"RetroBat" You know this front-end émulation?

[xmass73]

https://www.retrobat.ovh/index.html

RetroBat is a set of Batch and Powershell scripts written to easily configure and launch EmulationStation for Windows.
This frontend software is intended to gather your ROMs collection and run games with compatible emulators such as RetroArch.

RetroBat can download and install all the softwares you need to have a good retrogaming experience on your PC.

RetroBat is designed to run in Portable Mode. It means that you can either start it from HDD or from any removable storage device,
as long as you do it on a computer that meets the requirements.

Minimum system requierements:
-------------------------------------------

OS:
- Windows 8.1/10
- Windows 7 SP3

Processor:
- CPU with SSE2 support.
- 3 GHz and Dual Core, not older than 2008 is highly recommended.

Graphics:
- If you want to use emulators such as Dolphin or PCSX2, you need modern graphics card
(Direct3D 11.1 / OpenGL 3.3) that supports Direct3D 11.1 / OpenGL 4.4.

Software:
- VC++ Redistributables (both 32 & 64 bits)
- DirectX
- Powershell 2.0 (already installed on Windows 8.1/10, you need manual install on Windows 7)
- 7-Zip
- JoyTokey (optional)

Compatibles systems:
----------------------------

• 3DO
• ATARI 2600
• ATARI 5200
• ATARI PRO SYSTEM
• ATARI ST
• ATARI JAGUAR
• AMIGA
• PC-ENGINE
• PC-ENGINE CD
• NINTENDO GAMEBOY
• NINTENDO GAMEBOY COLOR
• NINTENDO GAMEBOY ADVANCE
• NINTEDO DS
• ATARI LYNX
• SEGA GAMEGEAR
• WONDERSWAN
• WONDERSWAN COLOR
• NEO-GEO POCKET
• NEO-GEO POCKET COLOR
• SONY PSP
• SEGA MASTER SYSTEM
• SEGA GENESIS
• SEGA MEGA-CD
• SEGA 32X
• SEGA SATURN
• SEGA DREAMCAST
• SEGA NAOMI
• ATOMISWAVE
• NINTENDO NES
• NINTENDO SUPER NES
• NINTENDO 64
• NINTENDO GAMECUBE
• NINTENDO WII
• MEDIA STREAMING UNIT (SD2SNES, SNES CD)
• SONY PLAYSTATION
• SONY PLAYSTATION 2
• ODYSSEY² - VIDEOPAC
• ARCADE (MAME, FBA)
• PC GAMES
• MS-DOS
• ...

github: github.com/kaylh/retrobat


Forum: https://retrobat.forumgaming.fr/

facebook.com/groups/retrobat

 

[LegzRwheelz]

I just discovered this, it seems capable. I am a Launchbox user so it's hard to come off of that lol. However I got both of my kids (8 and 9yo) capable gaming PCs (i7 6700k+ GTX 1060 and Ryzen 5 5500+ GTX 1660, capable for them at least, no kids in their classes have a gaming PC nor modded consoles like they do lulz) for Xmas and I am thinking that this would be better suited for them as it's simpler but informative, looks great but not overly flashy and send easy enough to configure. I don't plan to allow them to use the PC as a PC ie: I'm shelling it with a gaming friend and not allowing them access to chrome, explorer, control panel etc.

What I'm wondering, is how does this frontend handle Steam, GOG (Good Old Games), EGS (Epic Games Store) and UWP games (from the Microsoft store like Roblox, Xbox Game Pass games etc). I'm going to be signing into my games store accounts on their computers and have well over 700 games combined, on top of my ROMs, which I'm not going to be putting all on there, namely Yuzu, Citra, Cemu, Dolphin, PCSX2, RPCS3, DuckStation, XEMU, ReDream and RetroArch for a few retro outliers that I *think* they'll like. Ooof, sorry for the rant, lol, I get excited talking about PCs and bringing my children into the fold of my hobby (PLUS I get to free up my computer from being used to play Fortnite and Roblox all the time, lol)

 

[weestuarty]

There is a newer version of emulationstation being developed and its pretty much preconfigured for every system. Literally put roms into correct folder and put emulators in the emulator folder and good to go. plusit can launch pc games from shortcuts so its work reading into. https://es-de.org/

Post automatically merged: Dec 21, 2022

plus it has the ability to change emulator within the menu and use alt emulators per game

 

[LegzRwheelz]

There is a newer version of emulationstation being developed and its pretty much preconfigured for every system. Literally put roms into correct folder and put emulators in the emulator folder and good to go. plusit can launch pc games from shortcuts so its work reading into. https://es-de.org/

Post automatically merged: Dec 21, 2022

plus it has the ability to change emulator within the menu and use alt emulators per game

This is good news, you said emulation station, I have no experience with this but an aware of it. Is emu bat a fork of emu station? Also, how does it handle UWP games from game pass? Those shortcuts are very different from traditional .lnk shortcuts and will cause a "fatal" error (basically failed to launch) when handled as such.

 

[weestuarty]

i literally opened gamepass and sent shortcuts to desktop for high on life and lego skywalker saga and copied those shortcuts into my rom section for pc games and it worked fine no issues

 

[LegzRwheelz]

i literally opened gamepass and sent shortcuts to desktop for high on life and lego skywalker saga and copied those shortcuts into my rom section for pc games and it worked fine no issues

This is great news. Thank you very much for the info. This was absolutely the deciding factor cause it is a major pain in the a$$ launching UWP apps in frontends cause it requires knowing the internal names, like Forza horizon 4 is "sunrise_game" or som'n like that. There's no real easy way of getting these internal names. I have a PowerShell script that I created that creates a list of all the UWP apps but it's not just the games, it's stock apps like settings and whatnot as well as regular apps like the new Nvidia control panel. A lot of these have names that have no logic, rhyme or reason. Perfect example is like I mentioned about Forza Horizon 4. There's also a program out there called UWP hook that makes it easy to add UWP games to Steam but you must have it installed and it's buggy af on a good day. I'm know I'm rambling here, I'm just trying to convey how annoying these games are to deal with, typically.

Onto my other question though, has anybody used AutoHotKey for launching games along with 3rd party apps? Like controller companion and chrome? The reason I'm asking is on my computer, I've created a hotkey that launches YouTube in the TV format (like what you see on Android TV, Xbox, Switch etc.) in chrome in kiosk mode using the PS5 user agent string, launches controller companion app with a predefined profile for controlling chrome like it is on the Xbox with navigation sounds from Android TV. This is all accomplished using AHK and I created a snap launcher file that I direct Launchbox to as the "game" exe. What I'm wondering is, is the frontend smart enough to use simple ahk launchers like that or .bat files but watch for a different process such as chrome and when chrome closes, then is when it will go back to the game selection screen. Hope that makes sense. Lol.

Note: For further clarity and potential redundancy an example of what I'm talking about is the old middleware handler, RocketLauncher. It was extremely configurable, to an overwhelming level, but it was incredibly smart and in the PC games launcher you could set it up to the umpteenth degree, adding additional 3rd party apps to launch alongside the game (like controller companion), set it up to launch Steam games using the internal Steam URL as well as setting up a game that uses a launcher that you would configure so it would watch for a different process altogether, because not all games and apps can be launched directly from the exe that is running (like GTA 5). So you would set "Play GTA V" as the game but make it watch for the GTA5.exe instead and when that exe closes, it would then close the 3rd party apps and then "allow" the frontend to go back to the game selection screen. Unfortunately RocketLauncher is dated, a major resource hog and many things can and do go wrong on newer PCs so I had to stop using it on my computer (unless it is absolutely needed for games like GTA V) and it has honestly been a bit difficult for me to find anything that is even remotely passable in terms of PC game launching. So I keep it as an option for those games when I need that level of 'intelligence'. If I absolutely need to use it I will but I don't want to incorporate that into my kids' computers due to the amount of issues that can arise. I will if need to but I will need to create a batch file for launching games through RocketLauncher ... All of that is neither here nor there though. I was just explaining how helpful RocketLauncher was and am hoping that I can configure retrobat to do somewhat the same thing with PC games and other launchers that I have created using AutoHotKey. Sorry for the long, drawn out message and redundancy, I tend to struggle with concisely conveying my thoughts and questions into comprehensible sentences. Lol