Nixx

BezelMaster : Use your bezel in standalone emulator and improve bezel game matching View File So, this addon do two things, first it improve bezel matching, i will go in detail later, but to make it simple you will probably have a lot of game that had default bezel that will now show game specific bezel. Second, if you launch a game on a standalone emulator, it will get the bezel from retroarch and copy it into reshade-shaders\Textures\bezel.png in your emulator folder, so you can use the game specific bezel with it. Outside reshade, if you have your bezel working with retroarch, nothing to configure, it will just work. Some pic (screen ratio can be a little off since i wanted to take the screenshot windowed) : So, how to install ? Step 1 - Make sure your bezel works with Retroarch within launchbox. Step 2 - Install Reshade on your game emulator : https://reshade.me/ Pro tip, the last canari version of citra now support Vulkan backend, it make it easier to work with reshade. Step 3 : Install a shader that can use this bezel.png. Two solution : You can use the "Hud_Tech.fx" file insiide the zip, move it to reshade-shaders\Shaders and activate the shader. Or you can use the shader Layer.fx Activate the Hud_Tech module (code is not from me, got it from : https://reshade.me/forum/shader-presentation/3504-hud-image-overlay-shader ) Feel free to improve it. How does the improved bezel matching works ? For the Bezel project in retroarch, you have to use a name that strictly use the same as the config file registered for the bezel, often the nointro NTSC version. So, i added two things, first, if it don't find a specialized bezel, it will look for your other game with the same Launchbox Database id and check if for those you have a bezel. (usefull for exemple when you have both the original rom and a modded one) Second, i toke the time to register in a json file a long list that match launchbox id to the bezel config file, so if your game file don't match, it will use that to try to get a match. Extra tip : Use the official app to update your bezel, the launchbox one don't works well for me : https://github.com/thebezelproject/BezelProject-Windows Submitter Nixx Submitted 09/12/2023 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

I had this issue before with Vulkan and Dolphin. (you can test with Opengl or DirectX12 backend if you still have the issue) The problem for me is solved, idk if it's because driver update or emulator update.

Disable UAC Plugin View File I have a lot of Pre-Win 7 games that need admin rights to run. So i've made up this dirty solution. Basically, with this plugin, when you run an exe game with launchbox it will lower UAC for 10 sec. That way, launchbox can launch games that need elevated privilege without running as admin itself. Be aware, this is not something secure ! You end up with a scheduled task that anybody can run that temporary remove UAC ! But if that's something that bother you and the only alternative that was on your mind was removing the UAC entirely, well, remove it for 10 sec is better than having it off. How to use the plugin : It's bundled with an exe : UACTemporaryDisable.exe, run it as admin it will generate a task called TempDisableUAC. If you move the file, you will have to rerun it as admin. Source code is here if you want to compile it yourself : https://github.com/nixxou/UACTemporaryDisable Once it's done, the plugin should work (basically, just run the the task and wait until "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin" go to 0) Submitter Nixx Submitted 09/09/2023 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

Thoses days, i'm playing with a side project. Not gonna make a guide, since i'm still working on it, but i think the idea is interesting and worth sharing. I have my launchbox installed on my main machine, but sometime i want to access it remotely or kids want to play on TV (my computer is also plugged on the tv) and since i'm working on my PC, it's annoying. So, why not make a launchbox as a service that run in a virtual machine and that i can access though parsec & moonlight ? I have an obscene amount of Ram, so having a VM always on on background is not a problem. For that i use https://github.com/jamesstringerparsec/Easy-GPU-PV It's a script that generate a Windows Virtual machine with GPU shared. You have to define a percentage of GPU sharing (like if like me you set 90%, that mean the VM can use up to 90% of your GPU) and the basic other config of the vm (number of core, memory ...) Performance wise, how is it ? Surprising good. I mean, this is a 3D Mark bench from my Host : https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/99114511? And this is the same test from my VM : https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/99114862? I'm able to launch things like PS3 game inside the VM without issue : Few tips that i gather along the way to those who want to reproduce this : - Run something to debloat windows 11 on the vm, remove xbox stuff, this thing doesn't show on parsec and your PS/Guide button not gonna work with the xbox thing. - If you want to run a sunshine (i use sunshine because i use amd gpu), and your lock with low resolution, the trick is to register a fake display, set as primary and disable the other one. You can use that : https://www.amyuni.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3030 I had to add a schreduled task run as system with admin right on boot to run "deviceinstaller64 enableidd 1" on boot - For my launchbox, i use a custom tool that make softlink of each files in a directory and recreate the directory, so i just run "hardlinkfolder.exe "\\MyComputer\LaunchBox\Manuals" "I:\LaunchBox\Manuals" --softlink" (and the same with Images and Videos folders) That ways, when i add collection of files in launchbox, it will use my existing files on host, but if i want i can still add stuff without messing with my host files (the share is readonly btw) I can share it if someone needs it. - For PC games, i'm not here yet, but my plan is : On my PC all my games are in F:/PCGames. I plan to create a dummy drive called F:/ on Host, make an hardlink copy of all files in my host with size > 1Mb on F:/PCGames-clone, files <1mb will be copied instead of linked. I will use junction on the server to mount this cloned folder to F:/PcGames and since the files < 1mb are copied instead of linked, i'm confident that configuration files will still be independant so messing with resolutions and stuff will not impact on my host. If a game dont work, i just rename the folder, install it to F:/PCGames on the server, remove the folder and restore the linked one. So, i still have work to do, but that's promising, there is a short video of bigbox runing on PS Vita though Moonlight : if you are doing something similar or need help, feel free to post and share your experience.

LinkToSSD View File It's a side project, no fully tested, done quickly while on vacation. So, at home, i have all my windows games manually installed on my H drive, it's a slow HDD drive. I added them one by one in launchbox. Now, for some games, especially recent one, running them from a slow hdd is not great. But for organisation purpose, i prefer to keep them all here. So, with this plugin, i can set some path on my nvme drive and ssd, and with a click in launchbox, it will copy the game to the SSD, rename the original folder adding ".original" at the end of the folder name and make a junction link from my ssd to the original folder. On restore, if needed, you have the choice to just restore the original folder, or replicate files change (like if some files where added, removed or modified while the game is on your ssd). That way, all my games are stored one one folder in one drive, if i plan to play an heavy game seriously, i can speed it up by moving it to a quicker drive and link it back. Note : - You need launchbox >= 13.5 - The plugin will use your game "Root Folder" as registered in launchbox, so if you manually add a game with an application path like : F:/game/SuperFPS/bin/superfps.exe the default "Root Folder" in launchbox will be "F:/game/SuperFPS/bin", in that case, be sure to edit your Root Folder to "F:/game/SuperFPS" Submitter Nixx Submitted 08/26/2023 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

Interesting, but i see no point to store ps3 iso in encrypted format in the first place. A jailbroken console can read ps3 unencrypted iso just fine, and it make things easier to just store your collection as unencrypted iso.

Yeah, i did not know that, so after no answer on discord i quickly made something to deal with the issue, i locked my original post since there was a bug, it's fixed now, but there is no real point to reupload. I leave the source code here, could be usefull if someone need to filter out things from a playlist with something more complex or non available atm (like game missing bezels) https://github.com/nixxou/RemoveGamesWithVideoFromPlaylist/

RemoveGamesWithVideoFromPlaylist View File You select a playlist, you click on a button and it will remove all games with video from that playlist. It's a plugin i quickly made from a specific purpose, i wanted to download missing video using this plugin : So with my plugin, you can create a playlist, add all games on it, and them remove games with video, so you can select all and download video from youtube. Do not work with auto populated playlist, you have to select all your game, right click and add to playlist. https://github.com/nixxou/RemoveGamesWithVideoFromPlaylist Submitter Nixx Submitted 08/08/2023 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

Ok, i did an update to fix that.

MouseHideAndLock2 View File https://github.com/nixxou/MouseHideAndLock2 It's a rewritten version of my plugin MouseHideAndLock, while using the original one, i got some issues & crash that's why i did an other version. Also, i'm not using startup screen and since disabling mouse requiere startup screen enabled, this plugin is useful for me. So, in the configuration file, you got something like this : You can select the configuration for each platform & emulator. Hide Cursor : Will hide the cursor once the game is launched. Show Cursor On Move : You need to also have Hide Cursor checked for this to work, with this option enabled, moving your mouse will show up the cursor, it's only hidden when it's not moving. Lock Cursor : Will lock your cursor on your main monitor, if you press Shift while moving the cursor, you will be able to go to other screen. Submitter Nixx Submitted 08/07/2023 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

Thank you very much for your detailed answer. 1 & 2) For point 1 and 2, for me it all breakdown to this windows that appear for me way too often. For me it's annoying to the point i have to disable the backup. 3) Could be worth it to get a look to this "font" issue, maybe there is a way to load from memory and that would drastically reduce the loading time ? "you're effectively asking for the same thing you are criticizing in the 4th point. " No, i'm really not. When i'm browsing my game like in my point 4, what matter to me is to quickly find a game i want to play, having the image show up help me with that. But when i'm clicking on a plateform/playlist on launchbox, what matter to me, is that my list of game load quick. If the platform details get in the way, that's really not a problem if it get loaded after the list is up. Probably not much to gain here though, like few ms at best, but that's always good to take. Also, for a frenetic clicker like me, the cancel loading would be something really nice. 4) I understand your point, but i do still think that give the users some ability to alter this behavior would be a worth the time investment. Like i said, i don't personally care, i can edit a theme with the Community Editor, but that's not something most end users would do. Something like just a option to adjust the selection delay (and maybe an other one to adjust the video delay to avoid it to show up if we reduce the selection delay too much) could be a nice improvement. Sure, i understand totally. But i do things some of the point are worth taking a look. Personally, I would gladly take performance improvement of a feature that i'm constantly using over a new feature.

Ok, so first thing first. I love launchbox, i'm not here to denigrate the quality of your work. Your app is great and i use it all the time. I'm not posting here to spit on your work, and the clickbait title is mostly here to draw your attention. Also, i'm using currently an outdated version of launchbox the 13.3, my premium licence is expired, i didn't won the lottery and i don't have money to upgrade to lifetime for the moment, so maybe some of the issue i'm talking here are fixed now. I'm no way an expert, but i just want to point out some things that seems to me weird behavior of your program. 1- Lauchbox / Bigbox make unnecessary xml writing each time it close Bigbox make new save of Playlist and Plateform time, each time you close. (But, it's not an issue with Launchbox) In bigbox, if i go into a playlist and browse game, on close, it will regenerate a new playlist xml file. Why ? I didn't change anything in the library, so that feels totaly unnecessary Like, if i do that and i close : https://youtu.be/puCQicbiPyQ Those files are gonna be updated on Bigbox close : Data\Platforms\Nintendo Game Boy.xml Data\Playlists\Nintendo Game Boy All Games.xml Also, lots of files in the LaunchBox\Data root folder get updated : (GameControllers.xml, InputBindings.xml, ListCache.xml, Platforms.xml, Settings.xml, BigBoxSettings.xml) If i use Launchbox instead of BigBox, strangely, the playlist do not get updated but that happen to the Plateform xmls, and some xml files in the root of the Data folder Why ? I'm just browsing, i did not change anything in the library, i didn't change my config so it should not have any valid reason to rewrite those files. So, yeah, writing two files is not gonna take much time, but the reason i'm pointing this will make more sense in my second point. 2- The backup option is badly written With this option on, a backup is made every time launchbox is started and every time launchbox is close. Even if you do not change with your playlist, configuration or plateform ! With this option disabled, and i close launchbox, the process disapear from my task manager in less than 3 sec. With this option on, it disappear in 11 sec ! There is an huge quality of life improvement to make here ! Save should be only done when there is something new to save. If xml files where only written if there something relevant to write (so that why i did my first point), and save only done where there is something new to save, that would lead to a real improvement here. (Also, incremental saves with full save only done like once a week could be nice) 3- Browsing library in launchbox feels slow Now, i don't know the secret sauce about how launchbox does it things and if improvement could be made here, but i want to point out some strange things i noticed. If i load my entiere Nintendo Library, it take 2 seconds to load. But if i monitor the process with Sysinternals System Monitor, i notice something that feels strange to me. Here i have like nearly one sec that are used to do stuff with fonts. Seems like a lot of time to me. Is there something wrong here ? I'm no expert, but i suppose there is something to do here, and probably shorten the loading time. Also, bellow, why does launchbox try to access to one of my file in my library ? I mean, that does not take time, ok, but if it was a network drive, that will. And i don't really see the point. An other thing, if i uncheck everything in : I get a slight loading time boost. That made me wondering, does the platform details get loaded in the same thread that the library data ? If so, maybe the app should show the list of game first and give the ability to the user to browse it and then load and display plateform data ? Also, an other thing that come to my mind is : Can you manage a way to abord loading when we click on an other library ? If that could be done, it will make navigation beetween playlist and plateform much more enjoyable, often when i browse i missclick or go to an other library without waiting. 4- In BigBox Themes, things like Title and Game main image should be updated During selection and not Once selected. Well, that's maybe debatable, but for me, it's night and day, i did the change using the community editor but i guess that not something the majority of the userbase can do. So, this is the default theme : You notice that if you want anything to appear on the right, you have to wait few seconds while a game is selected. It all break down to personal opinion, but that how it appear after i edited a theme to keep some of the text and image show while selected. For me, it's just better to have title and image show up during selection and do not have to wait. But the process to do that is complicated, there should be some option available to end users to get the same result.

I have though of something kinda like that using https://github.com/jamesstringerparsec/Easy-GPU-PV Make an Hyper V Virtual maching running on my PC and sharing my gpu resources, it would run a clone of my launchbox so when i'm working on my PC, wife & kids can still access to my launchbox from an other client using parsec. Sadly, i got a technical issue and i was not able to share my AMD gpu resources to my VM, only my IGPU and that's not good enough, so i did not go further. Edit : Ah, sorry, it was a linux related post, my stuff is for windows.

Ok, so i did it : https://github.com/nixxou/IsoEnablerForRPCS3/releases/tag/V2.0 Now i can launch PSN game as standalone file like for exemple rpcs3.exe D:/ps3/psn/GuityGear.vhdx

This is my first draft : First i go on "creation mode" using admin rights on rpcs3, then i launch a newly generated ps3 psn game. Still have work to do, but in the end, i want only have standalone file, either iso for ps3 disc game or vhdx for psn game.

I like to keep my games as 1 file = one game without installation. That's why for PS3, i opted for disc library and i mount iso. But some game are PSN Exclusive and i want to be able to launch them with something like rpcs3.exe <GameFile> I have an idea about how to do that, but i would need people to help me test it.

StreamIsoToPS3 View File I own a jailbreaked PS3, i mostly use rpcs3 from launchbox, but sometime, i want to launch a game on my real ps3. With this tool, i can select the game from launchbox and make it run on my ps3. You need WMan Mod, go to http://yourps3ip/setup.ps3/sman.ps3 and add your PC IP as PS3NETSRV#1 StreamIsoToPS3.exe <IsoFile> <PS3IP> Submitter Nixx Submitted 07/25/2023 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

IsoEnablerForRPCS3 View File It's basic as it get, and there is probably ton of similar tools around but mine is really "fire & forget" So, you extract the archive somewhere, you execute IsoEnablerForRPCS3.exe to register it and that's it. There is no launcher, no menu, nothing, if you want to unregister, you click again on IsoEnablerForRPCS3.exe To use it ? You just use rpcs3.exe as usual, except that now, if you use an iso as an argument, it will just work (mounting the iso thought powershell) Works only with decrypted iso. I make mine from jbfolder with makeps3iso. ( https://github.com/bucanero/ps3iso-utils/tree/master ) Also, not included in this release, but i package updates DLC and rap files inside a folder called UPDATES_AND_DLC that i put inside my iso file, dlc package have name that start with "DLC--". I'm telling this because i plan to add an option to auto install updates & dlc in a future rlz. Not compatible with BigBoxProfile because it use the same trick to hijack the process, (i will update BBProfile it to include that as a module) Submitter Nixx Submitted 07/24/2023 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins