Jason Carr

Gotcha, @neil9000 mentioned this as well. Now that I know it's the list view I can look into it. On my list.

Make sure you're on the latest beta, as it sounds like you're missing the features in beta 4.

That's pretty weird. I just tested to be sure and I can't replicate that issue with the betas. Do you have any plugins installed?

Beta 4 is out now with some more major improvements for startup screens: Added themes for shutdown screens Added global settings in both LaunchBox and Big Box for Minimum Startup Screen Display Time and Minimum Shutdown Screen Display Time Made the extraction progress bar smoother towards the end Added a better description in the Edit Emulator Game Startup Screen tab for the Startup Delay setting Better resource management for startup screens should result in them being completely removed from memory when closed Fix for potential issue where the mouse cursor would not show back up if an error occurs while the game is launched Duplicate startup prevention when spamming the play button Pressing random keys or mouse buttons on the startup screen or during the startup process should no longer hijack focus and prevent the game from being displayed For the shutdown screens, they work the same way as the startup screens do for themes. Shutdown screens will use the same selected theme as the startup screens, and just use "Default Shutdown.xaml" or "Nintendo Entertainment System Shutdown.xaml" instead of the versions for startup screen without "Shutdown" appended. The startup screens are working amazingly well at this point in my testing, so I'm very pleased with where we're at. There are some more items to tackle, but I believe we're nearing the end. I'll update the first post of this topic again for status. Please let me know if you find a particular game or emulator that is not working well with the new startup screens.

Sadly I can't replicate this (the arrow keys work properly after using letter shortcuts for me), so it's gonna be one of those finicky issues to fix. I suspect that it's somehow system-specific. If anyone else wants to try and replicate this to see if we can narrow it down any, I'm all ears. Shortcut letter keys for platform names is a new request I believe. I'll add it to my list but I probably won't be able to tackle it soon unless it proves to be a more common request.

@Merc33 If you would, please create a separate thread for this as this is not a troubleshooting thread. That said, I'm honestly very doubtful that this is a glitch with LaunchBox or Big Box. I would first try disabling game controllers in Big Box to see if maybe it's being caused by a stray controller or something of that nature. If you are convinced it's an issue with the betas, then the next step would be to install the latest 9.1 official release to see if you have the same issue.

Please keep the beta testing stuff over in the other thread @RULLUR if you can. Not much of that is making any sense though, so I'm guessing either it was some kind of weird fluke, or something got confused.

Yeah, a fix for that is still coming before the official release.

Good to hear.

Hey all, already called you guys out over there, but just updating this topic to say that I *think* I've fulfilled all of these requests with 9.2-beta-3:

I've also updated the first post of this topic with today's progress so we can keep track of what's left for the startup screens there.

Beta 3 is out now guys. A few new/updated things from today's development: Mouse cursors are now hidden during game launches New option on emulators to hide the mouse cursor while the game is running Auto-generated playlists have been removed from the "Add to Playlist" menu option in LaunchBox in order to prevent the list from getting too unwieldy Overhauled plugin system focusing on game launching and better access to the new LaunchBox interface Details on the overhauled plugin system are here:

Yeah, that makes sense. I'll probably add a global "minimum startup screen time" setting in the global settings here at some point.

Plugins have been overhauled for LaunchBox and Big Box 9.2-beta-3 with three major objectives: Make it easier to track games that are launching (including knowing which game, app, and/or emulator that is launching) Allow plugins to launch games using the entire game startup process, including the new startup screens Provide access to the LaunchBox.Next interface in the same way that the old LaunchBox Windows Forms interface was accessible The documentation has been updated here: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/ Please make sure to do a Ctrl+F5 when first loading the documentation, because the site has a tendency to cache itself otherwise, and you may not be immediately seeing the new stuff if you've accessed it recently. Here are the most notable new items: IGameLaunchingPlugin - New plugin interface for game launching events Documentation: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/a40a286d-83c6-e179-940c-7e4166d567fe.htm Three events: OnAfterGameLaunched(Game, App, Emulator) - http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/b5cc7cd0-29af-fbfa-524f-232702c94d55.htm OnBeforeGameLaunched(Game, App, Emulator) - http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/40aaa079-d70c-20fd-5907-7e20a9df2ffe.htm OnGameExited() - http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/75a73cd6-1335-2d8c-cbee-db7f0fe15f5b.htm PluginHelper.LaunchBoxMainViewModel - new property in the PluginHelper static class that provides access to the LaunchBox interface Documentation: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/da689f24-d5ec-7977-c285-e94ce60f7c94.htm PluginHelper.LaunchBoxMainViewModel.PlayGame(Game, App, Emulator, OverrideCommandLine) - Allows launching games using the full launch stack (including startup screens) in LaunchBox Documentation: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/e8be24c8-cb9c-6427-03e1-70b5636bc25f.htm PluginHelper.BigBoxMainViewModel.PlayGame(Game, App, Emulator, OverrideCommandLine) - Allow launching games using the full launch stack (including startup screens) in Big Box Documentation: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/fda4655e-156d-412f-b491-30d010c726ef.htm That should do it. As always, big thanks goes out to all you guys who have come up with some amazing plugins already. Hopefully this stuff helps; let me know if anything isn't working or if there's something specific that you still need. @UnderwoodNC @starplayer @eatkinola @Undertherainbow @srxz @wasili @matiaspons @Lahma @alec100_94 @loueradun @Axenn @binarygeek119 @bbweiners @Grila @jayjay @epicfail @malarrya @xiaumaster @fraganator @dbinott @NJDave71 @locvez @slipsystem @CoinTos @dingodan @harryoke @pdavis @dragon57 @Hexxxer @MTyrealhanla @superfurry @Nielk1 @Echoshard1 @Ize @Fayne Aldan @SpaceMidget75 @teeedubb @goblindriver @JaysArcade @Brian @DOS76 @Nyny77 @nicknamex @IlhanK @jadekitten @kmoney @Sithel @Sdentau92 @CriticalCid @elliot763

Currently you can put them in fanart. But that's just for the default theme.

Sure, all this stuff is available already via the custom themes. I'm sure we'll have plenty of theme developers popping up for this soon enough if you don't want to dive into it yourself.

Gotcha. As far as I know it has but of course I haven't tested with every game under the sun. Let me know if you still see it.

I assume MUGEN uses exclusive fullscreen mode. If that's the case, just set the startup delay to a large value (the max amount of time MUGEN can take to load). Assuming it does use exclusive fullscreen mode, it will start up when it's ready regardless of the delay. The only drawback to this is that if MUGEN starts up quickly, the startup screen will flash on shutdown if you close the game within that delay period.

Good to know; I'll take a look. Remind me though, why do you need to minimize and restore LaunchBox when launching games? I imagine that this will just generally make the startup process less smooth.

Please read my explanation in my response to @ed20910 above.

Keep in mind that the purpose of this solution is to get something that *just works*, not something with a thousand options that requires a bunch of effort and tinkering. Rocket Launcher is perfect for that. So if you're looking for that, honestly I would recommend sticking with Rocket Launcher.

In this case you just need to increase the startup delay.

This depends on the emulator and the startup settings. If the emulator uses exclusive fullscreen mode, then nothing I can do can prevent it from being displayed fullscreen immediately when the emulator switches to exclusive fullscreen mode. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. In this case, you want the startup delay to be long enough so that the startup screen doesn't go away or switch to a black background before the game starts up into exclusive fullscreen mode, but if the startup delay is too long, then it will flash the startup screen for a brief period on game shutdown if you close the game too quickly. If the emulator does not use exclusive fullscreen mode, then the startup screen will wait the full startup delay time after starting the EXE before displaying it. Yes, the startup screen will remain in the background while the game is running. This is by design, as the same window is used as the shut down screen. You shouldn't be seeing any flashing though, as it should simply show a black background currently after the game closes, and then fade back to LaunchBox or Big Box.

@UnluckyForSome What I don't understand with this is how .bin files could ever work properly without their .cue attachments. If a Playstation 2 game has only one track, then it makes sense that a cue file wouldn't necessarily be needed. But if there are more than one track in the cue, then the bin file will be worthless without the cue data. But idk, maybe Playstation 2 games only ever use one track. That's the general problem with ISO and straight BIN files: they don't support multiple tracks. But again, I guess maybe PS2 doesn't ever have multiple tracks on the disc? This has been requested before (the option to choose what extensions to prioritize), so it is on my list. I'll bump it up a notch.

@rafaelfndev Unfortunately Windows Task Manager does not do a good job reporting correct memory usage, so that can't really be trusted. There is a debug log you can enable, however. If you open the LaunchBox\Data\Settings.xml file in a text editor, you'll find a line called DebugLog that you can set to true instead of false. It should then start creating log files in the Logs folder. I would also try some different themes to see if maybe it's a theme-specific issue. Another thing to try is to switch the video playback engine to either Windows Media Player or VLC, depending on what it is currently. Hopefully that will help to narrow it down.