Jason Carr

There is an import Windows games option in the wizard, and it's pretty much as good as importing random Windows games can get. You can always search the file system for EXE files and import those though instead. This is a known issue and happens when Big Box custom themes use the views that contain the favorites and recent boxes from the default view, but don't have them in the theme. As of yet, I haven't figured out a way to disable this for themes that don't have the boxes displayed. Yeah, it's probably not difficult to set up from that perspective. Imports with metadata and media are the main issues.

Hi @Aaron5689, unfortunately Neil is correct. There are a few malicious hard drive sellers out there who are illegally selling our software (as well as loads and loads of ROMs). If you would be willing to share with us who you bought the drive from, I would really appreciate it. You can share it via PM privately if you would rather.

I'm not familiar with those drivers, but sometimes certain hardware can be incompatible with certain drivers and such, especially if you're using homebrew drivers. The next step is probably to test some various emulators to see if those are working.

Certainly; we can add a forum category here shortly.

There are many better ways to do that these days, the easiest of which is to just drag the EXE over and select "None of the Above" on import.

Oic. So we just need to fix it so that regions are pulled from folder names in that scenario. That's right, makes sense. I'll put that on the list at least.

I thought LaunchBox *was* prioritizing ROMs with matching regions to the region priority settings as the main ROM for the game, when combining ROMs. I haven't tested it recently, but my most recent import looks like it did this successfully for Game Boy. The additional apps/versions are sorted alphabetically, but if you edit the game and take a look at the default ROM file, it should be the correct region (if it exists).

The field is called Play Count, but unfortunately you can't modify it currently without going directly into the XML. I'll put that on my list.

Honestly, I really appreciate your bluntness and honesty. There are still a million other great features to tackle, and the more time I spend spinning my wheels on something that isn't really going to work out, the longer it takes to be productive. Per the backs of carts and generic boxes, it seems pretty strange to me to want to look at the blank back of a cart or box. I can add that to my list, but I probably won't be prioritizing it for this release. I'm currently working on prioritizing ideas and new features and such for the next poll. I'm also trying to decide if we should put a new poll out either before or after the next release; I may just add a bunch of quality of life things in for this release and then focus on the poll afterwards. Either way, I plan on announcing and having a live stream discussion as far as what to put on the poll.

Oh man, we've run into issues ourselves with LaunchBox and Corsair keyboards too. What the heck. I don't know what Corsair is doing with their crap keyboard software, but I've never seen anything like that before.

Sorry I forgot to update this; it's updated now. I have both packs updated for the next beta. Thanks guys.

I'm so sorry guys, but I'm giving up on pinball for now. It's just too much of a mess. It's of course already possible to use LaunchBox just fine with pinball, but with so many roadblocks in place towards making it easy, I don't really see the point in optimizing it all. Unless we can make it a straightforward process, it's not really worth the effort, and as best I can tell there really isn't a way to make it a straightforward process at all.

I see. What a mess though. Facepalm. The sad part is that they're only encouraging piracy.

That's...odd. What's the point of that? Obviously that ruins things because most people will not be using this on an actual table.

You mean the one from the Windows Store? Are you able to use that one with command-line parameters?

For PinballFX3, do you guys use the Steam version or the version from the Microsoft Store?

Per pinball, I've decided that we will probably not be adding additional support for media and metadata, at least not any more than already exists. For one thing, it sounds like it's trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and with the media "rights" issues I'm hearing about, that sounds like a nightmare as well. So unfortunately, I've been scared away from dealing with pinball media, at least for now. It's a nightmare from multiple perspectives, and I don't believe the audience for it would be big enough to justify the effort at this point (at least not once people realize how much effort it takes to set it all up). Good to know that with Pinball FX3 it is at least possible to launch specific tables. The question though is whether it would be possible to automate an import. If every table requires custom parameters, I'm not sure how we would set that up. I will experiment with it though.

There are only image groups for boxes, 3D boxes, carts, 3D carts, screenshots, clear logos, and Steam banners. Back images never show up by default (you can't view the back images for all games together anywhere), so there's really no point in adding default images for them.

A couple things... Region priorities only affect media. If you import games from other regions, LaunchBox won't skip them if those regions aren't checked in region priorities. It's assumed that you want to import them anyways if you import the files. Yes, the region is required to be in the file name. It probably should use the folder name if you check that box, but even still, it's not going to skip importing games that you've told it to import.

Yeah, from what I hear Pinball FX and Pinball Arcade do not work well with frontends at all, but I feel like if you're gonna go pinball, you might as well let them create an immersive experience inside their own apps. It sounds like they're dropping support for actual pinball tables though, but it's not like we're going to be able to support that any time soon anyways. The thing is, the item on the poll was "proper support for pinball". But I'm not even sure "proper" support is possible currently, at least in the way that emulated games work in LaunchBox. It seems like it would be a lot of manual work for the end user no matter what we do.

Alright, so the more I dive into pinball, the more problems I find, unfortunately. It makes sense that artwork would be more sensitive if someone created the entire table (that has to be a ton of work), even if the artwork was ripped from a movie or TV show, etc., so yeah, I can see that being a nightmare. I also spoke with @circo, and while EmuMovies does have some media available for download on the website, it isn't available in the download app or for searching via the API. Apparently pinball does not do well with consistent file names, so that's part of the problem there. So this can of worms seems to be getting worse and worse. Furthermore, I hear that the best approach for pinball these days is Pinball FX and Pinball Arcade, which are paid solutions, but there's certainly nothing wrong with that. But they have their own interfaces, so all you would need to do is just add them as games directly. So perhaps this isn't a path worth taking...

It looks like EmuMovies has pinball artwork, so for starters we can just recommend that people use EmuMovies. We just won't worry about it on the LaunchBox Games Database if people are gonna have problems with it. @circo to the rescue. Again.

I think first off, imports and launching are the goals. Unfortunately I think I'd need an actual cabinet to go for full-fledged cabinet support, so at this point that's not likely to happen. I can definitely use your help though. You mean the actual creators of the media (companies that create the tables) or the folks just ripping the artwork? I very much appreciate the work that the community does scanning and removing backgrounds and such, but I have to admit that I find it ridiculous for someone to demand credit for ripping an image that isn't theirs to begin with. If the community is likely to have a hissy fit though over ripped images, then perhaps this might not be a hurdle worth jumping... Obviously, we need images in order for this to work at all.

This isn't in the current plans for this release, but that could change depending on feedback.

This is a known issue that sometimes happens, sometimes doesn't. The issue is that WPF can occasionally be a jerk about letting go of references to image files. I've solved it in the vast majority of cases, but there's still a few areas that can be problematic.