Launchbox to TeknoParrot - YUCK! using Grok Bot and Cursor to fix this

[skunkinator]

Hello All, not here to ask questions, but to update y'all on what I have been building with Grok bot and cursor for my custom cabinet.

1) my cabinet. its a windows PC running Launchbox/BigBox, 2 player, 6 button + 2 8bitdo Ultimate 2 controllers and two aimtrack force feedback light guns.  windows 11. Nothing unusual there, However, my screen is 1080x1920 vertically oriented screen (22"). which makes my life miserable across the board with TeknoParrot. Mame and Retroarch emulators gracefully adjust aspect ratio and resolution on their own. but TeknoParrot!!!

2) Launchbox has a game load screen, looks great, however, when it hands off to TeknoParrot, TeknoParrot loads a few Game load screens and loading helper screens in ASCII art in a command prompt. Visually, this looks like trash. And TeknoParrot doesn't provide a lot of guidance on this and if you messed with games before in TeknoParrot, it is rather limited for configurability.

ok, so really there are two problems for me in TeknoParrot.
1) screen resolution and resizing (limited configurability, made worse by my portrait mounted screen. many games are 1020x1080 which converted to my orientation is 1080x608. So most games run ff my screen unless the game itself picks up and adjust and very few do.
2) Game Load handoff from Launchbox to Techno Parrot = terrible. games work, but oofda.

here is what I have done. 

Game Load Custom Screen (ts beautiful)

• Created a Game Load launcher. Once Launchbox is done, it kicks to a custom, borderless full screen 1080x1920 screen. it is actually dynamic so it will fit whatever screen its running on. on this launcher is a TeknoParrot clear logo at the top, game loading with  dot dot dot loading indicators every .5 seconds.  in the middle of the screen is the Launchbox game title and the Launchbox clear logo.
• once the game loads for the first time, i log the time it took, and on the second launch I produce a bottom of the game load countdown timer.
• and as many of you know, many games in TeknoParrot take 30 seconds or more to load. Some even 2-3 minutes if there is loaders after the game window pops up.
• I added a custom delay setting. so now the borderless popup window runs as a process in the background, tracks the natural time in seconds it takes to load the game window, displays it to the arcade user as a countdown, and I can add a forced delay to wait until in-game i/o, shaders, data are done loading and its actually at a start or coin screen.
• end result is a game load screen that reads actual game load times, dynamically uses the last time load data and lets the user know about how long to wait which includes any additional forced delay set by me.

Forced Resolution

• I now have a windows running process that's a helper service. It recognizes TeknoParrot games launched from Launchbox and will allow me to edit resolution size. 
• each game is in a game library on a local webserver Grok built. so all of this is stored and referenceable. it is synched to Launchbox for artwork, themes, playlists, games list, etc.
• in my web hub i can click a game, add art work, set key bindings, change resolution. this is also where i set per game forced load delays.
• here is how the resolution helper works. in the web hub i specify the resolution i like. in the game window when i click the game > resolution, it will tell me what that hardware, board, or games native aspect ratio is and resolution. like a recommended guidance. I can then click on the aspect ratio I desire or manually put in width and height resolutions. i save and it applies at next game launch.. since the game loader with a forced delay is also running, the resizing and repositioning of the game window happens behind that. so by the time i get to the game, it is adjusted resolution, exactly centered on my screen, and never exceeds my 1080 width. and it always maintains aspect ratio to the games native aspect ratio regardless of my screen orientation.
• I know many folks use borderless gaming and other apps, but what a pain in the butt. not bad for one or two games, but 300+ is insanity. those apps are difficult to use.

I lied, a Third; Windows Helper Hot Key Binding service. I had to create this because TeknoParrot, Retroarch, Mame dont all share or have options to map a universal game exit hotkey.  So i mapped all emulators to P1 + Coin.  i also added an inappropriate wav file sound to it to mock the user for giving up.

so basically, this is all driven through a local webserver localhost:port/ in my broswer.  i freely make edits there to games. it also stores all my change logs from my vibe coding with grok and cursor. it always backs-up and saves current configs before replacing them (like romgame.cfg for Mame joystick controls ((yes i can customize controls in the web browser. it even has a listener and calls the meta port data from Mame telling me the control layout configuration, and then the key mapping wizard only shows me those keys, not al the keys i "could map"

not a flex, im just excited about it, proud of it, but also want feedback. I intend to make this local websiter and helper scrips/processes available later for download once i work out the kinks and make it truly portable across any PC. I have another widescreen arcade im workign on next. so i can at least test it out and see what works universally.

please let me know if you have built something similar. if you have more ideas.  or if you just hate this.  Ill soon add videos and images to a public site to share with folks too.