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Windows games workaround

Open mikekornikh opened this issue 9 years ago • 5 comments

Hi! I love emulationstation but it doesn't work well with installed windows game (the ones in program files). When you make the path to read the program files folder and extensions as .exe you get every exe in programfilesx86 and you have to go through the crazy folder structures within ES. I couldn't find any help on this issue online so I tried fiddling with it and got it to work perfectly. Here's how..

First create a folder where all you can paste game shortcuts into, within the roms folder or wherever you want to store them. Next, copy the .exe of any game you want to launch from ES and paste shortcut into that folder. Rename shortcuts so they're recognizable for scraping. Here's the tricky part...In the es_systems.cfg file, the extensions are .lnk because they are shortcut files and the path is just %ROM% because they are their own .exe's and don't run in an emulator.

<system> <name>windows</name> <fullname>Games for Windows</fullname> <path>C:\gameshortcuts</path> <extension>.lnk</extension> <command>%ROM%</command> <platform>windows</platform> <theme>windows</theme> </system>

All that's left is making/modifying a theme to make it look like it belongs :)

mikekornikh avatar Mar 27 '16 21:03 mikekornikh

Can I marry you? No seriously! I've looked far and wide for this! You are a true life saver mike!

All i had to do, was to make a windowsfolder in my roms folder and edit the path to <path>~/.emulationstation/roms/windows</path>

Since dosbox isnt working for me anyways, i went ahead and made <theme>pc</theme>

Even the scraper works! This is truly brilliant!!!

Wormwoood avatar Mar 30 '16 11:03 Wormwoood

I'm truly flattered :) You may make my girlfriend a little jealous when she sees this. Don't forget to make a cool looking theme with a logo like this one https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/03/Games_for_Windows_logo.png

mikekornikh avatar Mar 30 '16 12:03 mikekornikh

This was helpful. I previously had this working with .lnk files and <command>C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "%ROM_RAW%"</command>

I thought I had tried %ROM% when I was testing, but apparently not.

Hancharenko avatar Apr 06 '16 14:04 Hancharenko

Thanks

Energyboost avatar Feb 25 '17 17:02 Energyboost

Little over 3 years late but, your a Life saver! i thought i had to use flat out batch files!

CaelThunderwing avatar May 25 '19 05:05 CaelThunderwing