Jason Carr

Hey guys, it's nearly time for another official release again, so time to get the translations in if you can. As always, I've updated the packages. I'm planning on putting out the official release on Monday or Tuesday. Thank you very much y'all. @Opak @dukeemu @cyanjiang @Bardock @MajKSA @gamehacker @Cauptain @Kondorito @Nyny77 @alexposad @k_kutsugi

I just uploaded version 0.28 with the following: Fixed the import process to resolve an issue where some images were not downloading properly Improved download performance with the new import process We seemed to have surprisingly good luck with 0.27 as far as it eliminating the app killing issue, but I'm hesitant to believe that it's really fixed. Any testing you guys can do on your various devices would be very much appreciated.

Not for use in the wheels, that I'm aware. Currently you can use any image in most places, but the FlowControl doesn't have that flexibility.

I'm not aware of any other than square brackets; I believe everything else (that exists in titles at least) should be safe. Parenthesis and square brackets are specifically searched for and removed in file names due to ROM file names often using them for version or region information, etc. Good to know. I'll add an item on my list to see if I can figure out a solution. It may be a while though.

Beta 4 is out now with the following: Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box now use improved processes for media downloads (threaded downloads). This should signficantly speed up downloads from the LaunchBox Games Database, especially. Improvement: In Big Box you can now individually hide view types while locked instead of all or none New "Games Missing Media" filters now have items for videos and manuals as well Fixed: "Scan for Removed ROMs" now removes additional apps that are missing as well Planning for this to be the last beta release with new stuff before the official release, which hopefully will go out early next week. Any testing you can do would be appreciated.

Sure, I can add that to the list.

Great to hear guys, thanks. I am a bit surprised by that outcome. Hopefully it's typical. I have noticed some bugs in this version where for some reason the downloads are not working in some cases though (so you end up with missing images). So I have that to resolve, and there's also more I can do to reduce RAM usage, so I expect that will help as well if we continue to experience issues on other devices.

This is a good point. I kind of wish we could just remove adult games from the database completely, but I know that's probably too much to ask. I agree that we should at least have a flag of some kind. On my list. It's worth noting, however, that images like that are not allowed in the database, and should never have been approved.

Hi Dragoon, LaunchBox considers Nintendo Famicom to be the same platform as Nintendo Entertainment System in the database. If you go to Tools > Manage Platforms in LaunchBox on the desktop, you can edit Nintendo Famicom. Then select Nintendo Entertainment System in the Scape As field for that platform, and it should then work properly in the exporter.

Just uploaded version 0.27 to the Play Store, so it should be available soon. I'm hoping this release fixes the app killing issues I described above for at least some people, but I'm fairly certain it won't fix it for everyone. Still, if you were experiencing issues with the new import process closing to the desktop, please give the new version a test and let me know how it goes. I did some brainstorming with @CBeatt13 (C-Beats as he apparently likes to go by these days), and we came up with some more optimization I can do to try and prevent the app kills further, but that will take quite a bit more development effort, so I'm hoping that these quick fixes at least help in the mean time. All in all, I have no idea if we'll ever be able to eliminate the app kills completely, but I'm certainly hoping so.

FYI on this all; I've hit a major roadblock that is fairly disastrous. Android phone manufacturers have a nasty habit of aggressively killing off any apps that use a large amount of resources. This is done to conserve battery, primarily. On my Samsung Galaxy S10+, it's not an issue when I have the phone plugged in, which is why I didn't discover the issue initially. However, the moment I unplug the phone, all of the sudden the import processes are killed regularly. The issues we're seeing in this thread are not because the app is crashing, but rather because Android (more specifically the customized versions of Android installed on mobile devices by certain manufacturers) are killing the app. At this point I don't have a good solution to this problem; I've tried everything from running it all on the main application thread (which destroys performance) to setting a super high thread priority, which seems to do nothing. At this point I'm seriously concerned about the feasibility of Android for the future at all. I also have more sympathy and understanding for some of the common issues that I see with emulators on Android. More information on this issue is available here: https://dontkillmyapp.com/ I plan to do a bit more experimentation to try and come up with some sort of a solution, but the way it's looking right now is not good. This is an issue that many Android app developers are dealing with, and I do not want to deal with the support nightmare that is having to tell everyone to change settings or hack their devices in order to get around this issue. This is all after spending 3 weeks of development time on this import process. The more I deal with stuff like this, the more I appreciate Windows.

It shouldn't, no. But if you want to run a test to make sure by deleting it first, I would appreciate it.

Cool, thanks.

One more question, what platforms did you import? Just in case I'm able to replicate it with certain platforms.

Wow, two of them doing the same thing. The only difference I can envision between your setup and mine would be the Internet connection. Does it always immediately crash when it gets to the downloading stage, or does it randomly get part of the way through it and then crash?

Yes, we'll definitely get a search function in there eventually.

The on-Android importer won't move the ROMs off of your USB stick. It just uses them in whatever location you put them in. If you want to move them from your USB stick to your Android device, first copy the ROMs onto your Android device, and then run the import.

Okay, what type of nVidia Shield do you have? Is it a Shield TV? It shouldn't matter that the ROMs are zipped. Sounds like it's not liking the downloads though for some reason.

The point of this new beta is to allow you to import them directly on your Android device, not have to export them. But that functionality is currently beta, and you do have more options currently on the desktop. This looks to be an Internet connection issue, but I'll confirm and see if there's anything I can do to make that part more resilient. I've done most of my testing on my own nVidia Shield TV, so I'm not sure why you'd be running into that. What screen is it crashing on? What text is displayed on the screen when it crashes? Thanks for all the testing guys.

The good news is we just hired Christian (our new developer). I do have plans to clean some things up with the games database and website here soon. Per #1, I never even thought about parenthesis in titles lol. Is that even a thing? Are there any games that officially have parenthesis in their titles? Per #2, I'm not sure about changing the titles in that case. I know it's a problem, but hopefully they would have different release dates, at least. I believe the MAME importer in LaunchBox does properly differentiate between these games. Let me know if anyone can prove otherwise, and I'll look into it. Per #3, I am in agreement that we need all arcade games under the Arcade platform, because that is what the platform is. However, I don't see anything wrong with duplicating them also in there subcategory "platforms". That way users can choose which approach they want and it should work well for both. I know we're missing a lot of subcategory platforms currently though. Per #4, that would be a massive job, identifying all of them, and we'd end up having arguments about what goes where lol. I do see the benefit of it, but honestly, that one's not likely to happen. Thanks for the feedback though @Jeffe. These are some good points.

And the beta update is live.

Beta 3 is out now guys with the following: New Feature: You can now force update metadata from the LaunchBox Games Database via Help > Force Update Games Database Metadata in LaunchBox Fixed: Removing existing auto-generated playlists was sometimes incorrectly deleting unrelated playlists because of "Nintendo Game Boy" being part of multiple platforms Fixed: Steam metadata imports were causing errors for games without videos (introduced in previous beta) Fixed: Counts were not properly showing in the side bar for the new Games Missing Media section Also, I finally have a new Android beta out with a new import process that runs directly on Android devices (and no longer requires the desktop app):

@wallmachine I've done some testing and haven't been able to replicate any of that. I'm inclined to believe that whatever is causing it is not related to the update, as you suggested. Rolling back to beta 1 should work just fine, so most likely it's not related to the beta release. Does it happen with all themes on your system?

Hey all, I just uploaded a new 0.26 beta to the Play Store with an on-Android import process. Details are here:

Hey all, I just uploaded a new 0.26 beta to the Play Store with an on-Android import process. Details are here: