Daphne Drama

[pinballwizard79]

I posted this yesterday on the Daphne forums but wanted to ask you folks too.

After actually purchasing the DL, DL2 & SA DVD's I installed "Daphne DownLoader" & then for a week I downloaded files & finally managed to get everything working.

Problem;

Games only work with "Daphne DownLoader", not Daphne Loader. When I try Daphne Loader is says its missing files, I click the more info tab & it says to go to the URL for "Daphne DownLoader" to resolve..............hmmmm, I must be missing a step here because this is now an endless cycle.

Sheesh, any ideas guys?

Thanks.

[polaris]

we will have to be careful or ader will report this for discussing legitimate downloading.

DISCLAIMER i am talking about the daphne legal torrent that its legal to use as long as you have bought the legal dvds legally in some legally acceptable way like oh i dunno ,a shop. that ok?


why cant you just play it through the downloader?

[pinballwizard79]

Yeah I saw that thread too.

I think Ark was understandably mistaken, no big deal. Heck you know it was just a matter of time before someone said "do this to avoid buying the DVD's" so he was barking up the right tree.....just one or two posts too soon.

Daphne is like PinMame.......its legal as often as illegal & so much is up for interpretation.

Anyway I personally bought the DVD's so my inquiry should be acceptable from all angles.

But to answer your question Maximus Arcade does not recognize DDL, only DL. If I run a scan using DDL I get an error message, if I run scan with DL it populates the games but wont run them afterward.... but if I go into preferences after a DL scan but flip it to DDL without a scan it works when I return to MA......until I reboot & have to manipulate it all over again 

 

[polaris]

hmm sorry fella, i know nothing of that front end.

[BASS!]

I have had annoying issues getting daphneloader to run well with maximus. I think the problem may be the way that max executes the files through daphne, that is why all the new versions since b7 have had file handling sections under the emulator that you use. Have you tried getting it to work with the command line version?

[ark_ader]

Before I get flamed for my previous remark about the thread that disappeared, I just want to note that the Daphne Down loader is very similar to the World of Warcraft down loader software, with the view that it gets the files via the familiar P2P networking system or torrent.

Once you have successfully downloaded the files from the Daphne loader and that you have unlocked the Mpeg files with original retail DVDs the games are playable from the menu.  The comment was made that the Dragon's Lair torrent was 3gb in size.  There are only a few of that size, and they stem from the rips off the Blue Ray disc.

The file you download from the Daphne has four games:  Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Dragon's Lair II and Thayer's Quest.  This file size is understandable larger, but easier to configure than the old capture method (either via DVD or Laserdisc) then a framefile has to be created with the game roms.  To get working from scratch is a long winded and understandable feat to achieve. 

You just have to look on the Daphne message board with the issues the developers had to face with incompatibilities.   I prefer the new way the Daphne Developers have created, as it takes most of the hassle away from the end users.  Also it has a nice side effect that Digital Leisure will benefit with the sale of their games from the interested parties wanting the "Arcade Experience".

Once you have the said game running with an emulator, you can just run Daphne from the CLI or in batch files.  This is where your front end (FE) will call these games.  I managed to get this working via Mamewah, but the other FE will be based on how they call games, etc.

Now I'm not a person to tell another what to do in their private life.  That is up to them, but to post about it on a message board irks me.  One issue I have related to reselling collector discs.  If I put a rare laserdisc game up on ebay, I expect to get what the disc is worth, and probably would before this economic debacle.

But if a person wanted to play this said game, and visited a message board and saw another way to play this game for free, it would be very upsetting.  Also the people of Digital Leisure would be upset too, to see their hard work being banded about freely on the internet.  I'm not going to draw parallels with MAME, but I bet somebody somewhere is peeved about the MAME issue like Nintendo probably is.

Then we have the rules of the board, which tells us how to play nice.  I'm sure Polaris has all the DVDs from Digital Leisure.  And that is all I will post about that.

I'm sure I will be quoted out of context after I press the Post button. 

[pinballwizard79]

I bought all 3 DVD's, legally.

It didn't take long to calculate the ROI of my time's value vs the costs of a few DVD's & the feeling of actually playing the games sooner than later.

The issue was regarding the fact that after using Down Loader I have to tell Loader to go to a txt file created by its cousin Down Loader but I didn't know this.

All I had to do was go to a game & click the "Config Daphne", then "config laser" & then the "no I will install missing video/audio" & then well......since the only file seen by the browse option in the VLDP game folder for that particular game I am configuring is a txt file which I have no choice but to choose since all the others are hidden & well that just so happens to be whats required.

Whew, what the heck was all that?

Anyway, maybe this will save a few more hairs off the next guys head (before) (after) 

[Ummon]

I dunno. I recall only having to set the exe and it found all and worked. Only instance in my experience an FE accomplished that with Daphne.

[pinballwizard79]

Ummon, thats the last thing I want to hear

[garnerb350]

Hey everybody....
Sorry if I caused any probs the other day...( I read what happened...SHEESH).... All I wanted to know is what, how must i and my buddy who are building a cabinet must do to be able to play Dragon's Lair. I at work, cannot be able to access the Daphne webpage...and I see where alot of MAME builders have DL....I just wanted to find out what they did to play it. So I am asking the pros...

[arzoo]

Problem;

Games only work with "Daphne DownLoader", not Daphne Loader. When I try Daphne Loader is says its missing files, I click the more info tab & it says to go to the URL for "Daphne DownLoader" to resolve..............hmmmm, I must be missing a step here because this is now an endless cycle.

Sheesh, any ideas guys?

Thanks.

pinballwizard79,
After reading this thread, I'm still not sure if you've gotten an answer to your question . Anyway, I'm in the process of configuring Daphne for MaLa and I've found it's easier to have the FE launch a batch file with the Daphne commands. And it turns out, creating the batch files is very easy using the DaphneLoader; For each game, click 'Configure' and on the 'Advanced' tab, enable the 'Display Command Line' option. Then start the game and the loader will display the specific command options. Just copy them into a batch file, add the full path to the daphne.exe and the batch file should work. Hope this helps.

[ark_ader]

Problem;

Games only work with "Daphne DownLoader", not Daphne Loader. When I try Daphne Loader is says its missing files, I click the more info tab & it says to go to the URL for "Daphne DownLoader" to resolve..............hmmmm, I must be missing a step here because this is now an endless cycle.

Sheesh, any ideas guys?

Thanks.

Like I said.

pinballwizard79,
After reading this thread, I'm still not sure if you've gotten an answer to your question . Anyway, I'm in the process of configuring Daphne for MaLa and I've found it's easier to have the FE launch a batch file with the Daphne commands. And it turns out, creating the batch files is very easy using the DaphneLoader; For each game, click 'Configure' and on the 'Advanced' tab, enable the 'Display Command Line' option. Then start the game and the loader will display the specific command options. Just copy them into a batch file, add the full path to the daphne.exe and the batch file should work. Hope this helps.

[pinballwizard79]

I figured it out.

Buying the DVD's & downloading the files from DDL (DaphneDownLoader) was the easy part.

Getting DL (DaphneLoader) to recognize the files from DDL was the part that had me stumped. Evidently those two programs despite residing in the same folder & looking identical in function/form do not communicate with one another.

My FE needed the DL exe & didnt recognize the DDL exe as valid which is why this thread now exists. I was able to play everything the entire time but only on DDL rather than DL.

Nontheless I just did the following (well, after downloading everything via the DDL program & buying the DL, DL2 & SA DVD's....OMG!!):

"go to a game & click the "Config Daphne", then "config laser" & then the "no I will install missing video/audio" & then well......since the only file seen by the browse option in the VLDP game folder for that particular game I am configuring is a txt file which I have no choice but to choose since all the others are hidden & well that just so happens to be whats required".

After learning how to load Daphne I received a call from Stephen Hawking's publicist.....he wants to know how I did it. 

[arzoo]

"go to a game & click the "Config Daphne", then "config laser" & then the "no I will install missing video/audio" & then well......since the only file seen by the browse option in the VLDP game folder for that particular game I am configuring is a txt file which I have no choice but to choose since all the others are hidden & well that just so happens to be whats required".

That text file is the framefile. It tells Daphne where the roms are located and which frame to start the game with (for timing). Congrats on your success!

[Ummon]

Sounds weird to me. I've had Daphne for so long, I just copy it over to another computer en mass. I don't remember having those problems, though. In fact, I looked at my Daphne folder and there is only DaphneLoader in it. It's not in the folder of my main rig, either. I guess I deleted the downloader.

Ummon, thats the last thing I want to hear

Heheh.

Problem;

Games only work with "Daphne DownLoader", not Daphne Loader. When I try Daphne Loader is says its missing files, I click the more info tab & it says to go to the URL for "Daphne DownLoader" to resolve..............hmmmm, I must be missing a step here because this is now an endless cycle.

Sheesh, any ideas guys?

Thanks.

pinballwizard79,
After reading this thread, I'm still not sure if you've gotten an answer to your question . Anyway, I'm in the process of configuring Daphne for MaLa and I've found it's easier to have the FE launch a batch file with the Daphne commands. And it turns out, creating the batch files is very easy using the DaphneLoader; For each game, click 'Configure' and on the 'Advanced' tab, enable the 'Display Command Line' option. Then start the game and the loader will display the specific command options. Just copy them into a batch file, add the full path to the daphne.exe and the batch file should work. Hope this helps.

Ehhhhn. I'll try this, as my orignal attempt via the provided files and assistance from the MaLa tutorial wasn't successful and I gave up.

[arzoo]

pinballwizard79,
After reading this thread, I'm still not sure if you've gotten an answer to your question . Anyway, I'm in the process of configuring Daphne for MaLa and I've found it's easier to have the FE launch a batch file with the Daphne commands. And it turns out, creating the batch files is very easy using the DaphneLoader; For each game, click 'Configure' and on the 'Advanced' tab, enable the 'Display Command Line' option. Then start the game and the loader will display the specific command options. Just copy them into a batch file, add the full path to the daphne.exe and the batch file should work. Hope this helps.

Turns out there's one more thing you need to do (at least I had to do this); It seems that DaphneLoader looks for the ROM files in the same folder as the video and audio, but Daphne.exe always looks in the ROM folder. So for example to get Dragons Lair to work, I copied the vldp_dl\lair\lair.dat to the \rom folder. Same for ace.dat and all the dl2*.dat files.

Edit: It worked and now it doesn't work. Can't find the rom files error. Grrrrrr.

Edit Edit: Ok - if DaphneLoader is running at the same time you launch Daphne.exe (batch file), then the rom files are not found. 

[ark_ader]

It is really easy, when you have got it working.  You experience the paradigm shift when you get no errors and the game starts.  Before that its all duh and doh! 

But If I was running Daphne from A FE I would use Daphne .97 and make sure I READ all the directions located on the Daphne website.

Simplicity + Daphne is not an easy task.

Your roms must be in their folders, and your frame files must point to the Capture File.

Like this excerp from a framefile called lair.txt

C:\arcade\Daphne\Lair

-254       lair.m2v



I also unzip my roms to the game folder under roms, but I think Daphne can unzip them on start up.

Here is a sample command line to run from the FE:

C:\Arcade\Daphne\daphne.exe lair vldp -framefile "C:\Arcade\Daphne\lair\lair.txt" -fullscreen -x 1024 -y 768

The reason your roms are not being viewed is probably due to the unzipping issue.

You can PM me directly and I will try to help you through the process if you cannot get it to work. 

[Ummon]

Seriously, for any good FE, this should be a non-issue.

[pinballwizard79]

Even though my issue wasnt related to the FE & I did finally get everything working I have to ask.........what FE do you run?

I am thinking about going to Hyperspin, if 100 of us communicate & create 6 screenies.......never mind, that will just result in another thread titled "How to make Hyperspin screenies".

[ark_ader]

I use MameWah is it is the best FE out there! 

[Ummon]

Even though my issue wasnt related to the FE & I did finally get everything working I have to ask.........what FE do you run?

I am thinking about going to Hyperspin, if 100 of us communicate & create 6 screenies.......never mind, that will just result in another thread titled "How to make Hyperspin screenies".

Oh, right. Sorry, I was thinking of the Maximus part of the thread.

[pinballwizard79]

I blame you Ummon, not the FE or DDL. 

I guess if the FE recognized DDL or if DL just friggin worked after running DDL neither would be in the wrong at all.

Either way I have it working & sucked.

LOL 

[Ummon]

Yep, s'all my fault, sir. Anyways, good. Still strange to me, though.