5/22/2022
Note: most of this would probably be the same for other game launchers like RetroPie / EmulationStation
Note: this tutorial is for Windows. If you're on a Unix system, you may be able to learn some things but the specific programs / batch scripts clearly won't work verbatim.
Seems like an oddly specific topic for a tutorial? Yeah, it kinda is, but let me give some context.
I have been setting up a standalone emulation computer over the past couple weeks. Specifically, I was recommended to get at least a 4th gen i7, and I found a used Dell Desktop with 16GB RAM and an AMD RX 550 for $400 on NewEgg. I went with the 500GB HDD, which was a mistake! Definitely go for the SSD so you can have faster boot times.
Anyway, my goal is to have something plugged into my TV which I can just turn on and navigate with a game controller - keyboard/mouse should not be required. This is so I can really get that "game console" feel.
Launchbox / Big Box are fantastic for this purpose. I tried EmulationStation on Linux at first (trust me, I do not prefer Windows) - this is what Retropie uses, by the way - but it was just janky, and then I decided to go with Launchbox. It's a much more polished program, albeit only runs on Windows. So, yet again I found myself in that regrettable situation where I had to leave Ubuntu ... until next time😢.
You do have to pay for Launchbox premium to get controller navigation and access to Big Box (which is its more "console" oriented interface). However, that's not required for this tutorial and this will all work in standard Launchbox (or, as I mentioned, other launcher programs with some tweaks).
Launchbox / Bigbox has seamless integration with Retroarch which can run most emlators. However it does not run old Mac games, so to launch those we need some special (and tricky) configuration, hence this tutorial. I spent far too long getting this to work, and found myself questioning my sanity / obsessive tendencies (probably had a point!).
Note: Feel free to skip if you've already done this
Download the program from here
Download Mac OS 9.0.4 Installer from here
Unzip the Mac OS 9.0.4 Installer and mark the .toast
file as Read-Only via its "Properties" menu.
Download the "New World" ROMs from here (we don't really all of them, but it doesn't hurt).
Open SheepShaverGUI, navigate to the Memory/Misc tab. Set the RAM
to something higher (I used 1024 MB) and specify the ROM file
newworld86.rom.
Go to the "Volumes" tab, press "Add" and navigate to your Mac OS Installer file.
Still in the "Volumes" tab, press "create" and give a new name
for the drive, ending in .hsv extension, e.g.
OS9.hsv. Give it a decent size - 500MB to 2GB - this will
be the drive that Mac OS is installed to. The installation itself
requires around 250MB of space; it's up to you how much extra space you
want to add here. You can store games in this drive, but you can always
create additional drives.
Make sure the installer volume is first in the list. This ensures it's the one which gets booted into.
Make sure the "Mount drives" option is enabled and exposes the
drives you want to use. E.g. I want to copy files from my Windows C: and
D: drives to Mac OS so I put CD in this field.
Some further configuration (optional): In "Graphics/Sound", you can change Video Type to "Fullscreen" but I recommend instead using "Windowed" with Width/Height set to "Maximum". Fullscreen occasionally caused system-wide crashes for me. I also recommend changing the Render Driver to OpenGL or Direct3D. Apparently it's fine to turn off the JIT Compiler in the "JIT Compiler" tab, but I didn't see much effect either way.
Press start! The Installer should boot. If you see an error that it "must be on the original disk", you forgot to mark the installer as read-only. You will be promped to format the disk and Mac OS will install there (which can take maybe 10 min).
Exit Mac OS via Special => Shutdown
Open SheepShaverGUI again, remove the installation Volume. From this point you can launch Mac OS via SheepShaverGUI or the regular SheepShaver executable (to skip the GUI).
Note: Feel free to skip if you already know how to do this
When you download games, they will usually come as .sit
or .bin files. These are old compression formats and you
can use Stuffit Expander on Mac OS to extract them.
To find Stuffit (or any other program) you can use "Sherlock" which is like an early version of spotlight. If you're using Sherlock, make sure to uncheck "My PC" (your host Windows drive) or else it will take forever! You can also download Stuffit from here.
Once you extract the game, you should be able to just install/run it as normal. If there's no sound, don't be alarmed! Just turn up the volume from the bottom toolbar (it's set to 0 by default).
I should mention, in my experience it didn't work well to run Stuffit or the games via "My PC". It's better to copy stuff to the Mac OS drive before extracting / running. You can usually copy the extracted files back to "My PC" afterwards althoug this doesn't always work.
Download the program
Open it and test that your controller inputs register correctly. If they do, you're lucky! I personally use an 8bitdo controller and I had issues with some of the cheaper ones. $30-$50 a controller seems like a lot but the $15 ones I tried just didn't work.
Set up some basic mappings for testing purposes (can always change this later). E.g. Right stick to control the mouse, Left stick / D pad for arrows. X to click.
Save the profile somewhere and give it a name. It will auto-load the next time you start AntiMicroX.
Test in SheepShaver. You might have to adjust the mouse sensitivity.
Note that you can create as many profiles as needed, one per game is fine.
Now for the meat of the matter!
How this is gonna work, as an overview:
So first of all we're going to need to make sure we have a working Applescript environment in Mac OS. I'm gonna save you some time and just tell you to download Script debugger 1.0.3, since the built-in Script Editor would always crash upon save. Note that you cannot just create Applescripts from your host Windows machine - they won't execute.
Install this on the Mac, open it, and create a new script with the following content:
set txtFile to ("This PC:Users:max:Desktop:launcher_file.txt")
set appPath to (read file txtFile)
tell application appPath to open
Important You must replace
Users:max:Desktop:launcher_file.txt with a location on your
(Windows) system. Use colons, not slashes, to distinguish folders.
Create an empty launcher_file.txt at this location.
Save the Applescript under any name, but make sure to give it the type "Application". Uncheck all checkboxes (Stay open, show startup screen, save debugging information).
Move the script to the startup folder (System Folder / Startup Items).
Create a new file in your Windows text editor of choice, save it as
launcher_common.bat:
@echo off
Rem WRITE THE PATH TO THE LAUNCH FILE
(echo|set /p= %1)>C:\Users\max\Desktop\launcher_file.txt
Rem START ANTIMICROX FOR CONTROLLER MAPPING
START /B CMD /C CALL "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\AntiMicroX\AntiMicrox.lnk" --profile %2
Rem LAUNCH SHEEPSHAVER
cd C:\Users\max\Desktop\os\mac\Sheepsaver
start /W SheepShaver.exe
Rem KILL ANTIMICROX
taskkill /f /im antimicrox.exe
Rem EMPTY OUT THE LAUNCH FILE AFTER
echo|set /p= > C:\Users\max\Desktop\launcher_file.txtImportant you must replace all the paths in here with the ones on your system!
launcher_file.txtAntiMicrox.lnkThe AntiMicroX.lnk file can be found by typing
"AntiMicroX" into Windows search and pressing "Show File Location". We
use the symlink so we can start it minimized - to do this, right click
the file, go to "Properties => Shortcut" and change the "Run" mode
there. Note that "minimized" in this context means it won't show up on
your toolbar at all - you'll have to go to the system tray if you want
to see it.
Next, it's time to create launchers for specific games. Thankfully,
these are simpler. All we need to do is call
launcher_common.bat and pass it two argumrnts:
For example, this is my munchies.bat launcher:
C:\Users\max\Desktop\roms\mac\launchers\launcher_common.bat "OS9:Custom:munchies:munchies" "C:\Users\max\Desktop\os\antimicrox\munchies.gamecontroller.amgp"Remember that the path here
(OS9:Custom:munchies:munchies) is read by Mac OS. To get
the game path in Mac OS, click on the executable and press "File =>
Get Info".
Now we've done the hard work, and we can test it! Close SheepShaver
and AntiMicroX, doubleclick your game launcher .bat file,
and check if AntiMicroX / SheepShaver were booted!
One caveat - not all games will be able to get launched this way. For example, Munchies for some reason will only auto-launch when you do Special => Shutdown. But I think most games should work with this approach.
Currently, the only way to exit SheepShaver with the controller is to go to Special => Shutdown. But we can map this to a specific button in AntiMicroX:
Create a file .kill_sheepshaver.bat:
taskkill /f /im SheepShaver.exeThen, in AntiMicroX, open the mapping for a particular key (I use
"select") and go to "Advanced". In "Assignments", create a new
"Executable" entry and point it to your
kill_sheepshaver.bat script. Press "Insert" to save. You
should now be able to force kill SheepShaver with one button! You'll get
an annoying warning that Mac OS wasn't shut down correctly, but this can
be disabled in Mac OS general settings.
If you thought that was a lot of work, can you imagine doing it without a tutorial? At last, it's time to add our games to Launchbox.
Start by opening Launchbox, go to "tools => manage =>
emulators" and create a new entry named "SheepShaver" (or whatever you
want). For the "application path", you're going to want to quickly
create one last batch file, call this
launchbox_mac_os_9.bat or something like that. Populate it
like so:
%1Yes, that's right, just %1, nothing else in there.
Because our game launchers contain all the logic themselves, we don't
need to do anything here other than just fire off the launchers. But for
some reason Launchbox requires us to make this wrapper. Save it, and go
ahead and scan your launcher .bat files in.
Voila.
If you found this useful or something's not working feel free to email me at maxpleaner@gmail.com