[Launchbox imported games aren't saving]

I've been using my instance of launchbox for awhile now, and recently reinstalled my Windows 11 OS. For some reason, and likely not related to that reinstall, I'm unable to import games and have them stay after a restart of Launchbox. I can see them in my list, after importing, and I can see them in their systems xml file, but whenever I shutdown and restart, the games are no longer in launchbox or the xml file.

 

[CoinOP]

I really like this theme, as I've been wanting to have dynamic marquees for my arcade platform games list.

Unfortunately, there are many games without a marquee, and bigbox seems to autoselect images to use, if a marquee image file doesn't exist.

I set my box front image priority to include "clear logo" and made it the top priority, but what happens is I get two images in the marquee box, the "arcade classics" generic image, and then the "Clear Logo" stretched out over the top of it.

Is there a way to only have the arcade classics image show up if no other image exists? Is there a way to force the image to maintain its aspect ratio? I've tried tweaking the gamemarqueeview.xaml, and it appears to be ignored altogether (even tried changing the "activegame." to a different image type)...so, I'm not sure if I need to compile something to get these tweaks implemented.

Thank you.

 

EDIT:

Okay, I am making some great progress in understanding the overall theme mechanism, thanks to Neil9000. I was editing the wrong file. Once I started tweaking with the right view, I was able to quickly get this where I wanted. I ended up using the marquee, when available, and then switching to clear logo, if not. And configured it to Uniform. Finally, I removed the stretch from the video.

It looks fantastic. I've never been this happy scrolling through my arcade titles in BigBox.

 

 

[Mr. RetroLust's - Mame 4K - Lights Out - Realistic Bezels]

34 minutes ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Thank you so much for the kind words man, really appreciate it! Glad you enjoy them lol "Mr. Retrolust inside" that just sounds weird ?

Yeah, I thought the same thing...but, a using a less anthropomorphic "Retrolust Inside" sounds so accurate.

I didn't like any of the default 3D box art for arcade games, so I avoided using them. But when I discovered your collection with the detailed spines (and the darker color), they really felt closer to a real box. In fact, it had me completely refactor all the 3D boxes across platforms, to ensure I had the most accurate ones available, with as little placeholder or generic markings as possible.

 

[Mr. RetroLust's - Mame 4K - Lights Out - Realistic Bezels]

11 minutes ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

That is friggin amazing man! Thanks for sharing ??

Thanks! I had a great time putting this all together. But I can't thank you enough for what you've contributed to my cabinet with your great artwork, here and with the 3D boxes 2.0, which look so good. Feel like you need a logo for people to add to their cabinets, like "Intel Inside".

 

[Mr. RetroLust's - Mame 4K - Lights Out - Realistic Bezels]

10 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Mario Bros.

mario.zip 6.29 MB · 10 downloads

This is absolutely one of the best marquees in all of arcade history. I just finished turning my arcade cabinet into a watercooled pc case, using the mario series for inspiration...the original in particular. Felt like a natural fit...they are plumbers, after all.

[Mr. RetroLust's - Mame 4K - Lights Out - Realistic Bezels]

2 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

It's probably something really tiny thats overlooked but I can't help you further i'm afraid, if you can't figure out the problem you could make a new post in the forums there's many people with knowledge here.

Totally understand. Thank you.

 

EDIT:

Just to put a bow on this, I was able to get passed this issue. I had also setup Houb's CRT shaders, and something must have gotten corrupted there. Once I replaced those, artwork started showing up as expected.

 

Thanks again.

[Mr. RetroLust's - Mame 4K - Lights Out - Realistic Bezels]

6 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Mostly when you see diagonal lines in Mame there's something wrong with the artwork file not linking the image as it should, do you experience this with any artwork file in Mame?

I did test with some previous artwork sets, which also exhibit this issue. So it’s apparently an issue on my end...

artpath in mame.ini is “artwork”, which is where I copied all of your mame 4k zips. I’m not aware of any other artwork settings that involve locating the data, but I’ve never seen this issue before.

I’ll see if I can pull a log file...hopefully it can provide a direct answer to this issue.

Thank you!

[Mr. RetroLust's - Mame 4K - Lights Out - Realistic Bezels]

Perhaps this is a question for a mame forum specifically, but thought I would see if you have any thoughts.

I recently discovered the amazing 4k bezels produced my Mr. Retrolust, and spent some time over the weekend getting things working in MAME, and things looked fantastic.

While likely unrelated, I decided to take a look at setting up the 4k naomi bezels in retroarch. Once I got that working, I wanted to compare the shaders between retroarch and MAME, but ran into an issue...low-res diagonal lines across the screen, a weird stretch to the mame screen, and no artwork showing.

I don't see anything that changed since I had it working, all configs are the same, and the timestamps on the artwork zips hadn't changed.

I'm curious if anyone has seen anything like this. All research points to issues with the .lay file or resolution or something, but nothing has changed between when I had it working and now.

Thank you.

[Nintendo Switch boxes]

On 4/24/2020 at 1:22 AM, CMartin said:

Great! I think the first style suits Launchbox better because 99% of boxart is only 3d box with front cover. Nice work!

I agree fully! What I would like to see is the use of the LaunchBox feature to show the front or the back of the box.

[Unified Redux]

34 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Unfortunately the Unified/Redux themes aren't built to change the marquee headers for each game, so you'd have to find another theme to do that, or tweak it yourself (which admittedly might be a bit difficult).

Ah, good to know.  That said, I saw a reference in one of the xaml files to selectedgame.marqueeimagepath, so I thought I was doing something wrong.

 

what is that parameter?  Is that an unreleased feature in bigbox?

[Unified Redux]

I’m new to launchbox but starting to figure out its intricacies...one of which is figuring out image pathing and associating correctly with themes and views.  Love the flexibility...though.

 

my issue is that my arcade platform view only shows the stock marquee, and not the original marquee for the selected game.  Do i need to do anything special to get those to show up?

 

thank you!