SiriusVI

It seems to have worked perfectly. Had to manually remove some of the older playlists, since Flashpoint reduced its playlists. A question about the new Tag System. Now I still want to exclude "Adult" games. There are however many other tags that would suggest "Adult" content, such as "sexual violence" and other problematic sounding categories, which I don't want. Do you know how this works? Do apps have multiple tags? Is it enough to just exclude "Adult" games or do I have to go through the list excluding every problematic sounding tag? Thanks for all your hard work, man!

Great work. I'll try it out ASAP! ?

So I've deleted the ListCache.xml in the Data folder, which seems to have sped up my setup a little. It's still laggy, but much less than before. Removing all Playlists smoothed out the setup to a point where I'd consider the performance smooth enough. But the benefits of using playlists outweighs the benefits of using Colorful, no matter how beautiful the theme is. Besides, my setup ran smoothly on your machine, so the problem must be somewhere else. I'll try renaming the image directories later, but I doubt that's the problem, because I didn't use any images in my Launchbox Testsetup on my other SSD. EDIT: Scratch that, after a few reboots of BigBox, the lag returns, I guess after Listcache finished it's processes. Earlier today, I also opened up my PC and dd a little RAm readjustment. I was using 4 Ram Sticks (2x Corsair + 2 x G.Skill). I know that you shouldn't mix brands, but I was careful that all the values are compatible. In fact I never had problems using these 2 together. I removed the G.Skill anyway to try if that solved my problem. It didn't. Now I'm running 32GB of Ram instead of the former 48 GB of ram. I'm wondering if I should put the G.Skill back in or if I shuuld leave them out, just in case there were issues which I just wasn't aware of. I don't know, yet. Anyway, long story short, my issue still isn't fixed.

Something else I noticed. While CPU and GPU load are pretty normal when using BigBox, BigBox does use over 20GB of Ram. Ram use is continuously climbing . Is that normal? After a certain amount of time, it seems that ram use dips down again:

Tanks for jumping in, unfortunately I tried your plugin suggestion already and it didn't fix the problem. I will try removing stuff and see if that helps. Thank you for your continued support. Bummer that we couldn't figure out a solution. The "Games" Platform is from C64 Dreams, As far as I can see there are more than 2 or 3 games in it, though. It should contain 2500 games, in fact.

Thanks you so much for testing. The fact that you don't have my images is not the issue here, since I didn't have images on my test setup for launchbox as well and the lag was still there. The long startup is definitely related to the number of games and playlists you have in your setup. That's just something I have to live with. There is no fix for that. I should clarify that the lags only occur when scrolling through the platform categories. When scrolling through platforms colorful is smooth. That said, scrolling through platform categories in your video was much much smoother than on my machine. So... I'm out of ideas again... I now tried just about everything I could... I don't have the skills to troubleshoot this issue systematically and the trial and error approach has not generated any viable solutions for me so far. The 2TB SSD was not cheap so I don't see myself replacing it anytime soon, also because I don't think it's the issue here. I guess I'll have to wait for when I will eventually buy a completely new PC. But that won't happen for at least another 3 to 4 years. Regardless, I thank you so much for your help so far. Do you have any more suggestions for me? I'm out of ideas.

Hello again, 1. I've checked in msconfig, the task manager and the services menu. These services are not there. I've tried googling which third party program might interfere with WPF rendering, but it felt like googling a symptom you have with the intention of finding out what disease might cause it, haha. That's never successful. What I tried instead is disabling all non microsoft services in msconfig and rebooting. That didn't work as well. 2. I've also read that hardware acceleration might be causing trouble with WPF, so I disabled it in the display options, but that didn't work either. 3. I don't know what you refer to when you say that the EDID adapter causes lag. I've never experienced any kind of lag with it, be it in gaming, streaming or watching Blu-rays. And I am very sensitive when it comes to lagging. I cannot watch a movie if video and audio aren't in sync. And don't get me started about input lag. I used to use steam link, which has a minimal, but noticeable amount of input lag, especially noticeable when playing platformers, like Super Mario World. Again, it was minimal, but enough for my sensitive self to be bothered by it so much that I eventually resorted to a direct HDMI connection. 4. I think I could take my Launchbox to friend's PC, although I don't know anyone living near me who has a similarly beefy PC as me. EDIT: 5. I also tried disabling Nvidia Geforce ingame overlay, since I read somewhere that overlays in general might cause rendering issues. But again, no luck.

Have to write from my phone. 1. In don't have any of these services and or programs.Realtek Sonic Studio, Nahimic or NahimicOSD. EDIT: To clarify, I have the onboard soundcard disabled in the bios. On a former install of windows I actually did have the drivers and Nahimic software installed (the name sounded familiar, but I never knew what they were for), but on my newest setup, I did not install any realtek related drivers and such. 2. My bios storage mode is ahci 3. I already tried disabling full screen optimizations. 4. The EDID Adapter fixes an issue with my TV, not my gpu. To make it short, apparently my TV has a problem when my gpu is connected to it, but I switch to a different hdmi on the TV, to play my switch. There needs to be a constant signal connection. 5. My gpu drivers are cleanly installed. I didn't change any settings. I also tried various settings, but nothing helped. 6. My TV runs in game mode. All things that could cause input lag are deactivated. I will send you my data folder once I have access to my pc again. EDIT: I've sent you a private message. If you want you can also send me your data folder, so I could try it in my setup. What I forgot to write before, referring to: "You mentioned earlier you tested without your collection and it was fine until you added your collection back. Are you copying the db and swapping it or you doing an import? How many games did you import when you seen the lag again?" I did not reimport anything into Launchbox through the importer. I just copied my entire data folder back in. All in all that's almost 190.000 entries. Ridiculous, I know, but a large chunk of those are from computer systems which sometimes have a huge amount of roms. Over 70.000 entries are from the Flashpoint ultimate collection alone. Anyway, I don't know at which point the lag "returns", I just know that if I import 1 game per platform category (for testing purposes), there is no lag, but with my full collection, there is lag. Once again, only in Colorful, not in any other theme.

Tanks again for taking the time. I'll go through your suggestions: 1. I haven't tried disabling video playback. I will try that and report back. 2. I will make a video later showing you the lag I was talking about. 3. The HDMI cable runs through an Adapter. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pass-Through-Emulator-splitters-Extenders-fit-Headless/dp/B07C87QFNF This Adapter is crucial for my setup, since without it, my TV sometimes loses the signal to my PC which makes the GPU driver crash. It's a super weird issue, I won't get into. Took months to troubleshoot and eventually fix. But this is not the problem, since the Lag also occurs on my other two displays which are connected via displayport. And again, this only occurs with the COLORFUL theme. 4. My GPU usage during BigBox use is fairly low as well, at about 2-3% 5. I reinstalled Windows 10 a few months ago. It was a clean install with CSM disabled, just like you suggested. 6. I don't think it's my SSD. I already tried setting up a second Launchbox test install on a different SSD and also on a HDD. The results are the same. A fresh install does not Lag COLORFUL, but as soon as I copy my large collection into it, it starts lagging. That's why I think that the large game collection is the issue, however, as stated before, only in COLORFUL. EDIT: 1. I've been trying to disable video playback, but I couldn't find the correct option to do so... I tried to navigate to Options --> Videos and remove the ticks on the three options there, but that didn't work. BigBox still plays the platform videos. 2. Here is the video showcasing the general laggyness of BigBox. Note, these lags happens on all the themes, not just on COLORFUL, but browsing through the platforms is smooth with all themes, except for COLORFUL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB1hWGDjWrw There is no sound in that video, but I just flipped through the options and back as quickly as possible (always pressing the buttons right after I entered a specific menu, just so you know that I didn't wait to click the buttons to leave the menus. This is literally how long it takes for me to navigate through bigbox. EDIT 2: Another thing we could try - if you'd be willing - is that I could send over my Data folder so you can test my Collection on your setup and tell me if you experience similar problems.

I enabled iGPU and told windows to start BigBox in energy saving mode which apparently means it's using the iGPU. Sadly that did not fix the lag in COLORFUL. I'm not sure Im doing it right, though. In my BIOS, "PEG" is still set as the default GPU windows will use. 2. I also already tried disabling Anti Virus Software and BigBox is already excluded from scans, real time detections and firewalls. I've since tried every single BigBox theme available and the lag really ONLY occurs with COLORFUL. I mean BigBox in general runs pretty slowly when going to the options menu and back to the platform lists, bur once I'm at the platform lists, everything runs super snappy in every theme except for COLORFUL. EDIT: yes, I verified that my TV is running at 60hz. The other two displays run at different refresh rates, but that's not the issue either, since I've tried disconnecting them and using only one display. EDIT 2: I don't think the iGPU is working correctly. When I start BigBox, the iGPU isn't used, even though I set BigBox to run with the iGPU. Can you make sense of this?

I tried your Setup. I don't see any difference in performance to the previous method, though. The games that worked with @Darkshade's method wh your setup. The ones that didn't work before, don't work with our new setup. I also don't know why you need the shortcuts from the "Game Shortcuts" folder. The games work fine without them. I may have put them in the wrong folder though. Your tutorial was a bit confusing on that part. You wrote: Take the Game shortcuts folder that has been produced in the root folder of your emulator [...] and place it in the folder where you stored your command line folder from step 3. Closely following your instructions gives me the following paths: 1. L:\LaunchBox\Games\Nokia N-Gage\Command Lines\ ---> here are all the files from your command line archives. These files were imported into Launchbox. 2. L:\LaunchBox\L:\LaunchBox\Games\Nokia N-Gage\Game ShortcutsGames\Nokia N-Gage\Game Shortcuts\ --> here are all the shortcuts that your batch created. But nothing points to these files, so they are basically useless. Again, I don't know if this is the correct setup. Maybe you can tell me what I did wrong.

Wow, thank you so much for your answer. Let me go through your points in order: 1. VLC player is set in LauchbBox as well as in BigBox. I Also tried switching to Windows Media Player, which didn't solve the problem. 2. I don't think that the CPU is the issue, since BigBox does not stress my CPU all THAT much. But I downloaded the Intel CPU tool and launched it. The tool set that my CPU passed all the tests, as you can see here: 3. I downloaded CrystalDiskMark and checked the result against other results online. I think the results are comparable? I've added a screenshot, so maybe you can confirm. The 2 results on the left are from a website, the the window on the right shows my benchmark. 4. I wil enable the iGPU then. However, I've read online that if you have a dedicated GPU you shouldn't really enable the iGPU. I'm actually not really sure how I would use the iGPU in combination with my regular GPU. All my displays are connected to the Nvidia GPU anyway. So how would I even use the iGPU? 5. I've tried both the the 4k as well as the HD versions of COLORFUL videos. I switched them out again, because @viking originally suggested that maybe my PC couldn't handle the 4K videos. What I do know now is that the videos are not the issue. All videos, COLORFUL or not, work with other themes. Anyway, thank you so much for taking the time to answer =).

Great to hear =). Will I have to remove my imported platforms and playlists from v.9 or could I just use your tool to "update" the collection?

What you could do is extract them each in their own folder named after the original Archive. I'm almost 100% certain that there is a way to batch rename files after the folder they are placed in. I can't point you to a bat file like this, but over the past years there were multiple times where I had to google for bulk renaming scripts. I always found what I was looking for. SO, Google is your friend, I guess.

Sadly, that didn't work. Now I'm completely out of ideas. I'm sure it has something to do with the large number of games in my collection, but I cannot figure out why other themes work and colorful does not. I guess I'll just have to live without colorful (sadly...) Thank you for all your effort.

Thanks for replying. Hope you're alright. Covid is a mess. I've done some more testing and I found something else out: I redownloaded Launchbox and set up a test version of Launchbox with Platforms with only one game per platform: - SNES - Apple II - GBA - Arcade When I launch Bog box with this setup, Colorful runs smoothly. So far so good. Then I copied the platforms and parents from the Data Folder of my Main Launchbox setup over to the test setup. This setup has all my games listed. When I Launched Big Box again, the lag returns. In conclusion, Colorful runs smoothly, when there are just a few games imported. As soon as the number of roms increases, the lag returns. There must a some kind of difference between colorful and other themes, that make it lag when the number of games gets too high. If you want to test this, I can send you the contents of my data folder and you can try if you experience the same kind of lag that I experience.

That's great to know. So if this is the case, we might be able to change analog stick settings in retroarch for specific appleIIGS games that need them. Will have to test that =). Thank you! EDIT: scratch that, I just read in my original post that I'd already tried that.

Thanks for that! I was worried that I might have to convert my .cso ps2 library into .chd, but it looks like there is no significant gain in doing so. CHD is my preferred format whenever it's supported, though.

You are correct, of course. Nothing's disappearing. Anyway, my point was that collecting roms, for me personally isn't about archiving them out of fear for them to disappear or for actually playing a large amount of them. I just like having a collection that I set up and browse through. Occasionally I will play a few games, but that is not the reason I build this collection.

Sure, if you know where to look, they are still plenty of places where you can get them. I don't think they'll be gone any time soon / ever.

Well, Nintendo roms aren't as accessible as they used to be, but I also don't think they will disappear. Nonetheless, it's just cool to fire launchbox up and scroll through a game collection. Launchbox itself plays a key role here. I wouldn't be interested in collecting games if launchbox didn't give me the ption to display and launch games in a unified way.

That's not what this is about, haha. Its about collecting and having the opportunity to play anything you want if you ever wanted to. I have a collection of over 100k games. And the only one I ever SERIOUSLY played was Ocarina of time 3D for the Nintendo 3ds on Citra, because I wanted to play this game on the big screen. I'm not sure that I will ever finish emulated games in my collection. Still, I've spent years building up my collection. I don't know why, but it's just fun setting up a functioning collection of every released game in history (up to a certain point). I'm currently working on PS3 and Xbox 360. These are the newest systems I'll try to add to the collection (besides Nintendo switch). I don't plan to ever delve into ps4 or xbox one emulation. Besides that, older computer systems will take up a lot of my time for the next couple of years.

One more thing I thought I should mention: Once I've scrolled through all the platform categories once, the lag disappears / is drastically reduced when I switch through them a second or third time. I've also noticed the mouse curser turning into the blue wheel indicating that something loading. I contacted the author of the colorful theme about this, because I had a theory that the theme will count all the games in a certain platform and that's what causes the lag. However, the author said that Colorful isn't counting anything. So I'm not sure. What else could be "loading" while scrolling through platform categories for the first time?

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Let me go through your suggestions one by one. please keep in mind that the other Themes work fine, it's just Colorful that has this issue: 1. I do have the latest geforce drivers. I always get the latest updates from geforce experience. So I don't use the ones from the MSI homepage. 2. I do have some MSI apps related to the motherboard installed. I will try uninstalling those and get back to you. 3. My main display (smart TV) is at native 1080p 60hz. I do have two other monitors connected. DIsconnecting them does not solve the issue. 4. The Launchbox app with all images and videos is stored on a 2 TB SSD. All the games are stored on an external HDD. is this a problem? 5. I haven't benchmarked my SSD. I never had a problem with it. it reacts super quickly and has no issues running themes other than Colorful. 6. I use VLC player. 7. I have never tried iGPU. I don't know anything about it. I might try this out. 8. All my drivers are up to date. I use the drivers form the MSI homepage for everything except for the GPU. Should I get different drivers? I was under the assumption that the MSI drivers would be the best ones for the hardware. EDIT: uninstalling MSI software has not solved the issue. EDIT 2: According to Intel, all my drivers are up to date

Still trying to find a solution. Does anyone know what further steps I could take to troubleshoot this issue?