Jason Carr

This is interesting. Not sure exactly what all this changes, but I'll do some research and get it all fixed up. I have not tested LaunchBox for Android with Kodi at this point. Is it a Shield TV or a handheld Shield?

Correct. If you're using touch, that's probably your best bet. The trick though is that you'll also have to close the emulator in order to start a different game in that emulator.

I'm honestly not too surprised about those emulators as I haven't fully tested them. Retroarch does surprise me though; I hope they didn't make major changes to the Android app in the nightly. Is Retroarch 64-bit available on the Play Store?

Unfortunately it depends on the emulator. Retroarch can be a real pain to exit. ETA Prime has been researching this stuff though and he'll have a tutorial out soon. The answer depends on whether you're using a controller or not.

If you change the language, it is supposed to restart in that situation. How exactly did it crash? Yes, it is important that things go over to the SD card or internal memory in the correct folder. This is unfortunately due to Android permissions issues which can be a real pain. In my testing, I've been able to use SD cards on various devices without problems, but the folder structure has to be correct. It always has to be /Android/data/com.unbrokensoftware.launchbox/files/LaunchBox, which is why that folder structure is created for you in the exporter. MAME will be supported eventually, but it's very tricky because you can't just export your desktop MAME ROMs. On Android, most versions of MAME only work with really old MAME sets.

You'll need the latest beta version of the desktop application. Does it work if you use the direct link from the forums here on your GPD XD? As far as I know, searching does not work because the app is still in beta. You have to use the link provided and then click the second link to the listing once you opt in. Yes, please report issues here. Please let me know the exact path of the "LaunchBox" folder on your SD card. Have you tried exporting to internal memory? Does it work there? Good to know on the issues. I'm sure we'll have a fair number of them as we test various emulators and various devices.

FYI y'all, the Android version is finally out:

Thank you guys. It is indeed finally live.

No, but you will need to update to the latest beta, so you will lose premium features if you update. But the Export to Android process is available in the free version of the desktop app.

For anybody who's here early, the link should go live in about an hour or so.

The Android version of LaunchBox is now finally available in beta from the Play Store! Please keep in mind that this is still a very early release; it's functional, but we have many more things that are planned for it. Here are some current known issues: The export process does not yet support MS-DOS games The export process does not yet properly handle bin/cue files Extracting RAR files when launching games is not yet supported (but zip and 7-zip files work fine) Progress is not yet reported while extracting archives on game launch Temporary extracted ROM files are not yet cleaned up (they stay there forever until manually deleted) Language translations are supported, but there's currently no way to manually change the language. It should use the Android system's language, however, if a translation is available for that language. There's no way to view game details yet, only list your games and launch them FAQ Will LaunchBox for Android support Big Box features? Yes, we plan to add Big Box-type views and features to the Android app soon. Does the LaunchBox export process require a premium license? No, the export process is available in the free version of the Windows app (in the latest beta release). Therefore, the only purchase required is the (current) $5 purchase of the Android app from the Play Store. The cost of the Android app may go up to $10 once we get it more fleshed out. Will LaunchBox for Android always require the desktop app? No, eventually you'll be able to import and edit games directly on Android. However, in the long run, we think most people who have desktop collections will prefer to manage their collection on the desktop and simply export it to Android. Will such and such feature make it into the Android version? Most likely, eventually, yes. We haven't planned out everything long-term, but most features are planned for the Android version, sans for some more extreme customization options. Why isn't the Android app picking up my games/platforms? Currently the Android app requires you to use the "Export to Android" process that is available only in the beta version of LaunchBox for Windows. You can either wait until everything comes out of beta, or you can go to Tools > Options > General > Updates in LaunchBox and check the box to update to beta releases. Then restart, and you should be prompted to update (or the update will be downloaded in the background if you have background updates enabled). Then you'll have an option to "Export to Android" under the Tools menu. The Android app does not automatically pick up platforms or games that you have previously copied over to your device, and requires the export process. I've run the export process, but my platforms still aren't showing up. Why? Make sure that the folder structure looks like this: /Android/data/com.unbrokensoftware.launchbox/files/LaunchBox/Data/Platforms/(xml files). We've had reports of issues with SD cards, so it's probably best to try putting it on your device's internal storage instead of the SD card if you're running into issues. We're working on getting all this stuff fixed. All I'm seeing is a white screen and the app crashes; how do I fix it? We're still working to resolve this issue on some devices, but in the mean time you can try deleting the /Android/data/com.unbrokensoftware.launchbox folder from your internal storage to see if that helps. Also delete it from your SD card if necessary. Once you have the app up and running, then you can try exporting from the desktop app. Download You can opt-in for testing the beta from Google Play here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.unbrokensoftware.launchbox Please report any bugs that you find in this thread. Enjoy!

@Cauptain I finally have these translations updated for the next beta, just FYI. The beta probably won't be out until next week though.

To update everyone, unfortunately I'm still waiting on Google. On Tuesday, they rejected the submission with complaints that they couldn't properly test the app because it was bugged. I *think* this just happened because they couldn't be bothered to test the desktop export process, and so they didn't have any data to test with, and just gave up. So I went back to work and added a feature that automatically adds native Android applications into an Android platform, so that they'll hopefully have data to play with. I submitted that version also Tuesday morning and I haven't heard back yet. The site says another three-day wait. I'll admit that I'm a bit frustrated, but as I want to use the Play Store, I don't really have much choice. If we keep running into garbage though, I'll have no choice but to bypass the Play Store. But if that happens, it'll be a pain for users because they'll have to enable the side loading of apps on their devices, which I would much prefer users not to have to do.

We may do this at some point in the future (if the demand is high enough), but since Apple doesn't allow emulators in their store, you'd have to have a rooted device in order to use it for emulation. My guess would be that Apple wouldn't allow LaunchBox in the Apple Store either, but I'm not really sure. The good news though is that we're using Xamarin, which supports both Android and iOS, so porting the Android version to iOS wouldn't require starting over from scratch. Have they started allowing emulators in the store yet though? That's the biggest limiting factor as far as I know. I'm not entirely sure yet, to be honest, because I don't know how it all works. But I'll make that decision here shortly.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I think in it's current form though, it would be too dangerous to just delete files in the platform's default locations if that platform doesn't exist. People can put the platform folders anywhere they want, but if the platform that defines where those folders are is gone, then unfortunately it's too dangerous to just assume a location and delete the files. Thankfully though it's really easy to just delete the media folders for an old platform from the file system.

Thank you so much @Cauptain; sorry for the delays. I'll get these new translations in very soon.

Not as of yet. I have a lot of things to flesh out before we'd do any kind of a poll, and a lot of things are still in the planning stages.

Nope. If you get in early at $5, you'll have it forever for that price.

Yes, though not in this initial release. That's pretty important though so that will be coming soon. The issue with using a NAS is that you'd have to be local to the NAS, or have some kind of a public-facing web server hosting all the stuff. Plex does it well but it's very complicated. It's possible that we might support something like this eventually, but it's a fairly long ways off. The initial goal for the app is just to make everything work locally, and with the size and cost of SD cards these days, I don't see that as too much of a hindrance. I have a list of known issues that I was waiting to post until Google finally approves the Android app and it goes live, but this is a known issue that I was planning on posting. Bin and cue files will be supported, but they're not supported yet.

One more thing that I do want to mention: anyone can test the Android export process by going to Tools > Export to Android in the LaunchBox beta. You don't have to have the app installed to get a collection ready on your Android device. Then, when you do get the app installed, your collection will automatically show up in the app.

Also, watch ETA Prime's channel on YouTube. He's going to be putting out a teaser video later today.

I've been back and forth with them several times now. Hopefully the one I submitted this morning will be the last revision. There's been a lot of confusion about whether the app is a game or not, and Google hasn't exactly been straightforward with me in explaining exactly what needs changed. But anyways, yeah. If we're lucky, it'll be ready today. But yes, I'll announce it once it's live for sure.

Sorry for that guys; beta 3 is out now to fix the issue with the missing game details sidebar items.

I believe I've found and fixed this for the next beta. I think it's a bug that was introduced a while back during some performance optimization stuff.

I just put out the 10.0-beta-2 release. I decided to switch up to the 10.0 release (instead of 9.11), because I've made some major backend changes to support Android and such. This new beta includes the following: New Feature: A new Export to Android wizard is now available under the tools menu Fixed: Big Box was erroring in some situations for games without any platform set (and possibly no games found situations) I'm currently waiting on Google to approve the Android release, but that should be out in beta form very soon. I'll create a new forum post for the Android release when it's out.