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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)

you can set different directories for several things, but you cannot have a bunch of different config directories the way you are trying to. directories can be set via the GUI within Settings > Directories if you wanted \Retroarch\config_nes to be your config directory, then ALL your configs are gonna be stored there. so something from say N64 using Mupen core would be in that same directory. that would be confusing to me I'm fairly certain you cannot have it setup like this.... \Retroarch\config_nes\Nestopia \Retroarch\config_nes\Mesen AND \Retroarch\config_n64\Mupen \Retroarch\config_n64\Parallel at the same time. it's either gonna be "config_nes" or "config_n64" or whatever you want it to be. you cannot assign multiple different config folders like that. if you did really assign "\Retroarch\config_nes" as the config folder then you would have stuff looking like this.... \Retroarch\config_nes\Nestopia \Retroarch\config_nes\Mupen \Retroarch\config_nes\MAME \Retroarch\config_nes\Mesen \Retroarch\config_nes\Snes9x and so on......that is why I said this would be confusing. looks pretty silly to have everything under a folder with "nes" in the title. Retroarch doesn't work like that as far as I know. it allows you to define a single directory for the configs, and then the individual core specific folders live within that specified config directory. for ex, it should be like this \Retroarch\config\<core> within those core directories, live the game level configs. you can only assign one directory to be the config directory

you obviously edited the config folder name and therefore borked how Retroarch finds the running game's config. you cannot mess with that as far as I know

you said... "In my \RetroArch\config_nes\Nestopia folder I have the following file " did you make a specific config folder for nes? unless this is some new feature I am unaware of that is not where Retroarch looks for a config file. as far as I know it should be in \RetroArch\config\Nestopia get rid of that "_nes" bit!

naming mismatch is your issue. Dragon Warrior (USA).cfg is not the same as Dragon Warrior (U) (V1.0) [!].nes when you are saving an override it's gonna save it as the ROM file title, Dragon Warrior (U) (V1.0) [!].cfg mine from the BP is Dragon Warrior (USA).cfg so I would assume you either changed your ROM files or renamed them. The BP assumes you are using specific ROM sets that would have all the ROM files named appropriately. if your ROMS are not named the same it's not gonna work.

Can anyone actually download Steam Trailers?! I tested with full 13.25 release and it's worse than before, not a single game will have its trailer populate in the "Download Images/Media" window I rolled back to beta-3, and the problem persists. I haven't tried to download a video in several weeks now, so I'm not sure when it would have stopped working with older versions either. Where's the video? There should be a Steam Trailer selection I tried removing the existing videos thinking maybe some new feature introduced to not download if one existed already (not the case). @AstroBob what is going on here? Your comment this is fixed does not align with my experience. The only Steam specific bits I see on this window are, Steam Clear Logo, Steam Icon, Steam Poster, Steam Screenshot, none of which were giving me problems at any point in the past. For me only STEAM TRAILERS have been the continued issue since the fall, since October. Progress tracking improved regarding that "Done / Completed" values are not falling back to "Active / X", so that is working as intended now!

just flip that wording around and you'll find it. it is "playtime" rather than "time played"

there is not one. there are next/prev overlay hotkeys to select different overlays. you need to use those instead. you will need to create blank entries for any game you want to do this with. for ex for Super Mario 64 overlay it would be this below the 2nd entry is blank. when you switch to the 2nd overlay ("overlay1" - note the 0 index is the first entry) it just doesn't load any image, hence, making it act just like a toggle button. next and prev hotkeys will act like a toggle overlays = 2 overlay0_overlay = "Super Mario 64 (USA).png" overlay0_full_screen = true overlay0_descs = 0 overlay1_overlay = overlay1_full_screen = true overlay1_descs = 0 you'll want to run a script to do this if the plan was a global change. if you wanted only certain games, then do them individually. otherwise, I made this AHK script years ago to create overlay files looking like the above. #NoEnv ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases. ; #Warn ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors. SendMode Input ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability. SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory. FileNameArray := [] OverlayContentsA := " ( overlays = 2 overlay0_overlay = )" OverlayContentsB := " ( overlay0_full_screen = true overlay0_descs = 0 overlay1_overlay = overlay1_full_screen = true overlay1_descs = 0 )" FileCreateDir, New Configs FileCreateDir, Backup ;Getting array filled with file names Loop, Files, *.cfg, F { SplitPath, A_LoopFileName, , , , FileNameNoExt FileNameArray.Push(FileNameNoExt) } ;Creating New Configs Loop, % FileNameArray.Count() FileAppend, % OverlayContentsA . " """ . FileNameArray[A_Index] . ".png""" . OverlayContentsB, % ".\New Configs\" . FileNameArray[A_Index] . ".cfg" ;Backups Loop, % FileNameArray.Count() FileMove, % FileNameArray[A_Index] . ".cfg", % ".\Backup\" . FileNameArray[A_Index] . ".cfg", 1 ;Move new configs to correct directory Loop, % FileNameArray.Count() FileMove, % ".\New Configs\" . FileNameArray[A_Index] . ".cfg", % FileNameArray[A_Index] . ".cfg", 1 FileRemoveDir, New Configs run that from the same directory as where the overlay .cfg files live

the only way I would think that would happen is if the PNG files were listed as the "ROM File" under the entries "Launching" section. but you wouldn't be able to launch the games if that were the case, so either you really got images listed as the ROM file or something funkier and unknown to me going on. when I try this feature, it is simply copying/pasting whatever file is listed in "ROM File / Application Path" field to the directory the user selected.

I've had native PC games in my Windows platform and Nintendo Switch games in Nintendo Switch platform get stuck on "Active / In Progress". I play them, but then after 30 inactive days, they don't auto update to "Active / Paused". When I would click on those entries, they wouldn't auto update to the proper progress value of "Active / Paused". Sometimes entries auto updated after clicking on them. I had games from several other ROM based platforms do that. If you were to scroll through your library and find the entry it would still show "Active / In Progress" on those entries even if they haven't been played for over 30 days. But then I click on the entry and poof, it updates to "Active / Paused". So this makes filtering by progress values inaccurate unless you were to double check each entry one at a time like that. My point of this comment is yea I'd agree with you it's likely not just Steam games having some issue here, and likely more than just Completed/Beaten games getting changed to Active / X. Though, auto update from "Done / Completed" to "Active / X" on any game might make sense, you would need to provide the context. For ex, NES game, only has 8 out of 10 achievements earned. If you marked that as "Done / Completed" it implies you have 100% achievements softcore mode. But you do not. And LB reads your achievements and sees you do not have 100% so changes it accordingly to "Active / X". So I wouldn't call that a bug unless the effected entries really do have 100% achievements as those should actually auto update to Done / Competed or Done / Mastered accordingly based on either hardcore or softcore mode. When I try this I cannot even click away from the game before the value and badge updates back to the previous value. For ex, I take Mike Tyson's Punch Out, which I have not beaten or completed, change it to "Done / Beaten", or "Done / Completed" or "Done / Mastered" and it changes right back to "Active / In Progress" since I have played it recently. It's not really beaten, mastered, or completed, so that seems to work as intended in my mind.

any chance you have more files in the data folder than intended? being able to change settings when open, but a close/open cycle reverts values, has historically been aligned with users having additional files in the data folder. LB gets confused with the extra files present, so first things first is check that and remove those files if needed. otherwise, I just blame these fellas for the unexplained Though I think I see the pattern here. In the data files, a TRUE and FALSE value are obvious, check mark or empty respectively in LB's GUI. Being either installed or uninstalled respectively. But I didn't know what the box value was and decided to check that out. I go through my files and I'm like....wtf....cannot find the install value for any ROM based platform. I check Windows though for example and it is there clear as day. Makes sense given that platform does need install/uninstalled info So, I have to conclude that the entire tag/value needs to be NOT EVEN PRESENT in the XML file. as in literally delete that line whether it is "<Installed>false</Installed>" / "<Installed>true</Installed>" / or "<Installed></Installed>". Use a text editor that can mass edit, find all instances of "X" and replace it with "" (blank) I cannot find a single "<Installed>" tag in any of my ROM based platforms so if you remove them, by theory it should turn those entries into the "box" value. That should straighten you out. If it reverts though, there would be other values reverting too. ie if you added a new game, closed and then reopen LB, you would notice the game is no longer there because it reverted to reading a file prior to you making changes. if you had not already done so this would mean you def have additional file(s) in the data folder screwing up how LB is reading info. Depending on what you got for backup data files, another option is you can try reverting to an earlier point as well before things went wonky on you and decided all the ROM games are uninstalled For ex, Donkey Kong Country again, there is no installed tag. For other platforms it is always between ThemeVideoPath and ApplicationPath And here an entry from Windows platform, clearly shows this is where that value is normally there is a chance that leaving it blank does the same thing as removing the line all together, we just cannot tell right now due to there may be a chance you are dealing with the extra files problem too.... and that above thought seems to be true. I edited Donkey Kong Country to have this line "<Installed></Installed>" and it is still playable with the play button visible and usable, and still shows appropriately as "box" when viewing what the Installed value is in LB's GUI. For ex Seems likely you have extra files in the data folder then because what you did should make the appropriate change, and it should not be reverting back. Only way I know that to happen is those extra files confusing LB edit and after I do a reboot of LB just now, the "<Installed></Installed>" line I added to DKC is removed automatically at next shutdown of LB. I now assume LB removes that tag/line if the value is empty. I even try changing it to the likely more intended syntax of "<Installed />" and it is automatically remove at next shutdown of LB. So final conclusion would be ROM based games are not supposed to have that Installed entry, it should be a blank value to correspond with the GUI's "box" checkbox

It's not 100% of the time anymore as previously stated, but this happens far too often to just ignore this issue. Gets stuck on "Loading Interface..." For ex, I opened LB fine this morning, update to the beta-3 version, and as the beta auto launches after updating it happens to get stuck on Loading Interface. It's anyone's guess as to whether this is going to happen if it's the first time LB is booted since booting into the OS or if it is multiple boots of LB once booting into the OS. As always when it does occur, I must force close and try again. Progress tracking is now messed up for at least Steam games. I have many marked as "Done / Beaten". Now when I click on them they are all auto updating to "Active / In Progress" or "Active / Paused" depending on when last launched. Actually all Steam games are auto updating in ways that no user would want. If I set a value, that's what I want it to be. The way it is currently working means I cannot ever use automated progress tracking and expect any Steam game to use a "Done / Beaten" value as they all get changed automatically against my intentions. This sure seems new to the beta, and I confirm by rolling back to beta-2 this behavior is not there. It's introduced right now in beta-3. You have features within this progress tracking feature fighting with each other. I want automatic progress tracking, but it cannot fight me when I want to set something manually. Another example, Steam game has 100% achievements, and is being automatically updated to Done / Mastered. But maybe user wants it to remain on "Active / In Progress".....right now, this is also not possible. Automated system is too heavy handed in its current iteration. Steam Trailers are not fully fixed. Unfortunately don't think this is really fixed. I'm still finding some games that cannot download trailers Issues persist with some games with "new" trailers. Now, nothing shows up for those games for video download options. ie there is no "Steam Trailer Video" checkbox selection available for these games despite there being trailers on their page. Prior to beta-3 it gave the option, but would fail with an error. Here is another example... HITMAN WORLD OF ASSASSINATION (formerly HITMAN 3) just uploaded a new trailer for new game content released just now in December. Now this game cannot download any game trailer from within LB. It has no Steam Trailer Video option available when I click the download media button. Same goes for all previously mentioned games with more recent trailers. It is otherwise fixed for "legacy" games that are not impacted by having trailers recently uploaded. edit: I checked the games I personally mentioned, Tormented Souls 2, Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection, HITMAN World of Assassination, all these games cannot download trailers as mentioned above. I thought afterwards to check some of the games the other fella mention, Marvel Rivals and Absolum come up empty still for example. But Ninja Gaiden Ragebound will give the option to download its trailer now. So, maybe fixed some of the games falling into this issue, but did not fix all all of them.