Jason Carr

Great, updated. Yeah, forceful activation enabled does seem to be the best bet, and it's the default for unknown emulators. It's best to try it that way first, and if it doesn't work (locks up the emulator or something like that), try turning it off.

I just marked Sega Model 2 Emulator, Project64, and VisualBoyAdvance-M as fully working in the table, as they all work great now with the new option to disable forceful activation. Going forward, when reporting testing results, if you can report whether you're using forceful activation or not, that would be helpful. Thanks guys.

Thanks much, all updated. Per PPSSPP, we probably just need to add an AutoHotkey script on resume to call whatever key combination puts the emulator back into fullscreen mode. Also, I've already had two reports that RPCS3 is working properly with the pause screens, so try playing with the settings a bit to see if you can get it working, and let me know if you can. I've marked it as Conflicted Reports in the table in the mean time.

Beta 11 is out now with minor emulator compatibility/default settings updates. I figured out that a lot of the emulators that were previously not working with the pause screens now work great if you uncheck the "Forceful Activation" setting in the emulator pause screen options. So I think we're getting pretty close to ready to go with the pause screen showing and hiding functionality. Next week I can focus on game-specific pause screen settings and actually make the pause screens useful. I'm marking Project 64, Sega Model 2 Emulator, and VisualBoyAdvance-M as fully working with this release. We can really use some more help testing various emulators in the Emulator Coverage thread here: Going forward, if an emulator isn't working with the pause screens, please try unchecking/checking the "Forceful Automation" box in the emulator pause screen settings, and let us know which setting you're using when you report an emulator as working or broken. Thanks all.

Whoops. So I added it in, but forgot to add it to the interface itself. Fixed that for the next beta.

@wallmachine If you check Japan in your region priorities as the third one, does it still rename the Japanese games on import? The generally recommended way is to leave the Combine Games with Matching Titles box checked, which would then put the Japanese version in as an additional app, so that's the reason why it's working the way it is, I guess. I can see how that could be improved though if you don't want to combine your games. Per the update wizard, it makes sense that the replace option would rename the title, but I would hope that the don't overwrite option does not. So I suppose that's one way that should work to do what you want to do; just import without searching for metadata, and then run the update wizard and tell it not to replace.

Awesome, updated.

I can't replicate that freezing issue with MAME, so I'm guessing maybe there's a MAME setting that's causing it. Can you try testing with a fresh install of MAME with default settings? It has to be either a MAME settings discrepancy or a driver issue.

Thanks, updated. We did have one report of FX2 not working properly with the pause screens, so I've marked that as conflicted.

Yes, a while back we added logic to send additional apps PDFs to the built-in PDF reader. Let me know if that's not working. I think there might be a setting for it in Big Box.

Alright, beta 10 is out now with fixes for the following bugs from beta 9: When disabling forceful pause screen activation on an emulator in Big Box (MAME for example), the pause screen was not always showing and hiding properly After exiting games in Big Box, the game startup screens were not always exiting properly

FYI, hold off on testing. Found a couple bugs. New beta will be out shortly.

Thanks, I'm hoping this is fixed in beta 9.

Hmmmmm...I'm seeing some minor issues with pause screens when startup screens are disabled. So FYI...for folks having issues, that could be the problem. I'll need to address that separately.

Alright, beta 9 is out now with the following: Fix for the game pause keyboard key not updating until restart of LaunchBox New game pause screen setting on emulators for "Suspend Emulator Process While Paused". Previously, this was always happening. Unchecking the box will stop LaunchBox/Big Box from suspending the emulator's process during pause, but then you'll need to use the AutoHotkey script to pause the emulator, or it won't really pause. There may be some emulators that require this, as the suspend process may not work for all of them. New game pause screen setting on emulators for "Forceful Pause Screen Activation". This was previously always happening as well, but I figured out that for MAME, it's a much smoother process if I remove a bunch of the steps to activate the pause screens that some of the other emulators require. At least on my system, unchecking it for MAME results in much faster transitions. Emulator pause screen settings will be reset with this new beta, so you may have to make any customizations again. This of course won't happen after the official release.

Yes, that is the plan.

If you are able to record a quick video of the slow transition, that would probably help me to figure out what's going on. I do get an audio stutter (which I can probably handle just by muting eventually), but it's rather brief. It would help to know the specific error, so please post it here if you get it again. Depending on the emulator, the flashing windows might be something we just have to deal with here. We're treading in new waters and with fullscreen exclusive mode, some things just aren't possible. Full-screen exclusive mode requires some sort of an Alt-Tab in order to switch between the pause screens and the emulator, and there's nothing at all that we can do about that if it's a dirty process because of the way the emulator's built. One thing to look for: make sure that your emulator is using your desktop resolution. Neither the startup screens nor the pause screens will ever work ideally unless you're using the desktop resolution in the emulator.

Not sure if that is performance-related or not. All my testing with MAME has resulted in very quick transitions. Are you running Windows 7 or 10? What are your hardware specs? I'll look into the LaunchBox button issue.

The pause screens are entirely emulator-specific. So I'll need details on what game or emulator it is, first and foremost.

I had to give myself a break from pause screens today. Beta 8 is out now with a new Import Installed GOG Games Wizard. Per the name, it only imports installed GOG games. There's a plugin out that imports games via GOG's API, but it takes a very different approach, importing all a user's games and launching them via GOG Galaxy. So I guess now you get to choose. The new built-in importer takes advantage of the fact that GOG puts "Launch Game Name" Windows shortcuts into the game folder of every game. So you just give it the root folder of your GOG games, and it finds all the shortcut files and imports them. Any additional shortcut files are added as additional apps on the games as well. Previously you could import GOG games via the Windows import, which just found games in the Start menu, but this works a lot better.

Cool, updated.

Unfortunately Malwarebytes has a history of being overzealous. So it's yet another anti-virus program that acts like the boy who cried wolf, and ends up being untrustworthy as a result. My recommendation continues to be just to use the tried and true Windows Defender that comes with Windows, and uninstalling third party virus protection, as most are unnecessary, significantly slow down your system, and cause issues like these.

FYI, pause screens for DOSBox have been fixed for beta 7 (at least for me) with an AutoHotkey script. DOSBox's problem was that it automatically exits fullscreen mode when leaving the window, so I simply added a script to press Alt+Enter to put it back in fullscreen mode on resume. If anyone else can test to ensure it works on their systems as well, I'd appreciate it. It should work both for built-in DOSBox support and if you create a DOSBox emulator. I'm afraid it probably won't work for eXoDOS yet though since it uses batch files. It's also worth noting that this might be the issue for some other emulators, so you could try putting in a script to send key the fullscreen keyboard combination on resume. Let us know if you find something that works.

Awesome, all updated.

Thanks guys; all updated.