[Drt1989]

Hi @ Wintermute

So I tried RetroArch - wasn't my cup of tea. I much prefer to configure each of my Emulators how I want. Just to update where I am -

I have AEL lauching, Steam, Origin Games by use of .lnk. Also Configured NES, PS1, PS2, PSP, Wii, Gamecube.

As mentioned before some EMU's need some Arguments to load ROMS, in FullScreen without the EMU GUI popping up and/or not closing when you exit the game.

For ePSXe 

-loadbin "$roms$" -nogui

For Dolphin

/e "$rom" /b

/b means to close Dolphin's GUI when exiting the Emulation.

For PCSX2

"$rom$" --nogui

Note - I have configured already within each of the EMU Programs to run in Full Screen - 1920x1080, therefore the Emulators will load by default in fullscreen. The ESC on my keyboard quits the Emu and kicks me back out to Kodi/AEL by Default. Therefore you may need to this too if you aren't getting FullScreen Emulation. Basically it means, you won't see the Emulator program at all and get straight into the game! Also - in Dolphin, make sure you tick the option to make the game window always on top. Otherwise, you will randomly loose controller input.

Steam

To make .LNK for Steam games; (By default steam creates its own shortcuts to games as .url)

Go to your steam.exe, right click, send to Desktop (Create Shortcut)

Now go into Steam Store, locate the game you need to link to For example - http://store.steampowered.com/app/552990..._Warships/ and make a note of the app ID - which in this case is 552990

Now right click on your new Steam shortcut on the desktop. Add - applaunch number after the end " so it looks like: 

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 552990 (the number being whatever the number is for your game)

Click Apply.

This will correctly launch the games .exe via steam. 


Emulators that don't need further Arguments (but may need to be configured to enter fullscreen)

PPSSPP
Nestopia

Other
Origin, makes correct .lnks so just copy that into your .lnk folder.


I will update this further if there's any interest.

[Master_Blaster]

@ wintermute: I changed my theme from Aeon Nox Silvo to Arctic Zyphr Plus and i noticed there are light years of difference. Now i really start to like AEL

[Master_Blaster]

one more thing: can i change all titles at once wihout showing the [U] [!] endings ?

[sagrath]

It would be a great idea yes !!

I'm not at home but I will try to give you the log as soon as I can !

Thx for the support ! It's glad to see a dev so implicated for his community ! 

You are welcome.

Global setting or per-launcher setting?  

I think " per-launcher setting? " would be better, with that, we can choose to keep the launcher that are working ok with multisic support. Indeed, it seems that it acts differently with differents sets, so...  

+1 to per-launche setting, because there are other system that work ok with multi-disc on AEL

[Wintermute0110]

@ wintermute: I changed my theme from Aeon Nox Silvo to Arctic Zyphr Plus and i noticed there are light years of difference. Now i really start to like AEL

 
Rather than light years is just a couple of hundredth lines of XML code. Aeon Nox and derivatives are impressive skins overall but unfortunately they are notably for the poor views they have for programs addons.

one more thing: can i change all titles at once wihout showing the [!] endings ?

 
 Go to AEL settings, "ROM scanner" tab, and make sure "Clean No-Intro/TOSEC Title Tags (tag) [tag] {tag}" is ON. Delete all the ROMs from Launcher using the context menu and rescan ROMs again.

If you used online metadata scraping save the metadata to NFO files first and choose the scan policy "NFO Files". If you used online scraping for artwork you already have all the possible artwork the scrapers can get so select "Local Images" as asset scan policy. With these settings rescanning of a launcher with 1000 ROMs will take seconds.

[Wintermute0110]

I think " per-launcher setting? " would be better, with that, we can choose to keep the launcher that are working ok with multisic support. Indeed, it seems that it acts differently with differents sets, so...   

+1 to per-launche setting, because there are other system that work ok with multi-disc on AEL 

Per-launcher setting it is then.

@yevaman44 There should be some problem with you Dreamcast multi-disc names that makes AEL's multi-disc filename parse to fail. If you want me to have a look at the issue I will need an AEL debug log of the Dreamcast launcher (set AEL log level to DEBUG. Then, delete all ROMs from launcher. Finally, scan for new ROMs).

[einniv]

1) For the time being use local ROMs and assets.

2) Alternatively, you can use tools like autofs (some help here and here) to automatically mount remotes when they are needed. In my setup, I keep ROMs and artwork in a Synology NAS and then use autofs to mount the remote filesystems using SSH on demand. SSH is configured to auto log in with a SSH key pair. It works like a charm. I'm not sure if autofs (or a similar utility) is available for Android, though.

3) Kodi Leia will include Retroplayer and I believe it will be able to launch ROMs from any remote Kodi supports (however, it is still not clear). In any case, soon AEL will stop using the Pyhton filesystem functions and move to Kodi VFS filesystem functions which will enable true ROMs and artwork in remotes. However, if you want to use external emulators ROMs in remotes won't work so the most flexible option if you want to have ROMs in your NAS is to mount the remote filesystem with an external tool like autofs. 

  For most Android devices 2) , or something like it (mounting samba shares), will be an option if the user is rooted and has installed an OS replacement. For me I am using an Amazon Fire Stick which as of now cannot be rooted (though earlier versions could be).

I did find a way forward that falls under option 1) but is still an improvement. I thought I'd leave it here in case other fire stick users wander by. It appears that on 2nd generation fire sticks you can attach a usb thumb drive by using what is called an on-the-go usb connector. Details can be found here. Then from within Kodi you can set up a source in file manager by browsing to "Root filesystem"->"storage"->"usbotg". Once doing that the thumb drive you attach to the cable should look like any other local file to Kodi and , I should expect, RetroArch. Keep in mind I haven't actually tried it yet but by all reports this should work just fine.

[ehammer85]

fairly new to the Kodi forum and was hoping for a little guidance (and i apologize if this is answered somewhere glaringly obvious) but I'm in Kodi 17.5 with the Phenemonal skin and most of the time when I launch a game from AEL and exit back to Kodi, it's like Kodi was accepting input from my gamepad.  Is there a way to avoid this?  An argument to add that minimizes Kodi once the game is launched or a setting that I'm missing?

[illinx]

fairly new to the Kodi forum and was hoping for a little guidance (and i apologize if this is answered somewhere glaringly obvious) but I'm in Kodi 17.5 with the Phenemonal skin and most of the time when I launch a game from AEL and exit back to Kodi, it's like Kodi was accepting input from my gamepad.  Is there a way to avoid this?  An argument to add that minimizes Kodi once the game is launched or a setting that I'm missing?

Yes, minimize/put Kodi in windowed mode is a launcher option. I have to do this on my setup in order to prevent Kodi from stealing my input. Technically it minimizes/windows Kodi before launching the game, but this is what you want.

[theGuillaume]

Oops please delete

[sagrath]

Hi @Wintermute0110

I don't find the option to minimize kodi before launch some ROM/game. I'm only able to put kodi in window mode. The option was gone or I'm going crazy and this option never exist on AEL?

[Wintermute0110]

Hi @Wintermute0110

I don't find the option to minimize kodi before launch some ROM/game. I'm only able to put kodi in window mode. The option was gone or I'm going crazy and this option never exist on AEL?

AEL cannot minimize Kodi's window because that's platform dependant. What AEL does is toggle Kodi from full screen into a window. The setting is in the Launcher context menu, "Advanced Modifications", "Toggle Kodi into windowed mode". Old good Advanced Launcher named this setting "minimize" in the XML database and AEL, started as a fork of AL, keep using that name. However, I will rename it to avoid further confusion.

[Wintermute0110]

It would be a great idea yes !!

I'm not at home but I will try to give you the log as soon as I can !

Thx for the support ! It's glad to see a dev so implicated for his community ! 

You are welcome.

Global setting or per-launcher setting?    

I think " per-launcher setting? " would be better, with that, we can choose to keep the launcher that are working ok with multisic support. Indeed, it seems that it acts differently with differents sets, so...    

I have implemented the option to disable multidisc support, it is in the Launcher context menu, "Advanced modifications", "Multidisc support". Please install latest AEL from Github and try (I haven't made big changes so the development version is now pretty close to stable 0.9.7). After you upgrade to the development version, please run the "Check/update all databases" as usual.

To convert a launcher from Multtidisc into 'normal' disable the option and rescan the launcher (make sure you have metadata offline scraper and local images policies so the scanner will be fast). Multidisc ROMs will be removed and discs will be added to launcher.

If you want to convert a launcher from 'normal' into multidisc, enable the "Multidisc support" setting and rescan again. However, there is a bug in AEL and multidisc ROMs must be deleted from the launcher first. A workaround is to delete all ROMs from the Launcher and rescanning again.

[Master_Blaster]

Hi wintermute, Can i also implement movies from emumovies  ?

[Wintermute0110]

Hi wintermute, Can i also implement movies from emumovies  ?

 
I'm afraid that's not possible. Emumovies offers you downloads of 1 Gbyte per day for free (which should be more than OK to set all the artwork for your launchers not including trailers) but on top of that is a paid site. They have a download manager that makes very difficult, if not impossible, to make an automatic scraper. For MAME, however, you can get full artwork torrents (including trailers) from Pleasuredome and the Internet Archive.

EDIT: you can also get Boxfronts, Titles and Snaps collections from Libretro in Github. Repositories are here. For the platform you want click on the repository, then in the green button "Clone or Download", "Download as ZIP" and you are done! The Libretro artwork collection is getting very complete and respectable, and Boxfronts, Titles and Snaps are perfect for Estuary AEL "ROM Simple" and "ROM Shots" views.