game launcher help for an idiot!

[chuggy]

So, i've been at it for about 6 hours and i've come to the realization that someone will read this and smile because it's not as hard as i am making it. Here's my thing. I got mame, arcadeos, and game launcher, and decided i wanted to use gamelauncer. All i want to use in my cab is nes games plain and simple. First of all how in the world do you set this up, i get a giant list of mame games that i dont even have, but when i look at the nesticle games there is nothing and i have a bunch of them. I think i need help just setting up. If anyone can help i'd be eternally greatful
than you so much in advance.
adam

[tyweed]

go intyo game launcher cfg folder you will see files for each type of game nesticle,mame,etc...

there should be 3 files for each game a .rom,.map,and.cfg file

you put the rom with rom name in the .map
just rom name in .rom
and answer all quewstions in .cfg

what emulator you running for nes

[chuggy]

Im using nesticle unless you have a better suggestion, but if you know how to use one type i'll use that. The roms i have have only one file! I'll do any type of set up that works at this point

[tyweed]

nesticle is fine i hate it but at least there is a file in game launcher already setup for it right.

ok step 1. get list of all games into the .map file if you have not done this yet.this can be a pain in the ass this is what i did.

go into dosprompt find your roms file type dir/b>output.txt
this should give you a list of all your roms written to a file output.txt . then just paste that into your .rom and.map nesticle files

then fill in nesticle.cfg and if it still wont work go into glauncg.cfg and put debug to yes see what it is putting in.

post youy debug info and .cfg file if all that fails

good luck.............

[ErikRuud]

If you are only running Nesticle, yo will want to change the "emulators" line in the glaunch.cfg file to only say nesticle.

From this:
emulators = mame nesticle rocknes callus stella z26 genecyst zsnes misc

To this:
emulators = nesticle

The default nesticle.cfg is not setup to use a .rom file.  You do need to create nesticle.map file.  The format for the .map file is: rom_name rom_description.  The rom_name is entered without the extension and the rom description should be in quotes.  Look at some of the other .map files to see what I am talking about.

For any emulator:

The .cfg file tells GL about the emulator How to run the roms, where to find them, and where to find the emulator program

The .map file tells GL links the rom file to an actual game name. example: rushattk "Rush 'N Attack" tells GL to show "Rush 'N Attack" instead of rushattk.

The .rom file is used to tell GL to only display certain roms.  This is most useful in mame when you do not want to show all of the clones and bootlegs.

[chuggy]

Is there a certain folder where i need to put the roms? I got it to display only nesticle, and made the nesticle.map file, and put a sample file in, but where does the rom need to be? I get a screen that says Nesticle and thats it.

[chuggy]

Never mind! LIke i said im an idiot. I figured it out. Got any advice however on making gamelauncer run faster. I only have a p1 133 mhz processor. thanks again.

[ErikRuud]

For slow machines try these settings in glaunch.cfg

# Whether or not to use text animations such as smooth scrolling.
use_animations = no

Turning off the animations helps performance, but reduces the coolness factor. On a slow machine the animations are probably not that cool anyway.

# Milliseconds of delay before the screen shot is displayed after moving
# the cursor onto a selection.
screen_shot_delay = 1000

Increasing this delay can help when scrolling through a list. 400 is the default.  Try a larger number like 1000.

# Whether or not to use anti-aliasing on the font.  This looks nice, so
# unless you've got a *really* slow machine, I would use it.
antialias_font = no

Turn off the anti-aliasing for another performance boost.

[Wade]

I just thought of a GameLauncher question!

A lot of my game names are too long and they get cropped.  So I end up with a list like this:

Simpsons (
Simpsons (
Simpsons (

.. and I can't even tell the difference between the versions.  Now what I have been doing is excluding the versions I don't want (like 4 player when my cab is only 2 player, etc) by adding it to mamescan.cfg.

My question: is there a way to make the maximum width wider?  There is clearly more room on my monitor but GameLauncher is cropping a lot of the names for some reason.

Wade

[ErikRuud]

Wade,

I know I have much longer names displayed. I'm not sure what the max length is, but I don't think it can be changed.

Are the long names in you .map enclosed in double quotes?

It should look like this:
robotron "Robotron (Solid Blue label)"

If it looks like this it get chopped ath the first blank space.
robotron Robotron (Solid Blue label)

[Wade]

Last I checked they were in quotes.  I will check to be sure.

Wade

[chuggy]

OK, now im gettin somewhere!

two problems though first, it seems that when i scroll through games it skips every other one. Secondly when i select a gameit brings me to a dos prompt saying:

C:\gamlauncher\glaunch>pause
press any key to continue. . .

i press any key it says:

it tells me bad command or file name and goes back to old message.

any ideas? i think i can figure out the second question but i cant seem to figure the scrolling problem.

thanks

[ErikRuud]

Wade,

Make sure they are double quotes " not single quotes '

Chuggy,

Are you saying that you see all the names, but it skips over every other one when scrolling?  Or is it only displaying every other name from the .map file?

Are you using a mouse to scroll?

For the bad command problem, check in the logs directory, there should be a runit.log.  Open that in notepad to see what commands are being issued to dos by GL. Make sure that the nesticle.cfg file has the correct location for the nesticle.exe

[chuggy]

OK,

I got the scrolling to work by disabling a few more features. I think the computer was just screwing up the scrolling.

As far as the bad command. I have nesticle properly shown, and it's still doing it. Its saying that i cant find the game. Thats what the bad path is. Any ideas?

[ErikRuud]

Can you post your nesticle.cfg file?

The default path_prefix in glaunch.cfg is c:\

The default directory in nesticle.cfg is nes\nesticle

That means that GL is looking for nesticle in c:\nes\nesticle

If nesticle.exe is not in that directory then the game won't launch.

Check the runit.log file in the glaunch\logs directory, it should show the last command that GL tried to execute.

[chuggy]

OK, here is my glaunch.cfg. I hope i attached it right. I did what you suggested and now have a new message. Reads:

C:\nes\nesticle>echo will run: "nesticle.exe C:\nes\ROM\contra"
Will run: "nesticle.exe C:\nes\rom\contra  "

C:\nes\nesticle\>pause
press any key to continue

Then after i press a key the screen goes black till it comes back to DOS prompt saying:

C:\nes\nesticle>nesticle.exe C:\nes\rom\contra

C:\nes\nesticle>cd C:\gamelauncher\glaunch

C:\gamelauncer\glaunch>pause
press any key to continue

press a key and it goes back to game menu

?

hope you can help. I'll post my nesticle.cfg too.

[chuggy]

here is my nesticle.cfg

i had to convert both to txt to post.

[chuggy]

oops

[chuggy]

OK,

Now i have gotten nesticle to start, but it starts behind gamelauncher. You have to exit gamelauncher to play the game. any ideas?

[ErikRuud]

In your glaunch.cfg, set debug=no.

That should get rid of the "Pause hit any key to continue" stuff.

I don't know if it will get Nesticle to start in front of Gl or not. I've never had that problem.

[chuggy]

OK i got it to work! finally. For some reason it works in debug, and doesnt with it off? weird. I can handle hitting any key to have it work. Now this is my last question. I promise.  I cant seem to get the games to run full screen. I've adjusted the settings in nesticle, but i can only get the games to display with about 2 inches of black all the way around. WHen i increase the resolution the menus at the top go to the top of the screen with no border, but the game gets really small? any ideas?

[ErikRuud]

I can't help you with that one.  I've never run Nesticle.  I'm just pretty good with GameLauncher.

[chuggy]

Thanks anyway man. I dont think there is help. Nesticle appeart to be set at maximum size. If it gets any bigger the picture quality would be so bad that it wouldnt be worth it.
All and all thank you so much you've been a huge help!