[The State of LaunchBox on Android]

10 hours ago, neil9000 said:

Well the point is as Jason said in his original post, that emulation in general may no longer be possible on Android full stop. Short sighted would be continuing to invest time and money into a platform, that come the next release of Android may no longer support the functions that a frontend requires to actually be usefull.

Sure that's possible.  But I don't believe it for a moment.  There are too many applications with similar requirements.  Some way of maintaining the functionality will exist.  How inconvenient it will be is an open question.

10 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

On top of what Neil said, I'm sure you're not alone in your opinions, but the difference in quality of life between Windows and Android is enormous. One of the biggest issues is that we just felt like we were fighting with Google every step of the way. On Windows we have the control and the ability to produce an excellent product, but on Android, we were forced to cut way too many corners and forced to put out a product that we were not fully happy with, and the proper vision that we had in our head turned out to be impossible. It's impressive what some of the other frontend developers have been able to do on Android, but if you compare them to what's available on Windows, it's a night and day difference. And I don't buy that it's because it's a handheld platform; it's not. It's because of poor OS design decisions and artificial limitations.

I think that I am looking at things differently.  I see Windows and Android as two different use cases, with a small amount of overlap.  The way I see it, an Android front end doesn't need the ability to do detailed collection maintenance, it just needs to be able to help the user locate content quickly.  Additionally, IMO, the amount of graphic assets needed to "prettify" the experience are lower on Android simply because the speed of the storage media is painful enough to make small, better.  A simple cover image or snap shot loads quickly without a need for additional images.

I think the best model for an android front end would be "Calibre Companion".  All library maintenance is done PC side and the Android app is focused on finding and accessing external content.  It connects to the desktop app which acts like a server.

The Achilles heel of Android is the UI speed and inconvenience of a touch screen and a front end that simplifies the location and invocation of content would be awesome.  I don't know what you feel is missing, but honestly I think your app was almost there. All it really needed was to display the text from the DB (genre, description, developer, publisher etc) and to provide better ways to access content.  (Search, skipping to the next letter when scrolling, possibly genre filtering).

10 hours ago, Agent47 said:

For casual users, maybe. For anyone who wants better than decent emulation, never. Windows will always be king.

I have a complete windows setup and I definitely agree it's superior for obsessively cataloging and organizing ROMs.  When it comes to actually playing games Android works just fine in most cases and is more convenient.  

[The State of LaunchBox on Android]

I understand the reasoning but it's a depressing turn of events.  Personally, I think it's a short sighted decision.  I believe Android is going to be the go-to platform for emulation going forward.  It's cheap and it's easy to develop for.  You can get an Android TV box, a blue-tooth controller and a large SD card for 100 or less.  I have a full-size cabinet, a gaming PC a couple of Android set top boxes and an Android phone set up for emulation and hands down, the Android solutions get far more play simply because of the convenience factor.

Ah well.  Easy come, easy go.  Good luck with your windows app.

 

 

[How do you add a Custom Emulator?]

Can anyone give me some direction about how to set up Retroarch as a custom emulator?  The listed cores for the Atari Lynx don't show the one that is actually available unless I'm missing something.

I'm using the 64bit sideload so I I believe all I would need is the package name for that and then use the core name as the activity?  Am I on the right track?  Does anyone know the 64bit sideload package code?  

Any help would be appreciated!

[App Crashes when scanning Neo Geo]

There's also an issue where the app exits if you try and change the emulator for MSX or MSX2. When you tap the default emulator, RetroArch, it immediately exits. 

[App Crashes when scanning Neo Geo]

Hi all, 

I'm running into an issue where the application crashes if I try to import my Neo Geo roms. It scans, displays the files it found but after you click proceed it shows that it's preparing data and then it almost immediately exits. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!