Setup Instructions

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Download and unpack the bizhawk-shuffler-2 folder into your Bizhawk installation directory. If you already have a previous version of the shuffler installed, it is better to just delete it and reinstall from scratch.
   For Bizhawk versions older than 2.9: Open Bizhawk and go to the Config > Customize menu. Under the Advanced tab, ensure the Lua Core is set to Lua+LuaInterface, and restart Bizhawk if you made any changes.

2. Run shuffler.lua in Bizhawk (before loading any game) but DO NOT complete the setup. This can be done by either dragging shuffler.lua onto the open Bizhawk window before loading a game, or by opening the script from the Lua Console, which can be opened from Tools > Lua Console.

3. Place any rom supported by Bizhawk in the games/ folder created by the script. Any rom added to this folder will be part of the shuffler rotation. More files can be added later (please follow these instructions to add games during a session), and files can be removed as well if needed (but this should not be necessary). Files should be put directly into the games/ folder, not into subfolders. If a game requires multiple files to run (for instance, bin/cue or ccd/img file sets), the shuffler will handle these situations automatically. No action is required on your part.

4. At this point, you can complete the setup form - for a full explanation of the settings, check the section below on the shuffler settings.
5. When you have completed your desired goal for a given game, press your chosen hotkey (default: Ctrl+Shift+End) while the game is active to mark it complete.
6. Even if everything is working, you may want to browse the Frequently Asked Questions to check to see if there is anything else you might need to know.

SETTINGS:

• Seed - this value is the seed for the random number generator (if racing with another person, you may wish to choose same seed)
• Min/Max Swap Time - minimum and maximum number of seconds between game swaps
• Shuffler Swap Order - how should the shuffler decide in what order games should appear?
• Hotkey: Completed Game - this is the hotkey (combo?) you will press to mark a game as complete
  • if background input is not enabled on Bizhawk, this hotkey may not work predictably
• Output info files for OBS - select which files are written to the output-info folder
• Setup Plugins - open window for enabling and configuring special plugins
• Resuming a run? - check this box to resume a previous session (uses stored config from shuffler-src/config.lua)

PLUGINS:

Select a plugin from the dropdown menu and press "Select" to load its information (this does not enable the plugin). An "Enabled" checkbox will appear. Checking this box will enable the plugin and reveal any settings for you to configure. Once you have enabled and configured plugins, press the "Save and Close" button (just closing the window will discard any changes you have made).

OUTPUT FILES:

• current-game.txt - name of current game (based on filename, minus the extension)
• total-time.txt - APPROXIMATE total time spent on this shuffler
  • (this is an approximation. NOT a substitute for a timer, for speedrun/race purposes)
• total-swaps.txt - total number of times the shuffler has swapped games
• current-time.txt - APPROXIMATE time spent on current game during this shuffler
• current-swaps.txt - number of times the shuffler has swapped to the current game
• completed-games.txt - list of games marked as complete, one per line

To enable these files, select the "Games, Swaps" or "Games, Swaps, Timers" (for current-time.txt and total-time.txt) option in the shuffler setup window.

To set this up with OBS, create a Text source and enable loading the data from a file, as seen in the properties window below: