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[RELEASE] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC - Printable Version

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- Angelscry - 2012-01-24 14:06

Knut Anderson Wrote:The problem only occurs with items thumb and art as far as i know, never tried to scrape for emulator information. I use Beta 2 btw, maybe thats the problem?
I'm sorry. I'm not able to reproduce your problem of my different systems. If there is a bug, it may occurs after specific actions order or with specific files, paths. So... please... could you post here the content of your launchers.xml file and also give me the more possible information about your :
  • Advanced Launcher settings (collecting method, overwriting option) for thumbs and fanarts,
  • Thumbs and fanarts paths, filename, on your system.
Your problem may also be caused by the XBMC cache that do not refresh instantaneously or correctly.

- ali2k1 - 2012-01-24 19:00

Hi Angelscry is it possible to run different versions of pcsx2 for different games as some run better on different revisions. For example for the script to read from a settings ini/XML if game name is xg3 run pcsx2***exe.

- Angelscry - 2012-01-24 21:08

ali2k1 Wrote:Hi Angelscry is it possible to run different versions of pcsx2 for different games as some run better on different revisions. For example for the script to read from a settings ini/XML if game name is xg3 run pcsx2***exe.
Directly from Advanced Launcher, no, it's not possible. But there is always alternative ways to proceed:
  • For example instead of using pcs2 (as executable) and .iso files (as items), you can use Advaced launcher with .lnk shortcut files. Idea is simple : each .lnk files will corresponds to 1 iso file and will contain the command line of the pcs2.exe executable you want :
    Code:
    "C:\Program Files (x86)\[b]Pcsx2-r4496[/b]\pcsx2.exe" --nogui --fullscreen "D:\roms\[b]game1.iso[/b]"
    Code:
    "C:\Program Files (x86)\[b]Pcsx2-r4498[/b]\pcsx2.exe" --nogui --fullscreen "D:\roms\[b]game2.iso[/b]"
    Here is how to use .lnk file with Advanced Launcher : http://www.gwenael.org/xbmc/index.php?title=File_shortcuts
  • Instead of using .lnk file you can create a .bat or an autoit script that will be started by Advanced Launcher, and depending of the passed file as command line will start different version of pcsx2 : If game1 then start Pcsx2-r4496. If game2 then start Pcsx2-r4498, etc...


- ali2k1 - 2012-01-24 21:56

Thanks Bruv I've tried that but I don't know how to exit the emu as it comes back to pcsx2 GUI on pressing esc , I've tried mapping alt +f4 but that closes xbmc as pcsx2 GUI is on top but xbmc has focus than pcsx2. In my head it makes sense!

- Angelscry - 2012-01-24 22:17

ali2k1 Wrote:Thanks Bruv I've tried that but I don't know how to exit the emu as it comes back to pcsx2 GUI on pressing esc , I've tried mapping alt +f4 but that closes xbmc as pcsx2 GUI is on top but xbmc has focus than pcsx2. In my head it makes sense!
Yes I know this problem. You can solve it by creating an autoit script that will force PCXS2 to close, like described into the wiki page : http://www.gwenael.org/xbmc/index.php?title=PCSX2#Windows. You can change the "ESC" key to quit by any other key or keys combination.

If you plan to use different version of PCSX2, you will have to make different pcsx2-launcher.exe file (one for each version of PCSX2) and then make the .lnk files point to pcsx2-launcher.exe instead of pcsx2.exe.

- Knut Anderson - 2012-01-24 22:30

Hmm, i think it had to do with the images already being there, although i tried erasing all of them (for a certain emulator) for testing that scenario, dont know how it worked out though, if i acted logically at that moment i would have retried that scenario again for other emulators if it worked after erasing the thumbs and art, but i cant remember exactly. Maybe the caching wasnt working properly too, i added a GBA emulator and at first it didnt show 98% of the pictures (just two) and today all the thumbs and art was working.
Anyway, i've set the configuration to overwrite, and i've had no problem all evening.

The emulator thing is kinda my pride and joy and it sucked that i couldnt get it to work so thanks for your help!

- Angelscry - 2012-01-24 22:44

Knut Anderson Wrote:Hmm, i think it had to do with the images already being there, although i tried erasing all of them (for a certain emulator) for testing that scenario, dont know how it worked out though, if i acted logically at that moment i would have retried that scenario again for other emulators if it worked after erasing the thumbs and art, but i cant remember exactly. Maybe the caching wasnt working properly too, i added a GBA emulator and at first it didnt show 98% of the pictures (just two) and today all the thumbs and art was working.
Anyway, i've set the configuration to overwrite, and i've had no problem all evening.

The emulator thing is kinda my pride and joy and it sucked that i couldnt get it to work so thanks for your help!
Remember that if you already have set thumbs and fanarts for items or launchers and that you decide to replace some local images (out of XBMC and Advanced Launcher)... XBMC cached files will not be immediatly updated. If you want thumb and fanart images to be updated into XBMC you must do it FROM Advanced Launcher.

- Muyfa666 - 2012-01-25 00:25

@Angelscry:

I have this game that needs explorer.exe to shut down when it's played because of color distortion. I want to have a shortcut in XBMC for it.

Like:
1. Kill explorer.exe (windows explorer, not internet explorer)
2. Start game.exe
3. Restart explorer.exe after game.exe exits

Can it even be done at all?

- Angelscry - 2012-01-25 04:14

Muyfa666 Wrote:@Angelscry:

I have this game that needs explorer.exe to shut down when it's played because of color distortion. I want to have a shortcut in XBMC for it.

Like:
1. Kill explorer.exe (windows explorer, not internet explorer)
2. Start game.exe
3. Restart explorer.exe after game.exe exits

Can it even be done at all?
It is possible to do this by creating and use a launcher script that will kill explorer before start your game and then restore explorer after the game will be closed.

Do to this, you will first need to download and install the Autoit freeware on a computer (not necessary the computer where XBMC is installed). AutoIt is a BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting. It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to automate tasks in a way not possible or reliable with other languages.

You need first to create an Autoit script like this one :
Code:
Run ( "taskkill /F /IM explorer.exe" )
Run ( "[b]C:\Program Files (x86)\game_path\game.exe[/b]" )
ProcessWait ( "[b]game.exe[/b]" )
ProcessWaitClose ( "[b]game.exe[/b]" )
Run ( "C:\Windows\explorer.exe" )
Replace of game.exe and C:\Program Files (x86)\game\game.exe by the game executable filename and game executable full path you want to start. Save this script as game-launcher.au3 for example then right click on it, compile it as game-launcher.exe and save it into the same directory as your game.exe executable.

Finally, into Advanced Launcher, you just have to change the game.exe application by game-launcher.exe.

- Aubrien - 2012-01-25 07:08

Hello XBMC forum as this is my first post. I have been using XBMC since its days on XBOX and this is actually my first time to where I felt like I had something to contribute worth posting. I run XBMC in Ubuntu and I use LIRC to map a remote for controlling XBMC. I use Advanced Launcher to launch Firefox from where I have the arrow keys on my remote acting as a mouse and I use a keyboard for character input.

I have an issue where XBMC will queue up my LIRC input while in Firefox and when I return to XBMC, every key i pressed will be entered in rapid succession making XBMC go crazy. I have Firefox launched by Advanced Launcher with a script as follows...

Code:
#!/bin/bash
sudo killall -STOP xbmc.bin
firefox -width 1280 -height 720
sudo killall -CONT xbmc.bin

The above will pause the XBMC thread, execute Firefox, and resume XBMC upon exit of Firefox. This works great for my joypad (XBox360 user space driver), but I noticed that for the case of LIRC however, the remote input still queues up and I get spammed with remote button presses when I return from Firefox. I just wanted to share my solution to the issue, in hope that maybe it can be incorporated into a future release of the plugin or maybe it will just be useful to someone else. I simply modify the launcher_plugin.py file and I locate the lines...

Code:
elif (sys.platform.startswith('linux')):
  os.system("\"%s\" %s " % (launcher["application"], arguments))

and I wrap it with code to stop and restart LIRC...

Code:
elif (sys.platform.startswith('linux')):
  xbmc.executebuiltin('LIRC.stop')
  os.system("\"%s\" %s " % (launcher["application"], arguments))
  xbmc.executebuiltin('LIRC.start')

This works flawlessly...until the next addon update, at which time I have to apply the modifications once again.