I'd like to see your bat files. I was able to use the one-liner approach within the Daphne.cfg file which DK uses to launch the games. That works just fine for all the games I have. But its your second approach that I am interested in. I just need to figure out the proper syntax for the command line. And you're right, I'll probably never really mess with the individual game setting, but I've spend to much time to just forget about it, so I have to get it working now!
Basically all my BAT file does is identify the game you are trying to run (in my case I just had txt files in a roms directory since the file itself is only needed to have something appear on the menu in your FE)
The BAT File replaces the emulator, mine is called Daphne.bat, the game you are trying to run becomes a parameter which is represented by the %1 below - all it is is a dummy file that looks good in a list. Don't use long file names for any of this DOS stuff.
if "%1"=="C:\ARCADE\DAPHNE\PR\GAMES\SPACEA~1.TXT" goto ace
if "%1"=="C:\ARCADE\DAPHNE\PR\GAMES\DRAGON~1.TXT" goto lair
Then under each subroutine stick your commnad line as you see fit - mine are all the same but they dont have to be:
:ace
C:\arcade\daphne\daphne ace vldp -framefile "ace.txt" -fullscreen -nohwaccel
goto end
:lair C:\arcade\daphne\daphne lair vldp -framefile "lair.txt" -fullscreen -nohwaccel
goto end
Here is my one-liner if anyone cares (yes it is a long one liner), use your framefiles directory as your ROMS path and replace the directory structure below to match yours. Make sure your frontend is not passing a file extension or rom path along with the rom name.
c:\ARCADE\DAPHNE\daphne.exe %1 vldp -framefile c:\ARCADE\Daphne\framefile\%1.txt -fullscreen -nohwaccel
Exit