PC Games with MALA

[Eddie_Brock]

Greetings, I've followed the instructions listed in a previous post in getting PC games to show up and play in MALA.
I am fine with the PC games being in a seperate list from my MAME roms, in fact, its preferred.
What I have done is installed all of my PC games to C:\games folder (each with its own subfolder). I have made shortcuts to the games, and placed all of the shortcuts in \games. Now, 8 of my 10 PC games that I've set up all run correctly, exactly as I would like them to. However 2 of them do not. I get an "line 193 error" code.

I have MALA setup with the extensions of .pif and .lnk (dos and windows shortcuts), directed at the \games folder, and I've tried every combination I can think of for the command line. Right now I believe its reading: %path%\%rom%.%ext%

Any suggestions? 

Thanks in advance.

[ratsflif]

change the command to only "%rom% also, try it with  different settings on the way it launches, hidden/minimized/normal.  Sorry I dont have mala in front of me right now but I think thats how I have it working.

Hope it helps

[Eddie_Brock]

I've tried just %rom% and the entire path... I have also tried encased in quotes, and without.

The fact that 8/10 games work they way they should suggests something else is going on, although what it is, is beyond me...

[unclet]

Instead of creating shortcuts (LNK) to all of my PC Game exe files, I set up BAT files for each of them instead:

Here is an example of my "You Dont Know Jack (Vol1).bat" file contents which shows how I mount a CD image with Daemon Tools and then go to the install directory where the EXE file (ydkj32.exe) is located to call it directly:

c:
cd "C:\Program Files\D-Tools"
daemon.exe -unmount 0
daemon.exe -mount 0, "G:\Emulators\Romfiles\PCGames\myGames\YDKJ (Vol 1).iso"
g:
cd "G:\Emulators\PCGames\YOU DON'T KNOW JACK!"
ydkj32

Here is an example of my "Battle Of Endor.bat" file which shows how I simply call the EXE file (STARWARS_TheBattleOfEndor_v21.exe) only since there is no need to mount a CD image to play this game:

cd "G:\Emulators\PCGames\Battle Of Endor\STARWARS_TheBattleOfEndor_v21"
STARWARS_TheBattleOfEndor_v21

Anyway, I just set up MALA to use BAT as the extension.

I have no idea if this will solve your problems but you can try it.   I think you can put multiple extension types for the same emulator setup in MALA (I think), so you should be able to indicate LNK as well as BAT to use for your PC Game list.   Anyway, it is worth trying to set up those 2 games which did not work as LNK to be BAT files instead and see if they work for you.

[Eddie_Brock]

Awesome advice UncleT! I'm not sure of the logic behind it, but I went ahead and created .bat files for my remaining games that were not running and viola! suddenly they work! Thank you so much, I would have been pulling my hair out on this for sometime... Now i just need to get my hotkeys running 

 

[unclet]

Glad to hear it worked for you.