Emulator Organizer Suggestion or problems goes her

New version of the convertor released:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Fixed some bugs when attempting to convert profile with data info items in it.
Enjoy !

Don Django wrote:

Hi EO community!

Just a simple question: how do you manage multiple disc games inside EO? One entry per disc (for exemple FF7 Disc 1, FF7 Disc 2, FF7 Disc 3), or one enty for the whole set (for exemple FF7 Disc 1-2-3) with command lines to select the disc you want to use? If does not exist yet, it will be a great feature.

P.S. EO 5.4.125 works now, ignore the (old) post above.^^

I used the parent clone dats at no-intro so when I select a rom a window opens up asking me which region of the rom I want to play. Couldn't you just merge all discs into one compressed file and when you launch the game EO will ask which disc/file you want to load?

Another suggestion would be to allow for calculated fields. The reason I think this would be a good idea is because I list game review scores for games and it would be nice to have one column that averages those together so I can hide the unnecessary columns in case they contain blank data and only display the column that has the "average" review score.

For Example: (the below scores are made up I'm just using this as an example)


Phantasy Star II (8.5 + 6 + 6 = 20.5 / 3 = 6.83333333 or 6.8 would be the average score)
8.5 - EGM
??? - GameFan (not reviewed)
6.0 - GameSpot
??? - IGN (not reviewed)
6.5 - RPGFan

Phantasy Star III (7.5 + 8.5 + 4 = 20 / 3 = 6.6666667 or 6.7 would be the average score)
7.5 - EGM
8.5 - GameFan
4.0 - GameSpot
??? - IGN (not reviewed)
??? - RPGFan (not reviewed)

Phantasy Star IV (9 would be the average score)
9.0 - EGM
??? - GameFan (not reviewed)
??? - GameSpot (not reviewed)
??? - IGN (not reviewed)
??? - RPGFan (not reviewed)

So basically instead of displaying several columns which may or may not contain data it would be nice to just have one column with an average score. I could do this manually but if I happen to go back and add a score to a game and forgot to update the "Average" score column then it wouldn't be accurate.

Lastly, I understand that some sites use different scoring methods i.e. ABCDF or 0-100 or 0-10 but I could easily convert those to a standard format before entering them in to their respective columns to ensure the average is a true average.

Thanks for listening and thanks for all your hard work I love EO   

Hi Oden!

Merge all discs into one compressed files? Emulators recognize that type of file? How do you make this? It's clear that it could be interesting.

I haven't tried many disc based games except sega cd and it works with those games so I image it would work with PSX games.

I tried it with Shining Force CD. I compressed the two versions of Shining Force CD that I found (both ISO and all wav files) into one archive and added that archive to Emulator Organizer as a regular game. When I go to play the game it asked me which file I want to send to the emulator to play since multiple files are compressed into one archive. I select the iso or cue file depending on the emulator and it loads.

Ok, I will test this method. Thanks in advance Oden!

Another feature request came to mind after responding to Don Django.

I like the fact the Emulator Organizer recognizes merged roms by asking you which game inside that archive you want to extract. The only down side when dealing with disc based games is that the larger the archive, the longer it takes to extract and play the game.

Take for example Final Fantasy VII which is 3 discs and was released in multiple territories, if you merge all three discs and all territories together you will have a large archive that will be slow to extract when it's time to play.

My suggestion would be to allow multiple files to be linked to a single entry and when that entry is selected you would be presented with a window that would allow you to choose which archive you want to play/extract then after the archive is selected Emulator Organizer will open another window that contains the files inside the archive you choose (if multiple files exist) to allow you to select the rom or iso file i.e.

- Final Fantasy VII (USA) Disc 1.rar
- Final Fantasy VII (USA) Disc 2.rar
- Final Fantasy VII (USA) Disc 3.rar
- Final Fantasy VII (Japan) Disc 1.rar
- Final Fantasy VII (Japan) Disc 2.rar
- Final Fantasy VII (Japan) Disc 3.ar
etc.

I have a few suggestions for the review / score field that was recently added in EO.

1. Add a button or some other function that will allow the user to reset the score per game if they accidentally entered a score by mistake

2. The sort function on this field doesn't seem to be working i.e. it wont sort ascending or descending like it should be

3. Allow the user to specify which score they want to display in the main window that way they can sort by the overall score or if for some reason they wanted to see what game had the highest score by a specific publication they would have the ability to do so

I'm sure you have other things you are working on in EO as well but just wanted to offer some suggestions if they are easy to implement.

Thanks again for your hard work.


******EDIT******

I just noticed one more thing. If you edit a name in the Review / Score field it will make the value present in that field disappear for all games but it's still used to calculate the overall score i.e. if you re-lable IGN.com to IGN it will cause whatever score is in that field to reset to 0 but the value (whatever it was) is still being used to calculate the overall score for that game.

For some reason when I add images, RTF files, videos, etc. the path includes the drive (H) the files are located on instead of using a period (.) like it did previously. Did something change with the new version of EO?

Example:

This is what it looked like before
.\Files\Systems\Sega Genesis\Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\Media\Cover.png

This is what it looks like now
H:\Emulator Organizer\Files\Systems\Sega Genesis\Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\Media\Cover.png

So, if I move the "Emulator Organizer" folder to another drive or location it will not be able to locate the image or files.


****EDIT****

I was able to fix the problem by deleting the rom and re-adding it back to EO. I think the problem occurred because I relabeled the folder that this rom was located in and tried to update the images to the new location. Well at least the problem is now fix :-)

Hi everyone!

I met several problems with EO recently, with two versions: the one that I use, 5.4.125, and the new one.

1. With EO 5.4.125
Especially with SSF emulator, Sega Saturn games (but with other consoles with bios as PSX, GameCube, etc...) EO doesn't show the bios animation at the start (Sega Saturn logo boot screen), and for certain games (Shinobi X), it freezes after a few minutes. Some games needs to enable the bios file to work properly, and I tried without EO, it works like a charm!

Another case with Kega Fusion and Sega CD/Mega CD isos: this command file -scd works well but there's a lag between the image and the sound during the cinematic (Chuck Rock, Final Fight CD). Then, I used another method: using laucnh before/launch after command, but problems remain the same. Of course, outside EO, it works when I used iso with Deamon Tools and start the emulator normally, without these problems.

2. With the latest version
Well...when I want to create a new console category, I change properties, I click on Add Rom Folder and...nothing appears! Even with the Add Emulator function, my emulator doesn't appear! Strange...

Sorry for this long textual pavement  !

P.S. I wanted to convert my EO 5 profile with Profile Converter, but it doesn't work!

Ok I know how EO 6 works, please forget the second point above!^^ By the way, I don't know why EO cut the boot logo for CD games (Saturn, PSX,etc), and problems on first case above still remain the same! With another frontend, I don't see this inconvenience.

Hi Don Django, did you use the updated converter because I had problems with the original one.

AHD wrote:

New version of the convertor released:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
Fixed some bugs when attempting to convert profile with data info items in it.
Enjoy !

Thanks for the link Oden! No I used the old one.

First thanks for the program. I am trying to use this with PlayStation 1 games, my games are in .rar and when open a game to play only extract the file i select. Is good that i can choose the file because i need to select the .cue to open the game, but i need this to extract the game and track that some game have. If they were only two file (.bin, .cue) there would be no problem, because I choose the .bin first, and when extract, I choose the .cue, extract and open the game using the .cue. But many games have tracks (some have 50+), and it is difficult to decompress one by one.

I want to know if in the option that says "Extract rom first if archive", you can add another option that say something like "Extract all files no matter what you select".

Thanks.

Ok, "problems" that I've mentioned above are solved, when you want to use launch before/after commands, please uncheck the default command line "rompath". So bootscreen for Sega Saturn appears, lag sound in cinematic with Sega CD games no longer exist. And for PSX bootscreen, just add this command line -slowboot

And for the ultimate function missing in EO, to manage multiple disc games, maybe create a tool like this: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I'm using the new version 6.1.12 now and would like to report a bug.

I have added a couple of systems Sega CD, Sega Genesis, Sega 32x, and PC games. When I'm browsing Emulator Organizers game window (the one with the game names), for some reason I can't use the arrow keys to navigate up or down, I have to use the scroll bar. EO will still allow me to press a letter on my keyboard to go to games starting with that letter but it won't let me use the arrow keys to navigate.

Hello Hellboy!

Thaks for a way to run the ISO games with multi files, in fact I need the file selection screen the first to ask first unzip the file .cue that generates an error because the emulator does not find the .iso file.

Thus run the same game again and now on the file selection screen i ask to unzip the .iso which is now with the .cue in the / temp EO.

Ready now the game loads correctly, is a very laborious path, because if the game has more than two files in your extrutura, you need to repeat this action until the end of all, think of one of Sega CD iso image with various wav files .

The Emulators Organizer is in my opinion the best frontend for emulators, but would very much like the team included the option "Extract all the archive". So we could choose only the base file that the emulator need (.cue, iso, .bin, .cdd) to load the games properly, thus the program will be 100% functional for compressed ISO's.

Thanks to everyone and that we will soon have that option in this wonderful program!

Hugs!

For all those still struggling with the dreaded "Spliter Distance must be between panel1minsize and width" error message when firing up EO, I found that deleting the global settings.set file from your EO folder cures the problem. After i deleted mine, I was able to start up EO just fine. Spent weeks scouring the net for help with no luck. Hope this can help others going forward.

OK. Now i've noticed a new problem...

the tabs that normally appear on the right of the screen when in EO are now gone. No, titles, box, video, text, etc. I've tried re-installing and repairing with no luck. Anyone know how I might be able to get them back?

problem solved. I think all I had to do was set up an emulator from start to finish and they were back.

Hi guys!
the roms that has a dot in the name are not displayed correctly.
an example: "Al Unser Jr.'s Road to the Top.zip" is shown as "Al Unser Jr".

EO v6.3.17

It looks like retro arch still isn't working with the newest version of EO. Any idea what's causing the incompatibility?

oden wrote:

It looks like retro arch still isn't working with the newest version of EO. Any idea what's causing the incompatibility?

Hi Oden, i have the newest Nightly-Retroarch and it starts normaly.

I`m using this commandline e.g RomPath --config configs\bsnes_performance_libretro.cfg

You must change the Option "Configuration Per-Core" in "General Options" to Yes

Thanks for the info Aldirt, but it's still not working for me. I'll describe what I did and hopefully that will shed some light on why it's not working.

1. I downloaded RetroArch-v1.0.0.2-64-bit.zip from the RetroArch website and unzipped it to my emu folder i.e.
I:\Emulator Organizer\Files\Emulators\RetroArch

2. I then downloaded Cores-v1.0.0.2-64-bit.zip from the RetroArch website and unzipped it to a folder I created in the RetroArch folder i.e.
I:\Emulator Organizer\Files\Emulators\RetroArch\cores

3. I edited line 792 of the retroarch.cfg file from
core_specific_config = "false"
to
core_specific_config = "true"

4. Add retroarch.exe as an emulator in Emulator Organizer. In my case I'm using if for genesis roms using the genesis_plus_gx_libretro core.

5. Click on the Commandlines option under the Properties menu of the RetroArch emulator while in Emulator Organizer.

6. Add --config configs\genesis_plus_gx_libretro.cfg underneith the item labled
Name: default
Code: RomPath

So in the preview menu it looks like rompath --config configs\genesis_plus_gx_libretro.cfg

It still doesn't work though, any ideas?

Also the cores have the extension .dll so why would I input .cfg at the end of genesis_plus_gx_libretro?

I have a question about RTF files and EO. When I load an RTF file into EO it looks like the image below.



However if I open the RTF in Microsoft Word it has the correct spacing and alignment (see the image below).



Is there a reason EO changes the size of the boxes and alignment of the text?

Hello! I was doing my emulators database and in certain point I get this message and I can no loger load my Profile... Pleas! Help!

Code:

Can't open profile
Unable to load profile: End of Stream encountered before parsing was completed

I'm sorry to hear about that Edvard.

Do you have a backup copy of your profile?

Have you tried to load your profile on a clean install of EO?

No I don't have a backup, It was all of a sudden when adding a console and scanning roms and I didn't save... I try to load when the problem appears to a moment earlier but the problem remained , I had already created 10 or more consoles at that moment.
I try downloading again and loading the profile but the same message pop up...
I have the same error when trying to load the profile on EO v6.2 too.
Thanks anyway oden!

Sorry to hear that didn't fix the issue.

I'm sure Croser or AHD will check the forums soon to provide a solution to your problem.

Hello
Sorry we didn't be able to access forum recently
Edward could you upload your profile so we can analize the problem

Hello, I'm new around, and have a suggestion. I have looked and it seems that there's no option to auto find rom info from moby games. I'm sure that many users have thousands of roms, and its boring to add info one  by one. If there's a automatic and precise way to add info to roms, better will be. I'm not a program guy, but if so, I myself would develop such a feature.

Hi, I can't make work EO 6.0+ in Windows XP,
the 5.4 work fine and before

After run the exe it says "this have to be closed", typical message
of windows.
The EOWithLogger.bat doesn't write nothing in the log.

The EmulatorsOrganizer.exe after 6.0 doesn't show any icon.

I have Net framework 4, 3, etc

We're planning for new patch soon,we ll fix xp compatibility issue,we ll try to add your suggestion to next release sorry again if we couldn't reply to all your comments , my stupid ISP promise to get my internet connection. Back soon

Hi folks
You all should know that the weak point of Eo is lake of proper documentation , we need some one to write decent faq for eo it would be great help for us and for newcomer, if you interesting pls pm me AHD or oden
Thank you for your support eo will never be possible without you all

I noticed some of you has problem with eo , it won't launch and show error message , first make sure you have the latest version and you already applied the latest fix, check [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] , to fix this problem you need to delete this dir located at :
for eo version 5:
C:\Users\"user name"\AppData\Local\AHD
delete AHD folder and restart eo

for  version 6:
delete this dir located at mydocument:
EmulatorsOrganizer

delete "EmulatorsOrganizer" folder and restart eo

Croser wrote:

Hello
Sorry we didn't be able to access forum recently
Edward could you upload your profile so we can analize the problem

Here I upload my profile
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

The strange is that I can open my profile from other computer via local network (my brother's computer)... I would be good I you could help me with this profile issue...

ALSO, the option to export info from MobyGames is not working now... could be that the site is with problems?

I send screen captures of both problems.

Profile problem:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Get info from Moby:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I was cheking LaunchBox v4.9, another frontend, it has interesting tools for getting automatic info and images from GameDB, Wikipedia (they missed MobyGames, that for me is very complete). I would be good to get info from more sites.

Thanks for all your work! hope you can help me.Greetings!

I will check the profile now the help in the way
because mobygame site doesn't has api we implemented method to download html page and extract the info inqured by the user,mobygame seems aware of that and change thire site map from time to time,my guess launchbox use the same method to achieve that,thank yoo for pointing to that,I 'll check this frontend and see how it function,we could implement same function inside eo with better way

Great! Thanks for all Croser!

I forgot to mention a minor issue when detecting images, documents etc

For Example: If you have these two games...

Addams Family, The
Addams Family, The - Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt

when detecting images etc automatically assigns the wrong images, images in Addams Family original game are images and documents from the other game (Addams Family, The - Pugsley's Sacavenger Hunt) and in the other game it shows nothing on the tabs

It happens with titles that have a series of games also, like Adventure Insland.
I have to check those titles and fix them everytime I detect images etc from folders for a list of games.
It's minor issue but I think that you should know

Found your software today and it's exactly what I've been looking for. After setting things up for some dozen emulators, my profile got inaccessible - and I suppose it has something to do with the number of items under some console.
So I went all-in with C64. When I added the 50k+ games, things worked tho everything went real slow, but after I added another 30K+ of C64 demos, I couldn't save my profile anymore.
When trying to save the profile, I got the infamous "System.OutOfMemoryException: Out of memory" -error. Shut EO, try to open the profile and no cigar, now I'm stuck with the same "end of steam" -error that Edvard added above. 64-bit win 7, 16G memory. Profile file is 60M atm. And yes, deleted the EmulatorsOrganizer from mydocuments, but that didn't help (other than let me into the software again). Help?

Edit: I can reproduce the problem with fresh profile by adding the same massive pile of files. What I did exactly is:
a) went to archive.org and downloaded the latest c64 tosec set
b) created a console group called C64
c) added two consoles (C64 Games, C64 Demos) and binded two emulators to it
d) folder scanned the games folder for C64 Games and Demos folder for C64 Demos

And after that I first get the - and if I quit and try to open, my profile is busted.

Hello Viritys, thanks for stopping by and taking the time to post here

I don't have an answer to your specific problem,but I would suggest making a back up copy of your profile going forward that you can fall back on in the even this type of situation comes up again. I usually back mine up bi-weekly just in case anything crazy happens.

You may want to upload your profile here so Croser and AHD can take a look at it and possibly fix it.

I know Croser and AHD are working hard on the next release. I don't know the actual date it will be ready but they are definitely putting a lot of hours into this.

I have a beautiful nas drive for all my retro needs so don't worry, once I figure how to tame this beast, I will take good care of the backups

I can create a faulty profile if you want, but are you sure I should upload that 70MB file here? I will if that's what you want but again, if you follow the four steps above, you can recreate it yourselves. I'm either hitting the ceiling on overall stuff (120K, more or less) or on a single console (in my case, about 60K). The problem has something to do with EO's DB running out of juice under those conditions.

I'll try to do the gamelist in some 10K chunks and see whether that works ie does it break around 100K entries even if they are split on different tables or not. I can live with less than that, but would be helpful to know the breaking point so that I know how to avoid it

I'll let Croser or AHD post in this thread if they actually need the file. They should be able to replicate the issue.

Hello viritys and welcome we hope you enjoy both staying and using EO
we currently inspects the problem you already addressed ,we need to ask you if you could upload the profile (dropbox\mediafire if possible),thank you for your post,in future we will add new type of database (mysql)

Sure, happy to be your guinea pig

As an added bonus you'll get my second attempt which managed to break some other way. This time I have no idea what went wrong - I was using EO just fine up until the point I restarted it, after which the profile has refused to open.

Both can be downloaded from here: ("New members are not allowed to post external links or emails for 7 days. Please contact the forum administrator for more information.") Ok, www dot mediafire.com/?h353qiqa9qyoy

First problem (too many C64 games): c64_owns.eop  <--- note that it crashes midway, ie the error message hits in the middle and I get "unable to save a profile", but EO  doesn't crash as such. So the profile might be uniquely broken each and every time, don't know. (that's why I thought you might want to replicate the problem instead of looking at my profile)
In case you want to replicate it yourself, this is what I'm trying to get into EO: https archive.org/details/Commodore_C64_TOSEC_2012_04_23.

BTW is 137 934 305 bytes some magical number from your DBs perspective? Because I think I saw the exact same size when playing around earlier, can't remember tho.

Second problem: fubar.eop (Unable to load profile: Object reference not set to an instance of an object):

This is what I get after awhile on the latter one:

************** Exception Text **************
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
  at EmulatorsOrganizer.Form_Main.SaveSizesIntoStyle()
  at EmulatorsOrganizer.Form_Main.Form_Main_ResizeEnd(Object sender, EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnResizeEnd(EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmExitSizeMove(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

lol ok thanks for both the bonus and the info,I 'll see what we can do it seems serious glitch,I 'll pm you with fix soon after it works

we had extensive test with large collection of rom,we know for sure this is ancient problem since the initilat release back when first eo developed that we didn't find it till recently,eo use serialization and doesn't has regular database,thus it can't handle too many entries and might crash if these entries exceed certain count (I don't yet be sure what is the exact number)
we need to shift eo to next big update,eo 7,which will include real meta database (sql),but before we do that we 'll release another update that fix and enhance existing eo and this update will coming real soon
srry edvard viritys ,we couldn't fix this problem but we'll works hard to fix it
as you know eo is one man projext developed since v1.1 by AHD,it takes years of dedicated developments so we will ask you to be patient,we love eo ,the project has some slow development time due to real life matters(difficulties) and the fact that there is another projects ahd involved with,but we 'll promise you we make eo better
when will EO7 be released?
well it depends how things goes,this might take time maybe untill next year but I'm not sure
what the benefit of sql db?
it will make eo faster lighter and handlehuge collection of entries (roms)
if you want best performance and less crash,try to maintain project with less than 30k of roms for all consoles
Thank you all for your support the next update will coming soon

np and thanks for a useful reply. Being a "power user" on pretty much everything I'm trying to do, I'm used to run into problems no matter what I use, part of the fun I might be able to help you out here and there - while I'm too busy to run any additional pet projects myself, I'm happy to test and report random issues.

I guess I can handle issue #1 by building separate DB's for different consoles (yeah, the collection is HUGE) ie the problem is with db getting too big. Not a biggie, just a mental note to everyone - watch the size of your profile and when it hits around 100MB, it's time to move the rest of the collection to a separate one.

Two things:
1) what about my issue #2? That should not have exceeded the number- I think it broke down when I moved consoles to different console groups. If I could get a fixed profile, I would save some three hours of grunt work
2) found a bug - if the file path is too long (Windows has a limitation of 260 characters for the path length) and you try to import something from it, EO will simply do a windows crash. Event viewer reveales the issue.

scratch that request, I started all over again

Now I have a new problem that has had my head scratching for awhile. So I was trying to do Sega Saturn with emulator yabause. This time there is a folder inside the .7z-file (ie if you extract game.7z, you'll end up with game\gamefile.bin, game\gamefile.cue etc) and apparently this is not fully supported?

Say I'm playing game Shellshock, command line is set to -i <rompath>. I double-click the game on EO, EO extracts the files to D:\Emulator\Emulator Organizer\Temp\Shellshock (USA) (DW0685)\ and then asks which file I want to launch.

I click the bin, emulator launches and complains:
"File not found: D:\Emulator\Emulator Organizer\Temp\Shellshock (USA) (DW0685).bin"

So the issue is of course the missing folder, but I'm not sure how to fix it. Well, other than redoing the archives without folders, of course.
Could I maybe set parameters on how to extract games? (ie command 7-zip to remove folders while extracting, which would solve the issue)

sryy for delay and thanks for the info,we will be happy if you provide us with more reports and testing results,after the next update we might release small fixes if necessary but not new feature during eo 7 development
,regarding your second issue,we fix the cause of it but we can'rt do the same for your profile,so with next update you should not see it again
do you try to import profile or roms and extras? if you have files located on long path dir try to move these files to shorter path dir,this problem caused by windows and the error passed through eo
regarding sega saturn cd and other compressed image,you need to tell eo what to extract:
Right click on the console that will be modified and select Properties
Select the Archives section
Select the Extract all files option in the How to extract section
Click the Ok button
these info can be found on our wiki under console category
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beside the next update will has new feature and function to deal with disk based games

I think you missed the point - or maybe I did? Let's see

So, if my .7z has a structure "folder\gamefile"
1) EO extracts it to temp\folder\gamefile
2) EO asks the emulator to open temp\gamefile
which of course will fail

thank you very much fix in the way