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[CLOSED] Advanced Launcher - Applications Launcher Addon for XBMC
(2014-04-21, 20:59)Angelscry Wrote:
(2014-04-21, 20:48)coullgfx Wrote: Hi I'm quite new to xbmc, so I apologise if I'm asking something that's already covered, but there's, thousands of posts in this thread Sad

I have finally managed to set up advanced launcher with hyperspin, it launches fine, but when I close hyperspin, and xbmc pops back up, my task bar is visible and I have to click on xbmc again or alt tab back to it.

It's not too bad on PC, but I'm about to build a htpc, and hoping to eventually have a remote, so won't be using mouse or keyboard.

I installed someone's steam launcher yo launch big picture and that is fine when exiting.

I'm using aeon mq5 skin if that makes any difference

Any advice is appreciated
Hide your task bar. You don't need it if you use your PC as an HTPC.

Lol I suppose that will work, I will be loading windows 8 onto htpc when it's built, not sure if that has a task bar, but I will keep this in mind lol

Thanks for quick reply
In case that does not work try exiting xbmc when starting hyperspin and in hyperspin config make it launch xbmc when exiting, this will start xbmc with focus.
i did this because hyperspin start many differents things in many differents resolution and it was more efficient with xbmc.
Hide taskbar is not really a sollution.
XBMC works normally in fullscreen and if taskbar is shown, then this mean that XBMC does not have focus.

I dont have those problems (it might be that XBMClauncher takes care of focus).

But you can use NIRCMD commandline to set a focus after your external program is closed.
Hi there,

I'm using Gotham which I guess is not 100% supported, so I simply moved the extracted zips to .xbmc. I'm trying to get retroarch to work, but after many hours of tinkering i'm about to give up, just can't get it to work. Perhaps someone can give me a 1-2-3 to-do list to get retroarch + GBA or SNES working?

Ps: using OpenElec 4 beta.

Regards,

Bert
Easiest/most trouble free way of solving focus issues after launching a application I have found is to quit xbmc, then re-launch xbmc always in fullscreen afterwards (via a xbmc commandline switch or advancedsettings.xml). This is the batch file I use (adapted from the one contained in Rom Collection Browser):

applaunch-vbs.bat
Code:
@echo off
Title Running %*

set XBMCLaunchCmd="C:\Program Files (x86)\XBMC\XBMC.exe"

echo Stopping XBMC...
echo.
taskkill /f /IM xbmc.exe>nul 2>nul

echo Starting %*...

%*

echo Restarting XBMC...
cscript //B //Nologo "%appdata%\XBMC\userdata\addon_data\script.games.rom.collection.browser\scriptfiles\LaunchXBMC.vbs" %XBMCLaunchCmd%

timeout /T 2

c:\emulation\scripts\curl.exe -i -X POST -d "{\"jsonrpc\":\"2.0\",\"method\": \"GUI.ActivateWindow\", \"params\": { \"window\": \"programs\", \"parameters\": [ \"plugin://plugin.program.advanced.launcher?b58a9a738afdece57f3d511816e619e8\" ] }, \"id\": 1 }" -H "content-type: application/json;" http://localhost:9191/jsonrpc

You need the LaunchXBMC.vbs script from Rom Collection Browser (simply installing the addon should be fine) to prevent errors occurring from the batch file locking the xbmc.log file. (To be honest Ive never gotten this error with Advanced Launcher, but I have with RCB + Steam Launcher, which both quit xbmc, but I havent used Advanced Launcher with out the vbs script) The last command is to return xbmc to the emulator category within advanced launcher on xbmc restarting.

launchers.xml looks like:
Code:
<application>C:\emulation\emulators\applaunch-vbs.bat</application>
<args>C:\emulation\emulators\Stella\Stella.exe "%rom%"</args>
I have just setup Advanced Launcher on Gotham B4 (using the direct download from the first post).

I'm using it to launch my Bluray player software and also Firefox for some web based catchup TV.
It's working great on the launcher side, but I'm having a problem where the idle timer in XBMC is kicking in and putting the PC to sleep while the external apps are running.
Is Advanced Launcher supposed to keep XBMC's idle timer from being started while the 'launched' app is running, or is this something I can handle another way?
(I'd rather not have to kill / restart XBMC when the external app is launched if it can be helped).

Running on Windows 8.1 if it's any different...
I use windows power options instead, works well for me. I had the same issue, it would sleep even while gaming.
Still no luck using Retroarch or other emulators in Gotham B4. At the most the application will say 'starting xyz' but nothing happens.
Perhaps someone can PM me an xml file of their config using OpenElec? That way I can figure out what i'm doing wrong.

Regards,

Bert
(2014-04-25, 13:01)bertbeukema Wrote: Still no luck using Retroarch or other emulators in Gotham B4. At the most the application will say 'starting xyz' but nothing happens.
Perhaps someone can PM me an xml file of their config using OpenElec? That way I can figure out what i'm doing wrong.
I think it would be better that you post the content of your launchers.xml file to see how do you have configured your emulator launchers. Also do Retroarch and other emulators are correctly installed and work on your OpenElec system without starting them from XBMC/Advanced Launcher?
(2014-04-25, 14:23)Angelscry Wrote:
(2014-04-25, 13:01)bertbeukema Wrote: Still no luck using Retroarch or other emulators in Gotham B4. At the most the application will say 'starting xyz' but nothing happens.
Perhaps someone can PM me an xml file of their config using OpenElec? That way I can figure out what i'm doing wrong.
I think it would be better that you post the content of your launchers.xml file to see how do you have configured your emulator launchers. Also do Retroarch and other emulators are correctly installed and work on your OpenElec system without starting them from XBMC/Advanced Launcher?

Ah check (duh), will do this :-)
I thought it would add MAME to my HTPC as I like to play the odd arcade game from time to time, installed advanced launcher and setup MAME as per the wiki,. What I get is a black screen when launching a rom.

My config
Ubuntu 12.04 (kernel updated to 3.13.5)
XBMC 12.3

I do not run a window manager and Linux boots into XBMC via an upstart job as per the XBMC wiki

The black screen issue is to do with not running a Window manager like Gnome.

Testing the emulator I can stop XBMC and lunch MAME as follows.
Code:
#!/bin/sh
exec su -c "xinit /usr/games/mame exerion -- -nocursor :0" xbmc

This lunches MAME and loads Exerion no problem (well sound was missing but fixed that with an asound.conf file)

Is their a more elegant way to launch the emulator from within XBMC without resorting to installing a GDM
(2014-04-28, 06:03)redstorm Wrote: I thought it would add MAME to my HTPC as I like to play the odd arcade game from time to time, installed advanced launcher and setup MAME as per the wiki,. What I get is a black screen when launching a rom.

My config
Ubuntu 12.04 (kernel updated to 3.13.5)
XBMC 12.3

I do not run a window manager and Linux boots into XBMC via an upstart job as per the XBMC wiki

The black screen issue is to do with not running a Window manager like Gnome.

Testing the emulator I can stop XBMC and lunch MAME as follows.
Code:
#!/bin/sh
exec su -c "xinit /usr/games/mame exerion -- -nocursor :0" xbmc

This lunches MAME and loads Exerion no problem (well sound was missing but fixed that with an asound.conf file)

Is their a more elegant way to launch the emulator from within XBMC without resorting to installing a GDM
If this command line is working on your system, maybe you can try to modify your MAME launcher like this :

Application : /usr/bin/exec
Arguments : su -c "xinit /usr/games/mame %romname% -- -nocursor :0" xbmc

But I'm not sure it will work until XBMC still running and so have the focus. Way to fix it would be to close XBMC and then start MAME using you command. But honestly, using a windows manager, that will automatically manage application display switch, focus, resolution, commands and all would be more easier.
Version 2.5.2 : This new version of Advanced Launcher simply render it compatible with XBMC Gotham version.

Changelog :
  • Fix XBMC Gotham compatibility
I just wanted to thank you, Angelscry, for your hard work. Advanced Launcher is a wonderful Add-On that I use regularly.
XBMC/Advanced Launcher/AutoIt can be a very powerful combination!

I have 2 suggestions that *I think* may improve Advanced Launcher even more.
(I hope that those features aren't included or already rejected, or this will be a terrible first post from me)

1.
I think that for each launcher (especially "Files Launcher (e.g. Game Emulator)"), we should be able to specify a folder to load/save the .nfo files.
Well, exactly like we are doing with the Thumbs and Fanart folders.

2.
When creating a launcher with MAME roms, there's a way to ignore BIOS roms. Wouldn't it be totally great if we also could ignore clones, and keep only parent roms?
I mean, Advanced Launcher "knows" when the .zip file is a BIOS or a GAME (thanks to the ArcadeHits scrapper I suppose?), so is it possible to get that info too while importing?
When I browse their website, it's specified when a ROM is a clone of XYZ, and if it's not mentioned, then it's a parent rom.

If it's not possible, I'll probably look for a ROM manager that can sort the roms and only put the parent ones inside the folder I'm going to scan with Advanced Launcher.


Thank you for reading ;-)
Hi,

I don't really know if this is the right place for this question, but since I haven't been able to find an answer elsewhere...

I have been using a Mac Mini with Win7 as a mediacenter, running XBMC with Advanced Launcher because I wanted it to have a lot of emulators included - worked fine.

I now find myself wanting to switch to OSX (seems to run a bit smoother on the machine) and therefore want to setup XBMC with emulators again - thus I was thinking I would use Retroarch with commandline through Advanced Launcher.

Using the example from here: http://www.gwenael.org/xbmc/index.php?title=RetroArch my command line for SNES looks something like this:

-f -L /Applications/Roms/Libretro/Snes9x_libretro.dylib "%rom%"

Instead of starting up Snes9x, only Retroarch is started up asking me which core to use for the selected rom-file. I have tried moving the core-files and tons of other stuff, but no matter what I do, the emu asks me to select a core, which defeats the purpose of what I am trying to have it do.

There same command line works fine on the PC.

I figure my syntax in the command line is wrong, but can someone guide me?

Thanks in advance.
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