C-Beats

Well good news, we can use months as a unit of measure! I mean a year is nothing more than 12 months right?

There are 3 different setups with that panel depending on width. You can swap between them by just making it smaller or larger. The point that view changes can be altered in the settings file the theme has built in.

There's been a request for it here. You can upvote it so that the powers that be can access how important it is to everyone.

Only other options are this time are use plugins to do so (unsure if we have a community one that does this) or alter the XML file (you'd want \\LaunchBox\Data\Parents.xml I believe). Both should be used with caution and you should back up before playing around with either method. As some one with with just shy of 2700 playlists in their collections I personally went with the former solution, I'd share but it has a lot of logic in it very specific to my build as so just wouldn't make much sense to anyone else. I admit though this path forward requires coding skills which many may not possess.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to say even in the next 20 years you'll see it topple, Windows will be around for a long while. That being said look at the adoption of Win 11 vs 10 and 7, especially in underserved area's of the world that can't afford the next new thing. 10 and 7 still have a healthy foot hold. In the future I can see those communities swapping to Linux to make their older hardware play nicer for their purposes. Also the reason Linux is so shattered IS because as you said 1) hardware min/maxxing sometimes requires it and 2) They can, it's open source so it's a possibility that can't be done with Windows Android has similar issues and it's the leader in the mobile market so it's not impossible for it to happen. Just no one cares enough to really make a go for it. Valve's the biggest name in a while to even both TRYING to touch consumer markets on the Linux platform on PCs and as you said, even that is mostly because they were making an OS for their dedicated device, just seems to have steam rolled (pun fully intended) into something bigger than I think even they were initially thinking it would. I think a lot of it is the Linux community is just happy to see their hobby/opinions being highlighted more often again. Linux for a long while was relegated to server admins, "hackers", and hobbyists (and mostly as you said still is). The attention towards something they enjoy is always a palpable excitement, it just sometimes gets carried away with all the "We're doing it boys! Windows is going down!". Like listening to Cleveland Browns fans talk about going to the Super Bowl, it just isn't going to happen... lol

Yeah, if you'd look on the feedback site that is a known error related to having outdated plugins. Remove those plugins and that will go away.

If you haven't already go into Image Cache settings some night before you go to bed and press the "Populate All Images" (or something similar). If those aren't populated during attract mode it tries to build them very quickly and can cause some pretty big performance overhead. Doing it on it's own speeds it up a bit and should eliminate that as a possibility moving forward. If you haven't already please submit a bug request with information about what version you're on, themes you're using, plugins in play, etc. As stated I don't believe I've heard of anyone else running into stability issues using WMP/Default on the current version so it's something the team would need to delve into. That being said if you have sleep/hibernate set up on your computer while it's running that's a tad different and is known to cause issues. You can test Big Box for as many 30m intervals as you'd like before purchase. Though it sounds like it's taking a bit longer than that to break for you. You could reach out to support (support@unbrokensoftware.com) and let them know you're unhappy with your purchase and perhaps they can work something out with you.

Is that the top of the error? Scrollbar looks like it's all the way down, if not the top could you send that as that will have the most important bits.

Yeah, M$ being a corporate staple keeps it alive. They previously also had the education system since most K-12 schools used M$ and so it's just what people already knew when making personal purchase or entering the workforce. At least state side though they lost the education market to Google and ChromeOS so it's M$'s hold is being chipped away at. They also losing every software SDK atm due to constantly changing gears before the last one is finished. The forced moves to MAUI and Blazor are crippling them compared to other techs. I don't think M$ is going anyway anytime soon, but I do believe their is merit to the notion that Linux via some distro's is easier to use than it's ever been before and people are more willing to test the waters because of it. We still a LONG ways out before Linux could take over Windows, but it'll be interesting to see how long it takes (or if it will) surpass MacOS in user base though.

I'd have to look what release it was but I was pretty sure we dropped a version that automatically changed the setting to WMP on first startup, but that may have gotten pulled before final cut. I have a hard time remembering what was just internal tests and what made the production floor sometimes so don't want to say it with 100% certainty.

I doubt it's just you thing, there probably is a very specific setting to get it to malfunction I just haven't been able to trip over. I'll take some time this week to look more into it and see if I can sus it out.

What all do you have in \\LaunchBox\Plugins? Honestly never heard of things disappearing and it not being one of the two things you've already mentioned (that I believe I told you). Can you do the following for me: 1) Import the games in question 2) Go to Tools > File Management > Create a Backup 3) Send me that data file in a PM as well as a list of some of the games you see missing when you log back into LB

Yeah when we moved to .NET 9 it cleaned up stability in WMP but tanked it for VLC. There IS a prompt now last I knew in BB when you try to set playback to VLC (WMP is default) that tells you crap could break.

That we don't support older versions of the plugins because they have obvious flaws (hence the need for a new version) and we don't want to have to deal with reports of issues we know are fixed in a newer version. Was either this or we'd just auto-download new versions and then have to immediately restart the application you just opened. Notification at least lets you handle the update at your own leisure. So I guess what I'm trying to say is...

what format are your games in?

Yeah, it comes up again pretty regularly, as stated there have been some ups and downs with Attract Mode stability, but there have been quite a few releases where as long as you were using a theme built correctly that attract mode worked just fine. The migration to .NET 9 admittedly stirred up a lot of old ghosts we had previously rid ourselves of and so there was a recent version or two where it was pretty bad, but the large majority of that should have been corrected by now when using the correct settings. Why I wanted to make clear, if you're still seeing it let us know because it's news to me that people are stilling having issues on current version.

Import the 50 games and then in Big Box make your default view "All Games" instead of Platforms or Platform Categories. Then you'll load right into a game wheel with those games in it.

There have definitely been times where the app hasn't be as stable, but as of the current release our internal testing last I knew is showing it is. I'd try to update to latest and try again. If you're not seeing it as such let us know via the bug report system.

AttractMode using WMP and the default theme should be stable. Changing theme or video playback can make your mileage vary pretty considerably since theme's can be made in a way that is known to have issues with memory stability. VLC in current build also is known to bring down the app faster because of a leak in the process.

lol fair enough. The number of times I've done that is already staggering and I likely have quite a bit more before I learn my lesson lol

Glad you were able to solve it. Yeah anytime you see a binding that points to something ending in "View" then what is being displayed isn't in that file and potentially can be found in a different file in that folder.

I'll have to check the code tomorrow when I'm back on my dev machine. I can't remember if theme overrides are higher priority than your personal one. If so this could be related to the theme you are using. Some themes have their own (I believe Big Default for example does this)

@XvXPhoenix 13.22 Beta 2 may have some code in it that resolves the issue. Once you see it's released on the forums would be it be possible for you to do the following: Open LaunchBox Go to Tools menu and create a backup In LaunchBox open options and go to the updates section and enable beta downloads Check for updates (I believe in tools, may be in help not at a computer with LB installed) Let it update to beta 2 (again, once out) and see if you have the issue still there Omni settings depends on the view in use in Steamy. Do you use Image View or List View? Image view you'd select Image View in LB (or there is a selector on the right side of the theme, you want the left most button), then in the second grouping click the one that has two horizontal bars in it. That view should be essentially the same as steamy image view List View you'd want to press the 3rd button on the left grouping and the two vert lines in the second. Then drag the separator that is between the list and the details view (it's invisible but there) to the left until the list turns into a Steamy-esque list and you should have Steamy List view. It works better if you hide the Side Panel (no worries a new drop down appears so you can still use it)

Been a bulk edit wizard in app for at least as long as I've been on the project. Select multiple games (can hold control while clicking on them) and then press CTRL+E to open the edit window and change all the selected games at once.

The unresponsive part usually means something is being done on the same CPU thread as the UI and so the UI's "refresh" can't be called and so OS see's this as a hung process. Generally speaking the app will return to normal function once the process completes, it just doesn't play nice until then. Things to look for to improve the time it takes to do this: Make sure neither location are over network which can greatly increase time to move files, make sure both locations are on stable/working drives (bad sectors no good for anyone), make sure you don't have file sync software running on either location, make sure you don't have AV running against LB (Windows firewall should be fine, third party stuff can get pretty iffy pretty quickly)