skizzosjt

Badges - Got it, it's a feature, not a bug. The theme is COLORFUL which has been modded, started with the CTC version you produced in v2.3 and I've been updating into subsequent versions of CTC since. All of the animations on the WheelGamesView have been the same for several years and only in the past when the dev team is making updates to the frontend has this issue occurred with animations getting triggered at wrong points when exiting games and returning to the WheelGamesView. Now in the past it was spread to other themes too including the default. I don't see the behavior this time on default theme so that is different from previous occurrence of the issue. My version of COLORFUL theme worked OK on 13.27, but now it doesn't in 13.28 betas so that alone made me bring the issue to your attention. I attached logs from the last borked attempt to open, and the very next attempt that did load successfully. I left it open for some time, and then closed the frontend and attached all four logs that were created. I notice every time it got hung up it created the same 120KB file each time sans of course different time stamps for each step. Otherwise it keeps hanging up on the same exact spot each time where it is adjusting game's play count and time and then appears to do something with the media engine....this media engine step never appears on the borked attempts when it gets hung up at "Loading Interface" Can see the next step is where the hang up problem is. The left hand side is a borked launched log, the right hand side is a successful launch. Files are attached! Note there are no crashes or event logs, I checked both application and system tabs for anything relevant to the frontend or when it was launched/closed and didn't see anything. The program doesn't crash, it is hung up indefinitely when it occurs. The only way I can close it is through force closing the process and then trying to open it again. MediaEngine 2026-07-13 09-34-44 AM.worker.logDebug 2026-07-13 09-34-39 AM.logMediaEngine Client 2026-07-13 09-34-44 AM.logDebug 2026-07-13 09-34-06 AM.log

All these issues previously highlighted still exist in beta 4. Only one so far acknowledged and being addressed I have seen is the B button getting pressed twice wrongly returns focus to Big Box. So, really would appreciate a response from someone from dev team on when/if the rest of the issues are going to be addressed -LaunchBox does not open in a regular fashion. This is wholly unacceptable, requires me to force close and retry opening it on avg half a dozen times to get the program to even load. This isn't even beta related, it has been going on for many prior versions. It's getting exponentially worse in these betas though! -Big Box animations get triggered when exiting games when they should not be I realized now that badge images are not disappearing when scrolling if you use the mouse scroll wheel. the badges images only disappear when scrolling if I use the scroll bar and then they pop back in momentarily after you stop scrolling. Is this issue going to be addressed at all? LB Badge Image Issue.mp4

I realized now that badge images are not disappearing when scrolling if you use the mouse scroll wheel. the badges images only disappear when scrolling if I use the scroll bar and then they pop back in momentarily after you stop scrolling.

you should still have the latest stable release 13.27 in your "updates" directory. I believe the update sequence works in a way that forces users to download the latest stable release before they download a beta to prevent exact what you describe. or is there any chance the .dlls you speak are plugin related? they included some new plugins in the beta and when I tried to downgrade to 13.27 I got errors at launch regarding them and had to get rid of said new plugins to get LB to boot. if this is the case for you and you have custom plugins then copy your plugin directory somewhere safe like your desktop. then nuke the plugin folder in the LaunchBox directory. it will be rebuilt on launch and you can then add back any of your custom plugins from the one you saved onto your desktop

to clarify further what I tested with different emulators and storefront (Steam) games. the issue can occur for any game from what I can tell. it's not just emulator/ROM dependent.

gave another quick bit of testing tonight to see if I could create the returning to Big Box focus issue when using a controller using same triggers that others mentioned. so it is very close for me but not exactly the same as mentioned by izzishor and rlad. I can simply press B twice and it occurs on the 2nd press! I am using Startup/Shutdown screens and I am using VLC media engine.....let's see if same thing happens with the other two....yup....doesn't matter what media engine the user selects. Big Box is stealing focus from the game window which makes the Startup Screen window close at the same time. Note I don't actually ever get to see the Shutdown window when this issue occurs "ONLY" took four attempts to get LB to launch and NOT get stuck on "Loading interface" tonight....that's still three too many! But at least I could do some testing without spending 30+ mins just trying to launch the frontend. However when I tried to get back to LB for a 2nd time tonight it took 5 attempts to get it to load. this is total facepalm kinda territory, the program is really unusable like this! needing to force close it and try again so often is not a good experience. So with that said I can confirm there are still animations that are getting triggered that should not be when exiting a game and returning to Big Box in a normal fashion. ie exiting the game as intended and having the Shutdown Screen come up and return to Big Box. I have stuff like box images, cart images, disc images and the short animate (change position) that should only happen upon entering the view, but now they occur again. yet several other animations do not trigger Please note the extra animations that are occurring. The obvious ones are the box and cart image are doing their animation when they should not be.....but there is one harder to see. For games that have a 5 star rating I have given some elements animations where they change color. My idea here was I wanted 5 star games to have the stars "flash" so they are supposed to turn white before fading back to gold/yellow. That animation is wrongly happening when returning to Big Box as well! Big Box Animation Issue.mp4

So I farted around with LB a bit and the scrolling does seem smoother. But then there is a worse part, badges are taking longer to load. The box images are loading fine. But all badge images "pop in" after the fact, especially when scrolling quickly. There is some funky business with Big Box like a couple others mentioned (Rlad and izzshor). I didn't get into super detail to try and figure out if it's the exact same trigger for the button(s) causing it because I'm having a hard time getting the frontend to even launch (noted further below).....when I am playing a game windows are seemingly, randomly changing focus to other ones. I play with a controller. I'm sure it's related to same complaints as others. I actually was able to launch a game, play it for maybe 90secs before I randomly get thrown back to Big Box and launch the same game again and start up a new startup. I tried it a handful of times and was playing fighter games so lots of fast inputs going on and each time the same issue occurred. LB loading/launching is as worse as it has ever been. I tried to launch LB 32 times and only TWO of those times did the program actually load and not get stuck on "loading interface". this is unusable! I was able to do the media engine plugin update. But I noticed no improvements to any issues I previously commented on....so just refer to my previous post. All the same issues exist for me. *With exception I couldn't verify if the extra Big Box animations are still occurring due to the above issue about windows randomly changing focus as playing a game. Said issue makes it impossible to judge that problem with extra animations reoccurring since it's tied to exiting the game and returning to Big Box in a normal way.

I am not experiencing any slowdown in Big Box and I use a modified Colorful theme that has even more animations in it that the official version that I would think would be prime candidate for testing for slowdown scenarios when for ex just holding down on the wheel and very fast scrolling through the wheel. FFMPEG is a step backwards. Issues with audio not playing. And Big Box crashed eventually each time I had this one selected. So, if you are in a PLATFORM WHEEL (ie selecting SNES or NES or Arcade or Genesis etc) and then quickly move to another selection and back to the one you were just on (before allowing the next selections video to actually start), now said video will play WITH AUDIO. Note when in a GAME WHEEL video's audio plays OK. When I back out to a platform wheel from a game wheel, the platform video does not play audio still. User must do some quick back and forth movement in order to get audio to play for videos in a platform wheel. WMP is a step backdwards. Issues with videos not playing at all, just a GRAY screen like it doesn't know how the handle the video format. However, if you quickly move to another selection and back to the one you were just on, now said video will play. Also you can go into the next wheel, say going from platform to game wheel, and then go back to the platform wheel, now said platform video will play ok. So there is some pattern where they do not play upon initial attempt but if the user does some navigation inputs....now they will play OK. This quirk is only happening to me in PLATFORM WHEELS. when in a GAME WHEEL all the videos are playing fine without any funny business needed from the user. VLC RETURNS!!!! Honestly this is the one that is working GOOD for me! Video actually plays, audio is OK, and did not crash Big Box like FFMPEG did. So with that said, in it's current state, v13.28 Beta 2 VLC is the winner for me! Again, zero "slow down" with any of the media engine options. I'm on an i9-9900k. a big CPU for it's gen, but is past it's prime. Windows 10 RX 6900 XT 32GB 3200MHZ RAM When using VLC (didn't test launching games with other video settings) the startup screen and shutdown screen seem to be working OK. There is a RETURNING ISSUE with stuff doing EXTRA ANIMATIONS when you exit a game and return to Big Box. I brought this up a few versions back and it was fixed but it is happening again. Old post for reference. *NOTE* this time around the game's video is not getting reset when returning to Big Box, just certain animations are happening when they shouldn't be. I tried turning off "Force LB or BB back into focus when the shutdown screen closes" as well as "Automatically close the startup screen when the game window appears" options but this extra animation behavior persists. STARTUP VIDEOS are still working completely fine for me! Getting stuck on "Loading Interface..." is a new/old issue. This WAS happening to me for a while but got much better I believe in the 13.26 and 13.27 range. But this is back to being random, but common occurrence again. It seems to only do it when either opening LB or going from BB to LB. I've never once had this happen when booting directly into BB or going for LB to BB. I ran into a situation where my xinput controller (OEM Microsoft One Controller) would no longer work in Big Box after exiting a game. But this seems pretty random and I think there was a BB error that would close BB when this issue did occur. edit: forgot to add that downgrading back to 13.27 is problematic as there are a handful of plugin errors being created by ones being auto created when launching 13.28 beta. so users must delete the plugin folder prior to running 13.27, and add back any custom plugins manually

yes, I would think it's normal so you know what is the current active selection or what you are going to engage with if you were to for example expand/collapse that category it's the same behavior with keyboard. makes sense for navigating with input devices like that, rather than the main input intention of a mouse where you have the cursor visible to know what you are interacting with

This seems to be fixed in beta 5. So I'm also confirming previously problematic videos no longer freeze the frontend when they loop

yea I've noticed and have previously communicated the same since FFMPEG was implemented. for me webm videos freeze up the frontend when they try to loop. I also have some mp4 videos that def came from emumovies that do the same thing. the kicker is these videos all play totally fine in FFMPEG if you use FFMPEG directly from Windows. it's only problematic how FFMPEG is implemented in Big Box and LaunchBox. for me view doesn't matter in Big Box, these freezes can happen on any view where a video exists.

yea you set Big Box to default to "platform categories" it will be in Big Box options menu

yes I noticed the behavior surrounding the unread content page being wacky. for me some of the old posts that shouldn't be there are removed from the unread content list after viewing them again. some are not going away no matter how many times I read them for ex. that astrobob FAQ post will not go away. it is perpetually stuck on the unread content list it seems. if I click on the others, they will be removed from my unread content list

all makes sense now! i'm only using Windows for emulation and had no idea a different OS version of Retroarch structured directories different. not knowing this prior, seeing "_nes" appended on the end looked like a redflag to me

ahh ok then. I didn't mean it to be a bug. I figured it was either an intentional on unintentional rename by the user using a "_nes" appended on. so I get it now thanks to your explanation. I haven't had to use the BP since it's been revised and assumed they were using default locations that were used in earlier version. and yea I know exactly what you mean. the only real example I ran into was "Altered Beast (USA, Europe)" uses the same ROM name for Genesis and Master System. I'm sure there are more examples but that's the one I recall making me aware of that conflict between having a single core folder shared across multiple systems. so it seems their real issue was not using the system specific config. (I assume)