Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[AVTechMan]

I have a collection of legacy games (NES, SNES, Atari) that I have emulators for that I had set up in the past on my HTPC. I was wondering if there was a way where I can set up the emulators in MC to just pick the game and MC will launch the emulator. I've previously had all of this setup in MB3, but if there was a way to do this in MC, that would be great to where I wouldn't have to switch between two programs whenever I would want to play some classic games.

[mwillems]

There's a pretty comprehensive method in this thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=78049.0

Personally, I tried that method and found it a bit fiddly.  Now I use emulation station: http://www.emulationstation.org/.  I launch it from a theater view menu item. The UI's a little different, but the transition is relatively smooth.   It has some advantages in that it auto-scrapes box art, etc. 

[AVTechMan]

Hmm will have to check out the emulationstation...looks pretty cool! I'll have a read of the other thread too.

[AVTechMan]

There's a pretty comprehensive method in this thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=78049.0

Personally, I tried that method and found it a bit fiddly.  Now I use emulation station: http://www.emulationstation.org/.  I launch it from a theater view menu item. The UI's a little different, but the transition is relatively smooth.   It has some advantages in that it auto-scrapes box art, etc. 

Would you be able to show how you have the emu station setup in Theater view? And how smooth does it run when you exit to return to MC?

Edit: I got ES installed, but it looks like its going to be a little work in setting it up, and there's not many tuts on Windows installation since the majority are focused on the Pi. All of my games are on the server so I wonder if ES can read them from a network share, or whether I have to copy them over. Plus, I also use PCSX2 for PS2 games so not sure if ES can work with those. Guess will find out.

[mwillems]

Would you be able to show how you have the emu station setup in Theater view? And how smooth does it run when you exit to return to MC?

I use the "launch external program" menu item, and make sure the "hide MC while program is launched" box is checked.  It launches emulation station, there might be a quick flash of the desktop, but it's very brief.  When emulation station closes, theater view pops right back up.  No manual intervention is required.  

Edit: I got ES installed, but it looks like its going to be a little work in setting it up, and there's not many tuts on Windows installation since the majority are focused on the Pi. All of my games are on the server so I wonder if ES can read them from a network share, or whether I have to copy them over. Plus, I also use PCSX2 for PS2 games so not sure if ES can work with those. Guess will find out.

It can read them from the network share (that's what I do), and it can be hacked to launch any arbitrary emulator/renderer.  It may or may not have built in theming/scraping for PCSX2 stuff, but at it's core emulation station is just a launcher.  You can edit the config files to launch virtually anything because you're just specifying a launch path.  

As for configuration, the config files are the exact same as between the Pi version and the windows version, so any description of the config files will work. Hard to beat the official documentation: http://emulationstation.org/gettingstarted.html#config

The only quirk (that I recall) was that I had to use %ROM_RAW% instead of %ROM% in the path setup.  If you have any trouble, post your config in a code block, and I'll check it out.

[AVTechMan]

I use the "launch external program" menu item, and make sure the "hide MC while program is launched" box is checked.  It launches emulation station, there might be a quick flash of the desktop, but it's very brief.  When emulation station closes, theater view pops right back up.  No manual intervention is required.  

It can read them from the network share (that's what I do), and it can be hacked to launch any arbitrary emulator/renderer.  It may or may not have built in theming/scraping for PCSX2 stuff, but at it's core emulation station is just a launcher.  You can edit the config files to launch virtually anything because you're just specifying a launch path.  

As for configuration, the config files are the exact same as between the Pi version and the windows version, so any description of the config files will work. Hard to beat the official documentation: http://emulationstation.org/gettingstarted.html#config

The only quirk (that I recall) was that I had to use %ROM_RAW% instead of %ROM% in the path setup.  If you have any trouble, post your config in a code block, and I'll check it out.

I do have a quick question for you. Once I get to setting up the Emu Station, I am thinking of running my MC library as a server and all other PC's on clients. Thing is though is that when I load the library server from the clients the Theater View settings all carry over from the server...so I am wondering if I should install and configure the emulationstation on an local MC machine that is independent of the Library Server....does that make sense?

[mwillems]

I do have a quick question for you. Once I get to setting up the Emu Station, I am thinking of running my MC library as a server and all other PC's on clients. Thing is though is that when I load the library server from the clients the Theater View settings all carry over from the server...so I am wondering if I should install and configure the emulationstation on an local MC machine that is independent of the Library Server....does that make sense?

You can do it two ways: you can point the theater view launcher to a shared drive that's mapped the same on all computers (so all the clients launch from the server's copy of Emu Station) or you can have emulation station locally and just make sure that the path is exactly the same on all computers.  The latter is a much bigger pain in my experience if you have more than one client (especially since mapped drives are recommended when using a library server anyway).

[AVTechMan]

You can do it two ways: you can point the theater view launcher to a shared drive that's mapped the same on all computers (so all the clients launch from the server's copy of Emu Station) or you can have emulation station locally and just make sure that the path is exactly the same on all computers.  The latter is a much bigger pain in my experience if you have more than one client (especially since mapped drives are recommended when using a library server anyway).

Are mapped drives are recommended over the UNC paths? Its what I was currently using but now am transitioning to use mapped drives on the clients and server so all will be sharing one uniform 'drive'. That means I will have to create another mapped drive for the directory on the server where the game roms are kept for Emu Station.

As for the emulators themselves, I will probably install that on the local machine and perhaps when Emu Station is launched then should read the config for the emulators on the local machine, especially for PCSX2 since setting that up is a bit involved.

The library server itself is running on Win7 VM in ESXi.

[mwillems]

Are mapped drives are recommended over the UNC paths? Its what I was currently using but now am transitioning to use mapped drives on the clients and server so all will be sharing one uniform 'drive'. That means I will have to create another mapped drive for the directory on the server where the game roms are kept for Emu Station.

UNC paths should be just as good as mapped drives (they work the same way in server/client configurations).  You don't need to specifically map a separate drive for the ROMS (unless they're on a different drive than the other media)

[AVTechMan]

UNC paths should be just as good as mapped drives (they work the same way in server/client configurations).  You don't need to specifically map a separate drive for the ROMS (unless they're on a different drive than the other media)

Okay, looks like I got Emu to work and have created a test config file to test with the PS2 emulator.

Now the next question is, what emulators do you have in your setup? Do you have any that use .ISO files like GC and PS1? I'm trying to get the program to launch a PS2 game with PCSX2 but it apparently goes back to the game selection screen without launching the emulator.

Here's the error according to the log file:

Code: [Select]

lvl2: C:\Program Files (x86)\PCSX2 1.2.1\pcsx2-r5875.exe D:/DVD Rips/Final Fantasy XII.ISO
lvl1: ...launch terminated with nonzero exit code 1! 

And here's the config file for PCSX2:

Code: [Select]

<systemList>
<system>
<name>PS2</name>
<fullname>Sony Playstation 2</fullname>
<path>D:\DVD Rips</path>
<extension>.iso .ISO</extension>
<command>C:\Program Files (x86)\PCSX2 1.2.1\pcsx2-r5875.exe

%ROM_RAW%</command>
<platform>ps2</platform>
<theme>ps2</theme>
</system>
</systemList>


One more thing i've discovered is that if my games are in their own folders by name with the system name as the root, (ie. C:\Games\PS2\Name of Game\ then EMU Station can't find the games. I wonder if all the roms and .iso's have to be sitting like this: C:\PS2\'roms or iso's' in order for the program to find them. I originally had all my games and roms setup for MB3 with their Gamebrowser plugin so I wonder if I will have to rearrange the files?

[mwillems]

I haven't run any ISOs so I'm not sure how that piece fits together unfortunately

One more thing i've discovered is that if my games are in their own folders by name with the system name as the root, (ie. C:\Games\PS2\Name of Game\ then EMU Station can't find the games. I wonder if all the roms and .iso's have to be sitting like this: C:\PS2\'roms or iso's' in order for the program to find them. I originally had all my games and roms setup for MB3 with their Gamebrowser plugin so I wonder if I will have to rearrange the files?

Emulation station doesn't recursively dive down into directories; the files need to be in the directory you tell it to look in or it won't work.  You can probably work out a path rule leveraging the rom title if the directory has the same title as the ROM that would let you keep your existing file tree.

[syndromeofadown]

There's a pretty comprehensive method in this thread: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=78049.0
Personally, I tried that method and found it a bit fiddly.

Emulation station looks a little fiddly as well. It seams like an unnecessary step.
Why use MC to open emulation station to open an emulator?

I am planning on adding an update to the linked topic sometime soon. I am waiting for retroarch 1.1 to be released first (was suppose to be out in September).
Lately I have been using MC for Retroarch and Dolphin. The 2 emulator will play just about everything.
Dolphin needs to be configured on a game to game basis so it's not really beneficial to use MC with it. It doesn't hurt though.
Retroarch on the other hand is awesome with MC. You can point MC to config files that have video and controller settings for each system.
They play very nice together and MC is a perfect front end for it. Retroarch has a very ugly interface.
Hopefully it will happen soon.

[mwillems]

Emulation station looks a little fiddly as well. It seams like an unnecessary step.
Why use MC to open emulation station to open an emulator?

Emu station is certainly a little fiddly, but I already had config files on hand from Raspberry Pi project, and it's a one and done type thing.  

I hope you didn't take me to be disparaging your method; it was very good and I enjoyed having direct integration but I found that MC upgrades kept breaking it and I had to keep redoing it, which made it hard to stick with.  Maybe I'll try again and see if it sticks.

Lately I have been using MC for Retroarch and Dolphin. The 2 emulator will play just about everything.
Dolphin needs to be configured on a game to game basis so it's not really beneficial to use MC with it. It doesn't hurt though.
Retroarch on the other hand is awesome with MC. You can point MC to config files that have video and controller settings for each system.
They play very nice together and MC is a perfect front end for it. Retroarch has a very ugly interface.
Hopefully it will happen soon.

Retroarch is awesome.  Another plus to retroarch is that it can be configured to allow a combination of gamepad button presses to exit the emulator, which is handy without a keyboard.

[syndromeofadown]

I hope you didn't take me to be disparaging your method

Not at all.

I found that MC upgrades kept breaking it

Every version change you need to re-add your 'Custom Resources' folder.

Another plus to retroarch is that it can be configured to allow a combination of gamepad button presses to exit the emulator, which is handy without a keyboard

I agree. After picking a game in MC I just pick up a controller and play. When done I hit the exit bottom on my controller to go back to MC.
No mouse or keyboard required.

[AVTechMan]

I would like to see how Retroarch integrates with MC. I also have Dolphin as well, but it looks like I may have to run it outside of MC.

[AVTechMan]

Emulation station looks a little fiddly as well. It seams like an unnecessary step.
Why use MC to open emulation station to open an emulator?

I am planning on adding an update to the linked topic sometime soon. I am waiting for retroarch 1.1 to be released first (was suppose to be out in September).
Lately I have been using MC for Retroarch and Dolphin. The 2 emulator will play just about everything.
Dolphin needs to be configured on a game to game basis so it's not really beneficial to use MC with it. It doesn't hurt though.
Retroarch on the other hand is awesome with MC. You can point MC to config files that have video and controller settings for each system.
They play very nice together and MC is a perfect front end for it. Retroarch has a very ugly interface.
Hopefully it will happen soon.

I'm working on trying your method but I am a little confused on setting up the 'Custom Resource' folder. For instance, do you create the folder in the same path as the other folders (Default Resources)? Or create the folder inside the Defualt Resource folder?

For editing the XML file, I located the 'Data' section where I would add the line for the extensions, but how is it typed out? Would I copy one of the existing lines and then modify it for the game extension?

I'm not too knowledgeable with the expressions so will have to take it in strides on figuring that out. I don't know much about Retroarch since I never used it before and integrating it with MC; I have separate emulators for all the different systems I have. Mediabrowser 3 made this easy to put together, but in MC is obviously a bit more challenging.

[glynor]

Question for all of you in this thread...

What controllers do you use?

I have two xbox 360 controllers, but I had to get the wired ones.  I originally bought the wireless ones but I could not get them to work reliably with my PC (not even enough to get through a single sitting of a game, usually not 5 minutes) no matter what I did.  Maybe I just got a dud, but I think I even bought two of the controller USB doohickeys (and I know I had two controllers).

I eventually gave up and just gave away the whole thing and bought two wired ones.  They work, but wired is clunky, which means they're always put away, and I never get them out.

[mwillems]

I use wireless xbox 360 controllers.  I've got four of them and they all work perfectly, but they were branded as the "PC version."  I can't tell any difference between these controllers and normal 360 controllers, but they were branded for PC compatibility and included a branded wireless receiver. 

There apparently used to be terrible driver problems that got cleaned up a few years ago?  But that was before my shift on wireless controllers.  I've had these for three years and they always worked fine.

[glynor]

I use wireless xbox 360 controllers.  I've got four of them and they all work perfectly, but they were branded as the "PC version."  I can't tell any difference between these controllers and normal 360 controllers, but they were branded for PC compatibility and included a branded wireless receiver. 

I got the PC branded ones too.  I don't own an xbox (or any modern-gen console -- always been a PC gamer nutjob).  But... 

I searched and searched and only found all sorts of people with similar problems, and no good answers (aside from the usual RF noise mitigation suggestions).  My house might be somewhat RF noisy, but not out of control (nothing like an apartment complex or anything).  The problems seemed to be that the drivers were junk.  There were lots of supposed suggestions for "they've fixed the drivers" but nothing ever worked for me.

This was prior to three years ago, though.  Perhaps subsequently they did finally fix it.  It wasn't like the "PC branded" xbox controllers were new when I tried, though.

[mwillems]

That sounds miserable.  I can tell you that my controller receiver sits more or less on top of my wireless router and I never miss a button press, so I'd guess either vastly improved drivers or you got a bad receiver (or two).

[syndromeofadown]

I gave away my wireless xbox controllers because they were too much trouble to get working. I don't miss them.

I use Dualshock 4 controllers (for PS4). They are the best controllers I have ever used. I have had them for more than a year now.
Just plug it in and windows will install the driver. After that, bluetooth will work so no need for wires.
I can't comment on mac. The only negative is that the battery lasts a few hours. Doesn't bother me because I don't play very long.
There are all sorts of unofficial drivers to make the touch pad and vibration work but I haven't tried and don't care.
I have 2 so I still need to pull out the wired xbox controllers with 4 player Mario kart.
Firmware updates are a problem if you don't have a PS4 but they probably aren't needed.
If you get a blue, white or camo colour it may have a more recent firmware because they were released a couple months ago.
I also find that DS4's have less lag than xbox controllers wich is another plus for them.


For dolphin I have official wiimote plus's that connect via "Dolphin Bar". My family uses them for sports and dancing games.
I still play most wii games with DS4(Dualshock4).

As a gift I received official gamecube controllers for WiiU that connect to PC via an official Nintendo Adapter(for WiiU).
I haven't tried them yet so can't comment. Build quality is good though.

For nostalgia purposes I bought a couple of bluetooth NES style controllers made by 8bitdo. They also work very well (after firmware update).
I don't use them much because I already have the DS4's setup and I like them so much.
They work with mac, android, macphone, and PC so it may be a good choice.

The xbox one controllers could be nice but they only work wired so I am not going to buy any.
If there is an update to make them work wireless I will give them a shot.

[glynor]

Hmmm... Very interesting!  Thanks for the advice!

I don't have a PS4 (and no plans to get one), but if I hit a firmware problem, I work in IT, so... Finding one is not a serious challenge.  The HTPC certainly supports bluetooth... And it is reliable, I have an Apple Wireless Keyboard on it (which is bluetooth) and it is rock solid even enough for playing shooters (not if you're a competing nutjob of course, but for a casual round of something on the couch I have no problems).  My Logitech Smart Control's bluetooth support works fine too.

Hmmmm....  My only issue with (all of) the DualShocks is that I'm with Siracusa: like a Playstation 1 controller that someone sneezed on and an analog stick stuck to the edge.

This is also fascinating:

As a gift I received official gamecube controllers for WiiU that connect to PC via an official Nintendo Adapter(for WiiU).
I haven't tried them yet so can't comment. Build quality is good though.

I never owned a Gamecube, so I'm not very experienced with the controller.  It looks pretty good though.  And say what you will about Nintendo (post-N64 generation, and I won't argue), their build quality is always excellent, and the controllers are well thought out.  I'm basically with Siracusa in spirit on that too, though I think it's been long-since past time when you could look past Nintendo's other architectural deficiencies.  But, that doesn't matter if I'm buying it exclusively as a PC controller.

Hmmmm....

PS. If you haven't listened to that episode of Hypercritical before, and you're into video games and controllers, you really, really should.  The whole section starts here.

[glynor]

I'd love to hear how it goes as you test it out.

I'm very interested in how it works with emulators.  But, even more, I'm interested in how well it is supported on more modern games.  I won't play first person shooters with it (I'm a PC gamer guy, remember), but they're basically essential to have for stuff 3rd person games and fun family racers or whatever.

I don't know... I really haven't touched my HTPC for gaming at all since my daughter was born (and she's almost 4).  But I have this huge pile of Steam games sitting on my account (way too many of which are great games and are untouched) and I don't know... She's getting older too, and could almost certainly handle some fun Mario Kart or something.  If I don't have to play Candyland yet again it'd be okay with me.

So, I've been pondering dusting off the old Steam and maybe an emulator or two and seeing what for...  A new controller setup would be great.  And if it was wireless and always plugged in, it would be a great alternative controller for the HTPC too.  I could program all of those buttons to give me extra functions with something that might be at arms-length (when the mouse and keyboard are across the room).

As an aside, anyone know of any good, recent, arcade racers with split screen "family play" support out there?  My wife loves those, and that'll help a lot with the wife-acceptance factor.

[AVTechMan]

I've always used the PS3 controllers for the emulators. Only lately did I get USB adapters for some of the controllers like the N64 and GC since they have unique button configurations and where I can use the original controller. The rest of them I can map easily with the PS3 controller. Though I had to mess with the Motioninjoy driver to make the PS3 controller work, I used Better DS3 for it to function (and not having to deal with the adware that MIJ software has).

I don't have a PS4, but my brother does though....if the controller can be recognized in Windows and functions, I may give it a look. After all you can buy the controller without getting the system itself.

I have games dating from the Atari era all the way through the PS2. I still have all the original consoles (and they still do work) but having all my games in one place is nice. I'm still trying to figure out on getting PCSX2 to launch from Emulation Station and I don't quite understand syndromeofadown's method yet (some of the instructions are not quite clear).

Hopefully i'll get it figured out soon.

[mwillems]

As an aside, anyone know of any good, recent, arcade racers with split screen "family play" support out there?  My wife loves those, and that'll help a lot with the wife-acceptance factor.

There's currently a minor renaissance going on in PC racing games, see e.g.: http://www.avclub.com/article/three-new-racing-games-aim-speed-and-style-their-a-214156, but there are many more. Not sure how many offer split screen, but cooptimus is your friend.

[AVTechMan]

Ok on my progress today, I finally figured it out on getting PCSX2 to launch from Emulation Station. Basically having to redo some file paths and ensuring the arguments in the config file was correct. I have separate emulators for my other systems that I could launch from ES as well.

Now the question is how to exit back to MC once you're done gaming, exiting the game back to the ES menu screen. Right now I am testing ES outside of MC so that its faster for me to test.