How to mount a 2nd ISO image in a mulit CD a set

[dschulpius]

Hi All,

I asked this a few years ago and never got it truely figured out. Then I got me rig up and running, went on to other things in life and never creacked it open again to work on this. Oddly I've never had the need till now.

Anyway, Has anyone come up with a way of swapping mounted ISO images of CD's in a mulit CD game? What happens when your done with the first CD's ISO and need to mount and play the 2nd image? Do I unmount the first and then mount the 2nd? Will the conputer Know I've done this?

Also I see now there is auto ISO mounting in the latest versions of Gamex. Do even to wright command lines to do this?

Thanks for any insight or help,

Dave Schulpius

[Tempest]

SwitchDisc by Nullpointer can be found in the downloads section.

[dschulpius]

Thanks! Just what I was looking for.

Just a couple more questions. I guess I'm showing my newbieness. Maybe I should be asking this in that release thread but....;

Will this work for stand alone CD ISO's I own? For example I have Monkey Island 3 & 4 and both games have mutable CD's ISO images. I copied them from the actual CD's I own. From what little I read it looks like this neat program works through emulators. So, I guess I'd have the game installed on the hard drive and the ISO would have to be mounted to play the game just like I'd be playing it with the real CD on a desktop PC.

Adultery mentioned in that release thread that he wanted to make a plug-in to make this program seamless. Did he ever do that?

Thanks again, Dave Schulpius

[nullPointer]

Hi dschulpius, and thanks for your interest in SwitchDisc

SwitchDisc should work fine for mounting your standalone ISOs. It's pretty configurable, so you may have to research the applicable mount and/or unmount commands for your virtual drive, but beyond that it should be fairly straight forward. I'm (still!) working on putting together a better user guide for SwitchDisc, but if you run into any difficulties feel free to ask any questions you may have in the release thread.

You may hit a potential snag if you launch a game from GameEx and subsequently close the game for the purposes of changing discs. GameEx will take back focus while you're still in the process of changing discs. I actually do have a beta release build that can circumvent this issue. OTOH if you don't need the game to remain running in order to change discs, there's no reason you couldn't simply return to GameEx to launch the subsequent disc. If it becomes an insurmountable issue let me know and I can hook you up with a beta release version.

Adultery and I talked about the possibility of a plug-in at one point, and there may still be something in the future, but as of today there is no Plugin version of SwitchDisc.

[dschulpius]

Thanks Nullpointer for the info and this program. As I get into this and find I need help I'll drop a line asking my questions.

Till then thanks again,

Dave

[Adultery]

@NullieNull: Was that something you were still interested in doing?

[nullPointer]

It would definitely still be interested in doing it. I've got some ideas as to how this could work, but would need to iron out some of the details. The unreleased beta build I've had sitting around for quite a while contains some enhancements that would go quite a way towards supporting this.

There are still a couple of issues though. I think at best a SwitchDisc plugin would act as a simplified interface between GameEx and SwitchDisc. The good news here is that you can run most of the SwitchDisc functions using only SwitchDiscUtilities.dll (at least if it's run in headless mode without a GUI). The bad news is that SwitchDisc really needs the SwitchDisc config file to actually perform the functionality, and at this point I don't think I can divorce the config from the application. So the config would still need to come from somewhere. It's possible that a SwitchDisc plugin could attempt to 'intelligently build' the config based the users GameEx settings, but I'd need to look into it. I think there would be a lot of info that really couldn't be derived from the GameEx settings.

The other issue is that I'm still making changes to SwitchDisc. Ultimately I'd like to have the application pretty well ironed out before I tried to build a bridge between it and GameEx. It's 90-95% of the way there, but I still need to make some changes to the UI automation routines (this will offer better nullDC support specifically, but it's a 90/10 thing. The last 10% of the work could take as much of 90% of the time). This last bit is actually what's been holding up the next release, but I'm starting to think I should release a stop-gap version containing a number of unrelated enhancements so the next build can be purely focused on the UI Automation overhaul.

At any rate I'm still bouncing ideas around for a plugin, but I'm not quite there yet.

[Adultery]

Well when you're ready, I'm between projects.

[nullPointer]

Got any plans for 2020? That would coincide nicely with my projected completion date once external factors are accounted for.

[dschulpius]

2020? Grown.......

[nullPointer]

Don't sweat it! There's really nothing preventing the use of the standalone version of SwitchDisc. The 2020 comment was more a reference to how this sort of project seems like it's never truly done (particularly not when IRL stuff has the habit of taking center stage). The only issue I'm currently aware of with SD is that it can have a fairly persistent hiccup with nullDC. Not such a huge issue unless you're right in the middle of Shenmue or something.

[dschulpius]

Understood. I wasn't serious. Just having a little fun.

[RIP-Felix]

You may hit a potential snag if you launch a game from GameEx and subsequently close the game for the purposes of changing discs. GameEx will take back focus while you're still in the process of changing discs. I actually do have a beta release build that can circumvent this issue.

Really, I'd love to beta test it for you. I wonder if it will work one on the issue I was having. If it does then I could at least confirm the workaround can "fly outside of the nest".

BTW: Nullpointer has worked his hair grey putting up with my incessant bug reporting. SD is really starting to live up to it's goal; to be "compatible with any emulator in which it's possible to switch discs for multi-disc games via keyboard shortcuts and/or command line directives." I think I speak for everyone when I say Thanks Man, your awesome!

[nullPointer]

Thanks buddy! You're too kind! I've sent you a PM regarding beta testing. You're basically a project team member on SwitchDisc (test lead), so I really should have gotten this to you sooner. As always, thanks for helping me make SD better!

That's awesome about your success with nullDC! I haven't looked at the SD thread yet so I'll have to check the details.