Pause-Menu Music Player 1.1.0

Version 1.1.0 Released

Improvement:    Revamped how audio files are played allowing for improved features
Improvement:    Song resumes on subsequent pauses (vs. restarting from the beginning)
Improvement:    Songs will now loop/restart when the track ends during pause
Improvement:    Added support for more audio file formats.
                                 Including but not limited to .ogg, .webm (audio), .wav

New Feature:    Set pause-music volume (Default 50%)

I think this is a great tool. I wish to make a formal request in the mechanics of it though. I don't know the proper place to do that, so i will do it here.
1.I would like to store game audio as \Music\[Platform Name]\[game name]\[track]  and then a random track be selected to play when launching the pause menu
2. I would like to be able to set a root music path If not default. This would be useful in storing music files on an external drive, rather than launchbox itself.   NVM, I think I can set the root music folder in LB and that would solve for this. 

Edited Friday at 05:32 PM by Shredder_guitar

2 hours ago, Shredder_guitar said:

I think this is a great tool. I wish to make a formal request in the mechanics of it though. I don't know the proper place to do that, so i will do it here.

Thanks!  Good to hear at least one person thinks so. 😊

Requests are always welcome and can be made here in the Comments section or on the plugins Get Support page.

 

2 hours ago, Shredder_guitar said:

I would like to store game audio as \Music\[Platform Name]\[game name]\[track]  and then a random track be selected to play when launching the pause menu

Due to the popularity of this plugin, I'm not sure I want to spend time changing up how/where it looks for songs [e.g. looking in a custom folder], changing the song file to be an array and adding a randomizer.

Curious though, how many of your games actually have multiple soundtracks for a single game?  I can see possibly having multiple Background music files.

 

If you haven't already, you might want to upvote the Feature Request noted up top at the beginning of this plugins Description.  If enough upvotes are made and the LaunchBox team decides it's doable, the paid staff may be more incentivized than me to add more customization options.

9 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

Thanks!  Good to hear at least one person thinks so. 😊

Requests are always welcome and can be made here in the Comments section or on the plugins Get Support page.

 

Due to the popularity of this plugin, I'm not sure I want to spend time changing up how/where it looks for songs [e.g. looking in a custom folder], changing the song file to be an array and adding a randomizer.

Curious though, how many of your games actually have multiple soundtracks for a single game?  I can see possibly having multiple Background music files.

 

If you haven't already, you might want to upvote the Feature Request noted up top at the beginning of this plugins Description.  If enough upvotes are made and the LaunchBox team decides it's doable, the paid staff may be more incentivized than me to add more customization options.

Over the years I've aquired quite a bit of music files just finding them on various FTP sites, I would stash these away in the Rlauncher/Media/ Music folder and it would just pick whatever song from the folder... kinda wanting the same type of setup where I can just stash whatever music relative to the game. For example, Here is my Gameboy folder from Rlauncher, each folder has all the tracks for the named game (screenshot below). I haven't ported this stuff over to Launchbox yet due to the current limitation.  I have Other system folders that have much more tracks and folders with the game name in them. 

 

Also, this pairs nicely with the new Pause menu I'm working on, I wanted something similar to RPause, but more efficient. 

To be a little fair, I'm not making any money at all. Period.

Edited Saturday at 05:29 AM by Shredder_guitar

9 hours ago, Shredder_guitar said:

kinda wanting the same type of setup where I can just stash whatever music relative to the game. [....] I haven't ported this stuff over to Launchbox yet due to the current limitation. 

Along with upvoting the previously mentioned Feature Request, you might want to submit a new Feature Request regarding this folder structure.

 

Actually, to overcome this "limitation" in LaunchBox, you can create a .m3u file for your game(s) as mentioned here: Music in LaunchBox and Big Box - LaunchBox  Making it, I guess, not really a limitation.  And you can do this using your current folder structure.

However, the plugin [currently] won't be able to use those (.m3u files). That said, if the games' Music Path does point to a .m3u file, it would be easier for me to modify the plugin to account for .m3u files and add an array of songs from that rather than searching in user-specific folders.  If this plugin gains interest from the community, that's something I could look into.

 

10 hours ago, Shredder_guitar said:

To be a little fair, I'm not making any money at all. Period.

You and me both!   Well... TBH, I have had $23 in 'plugin-donations' over the course of 8 years of creating 40+ plugins. So, like 1 cup of coffee per year to keep me going. lol

11 hours ago, Shredder_guitar said:

due to the current limitation

Just made an enlightening discovery. 

If you place your folders/files in the appropriate /Music/[platform_name]/ folder AND have an m3u file [named the same as the games Title or ROM filename] for those song files, they will play in LaunchBox.

e.g. 

• D:\LaunchBox\Music\Atari 2600\Adventure\adventure.m3u
• D:\LaunchBox\Music\Atari 2600\Adventure\song1.mp3
• D:\LaunchBox\Music\Atari 2600\Adventure\song2.mp3
• D:\LaunchBox\Music\Atari 2600\Adventure\song3.mp3

and adventure.m3u contains

song1.mp3
song2.mp3
song3.mp3

Optionally, you can put the m3u file right under /Atari 2600/ (in this example) and the song files in "the subfolder". Then make the paths in the m3u relative to its location.  e.g. Adventure/song1.mp3

A batch file should be able to create the m3u files pretty easily.

 

Also, it appears that if you set the games Music Path to point to the m3u file, this plugin will play the songs in that music playlist [during pause].  Note, this is not by design [on my part]. It just mere happenstance.  

There are some caveats though.

1. LaunchBox can find/load the m3u file. But does so dynamically.  That is, it can find it on-the-fly but doesn't "save" the path.
   • For the plugin to find "the song" (m3u file), the path needs to be "saved"
     1. Edit the game. (LB will automatically add the m3u file to the music path)
     2. Click OK to save and close (the path will now be saved)
2. When in pause, the songs will play in order. Not randomly.
   • But the song will pause when you un-pause the game, and resume when you pause again
3. If/when you get to the 2nd (or more) song during pause (this is the big one)
   • The song may keep playing when you resume playing (un-pause)
   • The song may keep playing when you exit the game.

At this point, I don't plan to remediate the caveats.

On 1/10/2026 at 11:06 AM, JoeViking245 said:

Optionally, you can put the m3u file right under /Atari 2600/ (in this example) and the song files in "the subfolder". Then make the paths in the m3u relative to its location.  e.g. Adventure/song1.mp3

A batch file should be able to create the m3u files pretty easily.

 

Also, it appears that if you set the games Music Path to point to the m3u file, this plugin will play the songs in that music playlist [during pause].  Note, this is not by design [on my part]. It just mere happenstance.  

Nice discovery that an .m3u file works, thanks for digging into this a bit. It would be the random track selection that I am wanting when the pause menu first displays. Even if it just played that 1 randomly selected track in a loop that would suffice. Sounds like m3u files might be 'the way', but in it's current state that wouldn't get all the way there.  I think what I'm trying to do (in a grossly oversimplified nutshell) is eliminate any possible need for rlauncher without sacrificing data and still making use of it....a nearly impossible thing, I know. 

Number 2 and 3 on your list is a deal breaker for me. 

Because we have things like AI now, I did have a script created that will rename all of my current single mp3 files to the baserom name (not completely perfect on the name matching, but it's like 98% and that was good enough for me) and update the music path on each game to the full path of the renamed mp3, and also set the 'missingmusic' flag to false. This saves from having to do each one manually in launchbox. Something similar could be done with the m3u file creation and pathing at scale with m3u file creation based on whatever exists in the folder and updating of musicpaths in the system.xml file. 

That said, I don't see a point in proceeding if the track still won't be randomly selected at the end of it. It does allow for me to merge/store files in folders...so it's not nothing.  I would still only want 1 track to be played and looped, but the track is randomly selected at startup...which I think solves for item number 3. 

I'll have some more thinks about stuff that might work, It seems that someone on emumovies has already done some extensive work on selecting a track for each game and making a package based on a system for each game...which is nice and integrates nicely with this. But I prefer to solve the same problem in a different way that allows for more options on the user side.

 

Edited Sunday at 05:13 PM by Shredder_guitar

@Shredder_guitar

New Feature:  Play game song-playlist.  Songs from the playlist are shuffled, then played.
                           Assign a playlist to your games in Edit Game < Media - Game Music Path
                           Playlists can be .m3u, .m3u8 or .xspf

This feature is available only in the beta release.

PauseMenuMusic (v1.2.0-beta).7z

Thanks for altering this, I'll give this a try.


*update*
Experience so far....
After a few attempts and restarting launchbox, I was able to get music to play. The first track does load randomly each time and the track does resume from it's original place once the pause menu is brought up again.

Odd results, just as you mentioned previously is during the second track.
On 3 occurrences, after the 2nd track has finished playing...silence/nothing...until I close the pause menu and reopen it, it does not play a 3rd random track by simply leaving the pause menu open.
On my latest attempt the first track would load...play for about 20 seconds, then load the next track...play for another 20 seconds, then load the next track...repeat. This only happened once.

I am testing with Castlevania SOTN soundtrack. 

(note: the track named 'silence' is not ACTUALLY silence.)

Edited yesterday at 03:47 AM by Shredder_guitar

12 hours ago, Shredder_guitar said:

(note: the track named 'silence' is not ACTUALLY silence.)

lol

Can you please attach your .m3u file (drag and drop the file onto your response here. Don't copy/paste the contents) and also the log files found in the plugins /Logs/ folder?

log 2026-01-11 20-25-39.txtlog 2026-01-11 21-13-22.txt

Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA).m3u

Here you go, note, full path has been partially redacted, else the rest of the file has been unaltered. 

Edited 22 hours ago by Shredder_guitar

16 hours ago, Shredder_guitar said:

Odd results

Oops.  Didn't account for multiple tracks in all the code.

1.2.0-beta-2

PauseMenuMusic (v1.2.0-beta-2).7z