[TUTORIAL] Loading per game settings through GameEx

[thurmansevolution]

Hello!

I figured out something interesting last night and thought I would share this bit of information. I'm sure that some of you already know how to do this, but for the one's who find themselves in a "pickle", I hope this will help any.

I was having an issue with the Demul emulator, specifically NAOMI regarding the regions bios. Since I live in the United States, I wanted each game that I had to be the US version, rather than Jap or Export. If I set it to Auto, all of the games would be the Jap versions. By deselecting "Auto" and selecting the US bios in NAOMI, this gave me the US version for most games, except one - "House of the Dead 2", which used it's own region bios. This created a problem when trying to launch the game via GameEx, as well as through Demul - If I set the bios to the US version and ran the game House of the Dead 2, there would be an error that the system board was not able to run the game. (Alternately, running all other games through the House of the Dead 2 bios would cause the same error). If you are having this issue, or you would like to customize each game's settings (video resolution, key mappings, bio regions, etc) this tutorial is for you! :-)

First things first, you will have to have a little "know how" on creating batch files and would also have to have a little patience because this can be time consuming, depending on how many games you have for the emulator. For the tutorial, I will be using basic, simple paths (e.g. "C:\Demul"), but these paths will represent the paths for your emulators. For this tutorial, and as an example, we will just be having GameEx change the regions bios during the launch of a game through Demul. We will also assume that you have the emulator working correctly outside of GameEx, as well as having having GameEx configured to launching the game. Lets get started :-)

1.) Create a sub-folder inside the root of your emulator's path, and name it whatever you want. (e.g. "C:\Demul\regions and settings"

2.) Create another sub-folder inside the sub-folder you had just created and name it whatever you want. You will want to create additional sub-folders, one each per setting file. (e.g. C:\Demul\regions and settings\USA Bios ... C:\Demul\regions and settings\HOTD2 ...etc)

3.) Open the emulator, Demul for example, and make any changes you want in the settings. Close out the emulator and copy the *.ini file of the emulator (e.g. Demul.ini) and place the copy of the *.ini file inside the very last sub-folder(s) you created accordingly. (e.g. - the ini file for House of the Dead 2 bios inside of C:\Demul\regions and settings\HOTD2). Repeat this step for every changes you would like to make.

4). Create a batch file with the following command line: (again, we will be using a basic path for example, but customize the paths to reflect where your emulator is located)

@echo off

xcopy /Y "C:\Demul\regions and settings\HOTD2\Demul.ini" "C:\Demul\Demul.ini

Exit

5.) Create additional batch files, one "template" per "setting group" or a game's settings. Have the first path in the batch files reflect where the *.ini file of the different settings is located at, and the second path to the emulator's root folder.

6.) Place each batch file inside the emulator's root folder, and name each batch file the exact same name as your rom accordingly. (e.g. the batch file for changing the region bios for House of the Dead 2 will be named hotd2.bat and placed inside of C:\Demul)

7.) Open GameEx Setup Wizard, and goto the Advanced Emulator Settings for the particular emulator (e.g. Demul). In the "Launch Before" field, type the following in (and again, the paths I type here are only examples, use the paths that reflect the location of the newly created batch files inside the root folder of your emulator):

Start "" "C:\Demul\[ROM].bat"

Make sure you keep "[ROM]" the way it is. In a nutshell, what this process does is - GameEx, before launching the game, will launch the batch file, which will copy and automatically replace the existing *.ini file inside the root folder of the emulator with the one located inside the proper sub-folder. When the game launches, the *.ini file inside the root folder of the emulator has already been overwritten, and the settings have already been changed.

There is one "con" to doing this -

If you decide to do this, this is an "ALL OR NOTHING" type of process - this means that you will have to create a batch file for every rom that you have for that emulator. If you have hundreds of roms for that emulator, this can be timely (unless you make copies of the batch files, which still can be time consuming considering that they would still have to be renamed to the proper rom name)

I hope this helps, and if you have any questions about this, please feel free to comment, or send me a pm.

LC

[nullPointer]

Thanks for sharing a creative solution to a troublesome problem thurmansevolution!

[thurmansevolution]

Anytime, my friend!

My next tackle is figuring out how to have two lightguns automatically reconfigure for the Model 3 (supermodel) emu...kinda like controllerremap...I may have to end up building something lol.

[DazzleHP]

This is a very nice guide indeed. As you mention it can be adapted to any emulator that uses a config file rather than holding settings in the registry - i'm looking at you PCSX2!

May i suggest you change the title to something like "Loading per game settings through GameEx". I think it will help users find what they're looking for

[thurmansevolution]

Thanks! I changed the name to the one you suggested - it has a much better ring to it lol.

Yeah, this process should work with any emu (or even a pc game) that uses a config file rather than setting saved in the registry. It takes a little time, but is well worth it in the end :-)

[Draco1962]

I went ahead and moved this to the FAQs, Guides, & Other Useful Information thread so that it will be a point of reference for those that wish to setup GameEx as explained in the tutorial. Well done,thurmansevolution!

[thurmansevolution]

Thanks Draco! :-)

Lol I originally attempted to post this under that category, but wasn't able to find the "Start a new topic" button.

I think I may have figured a work around pertaining to a Sega Model 2 and 3 issue when it came to dual lightguns (the same type of issue that Mame has in reassigning IDs when reboot). The concept is pretty logical, and as soon as I get everything working correctly, I will be happy to share the script :-).

[stigzler]

Thanks for sharing the guide, thurman

[Mute64]

Sweet i should be able to manage that

Altho its rather tricky todo with PJ64, i was hoping the controller configurations were saved in the RDB ( INI ) file but seems like they are not, il try and find out were that information is saved.

Saves the controller settings in the registry i think...

update: So you can set keyboard shortcuts in pj64 2.0, so i was thinking if you could set pj64 to open before your rom starts then have that option in GameEX to press your shortcut buttons to go to the control settings, then i get stuck..... need to some how load a profile with out the help of a mouse.... and the TAB button doesn't tab down to the Load profile option....... Just brainstorming out loud.

2nd update: I could just use xpadder and maybe have different xpadder profile to launch when i open certain games... think that would be much easier can not remember if xpadder handles multiple controllers tho.

[DazzleHP]

2nd update: I could just use xpadder and maybe have different xpadder profile to launch when i open certain games... think that would be much easier can not remember if xpadder handles multiple controllers tho.

It certainly does! And with Adultery's Xpadder Plugin that comes with GameEx (All Programs> GameEx> Plugin Manager) it's very easy to launch different profiles per game. In fact i load all my emu's with at least a blank profile that has mouse and handy keyboard functions on Set 2 (Alt, Tab, F4, Enter, Esc etc). I can control everything with my pad if i want to and sometimes do

[Mute64]

Okkkkkkie that sounds good... once I get my N64 controllers one controller profile should be sweet apart from the games like GE and PD and GE:X. Coz ill use a 360 controller for those game along with 1964 stolens build that runs at 60fps

The issue I have when playing with the 360 controller and the reason the controller setup always changes is for games like mariokart64 I want to emulate the joystick that to the left joystick on the 360 controller but then when I switch to say GoldeneyeX or Goldeneye or Perfectdark I emulate the joystick to the right joystick of my 360 controller because using a joystick to emulate a joystick makes aiming much smoother and the left joystick emulates the c buttons for movement.

When I get real fancy I use the INGAME setting in Goldeneye to usr two controllers so that I can emulate two joysticks on one 360 controller resulting in smooth aiming and smooth movement... but that feature is not in multiplayer .

Oh and when im using my gaming rig I use my key board n mouse with a mouse injecter for stolens 1964 ultrafast emulator to have precision aiming lol

[Eckers569]

This is great . While a little time consuming - saves me a lot of space instead of having multiple separate states of Demul set up per system (Naomi, atomiswave, dreamcast) - let alone per game game. Honestly, I must have had over 20 separate folders with separate Demuls set up for different control configurations.

I was able to take you steps to copy both the demul.ini and the pad.ini (controls) in the same instruction so general settings and specific controls can be setup per game (especially useful for Naomi).
 

Thanks for the detailed explanation - just a note in step 4 - choose the folder not the .ini files itself in the last bit of code or it will open the document up. I know you do clarify in the next step- but for those like me that don’t read things properly it might be worth pointing out. Thanks again.