Messages

16

General / Re: Game works when ran from emulator, but not from frontend

« on: August 17, 2020, 08:05:09 AM »

Yeah i understand all that, the weird thing was that the game did run when opened from nebula.exe, but not on command line (thus, also from attract mode)
But i guess Nebula has some weird way of dealing with romsets where the GUI probably has a default "ignore any problems with the romset and run anyway" that i dunno how to trigger from command line.

I know about FBA but i never got around trying it and i already have all my desired roms working on nebula so for now im good!
Does it have any cool features, like i dunno.. filters? Nebula is pretty basic but i dig the billinear/pixel-perfect nearest neighbour look so i don't mind

17

General / Re: Joy2Key

« on: August 14, 2020, 01:08:07 PM »

It's cool to have a plugin, but it's not necessary, since joy2key is super versatile and you can set up everything from the software itself. Not trying to shit on your work hermione, maybe someone likes that better than what i'll suggest next, but in case someone has trouble with your thing, the default way to configure stuff to do this would be:

• First, there's no need to "close joy2key" to stop it's binding, simply create an "empty" profile to set as default, and a profile for your emulator with whatever bindings you need, i suggest short names that reference the emulator, like, say "Fusion (genesis)" would be fine.
• Now go to "Settings>associate profile with applications"
• On the lower part theres "default behaviour", set "specify a default profile" and select your "empty" profile on the dropdown.
• Now press "add" to add a profile-app link
• Application name is arbitrary, put anything that helps you identify and remember the target application
• Application path, it's easier to set up by pressing "capture aplication info" button below, and then opening your desired app, but you could also simply copy the direct path to the .exe file
• Asociated profile, select the profile created for this aplication on the dropdown (in my example it would be "Fusion(genesis)").

That's it! now joy2key should only work as intended while using the desired app, and do nothing when you're using any others.
You can set up as many profile-app links as you want, as long as you keep "empty" as default you shouldn't have problems with the mappings.

And to make sure joy2key is always running during your gameplay, create a bat file that launches both joy2key and attract-mode, and start the frontend using that.

18

General / Re: Exit to Menu

« on: August 13, 2020, 10:07:45 PM »

I wrote a reply but i guess my internet died and it never sent.
Joy2key lets you change behaviour with a time threshold.
that means. Whatever key you map, you can tell it to to something (in your case nothing) or, past 2000 milliseconds, trigger the exit hotkey.
I dunno if you can use joy2key in raspberry pi, but in any case, it might help someone else.

19

General / Re: Exit to Menu

« on: August 13, 2020, 10:23:17 AM »

Why not just set an AM exit button? It's simple enough and works without trouble.
Otherwise, what i do is create joy2key profiles for every emulator and map the same button (the Xbox controller ON/MENU button) to each emulator's exit hotkey (alt+f4, alt+x, ESC, ctrl+F9...) since AM doesn't recognise that one for some reason and it's the one i like to use

20

General / Re: Metadata for non-MAME romlists?

« on: August 12, 2020, 09:26:06 PM »

There are free tools that will rename your roms properly. The naming styles are different for different kinds of rom sets. The no-intro roms sets are the most popular and the names that are most often used. You want to get your rom names right from the beginning because all your artwork files will be matched to their names.

yeah if i only knew about the metadata stuff earlier i would've done right from the start. Thankfully i only have the games i care about, so there's not 390 roms to rename, more like 45. It's doable.
What about those tools? any to suggest? even if it's doable by hand, i wouldn't mind having some tool to simplify it

21

General / Re: listXML for non-MAME emulators

« on: August 12, 2020, 09:22:13 PM »

Inside your Attract-Mode folder create a folder called "extras".

From the command line run

Code: [Select]

<path_to_mame_folder>\mame.exe -listxml > <path_to_attractmode_extras_folder>\mame.xml

You should end up with something like this
/attract/extras/mame.xml

Now add this line to your arcade emulator files

Code: [Select]

import_extras        .\extras\mame.xml

Now all of you emulators will use the mame.xml when creating your romlists.

Outstanding! that's exactly what i needed! i just found out about exporting the XML list but i had no idea how to include it, it was quite simple. Thanks!

22

General / Re: Metadata for non-MAME romlists?

« on: August 12, 2020, 09:16:03 PM »

EDIT: i tried creating a romlist with multiple emulators ("ALL GAMES" sorta list) and the metadata i did manage to get before (NES, Genesis, etc) does not show up in this list. Apparently it only gets MAME metadata. But there's no place to select the included platforms or the source of the data! i figured it would simply import the data from the original lists and merge it, that's why i was trying to get the data of each emulator in the first place... but no! it creates a brand new list without any metadata.

Any ideas?

Get all your system romlists working properly with the metadata and then create your combined lists inside AM and it will have the metadata.

Configure-->Emulators-->Generate Collection/Rom List-->Set all of your game emulators to “Yes” and then click “Generate Collection/Rom List” and enter the name “All Games”

yeah i got it working! i was having this issue where the antivirus blocked my creation of new romlists so everything i was seeing and getting made no sense. Now my "all games" list has the correct metadata for a good portion of my games (there's a bunch of gameboy games that didn't get the metadata because of the rom filenames but i'll fix that manually so it grabs the metadata next time.

Something that some guy mentioned in another thread, thegamesdb likes "name of the rom (USA)" but not "name of the rom(U) [!]" kinda filenames. I didn't know and it's important information

23

General / listXML for non-MAME emulators

« on: August 12, 2020, 08:20:37 PM »

Ok so here's the deal, i have a few arcade emulators besides MAME, like Nebula (for neo-geo and capcom), supermodel, and Model2. I'd like to use only one, but this is the easiest and fastest way i got every game i wanted running.

Now,i can't retrieve the metadata of those with thegamesdb. BUT i can get it with listxml if i swap the emulator with my MAME executable, generate the romlist, then swap back to the original emulator.

But it's a pain in the ass to do that every single time i update the romlists. Is there a way to force the romlist to retrieve the data from my MAME executable but keeping the real emulator in place?

Or perhaps there's a similar command for Nebula and the others to retrieve the same data? or a way to export the list from mame and load it as a file for the other romlists?

24

General / Re: Game works when ran from emulator, but not from frontend

« on: August 12, 2020, 08:15:59 PM »

Fixed it on my own!
I merged the parent rom "msh" with the USA "mshu", keeping the latter's name for the .zip file.
That worked for some reason.

25

General / Re: Game works when ran from emulator, but not from frontend

« on: August 12, 2020, 06:39:54 PM »

ugh i can't find solutions to this. Please help
I don't see a reason why certain games would fail to run in console but work when opening the nebula.exe.
I tried looking at the docs and testing a few options but, nada...

I didn't care about darkstalkers, but now marvel super heroes is doing the same, and i haven't tried many others so i suspect it might happen again.

26

General / Re: Joy2Key

« on: August 12, 2020, 06:37:48 PM »

It's easier to switch profiles by linking the emulators applications to certain profiles in joy2key itself than writing commands on the frontend. It's so easy i made profiles for every emulator to have the same "exit back to frontend" button on all of the emulators.
It would also work if you ever play the emulators without the frontend, as long as you remember to open joy2key of course, which might be cool.

Can you explain how or do a video?

Did you manage to get it working? did potter's video do the trick? i can try to help you otherwise. It's pretty easy.

Also, i suggest you all to create a bat file to open joy2key along with the frontend. That way you're sure the mapping will be working whenever you play any emulators. I dunno i found it to be pretty comfortable, when the AM "exit emulator button" fails you, there's always joy2key mapped to ALT+f4 or whatever that emulator needs to be closed

27

General / Re: Cannot see snap, boxart with parentheses for Sega Genesis

« on: August 12, 2020, 06:29:24 PM »

Shinobi 3 - Return of the Ninja Master (U) [!].bin  <--- naming convention number one (I forget the name of it..'good merged' or something...)


Shinobi 3 - Return of the Ninja Master (USA).bin <-- naming convention number 2 (no-intro)


Most scrapers now use the no-intro naming convention thus why some (or all) roms are not scraped. They do not understand the (u) [!] but DO understand the (USA).

That information would've helped me regarding the "metadata for non-mame platforms" thread! I'll check it out!

28

General / Re: Unable to modify or create romlists

« on: August 12, 2020, 06:26:40 PM »

For some reason my antivirus (AVAST) decided that AM was a threat without warning me, and blocked every file modification done inside it. I made an exception and now it's working just fine.

Reporting in case it's happening to someone else

/thread

29

General / Unable to modify or create romlists

« on: August 12, 2020, 08:27:56 AM »

Since last night, for some reason, AM is unable to modify or create romlists in any way.

I can't change titles, i can't delete entries, and if i overwrite a romlist it stays the same. If i create an emulator, it doesn't create it's corresponding romlist, although it automatically sets the emulator's romlist with it's corresponding romlist, but it's a "ghost" one that dissapears when you scroll between your romlists, clearly because it never existed. (i did check in the folders, it does not exist)

I downloaded a fresh clean download of the frontend, and same thing happens. I even tried an older build, same thing.
I apparently don't have issues with other software, only Attract-Mode romlist creation.
I spent hours last night googling and it might be because of a windows update, but i'm not finding a solution.

Anyone been thru this?

30

General / Re: Cannot see snap, boxart with parentheses for Sega Genesis

« on: August 12, 2020, 08:22:17 AM »

Sounds like maybe connection problems? It's odd that it's not recognising "Sega Genesis" as platform