[Bigbox Freezing up when in goes in out and focus]

On 6/27/2023 at 8:50 AM, C-Beats said:

Thanks for this. May be onto something with the startup/pause processes still running. I'll see if I can use that to attempt to replicate the issue.

I am noticing this behavior as well on the latest release on my arcade cabinet build and my ROG Ally *without* any ASUS bloatware installed.

[Export games list]

I just noticed today that there is some sort of hard limit in place preventing copying and pasting a list larger than about 1600 (messing with filters) or so of games. So if you are collector completionist like and want export an entire list of your 1000s of games to Excel, bear this in mind. @Jason Carr, is this something that I should submit in a bug report? I can confidently say that Windows at least can easily hold an export in the 10,000's in the clipboard as I copy and paste from SQL Server with tables much taller and wider in my day job.

[Marquee screen not displaying correctly when launching a game]

Did you also make sure that you have the displays lined up so they are left to right and their top edges align like so? Outside of ensuring 100% scaling on both displays, this is another step that is also commonly missed.

[PSA - Cemu - combine and compress Wii U game + updates + DLC into a single file (.wua)]

On 9/10/2022 at 8:56 PM, Ʉ₦₳VØ₩ɆĐ said:

this only packs\unpacks, does not convert to wua

This. The tool converts to the compression format that WUA uses. However, it does not know how to organize the files appropriately nor does it understand how to batch through the files either or most importantly identify one game from another for that matter. Ultimately, bulk support will need to be done upstream in Cemu since that is only what has the necessary bits for the archive file organization and metadata. ZArchive exists because they invented a new compression format that is insanely fast at finding and decompressing a single file at a moment's notice from a pool of tens of thousands of files (hence the billed support for "random-access reads"). It is able to instantaneously decompress a file without having to decompress the entire archive contents, making it much faster than traditional methods like .ZIP or .RAR given the high file counts of some games. Therefore, it is purpose built for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild that is a game with tens of thousands of files that can't easily live and run out of a slowly decompressed zip file.

[Running LaunchBox and Big Box on Linux]

On 8/4/2022 at 4:44 AM, static said:

The tools will mature, it will just take time, no worries, everyone wants a version that runs on linux but not at the cost of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, just give it time things are always improving with compatibility solutions being developed and implemented in the Linux community.

I would insert the term: with all due respect, just no. Stop while you’re ahead of yourself in that train of thought. Besides the colossal amount of overhead of migrating and reimagining a codebase on Linux knowing that some things just won’t port over nicely or at all (for example, the Windows BigBox theming system), pure and simple economics is the driving factor here. Even if the Steam Deck is relatively popular in the eyes of some users here, perspective is helpful. Valve informs us that Linux accounts for just over 1% of Steam gamers compared with Windows’s over 96% and that closely reflects the status of Linux as a gaming platform. Further, EmuDeck, RetroDeck and other tools have fast become the go-to choices among Steam Deck users, meaning there is entrenchment and acceptance of these free offerings that make that market more resistive to purchasing a paid product. Conclusion? Maybe when Steam Deck 2 or 3 comes out and the Linux has miraculously cracked 10% of the PC gaming market will it then be worthwhile for them to explore a Linux version in more depth with a faster development that more closely mirrors the cadence of their Windows and Android products.

As it is though, Linux is far less lucrative than Windows or Android and therefore will stay on the back burner for the foreseeable future. If I were to peg a price tag on this pipedream, provided you could prove they’re were enough people interested in purchasing at that point, I would wager a price of at least double if not triple for yearly and lifetime licenses would be the absolute minimum price given the Herculean amount of work involved and significantly smaller user base. So if the price paid for the time and effort and if waiting five years more until Steam Deck 2 or 3 when maybe, just maybe Linux becomes more mainstream, then I will believe that Linux is worth us developing for. But until then, it is simply not realistic to push so much for Linux support.

[The LaunchBox 2022 Community Poll]

On 5/18/2022 at 12:59 AM, MRCrisis said:

Unfortunately animated cover support is not in the poll. Yet there are a lot of votes

https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/307/animated-backgrounds-and-animated-box-art

For what it is worth, I voted for this feature as well just now. It is surprising GIF support isn’t there yet when @Jason Carr himself expressed interest in it about seven years ago in conversation of this BitBucket issue/feature request. At this point, though, as @Lordmonkus rightly brought up, implementing this feature might require significant refactoring to accommodate it depending on how the codebase is currently structured. I do think it is quite doable though as .NET Core does have support for GIF rendering.

[Launchbox on Steam Deck]

I do not think it is a matter of ignoring the Steam Deck but picking battles, allocating limited manpower, and then hedging bets accordingly hoping that it will be the most profitable choice in the long haul. Recall too that ETA PRIME has a stake in LaunchBox and also is an expert himself in SBC, APU gaming, and handheld PCs and so he keeps a very watchful eye on the market more than us enthusiasts. I think if anyone there at LaunchBox might clue in the team to what he sees as a tidal wave of revenue in the emulation market that makes it worth the opportunity cost of development time, it would be him. All I know is right now, anecdotally, Steam Deck users are clamoring for a decent all-in-one emulation experience that scrapes halfway decently and is easily tweaked and tuned. No shocker, Steam ROM Manager’s built-in scraper is pretty bad right now, but commits and issue logs are hitting warp speed thanks to Steam Deck in stark contrast to the years of snail’s pace development. Meanwhile, even more exciting, EmuDeck only came out a week ago and is like a roller coaster ride, going from nothing to everything in a week’s time. Talk about breakneck development cycle and overnight viral sensation. EmuDeck leverages Steam Rom Manager and EmuDeck is seeing as much as hourly commits everyday now. Emulation is a top consideration for many if not most Steam Deck owners and EmuDeck’s Reddit announcement thread that blew up overnight much to everyone’s surprise including the developer is proof of it:
 

EmuDeck already supports several dozen consoles now with no sign of slowing. It somehow now even supports Cemu which itself is not native to Linux. 

https://www.emudeck.com/

[Launchbox on Steam Deck]

57 minutes ago, WatcherXP said:

I was lucky enough to be a week 1 Steam deck recipient, every single day i with that LB was on the device.

Wait?!? You already got it working? I am right now copying my Launchbox files over that’s great news if you did.

[Launchbox on Steam Deck]

On 3/17/2022 at 8:38 AM, C-Beats said:

Numbers are a hard thing for people to keep in perspective. 110k preorders SOUNDS like a lot but you need to keep some other statistics in mind when comparing that number.

First off, that is number of pre-orders, NOT number of units successfully sold, produced, and shipped, so the number of affected users that would utilize a new product SOLELY for a Steam Deck is FAR less than 110k at this point.

Another thing to note is how popular Linux is compared to the other operating systems we've shipped to. When talking about desktop OS user count, Windows boasts 1.5 BILLION users, which sounds MASSIVE, but then you look at mobile tech and Android operating systems reports 2.5 BILLION users. 110 THOUSAND starts to sound pretty abysmal...

The fact of the matter is that Linux has last been reported to be a 3% market share of desktop operating systems. That number has been PRETTY consistent and while I think Valve is helping to bring light to Linux with it's SteamOS it isn't the FIRST time they've tried, and frankly fell flat. Linux has many short comings and is a pain to develop on for anything graphical (which is why most apps you see for it actually render using web tech and not native graphics tech like OpenGL or Vulkan). To write something that natively ran on Linux would require a complete rewrite of our application, an application that has been in development for almost a decade. To start completely over for a 3% market share and a machine that at MOST at this point has only a potential 110k units sold is a pretty hard sell. If we DID get a Linux build up and running it most certainly wouldn't be solely with the intent of releasing to the deck, Linux desktop user base is FAR larger than the number of users the deck will sell in it's lifetime, and we'd need to hit quite a few of those users for the work to be profitable.

Mild correction here. Others including myself who have been closely following the Steam Deck long before when we just knew of just an obscure quote from Gabe Newell in mid 2021 and we pieced that together with AMD’s enigmatic Van Gogh, find SteamDB’s numbers to be a bit off the mark in this case. We are looking at annual production in the millions, given the fact that Valve is going for production totaling in the hundreds of thousands of units per month by April. That easily dwarfs the 110,000 preorder estimation and proof positive why SteamDB is often an educated guess at worst and sometimes a wildly off the mark guess at worst at that and not necessarily gospel truth.

 

EDIT: That 110,000 number was for just the first 90 minutes. The total preorders as of late February are 810,000-900,000. That said, having spoke to a user who has been following this very closely, SteamDB’s algorithm is tuned to Steam software and not hardware and so preorders are likely already at 1 million-plus.

Link:

https://steamdb.info/app/1675180/graphs/

[Running LaunchBox and Big Box on Linux]

On 2/23/2021 at 3:36 PM, Sterophonick said:

I have been performing experiments with running LaunchBox on Linux through Wine, and I gotta say, with a bit of tweaking, it might be viable!
I was able to import games through the Tools menu, and was able to launch a game!

However, because it is being run through Wine, actually launching native Linux versions of emulators is a little bit tricky. With that in mind, I was able to write some batch scripts that will do just that!

The example I'll put here is the one I wrote for RetroArch,

for /f "delims=" %%i in ('winepath -u %2') do set content=%%i
if %1=="gba" (
    set core=RetroArch-Linux-x86_64.AppImage.home/.config/retroarch/cores/mgba_libretro.so
    set config=RetroArch-Linux-x86_64.AppImage.home/.config/retroarch/config/default.cfg
)

echo %core%
cmd /c start /unix RetroArch/RetroArch-Linux-x86_64.AppImage --verbose -c %config% -L %core% "%content%"

(You will need to edit this yourself if you want more than just the Game Boy Advance)

 

And the entry in the emulation menu looked like this

Make sure that you avoid naming it "RetroArch" otherwise you'll set off a flag that will make setting parameters a little more cumbersome.

 

 

Here are some other issues that I noticed:

The appearance of context menus are bugged.

 

Dragging and dropping games will cause LaunchBox to crash.

 

Some fonts are looking a little rough and are missing certain glyphs

 

Menus such as the "Edit Game" menu will turn black except for the option you are highlighting.

The LaunchBox window will force itself to the front of the screen if the screen is ever updated.

This is visible in the above YouTube video, where it takes me a bit of time to switch to RetroArch after launching it.

 

This could use a little bit of work, but I am impressed with what I have been able to accomplish so far!
I hope this eventually becomes an option, at the cost of a little extra maintenance.

 

On 2/23/2021 at 8:51 PM, Sterophonick said:

I got Dolphin emulator to work

for /f "delims=" %%i in ('winepath -u %1') do set content=%%i
cmd /c start /unix Dolphin/dolphin-emu -e "%content%"

Keep the emulator command line parameters empty.

Have fun!

 

On 2/24/2021 at 4:11 PM, Sterophonick said:

MAME Script

cmd /c start /unix MAME/mame64 -verbose -rompath %1 %2 %3

Emulator settings:

 

Edit these settings to fit the system you're trying to emulate.

 

Currently working on a script that will run Windows games in Wine, however it's getting a bit frustrating. Dunno if I will ever get it to work

This is incredible work! I will be referencing these scripts over the next week as I get my Steam Deck configured to run all my roms. I wonder if a plug-in could be created to use these Linux scripts. Right now, the only option for rom management on the Steam Deck is Steam Rom Manager. When used with the Steam Deck’s UI, it at best just presents collections of roms by console. It displays box art, title, and not much more—very drab and droll. It is not at all granular, pleasing or robust like BigBox is. Right now, we have an incredible opportunity to grab a good chunk of Steam Deck users who want to emulate their games. I think if we concentrate on getting scripts written and we curate them and publish them, that should be a good starting point. Perhaps eventually a more user friendly option will present itself. I will focus on getting scripts adapted and made that use the Discover Flatpak emulator path locations for the emulators as well as rom file paths that point to either parent “Roms” folder under the “Deck” user home directory or a “Roms” folder under the MicroSD path. Offering ready-made scripts for these two folder paths schemes, that should make this as plug and play as possible for the Steam Deck users who want a slick interface with scrapping capabilities leagues better than anything else out there.

[Running LaunchBox and Big Box on Linux]

Likewise! I have a Steam Deck right now and while the Steam Rom Manager is alright for basic game launching, it is way behind LaunchBox and BigBox in navigating and managing a library.

[January 2022 Server Updates]

If you ever feel adventurous, Discourse (the forum software founded by Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror fame) is very fun and flexible to use and comes highly recommended. (For one, it encourages using read time, meaning listening, instead of post count, or talking, to establish user reputation, and boy how many talking heads would this get to straighten their act up! 🤣) I am using Discourse right now as the new home for a well-frequented forum (forum.TabletPCReview.com community members are migrating forum.TabletPC.review which I operate) after the controlling interest, the tech marketing company TechTarget, decided to pull the plug on it and all the rest of the TechnologyGuide family of sites (bye, bye, Brighthand and NotebookReviews).

[Bigbox launches on wrong monitor]

That’s true too, but there is something else too: unless both monitors have the same scaling factor, LaunchBox will only show up on monitor 1 in Windows. I adapted a script that launches BigBox that will change the scaling factor to the same for both monitors to overcome this Windows limitation.

[Can't run most of the ps1 games, some are in cue/bin files, some are divided in tracks.]

Compress CUEs and GDIs into CHDs.zip

[Can't run most of the ps1 games, some are in cue/bin files, some are divided in tracks.]

I guess I have been lucky because it’s not an issue for me, at least. If anyone needs it, I have a script and bat set that I run that works flawlessly for converting CHDs to and from their native formats (.cue/.bin, .iso, .gdi) including Dreamcast, Saturn, and Sega CD. It’s worked for perhaps a thousand plus games on those consoles, so I think it is safe to say that it will work. I can say that if chdman is outdated, that may very well be problematic and the cause for the many reported issues.

[Running LaunchBox and Big Box on Linux]

On 11/22/2021 at 10:25 AM, Jason Carr said:

I am in the process of getting the Android version working natively with GTK on Linux. I think I can safely say that it's going to work at this point, but I do have a lot of work left, so it will still be a while. But it's coming.

If we bought an Android license, is that valid for this Linux port or will it require a Linux license? I don't mind either way since this is a fantastic product and is always worth shelling out the $.

[12.2 Beta Testing]

4 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

If anyone has any ideas as to how to programmatically determine what the latest version of RetroArch is (sans for parsing HTML markup), please let us know.

Is this JSON data feed what you are aiming for?

https://api.github.com/repos/libretro/RetroArch/releases/latest

Source:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14866528/how-can-i-grab-the-latest-stable-repo-version-from-the-github-api

EDIT: Fixed link for JSON feed to pull the latest stable release.

[Pulse Theme]

On 10/16/2021 at 1:51 PM, Juketsu said:

Now there is a view with the separate logo. Good idea. It fits in this view.

 

Which view is this? Thanks!

[Pulse Theme]

9 hours ago, Juketsu said:

Final preview. Did some major last minute changes. Now I'm going to test this for a few days. Might publish next saturday if all goes well.

 

Just wow. I have always been wanting a theme that meshed together the very clean and thoughtful look of Colorful with a mature, radical look of others here. There is zero clutter here and it looks stellar. Here is a thought: have you ever considered using the game clear logo in place of the game title in text? That is something I wish Colorful did. Granted, this is easily modifiable for us users thanks to the modularity of community theme builder. But I feel that using the game logo in the place of text for the game title would evoke the feeling of the game more.

[Zpevdo.b trojan in latest LB installer]

Just as a heads up, this could also end up being a problem at some point. If in doubt, try disabling Potentially unwanted app blocking in Windows Defender. Thanks, Microsoft, for enabling the new feature we did not ask for.

Windows 10 begins blocking installation of "Potentially Unwanted Apps" by default this month - Liliputing

[Issues with getting my Marquee monitor to display in big box.]

12 hours ago, Retro808 said:

This is interesting. My 3 cabinets work regardless of marquee screen position. Good to know this worked for @Benjc. Another option to try when troubleshooting anyone with a similar issue.

I was just about to post this answer to the riddle of all this nonsense, but I am glad someone found it! In my misadventures of getting my cabinet up and running about a year ago, I encountered the same exact trouble as @Benjc did. There were two things I had to do: first, have the monitors side by side in their default positions, primary on left and secondary on right in Windows' display position; and second, both monitors had to be at the same scale factor, which in nearly all cases would be 100%. I had to have my monitors in the default position that Windows places them, meaning Display 1 (primary) has to be on the left and Display 2 (secondary) on the right with the top of Display 2 even with the top of Display 1.

This defies intuition of course because ideally you would think you would want them placed top and bottom (marquee on top and main screen right below) as you would want your mouse to flow from the top of your main display to bottom of your secondary display, but nope, that's Microsoft for you. You also have to have the scale factor equal because Windows' display management is equally garbage in this regard. In my case, I have a high DPI 4K/UHD main display so just so I can keep my main display's text legible, I use a Visual Basic script to automatically toggle the scale factor to 100% until Big Box's process is closed. 

You might not be seeing it maybe because it is Windows 10 related or perhaps it is a new "feature" specific to later feature updates of Windows 10. I noticed it on Windows 10 May 2020 Update with either Intel (Intel Iris Xe on Microsoft Surface Pro 7+) or NVIDIA (GeForce GTX 3090) with both clean and updated installs of the operating system. Pure nonsense, I tell ya.

[The LaunchBox 2021 Community Poll]

I voted for better performance out of Big Box. Right now, it is hard getting 1080p with Colorful theme (with video backgrounds enabled) running fluidly on low-end integrated graphics like Vega 3 (like on a Ryzen R1505G) or Intel HD/UHD Graphics (with 24 EUs or less). I have to aim for 720p or even 480p in some cases just for fluid operation if I want to have video backgrounds. That is my current situation with performance enhancements from (1) Process Lasso, (2) highest performance levels in the BIOS and Windows power settings, and (3) disabling or demoting prioritization on any less critical system services.

[Launchbox on Steam Deck]

A lot has been confirmed already yesterday and contrary to some reports, most of the hardware is finalized and is not in a state of flux at this point. Valve has confirmed in multiple communications now at least two things that people are getting confused about.

1. This is--repeat--a full-fledged PC (meaning, for example, it can be installed with an alternative OS via bootable media), so you can install whatever OS and software you want. There is zip, zero, nada locked down here. So putting Linux and Windows petty rivalries aside for a brief moment, if you prefer the pure Windows experience, go ahead and install it. Or if you want a different Linux distro than the stock one from Valve, that's totally up to you too. Or stay pure with SteamOS 3.0 and add any additional software you want.

2. The SSD is 2230 M.2 NVMe slot that Valve claims is "not intended for end-user replacement" and is surrounded by an EMI and thermal shield. Let me dispel some fears here. Don't get tricked by semantics! They are saying it is not intended to be upgraded though it most certainly can with minimal effort. That way, you doubt the ease of upgrade and you jump for the highest model and they preserve the upsell. In fact, Microsoft used the same lingo to describe the Surface Pro X and Pro 7+'s serviceable SSD. In reality, on those two Surfaces, it is just ONE screw and a flex-metal housing away from removal, as you can see here. Lastly, don't let the EMI and thermal shield terminology scare you. It is in reality likely just a clam shell covering the SSD to reduce EMI radiation in order to pass FCC requirements. As seen in this video, it is probably just like the Surface Pro 7+'s EMI and thermal shield which is trivial to remove.

[11.13 Beta Testing]

I would also like to report that I get the same error rate as @ferretlegshad indicated on the order of 1% for a scraping session over 10,000 media items. I will add too that the error rate seems to be worse as the processing power gets less and less on the hardware. I have a Ryzen 9 5950X semi-dedicated arcade system that seems to get the least errors, followed by Surface Pro 7+ which gets a bit more, and finally my thin client portable arcade system (an HP T640, a passively cooled dual-core Ryzen R1505G mini PC) which gets the worst level of errors. Bear in mind that all these devices have a top-of-the-line Intel AX200 or AX201 wireless AX Wi-Fi cards and are connected to blazing fast 1.2 Gbps Comcast cable internet. The error rate was so bad on the T640 (on the order of greater than 90% for EmuMovies) that I tried everything to remedy the failed downloads. I tried using a VPN thinking it was an ISP issue (interestingly, though, the issue was nowhere as profound on the other two, higher powered devices) and I even tweaked resource allocation in Process Lasso to give LaunchBox and the browser subprocesses higher process and I/O priority.

 

I got so frustrated that I finally tried the latest 11.13 beta and that finally seems to have mostly fixed the downloading issue on the T640. The caveat here is that I still get a small error rate, on the order of less than 10 errors for 10,000+ media items. My current scraping session is visible below. I am almost 2,000 media items in and only two errors have occurred so far. Contrast that with before loading the beta on the T640 where I was getting an error rate of >90%, where maybe a couple hundred media items would download and then all of the remaining items would fail repeatedly afterwards. I am glad to report that this latest beta seems to be the fix to this recent issue that popped up in the last few releases. Thanks for continuing to make me a proud and happy LaunchBox user with your ongoing support and amazing upgrades to this excellent piece of software. This is the best arcade software bar none!

[(404) Session has expired. Please login..]

I'll throw out there that I am also seeing the same issues described in this thread. I'm a bit tied up this week so I won't be able to throw up a log file, but I'll try to send one over next week if it is not yet resolved.