AstroBob

Hi Folks, Thanks for the reports here. Just to let you know we think we've identified the cause of this and hope to have something out in our next beta. I'll post here again once that is available. Thanks for bearing with us and sorry for the issues caused here. Cheers,

LaunchBox is continuing to grow, and we're thrilled to introduce our newest team member, skarmy_punk! (better known as Stefan! As a Full Stack Developer with 13 years of experience🖥️, he’ll be diving into the Games Database, helping to shape the next-gen cross-platform LaunchBox, and generally making the web side of things even better. Let’s get to know him! 🎮 👋 Introduce yourself and describe your role on the team? Hey everyone! I’m Stefan, a Full Stack Developer who’s been tinkering with web development for over a decade. My focus at LaunchBox will be on the Games Database and making sure our web-based tools are running smoothly, as well as helping to develop the next-gen cross-platform version of LaunchBox. Basically, if it lives on the web and needs some magic, I’ll be the one waving the wand. I’m beyond excited to be here and work on projects that bring gaming communities together. Also, let’s be honest—working on a platform that revolves around gaming? That’s the dream. 🎮🚀 🎮 What is your history with gaming? I genuinely can’t remember a time when I wasn’t gaming. I’m pretty sure I emerged into this world clutching an NES controller. My first console? No idea. It was just… there, like a childhood best friend who never left. One of my earliest gaming memories is playing some helicopter flight sim on a floppy disk with my dad. I have absolutely no clue what the game was, and at this point, I’m half convinced I imagined it. From there, the console collection just kept growing—N64, GameCube, Xbox (soft-modded, of course), Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, and now PS5. I also had a pretty serious handheld obsession, going through Game Boy Color, GBA, DS, 3DS, and even one of those MegaMan Advanced PETs—if you know, you know. Oh yeah, anyone remember these? 😉 Of course, once I built my first gaming PC as a teenager, that changed everything. Suddenly, I could play anything, mod everything, and lose entire weekends to games like Terraria. Oh, and VR? I’m in. Got the Vive, ready to dodge imaginary bullets in my living room. 🛠️ What’s the most challenging aspect of your role? Taking over a codebase that someone else wrote is like inheriting an ancient treasure map—except some of the landmarks have moved, and there’s definitely a few traps along the way. It’s always a bit of an adventure figuring out how everything fits together, but that’s part of what makes it fun. The cross-platform LaunchBox project is going to be a massive challenge, but it’s one I’m really looking forward to. Who doesn’t love solving puzzles, right? 🎉 What has been your proudest moment while working on LaunchBox? So far, getting the new game details page deployed has been a highlight—but there’s still plenty more I want to improve! Funny enough, before I was even officially on the team, I kind of helped out by pointing out that the SSL certificate had expired. So technically, my first real contribution to LaunchBox was playing the role of security watchdog. Not glamorous, but hey, someone’s gotta do it! 🔐😆 Some examples of the new games database game page, with rich media and metadata front & center 🔥 What do you think is the most underrated LaunchBox feature? I don’t know if it’s underrated, but I am blown away by how seamless emulator setup is. Anyone who’s tried to configure emulators manually knows the pain—it’s basically a rite of passage. The fact that LaunchBox makes it so smooth is a huge win. Also, Big Box theming is next level. The amount of customization you can do? Chef’s kiss. 🎨 🏆 What is your favourite game of all time and why? This is an impossible question. It’s like asking me to pick a favorite cat, and I have two (who would definitely judge me for it). That said, if I had to pick, I’d go with a tie: Halo 3 (because Forge mode was way more powerful than it had any right to be—anyone remember forgehub.com?) and Terraria, because once you start playing, it will consume your life. Honorable mentions to about 50 other games I’ve lost weeks of my life to. 🎭 What types of games do you enjoy in your downtime? It really depends on my mood! If I’m playing with friends, it’s usually something chaotic like Lethal Company, Blood Typers, or just some weird and wonderful indie multiplayer game. If I need to chill, I’ll fire up Satisfactory and spend hours optimizing factory layouts like a true efficiency nerd. For story-driven games, I love something cinematic like Alan Wake, which I’ll play on the big screen with my partner. And if I want to get moving, Beat Saber or Synth Riders in VR is my go-to workout that doesn’t feel like a workout. 🐱 Can you share a fun fact about yourself that the community might not know? I just adopted an 8-month-old kitten who is very eager to help debug my code—by randomly stepping on my keyboard. We’re in the process of introducing her to our 6-year-old cat, and negotiations are ongoing. Debugging hard at work with the new kitten 🐈 and the grumpy toothless Ruby in her little area we built for her, along with cat versions of famous photos Also, my partner plays competitive dodgeball, which is probably the coolest sentence I’ll ever be able to say. Oh, and I’m based in Winnipeg ❄️ 🎮 What’s your go-to gaming setup currently? Mostly PC for everything, but when I want to kick back and play on the big screen, I’ll fire up the PS5 for story-driven games. And of course, PC for VR, because let’s be real, that’s where all the fun is. Game console collection, along with VR PC, complete with cardboard underneath to prevent cat toys getting stuck 🎲 Do you have any hobbies outside of gaming? I love keeping my hands busy! I’ve been dabbling in game development (currently using Godot), building Gundams, making book nooks, and even needle felting. If it’s creative and involves putting something together, I’m into it. I also love board games, escape rooms, hiking (just getting into it), and bouldering (also just getting into it). And I’m a big fan of Activate, which is basically a high-tech playground where you jump, climb, and dodge obstacles. It’s like being in a video game, except with actual cardio. We’re absolutely stoked to have Stefan on the team! He’s already making an impact, and we can’t wait to see what he accomplishes next. Join us in giving him a huge welcome! 🎉🙌

Hiya, yes it’s likely you have auto-ROM imports enabled. You can configure this by going to Tools > Options > General and configure the options under Automated Imports

Hi Folks, Thanks for confirming, this appears to be a bug on our end. We’ve written this up, please follow the issue to be notified of updates and once it has been fixed. 🔗 https://feedback.launchbox.gg/p/known-issue-back-command-unresponsive-after-failed-search-in-big Cheers,

Hi there, thanks for the report here. Ideally, If this happens again, could you grab a copy of the exact error message that is being shown? There are a few known issues .dll files, so it would be good to know which one is specifically affecting you so we can advise on the best workaround. Cheers,

Hi there, Thanks for the great question. I own a Retroid Pocket 5 and am very happy with it. The screen is beautiful and, at least for me, I don't mind the D-Pad being on top since I play mostly retro games. Regarding LaunchBox for Android, the RP5 works great with it, since you can use the built-in controls for navigation (i.e, the D-Pad, confirm / back buttons, and the dedicated ANdroid back/home buttons make it a breeze to move around the app and launch games). I rarely even need to, but you also have the touch screen if you want to use that for navigation instead. All in all, I'm very happy with it, happy to answer any specific questions you might have with it and LaunchBox.

Please also add your support and follow our feature request for this, to be notified of any updates. 🔗 Support for Linux operating systems

Yes, there have been some updates to the game pages on the database. Expect more details on these to arrive soon, but you should be seeing images load a lot faster, along with some other quality of life improvements. Sorry for the issues there, and let us know if you notice these errors again in the future.

Hi Folks, Just wanted to let you know, today we released a patch version (13.20) which contains a fix for this issue. The DOS importer should now be working properly as expected. You can see the full changelog here. Thanks for bearing with us there. Cheers,

Hi there, Thanks for the report here, there was some maintenance on the database yesterday, which could have contributed to this. Can you confirm If you're continuously seeing these moderation errors today? Cheers,

If you go to Tools > Edit > Platforms, select WiiU and then click on the 3D Model Settings tab, do you have any ovveride set there? Also, does this affect any WiiU games, or just that specific one?

I wouldn't be surprised if it's not treating those shortcuts as game files, hence why it isn't picking anything up to be removed. I've added that to the scoped feature though, since you're right, it shouldn't just be able to scan for added shortcuts but remove them by running the scan for deleted ROMs as well

For sure, it's certainly possible. There are many ways we could go about this, another being using the fbneo core, since a lot of those sets also don't require any dependencies. We're continuing to iterate on the NAS functionality so I wouldn't be surprised if we come back to this in the future, but can't say which approach we would go with.

Hi there, Thanks for the report here. We've actually been hunting down an issue for a while now that sounds similar to this. I tried to run the same repro steps as you but unfortunately, I couldn't reproduce the behaviour. If you can reliably reproduce the issue, would you mind recording a quick screen recording outline so I can ensure I'm following your steps 100%. That, and please let me know what LaunchBox version you're using. Cheers,

Thanks, one thing you could try here is temporarily moving the directory it's referring to outside of LaunchBox to see If it resolves the error. It's possible something in that tmp directory has become corrupted so take a backup of it, remove it and see if that resolves the error.

Hi Folks, Happy to report we finally have an implementation for .RVZ scanning! 🙌 This is available in our latest beta for 13.20 GameCube games in the .RVZ will now be able to scan correctly for achievements, and achievement badges will now show for any matched games. If you're keen to give this a try you can join the latest beta, otherwise you can expect this in 13.20. Cheers,

Hi Folks, Just to let you know this, issue has now been addressed internally and will be available in the next version of LaunchBox (13.20). An early beta is available of this version which contains this fix, which you are welcome to try out below: 🔗 https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/89482-launchbox-1320-beta-thread/ Otherwise, you can expect to receive this fix in 13.20. Thanks for bearing with us there, and apologies for any issues due to this.

Hi Folks, Just to let you know this, issue has now been addressed internally and will be available in the next version of LaunchBox (13.20). An early beta is available of this version which contains this fix, which you are welcome to try out below: 🔗 https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/89482-launchbox-1320-beta-thread/ Otherwise, you can expect to receive this fix in 13.20. Thanks for bearing with us there, and apologies for any issues due to this.

Hi Folks, Just to let you know this, issue has now been addressed internally and will be available in the next version of LaunchBox (13.20). An early beta is available of this version which contains this fix, which you are welcome to try out below: 🔗 https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/89482-launchbox-1320-beta-thread/ Otherwise, you can expect to receive this fix in 13.20. Thanks for bearing with us there, and apologies for any issues due to this.

HI there, Thanks for the report here. I'm looking into a potential issue where .chd files don't appear to be getting recognised by the importer. Could you please walk me through your exactly import steps (including what files you have in the directory you're trying to import). If it's easier, you can also share a screen recording, but I'm most curious to see what is the structure of the directory your trying to import, and which import steps your following to get them into LaunchBox. Please let me know and we'll try to get you sorted. Cheers,

Hi there, I've split this out into its own topic since that thread was specifically with Big Box, and if you're not using Big Box it would be good to keep this separate. To investigate further, could you please confirm the following? Steps to reproduce: Please describe the full steps you took to encounter this error. Consistency: Are you able to reproduce this error reliably, or does it occur sporadically? Error details: Are any errors shown, and if so please attach to this thread When did the issue start? Let us know when you first noticed this issue occurring. Screen recording: If possible, providing a screen recording of the issue in action would greatly help our team narrow down the cause. Let us know, and we’ll work on getting this resolved for you.

Hi there, Thanks for the report here. It's hard to tell without the full error log, but for any issues with 13.19, please first check out this post to ensure there aren't any issues with incompatible plugins: If it's not that, there are references to mapped drives there. May I confirm, do you have any data (games, media etc), that is stored on a drive different to your LaunchBox install, and that wasn't connected at the time of this report? There are some known issues where LaunchBox will complain in certain places if a mapped drive is not connected, however this shouldn't have any impact during startup. I'd also be keen to understand if this was a one-off issue, or if it continues to be slow to startup. Finally, just to confirm I assume you're referring to 13.19 and 13.18, but can you confirm exactly which version you are using? Cheers,

Hi there, Thanks for reaching out and reporting this error. To investigate further, could you please confirm the following? Consistency: Are you able to reproduce this error reliably, or does it occur sporadically? Error details: Is any error displayed when LaunchBox closes? If so, please ensure that the full content of the error message is visible in your response or pasted into this thread Screen recording: If possible, providing a screen recording of the issue in action would greatly help our team narrow down the cause. Let us know, and we’ll work on getting this resolved for you.

Thanks for the additional context! You both make some great points, and the fact is that the Scan for Added ROMs functionality wasn’t originally intended for Windows shortcuts, so there’s definitely room for improvement in this area. I’ve gone ahead and scoped out a proper feature request based on your feedback. You can view and upvote it here: 🔗 https://feedback.launchbox.gg/p/support-for-windows-shortcuts-in-scan-for-added-roms Thanks for bringing this to our attention! While I wasn’t able to confirm that this behavior has changed in recent versions (as far as I know, it’s always been this way), I believe these reports may have been mixed up with the drag-and-drop issue in LaunchBox, which was an actual bug that has since been fixed. However, if you’re certain it behaved differently in a previous version, please let me know which version that was, and I’ll do my best to track it down.

Hi there, Thanks for the report! Would you be able to paste the full output of the error here? Unfortunately, it’s cut off in the screenshot, so we can’t see the entire message. From what we can see, it looks like the issue is related to a specific file being unreadable. Could you confirm which file is mentioned in the first line of the error? Also, since the file is on the E: drive, is that a removable drive? If so, please check that it’s properly connected and that other files on the drive are accessible. If you can share the full error log, we’ll do our best to advise further.