AstroBob

Hi There, Thanks for the update there and apologies for the delayed response here. This is a particularly taxing issue since after countless tries we are not able to reproduce this behaviour on our side 😭 That said, I have a few more ideas of things we could try: I would be interested to know if a certain application is pulling focus away from LaunchBox which could be contributing to the freeze, we've had some people find luck with using a focus logger app, which at the time of problem could show any background processes or apps that may be interfering. Here's an example one you could use (https://github.com/JocysCom/FocusLogger) Outside of that, we'd really need to isolate if it is a LaunchBox issue or something else in your environment that is causing LaunchBox to freeze. The only way to narrow this down is to install a completely new build of LaunchBox (using the 13.17 installer), and only import a few games (not AHK scripts, no plugins, nothing custom at all, just vanilla LaunchBox). If the issue persists on that new build, then at least we know it's something in your specific environment, and if not, we know that it's something related to your specific LaunchBox setup (could be your data files, could some custom plugin or script you're using, anything that isn't vanilla LaunchBox). I realise it may be hard to test that, but it would be the next logical step to trying to narrow this down Let me know how you get on, and thanks for bearing with us here

Thanks for the update there and definately good to learn about more use cases. It sounds like what you have set up with the categories is a good stopgap, though I appreciate the effort that goes into that. Although not ideal, you could leverage the on-the-fly filters in Big Box, to filter out any games that have lightgun support. You can of course make other playlists based on this filter, but I realise that is aan dded setup. Definately a valid request, and would love to hear about other's experiences in this area. But sounds like you've got this up and running for now. What's first up up on the list for a good lightgun game? Recently got myself a Dolphin bar to put my Wii Zapper to good use (need to upgrade to Sinden at some point) 🤣

Hi @TommyTomorrow jumping in to see if I can help clarify things here: These are the requirements we recommend for Android devices running LaunchBox (taken from our Android Download page) Currently, LaunchBox for Android is recommended for devices running Android 10, which is several versions behind the latest Android updates. While it’s hard to predict future system requirements, a few key points might help your decision: 1. You’re not forced to update to a newer version of LaunchBox if your device no longer meets future requirements. You can continue using your existing version indefinitely. 2. The lifetime license ensures long-term flexibility and value. Even if you eventually upgrade to a new Android device, you won’t have to worry about repurchasing the app. At the end of the day, it’s entirely personal preference. There’s always the option to upgrade your standard license later at a discounted price, or you can opt for the lifetime license now if you prefer the peace of mind of knowing you’re covered for both your current device and any future upgrades. Hope that helps, happy to answer any further questions.

Unfortunately, if the issue you're seeing in Daphne is still happening outside of LaunchBox we may not be able to offer any advice there, as it sounds like it's something with that specific emulator. I'm not sure if they have a support community or channel, but you can always ask on our Reddit to see if anyone has experience using that Emulator. Regarding this, if you go To Big Box's system menu (just press escape when Big Box launches), and then go to Options, the very last option in that list should be Mouse. Let me know if you still can't find it.

Hi @Opus132, thanks for the question. The way renewal or upgrades normally work, is that if you own a regular license you can renew for another year of updates or upgrade to a lifetime license for a discounted price. Full details on what these normally cost and the process to do so can be found below 🔗 https://www.launchbox-app.com/renew With the upcoming Black Friday sale, we will offer discounts on the already discounted cost of a renewal or upgrade. It’s hard to say what discounts will be offered in the future, since some of our sales do not cover all types of licenses, but this upcoming one in particular has discounts across all our offerings (Windows & Android apps + renewals and upgrades). Hope that helps clarify, let me know if you have any questions. Cheers,

Thanks for the update and elaborating on the use case there. It certainly may seem edge-casey, but we understand that there’s no right or wrong workflow, it’s whatever works for you 😊 I apologise that there isn’t a better workaround for this at the moment, and it’s certainly not a use-case we’ve heard too much about, but glad to hear scripts seem to be a reasonable stop-gap and would love to hear if others in the community have similar issues. All this talk of Sinden light guns makes me really want to go and pick one of those up now 😊 I’ve heard very good things about them

Hi @Joe35car regarding the mouse pointer, there are some options under Options > Mouse. I think some of those could be what you are looking for, such as enabling the mouse in Big Box, or hiding the cursor when it's not in use. Regarding Daphne, I'm not personally familiar with this emulator, but my point of contact would be verify if this issues when you run the emulators outside of LaunchBox / Big Box. This will tell us if the issue is being caused by LaunchBox / Big Box or if it's an issue with the emulator itself. Cheers,

Hi @Joe35car thanks for the update there. Big Box shouldn’t remove any games from a playlist just because it’s a favourite, however I have a feeling you have the Big Box preference Options > Views > Show Favorite Games First turned on. This will push favourited games to the top of the playlist, but they should still be viewable within the playlist. If you turn that preference off, they will remain in order. Let me know if that fixes things up for you.

Hi Folks, Thanks for all the amazing suggestions so far. For tomorrow's live stream, we're going to be doing something fun, by voting on and curating some of these playlists LIVE with you, the viewers. The stream will be on Wednesday 27th November, 5pm EST (details here) To prepare for this, I've curated and fleshed out some of the amazing suggestions people have given and narrowed it down to 5 categories. We're going to be voting on stream which of these we create together, but don't worry, there will be plenty of chances to deviate and we'll probably be doing more than just these 5, so definitely pop along if you can 😄 Here's the list, with some examples for each. “I Just Want to Blow Stuff Up” - Games where destruction is not just an option, it’s the point. Burnout 3 Boom Blox Cannon Spike After Burner 2 Blast Corps “Games Based on Iconic Cartoons” – Relive the magic of your favorite animated movies & series through these unforgettable games. Tiny Tunes Adventures Quackshot Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Cosmic Destruction Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights Crazy Castle 3 “The Forgotten Ones” – A tribute to games that time seems to have left behind, with no active franchises or remakes to reignite their legacy. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem Skies of Arcadia Okami Chu Chu Rocket Vagrant Story “Oddities and Oddballs” – A collection of the most bizarre, unconventional, and delightfully weird games ever made. Seaman I Am Bread Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure Mister Mosquito Katamari Damacy Gravity Takes a Vacation” - Titles with hilarious or non-existent physics. Superman 64 Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) Goat Simulator Gang Beasts Party Animals

Hi @Joe35car sorry for the issues here, may I confirm a few things to try and narrow this down: Which games specifically are not showing in Big Box, and are there any patterns between them (i.e from the same platform). Do you have the show games marked Broken enabled? Are any platforms from the missing games marked to be hidden in Big Box (right-click on the platform > edit and see if the Hide in Big Box item is checked What theme are you using in Big Box, and if it’s not the default, are those games also missing if you switch to the default theme? Let me know and we’ll try to get you sorted Cheers,

Hi @CyberMonkey sorry for the issues here, may I confirm a few things to try and narrow this down: - What version of LaunchBox do you have installed? - Where is your LaunchBox directory location (i.e SSD, Network Drive, Cloud storage etc) - What theme are you using within Big Box - What are the specs of the machine you're running (CPU, GPU, RAM, etc) - Can you elaborate a bit more on the frequency to which this happens? You mention it happens (sometimes), though are you able to reproduce this, or it appears to happen randomly? Let me know and we'll see if we can get you sorted.

Hey @Kefka2b, the only way to do this would be to create actual new Platforms for your Light Gun categories, and then change the Game’s metadata to that new platform, but this isn’t a workflow I’d recommend since you’ll lose association with the original platform. The best approach seems to be to use your current workflow (where you’ve created a new Category with some playlists for LightGun games). It’s not ideal, but you could create two auto-playlists underneath each platform: one for lightgun games from that platform (e.g., NES) and one for normal NES games. If you can let me know a bit more about your ideal end goal and how you’re looking to set things up I can try and advise further. Cheers,

Hi @51mm5 thanks for the update and apologies for the issue here. May I confirm a few things to try and get to the bottom of this: - Your original issue mentioned that LaunchBox closes or crashes, whenever you close a games. Do you happen to know which one it is (i.e are any error messages being displayed), - Under Tools > General do you have any of the following options checked (Minimise LaunchBox when launching games OR Restore LaunchBox when exiting games)? - Does this happen for every game, regardless of platform, or do some games not exhibit the issue? - Your original post mentioned that this is something that only started happening recently. I realise it's been a while since then, but is this an issue that happens continuously (i.e it's been like that ever since) or it only sometimes happens? - If you're able to do a quick screen recording showing the issue, that would be incredibly helpful Let us know and we'll try to get you sorted. Cheers,

Hi @earthprime thanks for the suggestion here. Currently, there is no functionality to switch between Big Box instances within the same UI, as it's been designed very much with the intention that people are running off a single build. That said, I can totally understand use cases such as yours where you've had to maintain a separate build. Because each instance of Big Box is its own application, the route you seem to be going down does appear to be the most sensible, whereby you have some sort of custom integration that points to which Big Box instance you want, and I imagine you want to keep that all within the Big Box interface. I realise it's not the ideal solution, but it certainly seems like it could work for you. We don't currently have any plans to add something like this officially, but I'd love to hear from others in the community about whether this would be something they'd like to see. While I realise there are plenty of valid use cases for it, I am curious why you've chosen to maintain 2 builds (space, access from different locations?), just in case it's a side effect of something that we can address, that would allow you to work off a single build since it certainly would be easily to maintain in the long run. I'm going to move this to the Features section of the forum now to get some more eyes on it. Cheers,

Hi @regismaltais33 thanks for the question. Assuming these builds focus on separate platforms, then it's a pretty straightforward process, you can simply copy the data files from the LaunchBox\Data\Platforms folder for the respective platforms, along with any media folders (such as Images, Music, Videos etc) from one build to the other. Unfortunately, if both builds contain the same platform (i.e both contain Arcade games), then it's a bit tricker, and your best bet would be to simply re-import the games, since the above method won't work. Either way, make sure you take a full backup of your build before attempting any merging, just incase 😉 Regarding your section question, would you mind elaborating on what you're hoping to archive here. Are you referring to having playlists for each of your categories of games? Let me know and I'll see how I can help 😊

No worries at all, glad it seems to be going in the right direction. Totally understand it's a faf to curate everything, so highlighting the best ones first seems like a great way to hone in on the best games. There is also a setting to put games marked a Favorite at the top of your view, which can be used in tandem with your current sorting, as a way to highlight specific picks (on mobile atm so can't remember the exact location of that preference). Let me know if you have any further questions, and good luck with the cab build! Feel free to show it off in our Collections & Builds section of the forum if you want 😊 We'd love to see it

Hi Jon, Welcome to the LaunchBox family! 🙌 Emumovies is indeed a great addition to a MAME Big Box setup. If you've recently purchased a Windows license, you should have already received a 25% discount code for EmuMovies. Coincidentally, literally, as of yesterday, we have kindly donated some EmuMovies lifetime codes that we've been giving on our streams. I can't confirm how many of those there will be, but if you were ever curious you can catch the schedule here and pop along next time, it could be your lucky day 😊

Hi @djdaveoc22, thanks for the updates there and for elaborating on your use case. Given what you're trying to achieve, I think we can simplify things to give you exactly what you need. Assuming this build only needs your 10-ish platforms, organised by star rating, here's what I suggest. 1. In LaunchBox, change your view (on the left-hand side under the search bar) from Platform Categories to Playlists. From there, using my previous method, create auto-playlists for each of your platforms, and set the playlist to be organised by star rating—no need to bother with adding them to any categories, and under the Parents tab, just leave everything unchecked. 2. In Big Box, go to Options > Views > Default Startup View and change the option to Playlists Assuming you don't have any other playlists already, this means now that when you load Big Box, it will simply show you the playlists you created, and going into those will organise the games by star rating. Let me know if this works for you and how you get on.

Hi @Rams128, may I confirm what version of LaunchBox you are running, since there were some optimisations made to the sync feature in 13.17. If you're on an older version, can you try updating to the latest version and letting us know if you still see issues with syncing? Cheers,

Also attaching a video at the correct timestamp that shows some other use-cases on how you can create playlists

Hi @djdaveoc22 thanks for the reply and no worries at all. I totally understand it can be tricky to track down some information and I also realised playlists is one of those areas we're yet to have a dedicated tutorial for. It's certainly something we're looking to improve. Here's how you can go about the workflow I mentioned. If you're looking to be able to view each platform by star rating, my suggestion would be to create a new category, and then nest some playlists for each platform inside that. Here's how to do it 1. Make sure you're in the platform category section of LaunchBox 2. Right click on any platform and select Add > New Category. Give it a name, and under the Parents tab, choose where you want to nest it (select Root if you want it to appear with your other platform categories) 3. Then, right click again, and select Add > New Playlist. Under the Auto-Populate tab, this is where you configure what appears in that playlist. Here's an example below 4. Back on the Details tab, under Sort Games By, this is where you choose what you want that playlist to sort by. Choose Star Rating 5. Finally, choose where you want that playlist to live from the Parents tab. You can have it appear under that new category you just created, or somewhere else. It's worth noting you don't have to add the new category first, you could nest the playlists directly under each platform, it's entirely personal preference. This playlist will now also appear in Big Box and will respect the sort order by star rating. Hope that helps, give me a shout if you get stuck along the way or have any further questions

Hi Folks, We recently published an FAQ on this topic that provides detailed instructions and highlights any important caveats to keep in mind. Sharing the link here in case anyone stumbles across this old thread.

Hi Folks, We recently published an FAQ on this subject that goes into detail on how to do this and any caveats to take into account. Linking here in case anyone comes across this old thread

The most up-to-date version of this article is now available on our new Help Center. Please visit the article here Moving your LaunchBox setup to a new PC is a straightforward process, but there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure a smooth transition. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know, including handling games, emulators, and dependencies. Can I move my LaunchBox build to a new PC? Yes! LaunchBox is designed to be portable, making it easy to transfer your setup to a new machine. The process involves copying your entire LaunchBox folder to the new PC. What do I need to transfer? The entire LaunchBox directory. This folder contains all your settings, themes, media, plugins etc. What about moving my games? If your games are stored in the LaunchBox\Games folder: No additional steps are required. Everything should transfer seamlessly. If your games are stored outside the LaunchBox folder, You must copy these separately and update the folder paths in LaunchBox for each platform. Navigate to Tools > Manage > Platforms, then within the Edit Platform window, select the Folders to update the games directory What about emulators? The key consideration is whether your emulators are located in the LaunchBox\Emulators directory and are set up as portable. Portable emulators, like RetroArch, PCSX2, and Dolphin (when managed through LaunchBox), store all their settings within their own directories, making them easy to transfer. However, some emulators save preferences and user data outside their folders, typically in the AppData directory. Many emulators offer an option to switch to portable mode, which consolidates all settings within their main folder. Check each emulator’s documentation for instructions on enabling portable mode. If your emulators are portable: and they live within the LaunchBox\Emulators directory, then no additional steps are required. Everything should transfer seamlessly. If your emulators aren’t portable: You’ll need to transfer any settings stored outside the emulator’s directory. Check the emulator’s documentation for details on where its configuration files are stored. ⚠ Don’t forget your BIOS files ⚠ If your emulators or games require additional BIOS files that don’t live within your LaunchBox directory, make sure those are transferred as well. Are there any dependencies I need to install on the new PC? Yes, LaunchBox has a few key dependencies: .NET Core 3.1 Runtime: This is required for the embedded Chromium implementation used in LaunchBox. You can easily download it from Microsoft’s official site if it isn’t already installed: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/thank-you/runtime-desktop-3.1.32-windows-x64-installer Operating System: Your new PC must run Windows 10 or above (64-bit). Older versions of Windows 10 may cause issues. Do I need to re-enter my license? No, your license lives within your LaunchBox directory. As long as you copy the entire directory, your license will transfer automatically. If you encounter issues, contact support@unbrokensoftware.com for assistance. What else should I consider? It's worth backing up your LaunchBox data directory before making changes. You can create a manual backup of your LaunchBox data by navigating to Tools > File Management > Create Data Backup In Summary Backup Your LaunchBox Data Directory Copy the entire LaunchBox folder to an external drive. Transfer the folder to the desired location on your new PC. Transfer any games, emulators/settings or BIOS files outside of your LaunchBox directory (if any) Ensure .NET Core 3.1 Runtime is installed on the new PC. Test a few games to ensure paths, emulators, and media are functioning correctly. By following these steps, you can ensure a seamless transition of your LaunchBox instance to a new PC. If you have further questions or encounter any issues, feel free to reach out. Happy gaming! 🎮

Hi @beeboy , thanks for the great question! To get started, you’ll want to create some playlists in LaunchBox. Any playlists you create can also be accessed from within Big Box. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to automatically import the collections that you’ve created in Steam. However, depending on the size of your collections, it should be relatively straightforward to recreate them as playlists in LaunchBox. Here are a few things to keep in mind when working with playlists: You can create playlists using either the auto-populated method, which uses specific fields to fill out the playlist (e.g., Favorite = True), or manually by selecting games. To add games manually, you can right-click a single game or select multiple games using Ctrl + Click, then right-click and choose “Add to Playlist.” You’ll be prompted to name a new playlist or add the selected games to an existing one. You can choose to omit specific playlists from Big Box. To do this, edit the playlist and check the Hide in Big Box option. Playlists can be accessed through the Playlists section, or you can embed them into your platform categories view for easier navigation. In your case, you may want to embed them under the Windows platform Hope that makes sense, let me know how you get on and if you have any other questions