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The Developer's Log lists all new features and bugfixes introduced in new releases. The Developer's Log started logging new features with the Alpha build 2015-01-26.
Metropolis Launcher Fall'18 Update 1.2.0 (build 2018-09-07)
Important: If you already use a previous build of Metropolis Launcher and update it with this one, go to Settings and click the Refresh Caches Now! button.
New Features
| • | RetroAchievements Support and Challenge Mode |
https://retroachievements.org is a set of modified emulators (including RetroArch) and an online database allowing you to unlock and track achievements in emulated games.
Metropolis Launcher helps you keeping track of (un)locked achievements for the supported games.
On top of that, Metropolis Launcher lets you create challenges:
- define multiple tiers per challenge having multiple achievements
- when all achievements in a tier are unlocked, the next tier is visible
- in multi-user mode a user may be bound to a challenge, so that only games of the current challenge/tier are visible to the user
Challenges can contain RetroAchievements and additionally runtime-based achievements. You can use runtime-based achievements for games which are not supported by RetroAchievements.
Read here on how to set up RetroAchievements and create your own challenges.
| • | Total DOS Launcher Support |
Sometimes one launcher just isn't enough.
The Total DOS Launcher by Trixter is a DOS native launcher, easily capable of handling thousands of files on vintage hardware. Metropolis Launcher ships and supports Total DOS Launcher in the following scenarios:
1. Export your zipped DOS games as a Total DOS Launcher Collection, ready to be copied to your vintage hardware.
2. Create a Total DOS Launcher start menu for games having multiple executables (e.g. Ultima Collection, id Anthology, Duke Nukum Episode 1 - 3)
Read here on how to use these features.
| • | Pre- and Post-Launch Commands |
For any emulator you can now define commands that are launched before and after the actual emulator is launched.
| • | Enhanced Scripting Support |
Metropolis Launcher now supports enhanced scripting with AutoIt and AutoHotKey. You'll be provided with a template script containing the variables which will be filled upon launch. Use it as the starting point for developing your own script.
Instead of directly launching the emulator, your script will be executed.
| • | Global Default Emulators defined per-user |
In Multi User Mode, each user may now define their global default emulator for each platform in the Emulator Settings dialog. This feature has been introduced in order to have emulators set up with different RetroAchievement credentials for each user.
| • | Main Window State, Location and Size |
The Main Window state (maximized, minimized, normal), location and size are now saved when Metropolis Launcher is closed.
These properties are restored with the next start of Metropolis Launcher. Hold down the SHIFT key when starting up and Metropolis Launcher will be shown in the default (maximized) state.
| • | Merged "Edit Game" and "Edit Multiple Games" |
Instead of having two menu items for editing a single game and multiple games, we now have one menu item reacting according to the current selection of either a single or a multiple selection of games.
| • | Downloader Fallback to Archive.org |
The downloader for extras (screenshots etc.) falls back to archive.org's wayback machine if mobygames.com is detected as being down.
Database Updates
| • | every licensed SEGA - Genesis / Mega Drive game now has complete multiplayer metadata (Number of Players, Multiplayer Options and Multiplayer Game Modes)
Important: if you already have games added for this platform, perform a rescan in the Rom Manager |
| • | All information from MobyGames.com has been updated |
Bugfixes
| • | (re-)scanning ScummVM games didn't identify duplicates properly |
| • | launching a random game didn't take unavailability into account |
| • | Closing the DOSBox - Choose Exe dialog did the same as using the Just Mount button (launch DOSBox into the command prompt), now closing the dialog actually cancels the whole launch procedure and reverts back to Games & Emulation Main Screen |
| • | Display of DOS executables now include their relative paths (you could have PRINCE\START.BAT and PRINCE2\START.BAT shown as just START.BAT and START.BAT which was misleading) |
Metropolis Launcher Winter'17 Update 1.1.0 (build 2017-11-25)
Important: If you already use a previous build of Metropolis Launcher and update it with this one, go to Settings and click the Refresh Caches Now! button.
New Features
| • | Extras Downloader
Metropolis Launcher is now able to download MobyGames extras (screenshots, cover art etc.) for your games. These downloads take place on-demand, i.e. an extra for a game is downloaded when the game is selected or the next extra is accessed by clicking the viewer or triggered by a slideshow event. Metropolis Launcher ships with a database of URLs for these extras. You can manage these extras with the MOBY Extras Manager.
The sub-directory moby of the extras directory will be used to cache all downloaded extras. They will be organized by extra type (screenshots, cover-art etc.) and platform (c64, dos, gen, snes etc.).
The downloader can be disabled in the Settings screen.
Extras are now differentiated as MOBY extras and USER extras.
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| • | Full Support for ScummVM
ScummVM which is able to emulate games from multiple platforms, is now fully supported by Metropolis Launcher. In order to achieve this, Metropolis Launcher introduced:
- the multi-platform "ScummVM" providing metadata of all platforms (e.g. DOS, FM-Towns etc.)
- a template-based configuration engine for ScummVM emulators
- a ScummVM v2.0.x based import process
Important: as of this writing, ScummVM 2.0.x is the latest Dev build and not in production. Features of 2.0.x are needed for importing games in Metropolis Launcher. You can later play with older versions of ScummVM, e.g. the stable 1.9.x version. ScummVM Dev builds can be downloaded at http://buildbot.scummvm.org/builds.html. |
| • | List Generators
In order to feed multiple roms/cd images/diskette images to an emulator, some emulators support text-based list files as startup parameter. Metropolis Launcher now lets you define such lists with the List Generator. Furthermore Metropolis Launcher ships with the following list definitions:
- VICE emulator flip list for device 8
- Mednafen m3u list Important: Metropolis Launcher generates m3u files with absolute paths. You need to set filesys.untrusted_fip_check 0 in your mednafen.cfg for it to work.
The generated list files can be used as startup parameter for the emulator by using the variable %listfile%, which provides a filepath with .txt file ending. A user-defined file ending can be achieved by providing the variable %listfile.ext% where ext is the extension (e.g. %listfile.m3u% generates a file with .m3u extension). |
| • | Emulator Autoconfiguration
Metropolis Launcher needs you to set up startup parameters, supported platforms etc. in order to get emulators to work correctly.
From now on, Metropolis Launcher ships with an internal database for some known emulators and can provide the correct settings. Currently there are in total 38 known emulators. |
| • | Support for DOSBox ECE (Enhanced Community Edition)
DOSBox ECE is a DOSBox build containing unofficial patches carefully picked and provided by YesterPlay80. Metropolis Launcher supports this DOSBox variant including settings for the following new patches:
- Pixel Perfect Output Mode Patch
- 4x, 5x, 6x window scaling Patch
- Nuked OPL3 emulator
- Fluidsynth
Any other patch included in DOSBox ECE has already been supported by Metropolis Launcher. |
| • | Improved M.A.M.E. support
You can now provide an .ini file for filtering the games to be kept after scanning. The rest of the games will be removed (e.g. slot machines, MESS software list games etc.)
Recommended .ini files for filtering are (choose one):
- Non Mechanicals Arcade.ini
- Originals Arcade.ini
- Working Arcade.ini
You can download .ini files for filtering from http://www.progettosnaps.net/renameset/ (category.ini)
You can now provide a gameinit.dat for the M.A.M.E. import process. Gameinit.dat lists the initialization procedures of some games. In fact, some of them, the first time are not immediately playable without these procedures. |
| • | Games Availability
Metropolis Launcher highlights unavailable games by showing them with a strike-through font. The availability will be updated when the user launches the game from the Games & Emulation Main Screen or performs a rescan in the Rom Manager. |
Table
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Column
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Description
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Games
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Moby Year
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the release year according to MobyGames
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Games
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Moby Publisher
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the publisher according to MobyGames
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Games
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Moby Developer
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the developer according to MobyGames
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Games
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deprecated
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the Moby Release entry has not been found after an update of the MobyGames data
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Moby Releases
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Compilation
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the release is a compilation containing multiple games
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Moby Releases
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Platform
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the actual platform of the game's release - it can differ from the selected platform e.g. ScummVM
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Moby Releases
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deprecated
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the Moby Release entry has not been found after an update of the MobyGames data
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| • | MobyLinkQA in the Rom Manager
In order to further verify links of Moby Release metadata to game entries, the MobyLinkQA function has been introduced to the Rom Manager.
The MobyLinkQA analyzes tags of the game's filename and tries to identify the developer/publisher within the tags. Then, it compares the name of the developer/publisher with the one provided by the MobyGames metadata. If there is no match, the game's entry in the list will be highlighted. |
Database Updates
| • | Big update for The Commodore - C64 Platform, the TOSEC 2017-04-14 set has been used as reference |
| • | All information from MobyGames.com has been updated |
Bugfixes
| • | Importing Romsets from a single packed file (7z/zip containing multiple games) lead to no identified filename tags |
| • | Some Moby Releases had missing Developer/Publisher - they could be identified as deprecated, links to Moby Releases have been fixed |
| • | MAME catlist 0.181 and nplayers 0.190 have been categorized |
| • | Rom Manager allows to skip import of a game when a duplicate has been found |
| • | Unified Error Message Box |
| • | Tag Parser optimized for small screen size |
| • | Rom Manager bug in grouping multi-volume games fixed |
Metropolis Launcher 1.0.1 (build 2017-05-03)
Bugfixes
| • | Fixed an issue when saving added games in the Rom Manager |
Metropolis Launcher 1.0.0 (build 2017-04-29)
New Features
Important: If you already use a previous build of Metropolis Launcher and update it with this one, go to Settings and click the Refresh Caches Now! button.
| • | Backup System
A basic backup system prevents you from unexpected data corruption and loss. You can define in which directory and after how many launches a backup should be made and how many backups should be kept. Currently, the ml.db file containing all your settings and data will be backed up as .zip files.
The backup system is triggered every time you close Metropolis Launcher.
Note: the backup system does not backup your emulators, games etc. |
| • | Detect MobyGames Links - Feature for Rom Manager and RomBase Manager (read more)
Linking Games (Roms, Disks, Executables etc.) to MobyGames meta data is an essential requirement but also a laborious task. The Detect MobyGames Links feature helps by performing an automatic text match on the game names and the MobyGames release names. |
| • | New Genre Categories
MobyGames ramped their number of genre categories up to a whopping total of 14 categories with 214 genres. Metropolis Launcher has been adjusted to that and provides all additional columns to the Games & Emulation Main Screen. In consequence, if you already performed Similarity Calculations, you should re-do them, as they could base on the new genre categories. |
| • | Export to CSV and XLSX
You can now export the Games & Emulation list to Microsoft Excel's XLSX file format. It is also possible to export to Text files (CSV). |
| • | Manage your collection of physical releases
In the Games & Emulation Main Screen you can quickly mark games which you Want (to buy), which you (physically) Have and which you want to Trade, by ticking the appropriate fields. This is just a first step towards management of physical releases. |
| • | Quick Filter
Using the smart tags of the main list's column headers can be cumbersome. Also it is not easily possible to select more than one entry as a filter or a range. The new Quick Filter panel on the left helps in setting up filters for multiple meta data fields without much hazzle. |
| • | Context Menu Overhaul
All context menus are now equipped with icons and adapt to the chosen skin |
  
| • | Duplicate DOSBox Templates
You can now easily duplicate a DOSBox Template in order to retain most of it's settings and modify some |
| • | Performance Optimization for Game Imports
Importing games is now significantly faster
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| • | RetroArch Cores
In Emulator Settings if a RetroArch emulator is chosen, you can select the appropriate core (target platform) from the dropdown (when you launch a game, the selected core will be provided as command line parameter "-L cores\corename.dll"). Important: the dropdown only shows cores that are already downloaded. |
Bugfixes
| • | There was an error when parsing the Version info in filenames, so that for example "(v1.0)" resulted in "1.0)" instead of "1.0" in the version field of your game's metadata. If you already use a previous build of Metropolis Launcher and encounter this error in the version field, either do a rescan within the Rom Manager or alter the version info via Edit Game. |
Alpha build 2016-02-20
Important
If you already use a previous build of Metropolis Launcher and update it with this one, go to Settings and click the Refresh Caches Now! button.
New Features
| • | Similarity Calculation (read more)
This is huge! still experimental, your results may vary. Select a game A and Metropolis Launcher finds similar games for you. More precisely, Metropolis Launcher calculates a similarity score of 0 to 100 for each game B compared to the selected game A based on feature sets of meta data (genre/s, perspective/s, developer/s etc.). |
| • | Pictures (Screenshots, Boxart etc.) are now organized as "Extras", the former term "Media" was misleading. If you used a previous version of Metropolis Launcher please go to Settings and check if the Extras directory is correctly set up.
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| • | Extras Management (read more): manage your extras (screenshots, box art etc.), Add, Re-Arrange, Remove and Crop your extras within Metropolis Launcher |
| • | The all new Multi User Mode (read more) allows the definition of (restricted) users with or without password authentication.
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| • | Statistics entries can now be removed selectively via context menu (right click) and choosing Remove this statistics entry |
| • | 8 skins have been added. There are now 18 skins to choose from. |
Bugfixes
Some minor fixes within the Rom Manager
Alpha build 2015-01-26
New Features
| • | DOSBox builds: Patch settings for DOSBox builds have been added. Metropolis Launcher tries to detect which SVN build is in use and activates appropriate patches.
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| • | DOSBox settings and templates: Numerous DOSBox patch based settings have been added, included but not limited to:
- CPU types: 'pentium', 'pentium_mmx'
- Direct3D and Pixel Shader support
- VOODOO and GLide support
- Roland MT-32 emulation support
- NE-2000 ethernet support
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| • | DOSBox settings and templates: Comparison feature added
-> Every setting tells its original value in its tooltip (by hovering the cursor over the settings control)
-> Every setting is highlighted in a bold font if its setting differs from the original value (i.e. the value from the template)
This applies to game-specific settings based on the DOSBox template and on templates based on a shipped template. |
Bugfixes
| • | Emulator Settings: Emulator executables are not just bound to .exe files anymore. You can add .bat, .cmd and .lnk files, too. |
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