Meaning of "emulator" in regards to displays

[firewater]

Should I setup an "emulator" thinking on the display, or the emulator itself? Because, for example, I use Gambatte for both Game Boy and Game Boy Color, and those are two separate systems, for which I want separate displays. So should I make Gambatte (Game Boy) and Gambatte (Game Boy Color) as separate "emulators" (even though they're the same .exe)? Because otherwise I get confused with how to separate them into two displays - I mean, how would I do it, considering I'm providing "Gambatte" with both GB and GBC directories of ROMS, GB and GBC directories for artwork, etc.

[progets]

You can do either. I recommend matching emulators and displays (i.e. Game Boy/Game Boy & Game Boy Color/Game Boy Color). It will make things easiest, especially if you want to get more complex in the future.

In your example, even if call you an emulator "Gambatte" and then use two different displays, GB and GBC, you would most likely need/want another "Gambatte2" emulator because its file extension, rom location, artwork, etc. will probably require different paths/settings. This will lead to something like this Gambatte/Game Boy & Gambatte2/Game Boy Color which is less obvious when looking at things later down the road. This can get even more confusing if you're using RetroArch or MAME for a half dozen or more emulators/systems.

[rand0m]

As progets said, its far better to match emulators with displays. But you can direct both GB and GBC emulators to a single location like D:\Gambatte. If you are just starting on AM I would recommend that you develop standard naming conventions to keep things organized. e.g. I use "System (Primary Emulator)".

[progets]

As progets said, its far better to match emulators with displays. But you can direct both GB and GBC emulators to a single location like D:\Gambatte. If you are just starting on AM I would recommend that you develop standard naming conventions to keep things organized. e.g. I use "System (Primary Emulator)".

As I mention in the first post, if you want to use a more complex setup in the future (RocketLaucher as and example), the "[emulator]" is passed as a varible and would require the system name and display name to match (or be very complex otherwise).

As a best practice, I would use the RocketLauncher naming convention in case you ever wanted to use it (even if you never plan on it). This would make things universal across FEs. The only other logical naming convention would be the thegamesdb.net if you planning on scrapping from there but I personally would still go with the RL naming convention for maximum flexibility in the future.

P.S. From years of experience, as much as you might want to call your emulators and/or displays NES, SNES, SMS, GEN, it's not the best long term idea - IMO.

[firewater]

Thanks guys. One last question, how come I can't change the name of the emulator after its set up? I know it sort of doesn't matter since it's an internal thing (since you can change the name of displays), but say I wanted to change them - would it be okay if I change the name of the .cfg file, and then rebuild the rom list?

[rand0m]

Yes it would be ok, you can rebuild and then remove the old list. If everything else is already set as you like, then you can manually:

1. Rename emulator.cfg
2. Rename and edit romlist and "Find/ Replace All" old emulator to new one (third column).
3. Edit attrcat.cfg, rename old romlist to new one.

PS: You can change the emulator from game edit.