Running games from the CD/DVD ROM

[InnocentSoul]

Can GameEx launch the actual CD/DVD in the main drive for CD emulators?

I'm trying to get a few emulators ready for this since I have the actual games or burns of the disks here and would rather not waste the drive space for ISOs and waste time ripping them. The emulators I am trying to get going are, ePSXe, PCSX2, SSF, and MagicEngine. If it is possible then how do I set it up on GameEx? I figured it's a command line problem and I don't know the commands.

Help with this would be appreciated, thanks.

[fRequEnCy]

Can GameEx launch the actual CD/DVD in the main drive for CD emulators?

I'm trying to get a few emulators ready for this since I have the actual games or burns of the disks here and would rather not waste the drive space for ISOs and waste time ripping them. The emulators I am trying to get going are, ePSXe, PCSX2, SSF, and MagicEngine. If it is possible then how do I set it up on GameEx? I figured it's a command line problem and I don't know the commands.

Help with this would be appreciated, thanks.

This would be an emulator thing and not a GameEx thing. If the emulator supports it then yes you can use the actual CD/DVD in the main drive. I'm pretty sure all those emulators you listed are capable of doing so. Would just need to point to your drive from within the emulator either by config, menu, or command-line. So best thing to do is try setting up the emulator and then we'll help you get it going in GameEx. If you need help with an emulator then just post again and we'll try to help you as best we can. Welcome to the forums!

[InnocentSoul]

I got it working properly on each of the four emulators mentioned in the first post, I just need the way to have it run it from GameEx directly. I tested them each with compatible games for each emulator too so I know they work in both ISO and in disk formats.

[InnocentSoul]

I still haven't been able to figure out how to launch from the disk through GameEx, I got the ISOs to read just fine on the PS1 and Saturn emulators (though I haven't tried an ISO with the PS2 emulator or Magic Engine yet since I don't have ISOs to try).

Any help with the console commands to get tell it to read from the disk would be appreciated. Also I have been wondering if there is a way to switch the Saturn BIOS through GameEx. I want to switch them since I have games from multiple regions and it's a hassle to switch the BIOS manually on that emulator.

[Adultery]

I would just copy/paste your emulator into another folder and change the settings. I actually do this with VBA for gbc and advanced games. Then you can put the games in a folder that use that BIOS with the emulator changes made. Finally you can add them all to an emulator group so they appear in one list.

As for using the CDs, I don't think there's a command line argument to look for a CD, but I'm fairly new to SSF. I'm certain there isn't one for Magic Engine, and I use pSX and I know that emulator doesn't.

[fRequEnCy]

I still haven't been able to figure out how to launch from the disk through GameEx, I got the ISOs to read just fine on the PS1 and Saturn emulators (though I haven't tried an ISO with the PS2 emulator or Magic Engine yet since I don't have ISOs to try).

Any help with the console commands to get tell it to read from the disk would be appreciated. Also I have been wondering if there is a way to switch the Saturn BIOS through GameEx. I want to switch them since I have games from multiple regions and it's a hassle to switch the BIOS manually on that emulator.

There is a loader that handles switching bios'es depending on region. It was created by member zarkok and is located in the submissions thread found here.

As far as the command-line for these emulators to just load the game in the cd/dvd drive, give me some time to download all these emulators and read the documentation to get the command-line for them. Also something you can try doin.

Won't be able to get to this till next week though as I'm pretty busy on the weekend.

Edit:

ePSXe:

Make sure you have the emulator working with all plugins and outside of GameEx. I don't have discs to test with but this is what I did for ePSXe. I just configured the drive in the emulator and then ran with the command-line:

ePSXe.exe -nogui

SSF

Same rules apply. Setup the emulator (bios, cdrom drive, screen settings, etc.) and then run with the command-line below.

SSF.exe

Now this worked with a mounted image so it should work the same if you just want to run the emulator with the game in the drive as I'm just making my system think there is an actual disc in the drive. Come to think of it, i'm sure these can all be ported in to GameEx by importing an emulator config which is described here by Tempest, step 2. Then just tweak the command-line. Like remove [-virtualdrive-] switch since you're using actual discs or remove the daemon tools command if there's one. I haven't looked at these for some time so would have to look. Try these and then we'll move on.