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LaunchBox Ambient Music Player 1.2.0

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About This File

Listen to your favorite Arcade music playlist while admiring your LaunchBox collection.
Requires LaunchBox 13.3 or newer

Just add your own playlists and start listening when LaunchBox starts.  The music will pause when launching a game, and then resumes after exiting the game.


Setup:
Download and extract the contents of the zipped file into /LaunchBox/Plugins/

Quick Start:
With LaunchBox closed
    Copy a music playlist (i.e. MyPlaylist.m3u) into the Playlists subfolder
        i.e. /LaunchBox/Plugins/LBambient/Playlists/MyPlaylist.m3u
    Start LaunchBox

See Playlists below for playlist requirements.

About this plugin:
Place your music playlist(s) into /LBambient/Playlists/
    When you start LaunchBox, a random (if there're more than 1) playlist from that folder will be selected and start playing

Songs in the playlists will be played in a random order and will not repeat.

Songs will Pause when launching a game and then Resume when the game has exited.
    Fixed v1.2.0 Exception: It might not stay paused when launching Steam games and others using a launcher.

Once the player has gone through the entire playlist, that's it. No more music.
    So, if you plan to spend a lot of time looking at LaunchBox and not playing games, be sure to have a long playlist.


Options:
Go to Tools - LB Ambient Music

Adjust the player's volume slider (which is independent of LaunchBox's volume control) to your desired volume.
    Click Save Volume to save it in Settings for next time you start LaunchBox.

To manually select a specific playlist (or song) to load when LaunchBox starts
    Click Load to select a playlist (or song) and start playing it.
    The selection will be saved in Settings.
    Next time you start LaunchBox (and every time thereafter), the saved selection will be played.

To remove a playlist (or song) from Settings, click Clear Selection.
    This immediately stops the player and removes it from Settings.
    Next time you start LaunchBox, a random playlist (if any exists) will be selected from /LBambient/Playlists/ and automatically start playing.

Click Hide to close window.


Playlists:
Required: Playlists MUST have absolute paths to the song(s).
    Some players (i.e. VLC) will save the playlists using relative paths if it's saved within the players folder structure.

(new v1.1.0) Playlists can have absolute or relative paths to the songs.  Relative paths MUST be relative to the Playlists subfolder

Playlist formats tested are  .m3u, .m3u8 and .xspf
No other formats have been tested and will not work with this plugin.
If you have playlists saved in a different format that you'd prefer to use, let me know.

THIS HAS ONLY BEEN TESTED WITH LOCAL FILES.
If the files paths in the playlists are URL's (i.e. start with "http://"), things might break.  
    You can try it if you want. Let me know what you find.


As always, all comments and suggestions are graciously accepted and encouraged. 😎


What's New in Version 1.1.0   See changelog

Released

Fixed:                  Now Playing not showing the entire song title for long names
Fixed:                  Tools Menu icon causes BigBox to crash
Fixed:                  When scanning /Playlists/ folder for playlists, it now looks ONLY for [actual] playlists (.m3u, .m3u8, .xspf)
Improvement:  Fade audio out/in when starting/exiting a game
Improvement:  Playlists can now contain relative paths.  Paths must be relative to /LBambient/Playlists/

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User Feedback

You may only provide a review once you have downloaded the file.


tycho

  

Works as advertised. I got some arcade ambience audio, split it into two-minute tracks, dropped them in the local playlist folder and made a playlist. I have some suggestions for future features:

  • Ability to specify a specific playlist per platform
  • Ability to toggle which platforms use the plugin
  • Fade out audio when starting a game (versus current hard cut)

Bugs/issues:

  • I noticed that despite the description stating that the music/audio ends after the last file in the playlist has been played, my audio stopped after a single track; in other words, upon startup, the plugin selects one audio file from the playlist at random, plays that file, then stops
  • Audio continues playing when switching to another application, instead of pausing when LB loses focus (not sure if this is intended behavior)

Response from the author:

Thanks for the review!  I will address your suggestions and issues in the comments thread.

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