[RESOLVED] BigFish Games

[Amilcar]

Good Day, my first time at forums.  If i'm in wrong place, please redirect me.Thanks.

I have a few games in iso format. Using DTLOADER i managed to create a F: drive with the game now on that drive. So manualy a can run the exe and the game works off the f: drive (Virtual drive)

The problem is a don't know how the to execute the exe file on the f: drive to make the game work using the command line.

Please advise

Thanks

 

[RedDog]

We will need more information than you have provided. Please post your GameEx.ini so we can see what your current setup is and let us know what emulator to review. Post your log.ini as well as it provides some other info.

It would also be helpful to have a list of games, file names of the isos, and executables on the iso that need to be triggered. We will want to see what filenames and config options are similar between them to see if a single emulater setup can be done

There is a 'Launch Before' and 'Launch  After' parameter in the Advanced Emulator section for each emulator that are often utilized for these sorts of things. Hopefully they will be handy to use here.

[Amilcar]

Thank you for the reply. 

I'm running Windows 10  version 1909. Daemon tools does not support mounting on Windows 10. So thank you for DTLOADER.

I'm using GameExArcade.

Once the iso is mounted to the f: drive, the game name to be run is an .exe file.   eg:  Dark Romance 7- The Monster Within Collectors Edition.exe.

Here are the required files. Hope this can help you to help me. Thanks.

GameEx.ini

[Draco1962]

Please attach your log.txt file. Thanks!

[Amilcar]

Sure. here is. Thanks

log.txt

[RedDog]

What makes this sort of situation different is that most emulators involve launching an emulator with a Rom file. The emulator has one filename and the Rom file is unique for each game.

These Big Fish games have no emulator, a file name for the iso and a filename for the exe, and the iso AND the exe have unique filenames that are not the same. I should point out that the example you gave in your second post with "Dark Romance 7- The Monster Within Collectors Edition" was incorrect (honest mistake I am sure). The iso name you provided is Dark Romance 7- The Monster Within Collectors Edition.iso while the executable name is DarkRomance7-TheMonsterWithin.exe. These details are very important.

 

I do not have any games like this in my setup (all of my iso emulators support iso launching fortuantely) , but I have two possible suggestions:

1. I believe the QuickLaunch plugin (download) will give the extra options you need to allow for different names for the iso and the executable. I have not used this myself and I do not have an example to test it with to try and figure it out. You may want to crosspost a message in the Quicklaunch thread so that people familiar with it can offer some advice. If it does work, I have a feeling it may be the more elegant of the two suggestions.

2. If you do not mind renaming your iso images, I believe this will work:

• Name each iso filename the same as the executable. ie, rename Dark Romance 7- The Monster Within Collectors Edition.iso to Dark Romance7-TheMonsterWithin.iso.
• In Advanced Emulator Setup > Launch After, enter X:\[ROM].exe where 'X' is the drive letter used to mount the image.
• One drawback with BigFish games is that there does not appear to be a database for them, which results in your game list using the file name as the tile of the game. If you want things looking pretty (like I do) you can remedy this by using a mapfile (sample attached). Mapfiles are text files with the extension changed from .txt to .map. You can edit them with any text editor. They can be used to control what games show up in your games list as well as the name that is displayed. I suggest placing the file where you keep your other assets. Within the Setup Wizard, set the path to the mapfile via Advanced Emulator Setup > Map or SW list file (example: E:\#Emulators\BigFish\Mapfile\BigFish.map)
• One other consideration is that the filenames of your assets will key off of the filename of the roms. Therefore, if you go with this suggestion and wish to use Snapshots, Title Screens, VideoSnaps, etc with your theme, the filenames will need to match. There is a feature in Tweaks\Performance > Snap Best Match that uses an algorithm to allow for a looser matching of assets to filenames which will help if they are close enough but not exact. I personally like to have all my filenames be an exact match. Since you have a VideoSnap path defined, you may have already set up some videos, which means you may have to do some file name changes.

Anyway, I hope this works for you or at least help you find a road to a solution. Of course, if anyone else chimes in that has direct experience with this type of setup, hopefully they can either confirm my suggestions or offer a better path.  

 

BTW, thank your for the files, screenshots, and taking time with the explanation. They were a big help in understanding your setup.

BigFish.map

[Amilcar]

Thank you. I will do what you suggested and post my outcome.

If all fails i can still run them, but directly off directories unzipped and no ISO's . Just means thousands of files all over the drive.

i'll give it a bash. Thank you

 

[RedDog]

I know that it can be made to work. What I am unsure of is how 'out of the box' can it be done without file editing. Please let us know how it goes.

[Amilcar]

Hi RedDog, thanks for all the time taken on this but i just can't seem to get the game to completely run on the f:drive

I've managed to get gameex  to load the ISO to the virtual drive:F but cannot execute the game because each one has a different file name.

So what i did was create an ISO with an added file called startgame.bat which then executes the main game. It does work because once the files are on the virtual drive and i run the bat file, the game runs.

so the bat file being: eg:          start darkromance7-themonsterwithin.exe. Obviously i'll change the name according to the game name.

I just need to know where from the emulator setup i can execute that bat file.If its possible then all should work. I've tried it on launch before, after but don't work. Is this a way forward or maybe not.

Thanks.

[RedDog]

Funny enough, I was going to make a comment that one way to go would be to make changes to the iso and rebuild it. I didn't expect that you would know how. LOL

In Advanced Emulator Setup > Also Launch, enter F:\startgame.bat. This will launch the batch file at the same time as the iso is mounted. To make sure the mount completes first, I would add a Sleep command to the beginning of your batch file. I would think 3 to 5 seconds would be long enough.

[Amilcar]

I've been trying to add a sleep command but examples on the net not really helpful. Could you please post an example. So far what I've managed is to get the game going but  gameex returns to selection page while the game is still running in the background. Phew. will get there. 

Not related to this, but while searching for clues  , i came across one of your articles on using a folder with links to execute different games. That works great with a straight forward games. Got a few GOG games  not zipped or ISO so I've got that working. But maybe you can guide me on how to setup the artwork. I have absolutely no idea because artwork looks at the name of the .exe file . In this case i'm using links. tried mapping the link file. That don't work . I'm stuck. 

Any way round this.

Thanks

[RedDog]

Sorry, it's been quite a while since I had to use batch files. Apparently the 'sleep' command was retired.

Try: timeout 5 /nobreak

[Amilcar]

If you don't succeed try, and try, and try again. Did that but to no avail. So unless some on this forum can help out. I accept defeat on using virtualdrive.

So my whole reason for running ISO is so not to have thousands of small files all over the drive. And yes, these HOG have thousands of files per game. This led me to approach another way of zipping the game and sacrificing a couple of seconds of decompressing.

OK, all good but now i hit a snag.  The built in 7z on gameex decompresses the zipped files to c:\users\joedoe\appdata\local\temp\unzipped7-zip.

So when i set my path on emulator setup to that location, when i run gameex it tell me there's an error .Obviously because that path don't exist until we run the game.

I need to execute the startgame.bat at a location that already exists. 

Anyway of changing 7z to decompress to a fixed directory, or anyway around this.Hope i made sense.

Thanks

[RedDog]

You got me confused. I do not see why anything is being decompressed. If you are mounting the iso to a virtual drive and then launching the start program on it, it should be no different than burning it to a disk and putting it into the DVD drive. Zip support shouldn't even be enabled for that emulator.

I have to say, it is starting to sound like you may be adding additional complexity to your setup which in turn is adding additional obstacles. For instance, what is the concern about the game having thousands of files? There are many games today that have many, many files. The only thing I can think of is that you might be concerned about read/writes to an SSD wearing out the drive (but as I understand it, that limitation is no longer a concern with modern SSDs).

As far as the question about 7zip folders (if it does indeed help you), open 7zip and navigate to Tools > Options > Folders and the option to choose the 'working folder' is there.

[Amilcar]

Quite right. I should not have used the name ISO. I failed dismally to try to get the games working in ISO so i abandoned the idea.Apologies.

I got all the games all working with all the artwork  by creating a folder with links to different games and that works  100%. So that's a plus for me.

Like most people i also like to have my games in a compressed zip format so i decided to try that.  

So my idea was unzip the files to E:\temp and then run my batch file startgame.bat in that directory run the exe file which is supposed to be at e:\temp

I stand corrected but the internal zip program in Gameex has two files, 7z.dll and 7za.exe  which i think don't have any  links to the 7-zip program that resides at C:\Program Files\7-Zip.

the files alway get extracted to c:\users\Joe\local\temp\unzipped7-zip.

I have sent a few pics that might help.

Thanks. 

[RedDog]

Sorry to say that you've gone in a direction that I would say is beyond the scope of support for GameEx. Zip functionality 'just works' for registered users. There isn't supposed to be configuration beyond that. For this setup, I really don't know what advise I can personally give as I do not know the ins and outs of what GameEx does in this instance nor do I know the ins and outs of 7zip interactions with programs.

I know it is a matter of choice, but in my setup I don't zip anything. I found that the benefit of compression wasn't that significant considering how affordable storage generally is. I also get the added benefit of games loading just a wee bit faster. There is nothing wrong with your preference of saving any space you can.

Since you began this thread with the games in iso format, I assumed that is how they came to you as I had no reason to think otherwise. I did not expect that you may have manipulated the format before that.

You sound like you know a bit of 'stuff', so perhaps this will help. When you simplify GameEx down as much as possible, it is a loader that utilizes batch functionality to launch games. If a game cannot be launched using a batch file, GameEx cannot launch it (which is pretty rare, but there are emulators that do not have command line functionality). When a game is selected in GameEx, it uses the parameters we set in the Setup Wizard to build and launch a file called runitgame.bat that is located in GameEx\DATA. If you launch a game that you know is set up correctly, you can exit GameEx and review the runitgame.bat to see how it is formatted.  I hope that knowing this may help you figure out a method that works to your liking.

Otherwise, it may be best to set these up as External Applications. This is generally used to set up individual applications...but you won't be able to do a HOG group.

[Amilcar]

Thanks RedDog. I've taken your advice and yes, it's the right one. I've created a link folder with shortcuts to the HOG and am using them uncompressed. I had a bit of problems with artwork but earlier you had mentioned keep the names all the same. That did the trick. All's working 100%.  I've learn't a lot through all this.Thanks. 

Time to hang up my gloves , enjoy what I've got and stop fighting for what i don't have. Pics of the final. Now it's just a matter of adding on others.

Thanks

 

[Amilcar]

Obviously later i'll combine them into one ,

Thanks Again

[RedDog]

That's fantastic!!!!!! Enjoy!