UniRun - helper for launching games and emulators

[blueznl]

New version v0.11x.

Homepage:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bluez/datatalk/pure29.htm#2_unirun

Download:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bluez/datatalk/unirun.zip



What is it?

It's a little tool that will allow you (some day) to load disk-images, games, rom-files into emulators, and similar things. All stuff you can do with batch files and a little patience. And that, my friends, is what I lack. Patience. So, to make my life easier I wrote this tool.

Load games then? Yep. In two flavours...

First regular games, through a disk image (which UniRun is supposed to load and check if it was properly loaded), cd (UniRun opens the drive and pops up a message) or just directly from the disk.

Then there are those emulated games, which typically are a bunch of rom-images, thrown together in a folder then fed to an emulator. Emulators have their peeks and perks, and sometimes it's hard to get things to work properly, either directly or through a front end such as Gameex.

It's alpha, beta, experimental whatever. Provided as is, work in progress etc. etc.

Use at your own risk, well, you know the drill...

[Ginsu Victim]

or through a so called 'front end' such as Gameex.

For some reason it sounds like a negative thing, though surely it's not your intention.

[blueznl]

or through a so called 'front end' such as Gameex.

For some reason it sounds like a negative thing, though surely it's not your intention.

Definitely not! Gameex and all other front ends are great programs, and pretty much better than anything I can throw together, so if it sounded 'negative' that was totally unintentional.

But... I've modified the text, better this way?

[Ginsu Victim]

Yes, much better. I know it wasn't your intention to disparage Game Ex in any way, it was just the wording that came across wrong.

[Ummon]

Eh, just technical language he was using there.

With how many are involved in development of all these things, this should be a non-issue. But as it isn't, great idea.

[blueznl]

Too many people reading too much _Dark Tower_ 

Anyway, minor Unirun update:

Emulators tested and working:

    * AtariWin800 Plus v3.1 - ok
    * Dega v1.12 - ok
    * (Kega) Fusion v3.51 - ok
    * Gens v2.14 Souvenir - ok
    * Gens32 Surreal v1.69r2 - ok
    * MamePlus - various versions ok
    * Meka v0.71 - ok

Games tested and working:

    * Red Alert 2 - ok

[gonzo90017]

A help file would be nice. 

[blueznl]

Real men don't read manuals! 

Yeah, you're right, but as the program is currently in some 'flux' that will have to wait until the dust has settled a little 

[gonzo90017]

No problem. I'll test it then.
I loaded the Fusion profile to try to understand how it works
But I still don't understand it completly. For example to load Genesis roms in Fusion:

Code: [Select]

fusion.exe "C:\genesis\roms\sonic 2.zip -gen -fullscreenFor SMS it would be -sms, 32x -32x etc. etc..
But I couldn't see these anywhere when I loaded the profile.

[blueznl]

Oh, I ran fusion without command line parameters and it seemed to work fine? At least the one I tried did (it was an SMS game IIRC.)

Anyway, the idea is that you can create your own profiles or templates, so you don't have to remember or mess around with the countless different command line options (if any) of certain emulators.

A step I'm thinking of is adding a very simple frontend, which allows you to link folders to profiles, so you would create a profile FusionSMS and link it to a folder with all SMS files, and a profile FusionGEN for all genesis files. Nothing too fancy, but with the current profiles in place it's rather easy 

Profiles, btw, are supposed to be user defined profiles for his / her applications. They can be easily picked in the combo box on the Profile tab.

Templates are applied to one or more tabs, and use the files stored in the Templates folder. The file format is identical.

Remember, command line support is still missing, but the idea is to do something like:

UniRun FusionSMS game.rom

... yet with folder linking I might let you get away with just specifying the rom file, food for thought, food for thought...
 

[Ummon]

How come Mameplus? Does that mean 'no' on regular Mame?

[blueznl]

Oh no problem, just didn't try it. I run mameplus for the 'autofire' option, that's all. No reason why mame wouldn't work.

Small update (not yet uploaded, but it's coming): I can now type UniRun <romname> and unirum checks the proper profile by itself, so one simple program to run any rom, hehe :-)

[blueznl]

New version v0.11x.

It's now getting some shape, and even without a decent manual it should be clear (at least a little :-)) what it does... But if you still want to know: it can be used from within any frontend (that allows calling another program) to launch a game, either via a specific emulator or by directly calling the program.

For PC games, it allows a message to insert a disc, or it can load a disk image. It will then check if it can actually find (a specific file on) that disc, before starting the program.

Changes:

- seperation between (sample) profiles and (standard) tempaltes
- little bit more on screen information
- messages are displayed on their own tab
- few small bugfixes

Homepage:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bluez/datatalk/pure29.htm#2_unirun

Download:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bluez/datatalk/unirun.zip

Profiles are, well, blocks of information that you use to launch a specific game or emulator. I've build a few to show how to load a specific game. Templates are the building blocks that you use to create profiles. In practice, there is very little difference between the two, and I wonder if I shouldn't remove that seperation altogether...

Anyway, if you would create a few profiles for your favourite games (either emulated or not) you'd have a mini front-end :-)