Jason Carr

You do not have to import a bunch of non-working games in order to fully populate playlists. I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but it definitely sounds like you're missing something. The MAME arcade full-set importer does specifically allow you to not import broken games. That's really the whole point of the importer. It allows you to skip broken games, casino games, etc. The new arcade playlists use auto-filtering instead of the previous game lists to build them out. So if you have the updated playlists, there shouldn't be any such thing as missing games.

Beta 5 is out now with a fix for the above error as well as the following: - Improvement: A new ListCache.xml data file has been added that helps keep things running smoothly for collections with thousands of playlists - Fixed: Incorrect counts could occasionally display in various places in LaunchBox and/or Big Box; this was previously due to hide games options not always being accounted for in game counts - Fixed: Auto-populating playlists were sometimes not updating when game metadata changed These changes are fairly significant; a lot of the codebase was touched, so testing is in order. That said, this should allow folks to have collections with multiple thousands of playlists without serious delays. The first time that LaunchBox and/or Big Box is started up after adding a bunch of playlists (or the first time you start up this beta), LaunchBox/Big Box may take a very long time to load, but subsequent startups should be quick. The cache that I added has to be refreshed when changing the options to hide or show hidden or broken games, or games with missing media, so changing those options will force the cache to invalidate, which is likely to cause delays, but if it wasn't delaying in previous builds, the only reason for it is that things were not always updating properly. Here is the basic strategy I used to implement this: When the list of games is being displayed for a particular category or playlist, the results are never cached, and are always fully processed. Since the processing only needs to happen for one playlist or category, performance is not typically an issue. This resolves the issue with playlists not always updating properly when game metadata is changed. When displaying the number of games for a playlist or a category, the count is cached. This count is automatically updated when the games are fully processed (such as when selecting this item in the sidebar and loading the games for it). However, it is assumed that the previous calculated count is accurate until the full games list is loaded for that category or playlist. This results in some rare cases where the counts in the sidebar may get temporarily out of date, but they should get updated when selecting that platform and loading the games for it. LaunchBox and Big Box both maintain separate caches for the lists; this is because LaunchBox and Big Box can have separate settings for hiding and showing games.

Hmm. My only guess is that it would be some kind of bizarre driver bug. Obviously Big Box uses a lot more of the video card than LaunchBox (though they both use the exact same WPF engine), but other than that I'm completely lost, unfortunately. I would first try making sure that you're 100% up to date on all Windows updates and drivers.

Thanks guys; I have this error fixed for the next beta. Hopefully it will be out before the end of the day, if development goes well.

This is unfortunately an extremely complicated process due to how MAME uses ROMS, parent ROMs, etc. It's not as easy as just removing stuff that isn't directly referenced, because ROMs often require other ROMs. We may add this at some point, but it's not planned for the immediate future.

There's absolutely nothing shady that we do with the premium licenses. The details are clear as day on the purchase page: Obviously there are two options for a reason, and the text is very clear. Use it forever, but you'll be required to renew your license for $10 in order to access new features after one year. Everyone who purchases does so from this page, and this stuff hasn't changed for a very long time. We've refunded superlativeB and also issued him the latest version of LaunchBox that should work for his license. We do everything we can to reduce confusion on this and frankly, no one has been confused in a very, very long time.

I just tested as well and everything is working fine with the latest official release (8.9). @memeforlife I'm not sure if 8.3 was affected, but we did have previous issues with Steam revoking our API keys, which is why we're having the user get their own API keys now. You may have to upgrade if that's the issue, but I'm not sure exactly what you're running into. As far the user name, it should be as easy as starting up the wizard and entering your custom URL into the field on the second screen (that's your user name): @charlie69er We'll need more details as far as what is happening in order to help you out. Are you seeing an error message? What's the error? Exactly what is happening that is not working for you?

Thank you @Pacman56. Yeah, I'd love to have that code for when I tackle the software lists. Feel free to send it to me and I'll set it aside for when I jump on it.

Awesome, I'll get it uploaded very soon then.

Looking incredible @RetroHumanoid. I'll definitely get the videos uploaded once they're available.

I have VLC on my list. @Scriven That's not a bad idea at all, though creating a "various" playlist for the rest would be a challenge because the auto-playlist would have to exclude a bunch of values. I feel like I need to focus on getting through the performance issues first though, as they're still a problem even without any developer and publisher playlists.

Awesome work guys. Thanks to @harryoke, @Padou, @dragon57, and @Airpuncher.

Good to hear that Redux works, though I'm not quite sure why lol. That said, I do have an ultrawide monitor myself so maybe I did tweak something, though I don't remember fixing anything with videos not showing up.

With the recommended usage (not making playlists for developers and publishers), you typically end up with around 30 playlists per platform, which does add up. Most people aren't going to have more than say, 25 platforms, but I know there will be some people that do. 30 x 25 is around 750 playlists, so we at least need to make LaunchBox realistic to use with that number. This isn't an issue performance-wise on my machine, but I'm sure it will be on older machines. I've done some testing and I can remove the pre-caching that happens on startup for all these playlists, but it does cause delays in the interface if I do. LaunchBox is much less of a concern than Big Box with removing the pre-caching; Big Box is much more of an issue because the cache is important so that the interface runs smoothly. The primary reason that the cache is needed is for game counts, believe it or not. Loading up the individual game lists for a single playlist is usually instantaneous, but calculating the total counts for each and every playlist (including parents while identifying duplicate games) is a much longer process. I have some ideas to alleviate or reduce this, so I'll be looking into it. Unfortunately it involves simply caching the counts, which can cause more issues regarding playlists not updating, but I have some ideas that should make a difference. Anyways, no need to argue whether x number of playlists is fringe-case or not.

It's easy to end up with 1600 playlists when you generate playlists for developers and publishers, which is why I'm noting that it's not recommended in the interface. I'm tempted to remove that option altogether, but I do see how it can be useful. But yeah, it definitely gets unruly. It's not hard to do though with the new auto-generating playlists.

Alright, beta 4 is out now with an overhaul for the auto-generated playlists: Details: Added Favorites playlist Sorted All Games and Favorites playlists first using Sort Title Added notes to Developers and Publishers that they're not recommended for performance reasons Added an option to remove all existing auto-generated categories and playlists Unfortunately, the new option to remove all existing auto-generated categories and playlists won't work for the playlists generated with the previous beta, since I added a new Auto-Generated field in order to handle it. The easiest way to remove the playlists generated by the previous beta is just to remove the playlist files from the LaunchBox\Data\Playlists folder while LaunchBox is closed. Going forward, you can use this dialog to remove them now as well.

I just did some performance testing over here. I added over 1,000 playlists and my LaunchBox is starting up in about 20 seconds. Granted, I do have a fast machine and that is slower than it was before, but at some point there's gonna be a tradeoff and certain things are just going to require better hardware. I may get back to some performance improvements before the official release, but there may not be a good solution. I'm actually tempted to remove the options to auto-generate developers and publishers playlists because there's just so many of them and it gets a bit unruly. So that's a question for everyone, does anyone here envision wanting developer and publisher playlists?

I am aware of that issue. Playlists will update after a restart but the cache is currently not updating automatically when game metadata changes. Sort by in Big Box makes sense; I'll add that to my list for the next poll.

It can indeed be themed using the MusicNotificationView.xaml file in the Big Box custom themes.

I wanted to update everyone here to let folks know that we're again in need of some new media. I just added some playlist auto-generation options to go along with the new nested options: This means that in LB/BB 9.0, users will be able to easily generate child wheels for each of their platforms, based on genres, play modes, regions, developers, and publishers. It's a bit of an impossible mission to attempt to create clear logos for all developers and publishers, but eventually I think we should be able to fill in the gaps for genres, play modes, and regions at least (there's really only a handful for each). I'd recommend playing around with the latest beta so you can wrap your head around how all this stuff works, but it basically allows you to do stuff that's similar to what we did for Arcade for all platforms. We could certainly use videos for them as well, but that gets a lot more complicated because people may want platform-specific videos for each genre in their collection, for example, so that certainly opens up a whole new can of worms (imagine having a separate video for NES Platformers, NES Shooters, Genesis Fighters, etc.). Regardless, here's a list of clear logos that we can use to fill in the gaps: All Games Favorites Genres Play Modes Regions Developers Publishers Action Adventure Casino Construction and Management Simulation Education Fighting Horror Life Simulation Music Party Quiz Role-Playing Sandbox Stealth Strategy Vehicle Simulation Cooperative Multiplayer Single Player Europe Japan North America Thanks all!

Looking awesome @harryoke and @Padou. Sorry for my delayed responses here. I'll get another round of videos uploaded to the server here soon.

This is indeed one concern I had. It is going to be a tradeoff at some point. If you have a large collection, it may be best not to create playlists for developers and publishers, as they tend to have the most playlists by far. Ah yes. I'll add that to my list.

No worries Nicolas; thanks so much for all your help over the years.

Beta 3 is out now with a new "Auto-Generate Child Playlists" feature: This option is available when right-clicking on platforms in the LaunchBox sidebar while in Platform Categories view. It allows you to generate child playlists for All Games, Genres, Regions, Play Modes, Developers, and/or Publishers and optionally put them in child categories. Now we're gonna need a bunch of new media for Big Box.

If you run the Download Metadata and Media Wizard and tell it not to overwrite existing fields, then no metadata will be overwritten and you'll get any new images that are available. Also, I could be wrong, but I think the MAME metadata is always prioritized if you're working with MAME/arcade, even when updating metadata. I haven't specifically tested for this, but I remember working on it back when we did the MAME overhaul.