oblivioncth

I just finished downloading 9.0 (though not home at the moment) to see if functional changes need to be made, and then regardless am going to push an update for my importer so that the version check matches. I'm in the Flashpoint dev chat and I believe most of the gamezip changes were implemented in a fashion in which the games are still called from the database the same way and helper applications take care of the zips, so I think it will still work as is.

Came across this while searching for the same so I just wanted to mention there is now a way if anyone else stumbles on this

Other than an annoyance in crazy timing in that Flashpoint updated to 8.2 literally 10 minutes ago, the tool has been released! I will have to see what changes (if any) will need to be made to support the new version. I anticipate that changes will be required but that it will only be a few minor ones. You will all be testers . But in all seriousness the tool seems consistent/reliable as far as I can tell.

Flashpoint Importer for Launchers View File FIL (Flashpoint Importer for Launchers) FIL is an importer tool for several launchers/frontends that allows one to add platforms and playlists from BlueMaxima's Flashpoint project to their collection. It is fully automated and only requires the user to provide the paths to their launcher and Flashpoint installs, choose which Platforms/Playlists they wish to import, and select between a few import mode options. Once the import is started the current progress is displayed and any errors that occur are shown to the user, with resolvable errors including a prompt for what the user would like to do. After the process has completed, the specified launcher can be started and the games from Flashpoint can be played like those from any other Platform. For Platforms, the importer is capable of importing each game/animation along with any additional apps, images, and most of the metadata fields (i.e. Title, Description, etc, see below). Function This utility makes use of its sister project CLIFp (Command-line Interface for Flashpoint) to allow launchers to actually start and exit the games correctly. It is automatically deployed into your Flashpoint installation (updated if necessary) at the end of a successful import and the latest version of CLIFp will be included in each release of this utility so it is not generally something the end-user needs to concern themselves with. Before making any changes to your collection, any datafiles that will be altered are automatically backed up (only one backup is maintained at once so any previous backup will be overwritten) and if any unrecoverable errors occur during the import any partial changes are reverted and the backups are restored; however, it is strongly suggested that you consider making a manual backup of your launcher's configuration to be safe. No responsibility is held for the loss of data due to use of this tool. FIL can safely be used multiple times on the same collection to update the selected Platforms and Playlists if that have already been imported previously. The method with which to handle existing entries is selected within the program before each import. The import time will vary, correlated with how many Platforms/Playlists you have selected, but more significantly the image mode you choose, which is expanded on later. Importing the entire collection usually takes 5-10 minutes with the recommended settings but can take longer with a more basic PC. The vast majority of the processing time is due to the plethora of images that have to be copied/symlinked when games processed so the speed of your storage device is the most significant factor. Running the importer for updates should be significantly faster it first checks to see if the source image from the new import source is actually different than your current one before copying/linking it. You will still be able to use the standard Flashpoint launcher as normal after completing an import. Compatability Flashpoint Infinity/Flashpoint Ultimate This tool works well with either edition of Flashpoint. General While testing for 100% compatibility is infeasible given the size of Flashpoint, FIL was designed with full compatibility in mind. The ":message:" feature of Flashpoint, commonly used to automatically show usage instructions for some games before they are started, is supported. The entries that use it are added as additional-apps to their respective games as they once were when Flashpoint came packaged with LaunchBox. All messages are displayed in a pop-up dialog via CLIFp. Viewing extras (which are simply a folder) is also supported and the corresponding additional apps that open these folders will be added when importing a platform. Since Flashpoint originally used LaunchBox as its launcher, most fields within Flashpoint have a one-to-one equivalent (or close enough equivalent) LaunchBox field. That being said there are a few fields that are unique to Flashpoint that do not have matching field and so they are simply excluded during the import, resulting in a relatively minor loss of information for each game in your collection. Version Matching Supported Launchers LaunchBox AttractMode ES-DE Flashpoint While testing for 100% compatibility is infeasible given the size of Flashpoint, FIL was designed with full compatibility in mind. The ":message:" feature of Flashpoint, commonly used to automatically show usage instructions for some games before they are started, is supported. The entries that use it are added as additional-apps to their respective games as they once were when Flashpoint came packaged with LaunchBox. All messages are displayed in a pop-up dialog via CLIFp. Viewing extras (which are simply a folder) is also supported and the corresponding additional apps that open these folders will be added when importing a platform. Each metadata field (i.e. Title, Author, etc.) is matched to the closest equivalent of a given launcher, or a custom field if there is no near equivalent and the launcher supports them; otherwise, the field will be omitted. Both Flashpoint Ultimate and Flashpoint Infinity are supported. Version Matching Each release of this application targets a specific version series of BlueMaxima's Flashpoint, which are composed of a major and minor version number, and are designed to work with all Flashpoint updates within that series. For example, a FIL release that targets Flashpoint 10.1 is intended to be used with any version of flashpoint that fits the scheme 10.1.x.x, such as 10.1, 10.1.0.3, 10.1.2, etc, but not 10.2. Using a version of FIL that does not target the version of Flashpoint you wish to use it with is highly discouraged as some features may not work correctly or at all and in some cases the utility may fail to function entirely or even damage the Flashpoint install it is used with. Please see the project's releases page on GitHub to check which tool version targets which Flashpoint version. Metadata Fields Currently the following fields in LaunchBox will be populated for each game, which is limited by what is available within Flashpoint: Title Series Developer Publisher Platform Sort Title Date Added Date Modified Broken Flag Play Mode Status Notes Source Release Date Version Library Language (as a Custom Field) Usage Please check the usage section for the tool on its GitHub page. It's easier to keep the instructions up to date when they are in one location. If you have a bug or feature request I ask that you submit an issue on the GitHub page for this tool, but if you just want to ask a question, discuss the tool in general, or are having issues getting it working for reasons you don't think are due to a bug then please just make a post here. Since sometimes the line between the two can be blurry don't feel afraid to use the wrong system, it isn't a huge deal. GitHub FIL: https://github.com/oblivioncth/FIL CLIFp: https://github.com/oblivioncth/CLIFp Submitter oblivioncth Submitted 08/27/2020 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

Sorry, been away from the machine. I did see you have to install .NET Core for 11.3 so that probably is related. I will check a few things and if I don't get anywhere I'll give you a copy of my data folder.

Just wanted to update this if anyone was looking: The tool is in the final testing and UI polish phases. It's a little rough around the edges internally and I won't be able to make 100% sure that all games are playable so it will very much be a beta that will probably take some time working with to get compatibility to/close to 100%. That being said I designed the process to be as hands off for the end-user as possible and so that the code base itself should be fairly easy to update and maintain going forward, which I very much plan on doing for as long as possible. It will most likely need to be modified every time a non-minor Flashpoint update is release, though most changes to LaunchBox shouldn't affect it. Hopefully overtime as the FP team figures out more optimal solutions to their software for running some of the more finicky games they'll need to make less and less changes to the apps core functionality when it comes to starting child processes, which would result in proportionally fewer changes required to keep this tool working. Ideally it would be nice if one version of this tool could work for several releases of Flashpoint. Can't give an exact time, but hopefully it will be out soon.

I do this all the time with my collection using ShadowPlay, but it would be nice to use OBS due to the new integration and grouping by game. The only issue is that as you mentioned I haven't found anyone who's spoke of a way to have the recording loop run 100% automatically in the background like Shadow Play and the Windows gamebar recordings can. In theory OBS with the flag you mentioned could be added as an additional app with "AutoRunBefore" set to 1, but that would be a massive pain and clunky. Hopefully in the future theres an option under the OBS integration to have it startup beforehand globally.

I haven't tested it with anything other than Retroarch, but strangely enough I'm able to open Retroarch through LB by right clicking on any game that uses it and using the corresponding option. The prompt only appears when I try to actually launch a game, additional apps included. It makes me wonder if the rom files are the issue but I believe LB has the same exact permissions with those as well.

Trying to launch any game on 11.3 Beta 10 (not sure about earlier betas) results in the "This operation requires elevation privileges" message that can occur if you run LB as an admin and then try going back to running it at the user level, even though this is not the case for my current install (User owns all files/folders within the LB directory and has permissions set to full control). Reverting to 11.2 stable avoids the issues without any changes to LB files. Not sure what 11.3 Beta 10 is trying to do or what files it is trying to access that needs admin privileges and I'm guessing it isn't intentional.

Interesting. I'm at a complete lost on what could of happened because it changed so suddenly and I only picked up on it soon after getting 11.2 beta to work and don't remember changing anything with my system. Strange.

@Jason Carr Also just meant to let you know that starting with 11.1 beta 1 (it may have been 11.0 beta 1) the speed of any filtering (i.e. searches, changing platforms, changing views) became painfully slow, often taking up to 20 seconds for the scroll view to refresh, but now at 11.2 official the speed is the fastest its ever been, with searches for example often being returned after just 1-2 seconds or so. This is with a collection of 60,000+ titles. So if this isn't a coincidence and you did make changes in the backend related to populating the games view, note that for me at least the current implementation is stellar.

Ok after reverting to 11.1 stable and then enabling debug logs, I reinstalled 11.2 stable and started LB again while watching for the Logs folder to be populated. As you guessed previously, the initial entry that was last in the log while the it was stuck initializing was "Libraries Initialization: Extracting ThirdParty folder...". Deleting the folders as you suggested doesn't seem to allow it to get any further. Not sure exactly what the hold up was (I did mess with the ScummVM folder previously, though I thought I had reverted all my changes), but I then tried deleting every folder under the ThirdParty folder except for 7-Zip, and that ultimately allowed it to start.

I don't have the machine at the moment. I will ask the friend who does to leave the process go for like 30 minutes to see if anything happens. As I said previously I let it go for a few under 10. If nothing happens I'll get a debug log.

Nope. Just D:\LaunchBox on an NVMe drive.