Jason Carr

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.

Thank you Owls. Yeah, there are emulators that are definitely much better suited for some of those platforms. We use the MAME metadata in order to process everything correctly, so we would need a different solution for the non-MAME stuff.

The playlists that are created are specifically for MAME arcade games. The playlists you're referring to are either not playable (or barely playable) with MAME, or are not arcade playlists.

That's a good thought; currently you can't but I might be able to add that in eventually.

This might be something that @CriticalCid would need to help with, though he may be on a much-needed break ftm. Make sure that all the DLL files in the Themes\Unified\Plugins folder are "unlocked" (from File properties). My only other thought is that it could be a resolution issue if you're not running a typical resolution or a resolution that the theme supports.

Do the videos play if you use the default theme? Sorry if you've already answered that question. You can also try switching between video playback engines to see if that makes any difference.

I plan to attempt to fix this soon, but honestly I've tried to fix it in the past without success. I think Steam's API is either being glitchy or they're somehow blocking us again. I will revisit soon.

Do you have the game videos from EmuMovies? If they're playing in full screen but not there, then that does sound like something odd is going on.