game launch front end with window based emulators?

[tyweed]

Hello i'm having a hell of a time trying to find some type of front end to control my emulators. It seems that game launch is a real cool front end. i'd like to get it to control my genesis,snes,nes,mame emulators. Problem is this it seems it will only control command line emulators. and the best nes and genesis emulators are the opposite. I'm using gens for genesis and fce ultra for nintendo and znes for snes. Can game launcher control fce ultra and gens ? if not are there ways to aviod that windows appearance with those emulators without having to go to another emulator? i'v tested all the other emu's and those just seem very good but i do like front ends ease of use

please help i'm up for all opinions!

[CM]

I won't claim to necessarily have THE best solution, but I have all my emulators running great using Lazarus and its wrappers.   To the user .. you never even see the emulator gui anymore on my cab .. it just fires straight into the game and escape brings you back to the lazarus selection screen.

[)p(]

yes one of the reasons howard made those wrappers is for those windows based emulators that can't be run from the commandline.

The great thing is you can use them with any frontend so you can try them with gamelauncher  


get the wrappers here http://www.oscarcontrols.com/lazarus

peter

[Minwah]

Tyweed, note that Gens and ZSNES CAN be launched from a commandline (and thus should work with GameLauncher I guess).  Don't know about FCE...

[Jakobud]

I have no problems with ZSnes.  Gens launches just fine from GL too, although the only way for me to 'exit' Gens it to right click w/ the mouse in the window and choose 'Quit'.  It's too bad people make such incredible emulators but are too short-sited to add support for customizable keys for everything......

I can't help you w/ FCE though.  Haven't touched any N64 emualtors for a long long time.  How are they nowadays? How would they run on my 1.2ghz athlon with a GeForce2?  Do you find the lack of an analog stick annoying or not?

[tyweed]

are you familiar with those wrapper classes they dont seem to have any documentation and they are built for specific emulators how would i begin to use them for an emulator they were not built for

[Howard_Casto]

They have documentation, it's in the lazarus online manual under "wrappers."  (gee who'd of thunk it)  

To use them in another fe you simply setup it's ini as per the instructions and then point your fe to the wrapper instead of the exe to the emulator itself.  Command line options and romnames are passed through the wrapper and translated appropriately.  

So to shorten the process:

step #1, place the wrapper and it's ini file in the emulator's directory.

step #2, configure the ini file

step #3, point your fe to the wrapper instead of the emulator

step #4, play!

[visciouslymamed]

I have no problems with ZSnes.  Gens launches just fine from GL too, although the only way for me to 'exit' Gens it to right click w/ the mouse in the window and choose 'Quit'.  It's too bad people make such incredible emulators but are too short-sited to add support for customizable keys for everything......

Hey Jakobud
I agree that it would be extremely nice if all emus were programed with remappable keys. Thought you would like to know that you can close gens (using esc) if you use HC's wrapper. It's kind of dirty but gets the job done.

Just go into your gens.cfg (for gens.exe) and change the entry for fullscreen=0 to fullscreen=1. While your at it setup any other options you want and then change atrribute to read-only.

here is the lconfig.ini
(begin)
#this is a config file for the command line launcher wrapper program
#turn on wordwrap for best viewing results

#put the two titles of the emu's window following these comments in the "handles" brackets
# number 1 should be the caption of the emu at ilde
# number 2 is optional and is the caption of the emu in full screen mode with a game running (using ctrl-alt-delete while running a game is the best way to determine this
# please fill in number 2 if possible as it adds to the launchers stability and efficiency. If it's non-standard (some emus tack on the game name making each instance have a diff caption) put a "null" on the line following the first entry.

{handles}
Gens - Idle
null
{/handles}

#each command in an emu is usually followed by a delimeter (in mame it's a "-" for example)  put this deliemter in the following line

delimeter=


#put the mame command followed by a ";" and the command that does the same thing in the emu your launching (like in zinc to launch a game you type it's number so sfex;1 would launch sfex for you)
{cmdlist}
{/cmdlist}
#put the name of the emulator you wish to launch immediately following this comment
exe=gens.exe

#Some emus don't like spaces in the filenames or paths
#turn this on to send a short filename to the emu
Short=0
#that's it! enjoy!  if you are using this wrapper in conjunction with Raging Dragon, please be sure to setup your emulator.cfg file.  Oh and don't forget to make/download a catver.ini file and a clrmamepro file for your emulator and regenerate your gamelist.  

(end)

Now when you lanch a game it will come up fullscreen with all your preferences in place. When you press Esc the wrapper will close Gens and return you to the fe.

[Howard_Casto]

I have no problems with ZSnes.  Gens launches just fine from GL too, although the only way for me to 'exit' Gens it to right click w/ the mouse in the window and choose 'Quit'.  It's too bad people make such incredible emulators but are too short-sited to add support for customizable keys for everything......

I can't help you w/ FCE though.  Haven't touched any N64 emualtors for a long long time.  How are they nowadays? How would they run on my 1.2ghz athlon with a GeForce2?  Do you find the lack of an analog stick annoying or not?

Just one more thing... I reccomend using a n64 to usb converter so you can use a true n64 control pan with your emulator.  What you don't have a n64?  Then shame on you for playing games illegally!

[tyweed]

Hi howard i have a problem with the wrapper i was hoping you could help me with. for the commands i need to hit tab 5 times but i cant find that included keycode finder program. can you please help. this is what i have thus far just need a tab command sequence oh also does that handler at top look ok?.....
{handles}
fce ultra - idle
fce ultra
{/handles}


#tab key 5 times
{ }

{/?}

{selectsequence}
40/down
40/up
{/selectsequence}


{entersequence}
13/down
13/up
{/entersequence}