 1.

• Open ScummVM
• Select the game you made specific changes to (Monkey Island 2)
• Click Game Options
• Make note of the ID (monkey2)
• Close ScummVM
• In LaunchBox, edit the game
• In the Emulation section
  • check the box Use Custom Command-line Parameters
  • In the space below it, put
    • -f monkey2 %noromfile%
  • (if you prefer, you can change -f to --fullscreen.  Same thing.)
• Click OK to save and close
• Wash, rinse and repeat for other games you've made custom settings for
• Play games

Edited 22 hours ago by Tsik

[Tsik]

I hope I helped and didn't make things more complicated by bombarding you with all these "instructions". 😅😅

At this point you should be able to do the same for every other game you might have and experiment with the Options, Global or per Game, just remember to backup that ini file every so often until everything is working!

If you need any further information/help about this subject feel free to post here. 😃

Edited 15 hours ago by Tsik

[Ronen1984]

18 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

Did some hands-on testing and learned a few things...

Using -c (scummvm.ini):

• If you start ScummVM without "scummvm.ini" in the same folder as the exe, it will be created in %AppData%.  And save states etc. will be saved there as well.
• If you use the -c parameter (or --config= ), regardless of what you set it to, Saves will be saved into the %AppData% folder.  Unless you use the --savepath= parameter as well.  Same with --logfile= and anything else that gets saved to disc.
• If you start ScummVM with "scummvm.ini" in the same folder as the exe, and no -c parameter, everything gets saved in a "portable" fashion.

 

Using -p:

When launching a game with the -p parameter, ScummVM will see it as a "new game" but still identify it (monkey2) correctly.  But it will then suffix the "new games" id with -1.  And since the scummvm.ini file doesn't contain a specific section for "[monkey2-1]", no custom settings you originally made will load.  This 'suffix thing' is the same with save states.  

If you manually edit the scummvm.ini and copy/paste the [monkey2] section and rename it [monkey2-1], upon launching with -p, ScummVM will again, find a "new game". This time suffixing it with -2.  ...We call this an uphill battle.

 

The Fix:

I tried this, that and the other thing to be able to load the saved game-specific settings and nothing worked.  Except 1.

• Open ScummVM
• Select the game you made specific changes to (Monkey Island 2)
• Click Game Options
• Make note of the ID (monkey2)
• Close ScummVM
• In LaunchBox, edit the game
• In the Emulation section
  • check the box Use Custom Command-line Parameters
  • In the space below it, put
    • -f monkey2 %noromfile%
  • (if you prefer, you can change -f to --fullscreen.  Same thing.)
• Click OK to save and close
• Wash, rinse and repeat for other games you've made custom settings for
• Play games

 

Final Note:

With that, you can revert the emulators Default Command-Line Parameters to -p %romfile% --auto-detect --fullscreen.  (removing the -c config parameter)

Your fix did it! thank you so much! 

Also would like to thank Tsik for his help! 

[Tsik]

Fantastic! So glad I've helped! 😄 
I also learned something new from all this, never heard of the %noromfile% variable before, very useful! Thank You

Edited 6 hours ago by Tsik

[JoeViking245]

3 hours ago, Tsik said:

the %noromfile% variable

"But wait!  There's more..."

Go here: LaunchBox for Windows - Strategy Guide

Scroll down to and under Advanced Features click LaunchBox Built-in Command Line Variables.