RetroFE forums

Not so familiar with Windows scripts, but technically you can create another batch file, which runs your scripts first (pre-execution), then starts the emulator, and optionally runs something else after the emulator has exited (post-execution).

Then just set up a RetroFE launcher to run your batch file.

Awesome work! I do wish you can keep it updated.
Where can I find the downloads for Sega CD / Sega Game Gear etc. that were added later?

Yes I see the logic there. The only issue I see is that on game exit, "loading" and "game over" start to fade at the same time, just "loading" fades faster than "game over".
So the code I posted earlier was trying to get "game over" to fade after "loading" is completely gone.
Just tried this myself. On my PC with an integrated graphics, I don't see either "loading" or "game over" on game exit, just black screen then suddenly the front end UI.
I guess depending on the theme there may be a lot stuff going on when exiting a game and reinitializing the front end, so by the time everything is ready, that 1s animation time has passed.
I tried to add a wait time and was able to see the "game over" image:

<image src="images/gameover.png" width="1920" height="1080" alpha="0" layer="6">
    <onGameExit>
        <set duration="0.001"><animate type="alpha" to="1"/></set>
        <set duration="1"><animate type="nop"/></set>
        <set duration="1"><animate type="alpha" to="0"/></set>
    </onGameExit>
</image>


The last crash log points to something related to font. But I have a feeling that something else might pop up if we try to fix this one.
I'm afraid this needs some involved debugging with a Mac. Sadly I don't have one.

This may be off topic, but regarding "having so many issues with MAME resetting my joysticks settings back to default", I think the recommended way is to not rely on cfg/default.cfg, instead put those settings into a file under the "ctrlr" folder, e.g. ctrlr/mycab.cfg, then in mame.ini set it to use that controller config:
ctrlr  mycab
You can also have different controller settings in different ini files.
This talks about the order of ini loading:
https://docs.mamedev.org/advanced/multiconfig.html

Using the ctrlr approach also solves the issue that the USB Joypad ID sometimes switches:
https://docs.mamedev.org/advanced/devicemap.html

Maybe there's some clue in log.txt?

I want to show case some posters that do not fit entirely on the screen due to their aspect ratio. I'm using the following animation to zoom in and slowly pan around the large image.

<reloadableImage type="cover" alpha="1" width="2000" xOrigin="center" x="center" yOrigin="center" y="center" xOffset="-200" yOffset="-200" layer="2">
    <onIdle>
        <set duration="6">
            <animate type="xOffset" from="-200" to="200" algorithm="easeinquadratic"/>
        </set>
        <set duration="6">
            <animate type="yOffset" from="-200" to="200" algorithm="easeinquadratic"/>
        </set>
        <set duration="6">
            <animate type="xOffset" from="200" to="-200" algorithm="easeinquadratic"/>
        </set>
        <set duration="6">
            <animate type="yOffset" from="200" to="-200" algorithm="easeinquadratic"/>
        </set>         
    </onIdle>
</reloadableImage>

It looks great but if the images have different sizes, the displacement needs to be adjusted accordingly.
It would be nice if we can have an "auto-pan" image type that does this automatically.

Thanks Pieter. I guess you get what I wanted to achieve. When time allows I'll give it more thought.