Jason Carr

I think he meant something different Neil.

This is currently done on purpose to keep the experience smooth, rather than create a jarring jump in frames. I think if you turn transitions off it would be a non-issue. But the point of transitions of course is to smooth out the experience.

Good to hear that it's at least feeling more responsive. It apparently doesn't resolve the controller lag issue for everyone, but I have a feeling it does solve what a lot of users were seeing. But there's still some sort of odd hiccup that @noiseordinance is running into at least.

If you edit those playlists, there is an option to "Include this playlist with platforms". Unchecking that should remove it from the platform list.

Glad to hear it worked. I'm currently running around like a chicken with my head cut off hunting bugs (and I'm bit a worn out to be honest), so if possible, I'd prefer if you could just send me a link or a screenshot or something first.

Platform.DeviceImagePath should work, but it's not a proper binding, which means that it may not update as games change. It might still work for you though, so it's worth a shot.

You know what, can you zip up and PM me your LaunchBox\Data folder? For all we know it could be specific to your collection.

Well that is telling at least. If Big Box isn't loading any media, you would think that it's not a performance issue that's causing the problem, at least in your case. I'm starting to think maybe @Z3R0B4NG is right. We may also have a couple different issues here for different people, which could be why this has been such a disaster to solve.

Though this is possible, it's not very likely. I think people would be having horrible issues in games if the controller drivers were hitching like that. More than likely it's a thread prioritization issue in Big Box, which I'm certainly hoping is fixed in the latest beta (but like I said, I can't even really test for it). Still, thanks for diving into this @Z3R0B4NG.

Alright, a new beta is out that I'm hoping will improve things, but honestly it's still a bit of a shot in the dark. It does seem to have improved things on my slowest machines, but I'm not necessarily convinced that I ever had the problem on my machines to begin with. Regardless, if you've been experiencing controller lag, please test the new beta and let me know how it goes. We'll have to do some extensive testing before we can confirm if the issue is really fixed, since it seems to be somewhat sporadic for the folks that it affects.

Beta 5 is out now with hopes that it will solve the lag that a handful of people are still experiencing with controllers. Nothing else is added or changed in this beta, but there have been some significant tweaks to the Big Box code, so testing is appreciated.

That is a very good point. Would be good to hear what people's settings are, assuming they're experiencing the issue with the wheels. What views are you using with the default theme? The text lists or the clear logo wheels? I'm not aware of any themes that bypass everything, unfortunately. That would be interesting to test though. What you could do is copy your LaunchBox with the data to a new folder, and just don't copy any media. It should be fairly small without media.

Hey all, I'm diving into this today. I've done some significant testing on three systems so far, the oldest of which is a Core 2 Duo. I've had the best luck getting hitches on that system, but only in the platforms/categories lists (not in the games lists). I'm still not sure if I'm seeing the same problem, as typically I get the hitches about three times in the platforms lists and then they go away completely until I close out and restart. My current question is this: what views and themes are you using when it occurs? Are you using the text lists or the clear logo wheels? Or CoverFlow? I know @noiseordinance was experiencing the issue in the text game lists (videos are posted in the other thread). I need to test them with that particular theme though. What theme is that @noiseordinance? At least in some cases, it seems that the hitches are being caused by Big Box trying to load details for the selected game or platform while scrolling to other games/platforms. It still escapes me why I don't experience those issues though on any of my machines. I might just have to try some blind changes here again to try and get this fixed.

Sure, sorry for any false assumptions we made. It can be a touchy subject around here.

There are big differences in the law between personal use and selling other people's work. A lot of us put a lot of money and effort towards purchasing any game that is available to purchase (myself included). I recognize that not everyone can do that, and I also recognize the ridiculousness of paying $10 for a 20 year old game, but saying that everyone in emulation is playing illegally is very false and also very bad for the scene.

Hi @jimh54, the truth is that it will take a while to get everything going. LaunchBox is the easiest thing to set up by far out of all the frontends available, but migrating everything over from Hyperspin is not automatic for everything all at once. The LaunchBox YouTube channel is probably your best bet, however. I'm also not sure who you purchased the drive from or if they've included an illegal license to Big Box, but we do know at least one drive seller who is doing just that. If you have access to Big Box already and your name is not at the top of the LaunchBox interface, then it's guaranteed to be pirated. It's also worth noting that unfortunately drive sellers are illegally profiting off of the work of so many in the gaming community, most notably the actual game developers themselves, and drives populated with ROMs and such are not legal (neither selling nor buying them). I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news.

I think I get what you're saying. I wouldn't recommend doing a bunch of stuff like that directly in the XMLs (or at least make a backup) because things are bound to go wrong. That said, stuff is spread out through the playlist and platform XMLs, the Parents.xml, and the Platforms.xml files. It's probably going to be more difficult to manually edit the stuff than it would be to just do it in the LB interface. In the future I have plans to make auto-generating stuff like genre playlists easier.

The pause screen stuff is on the radar, as well as the start screen stuff. At this point, though, I don't know what will be next. Both features will be themable though, so they'll be fully flexible as to what goes on them.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean here. What are you wanting to do in the XML?

Hi @Ranthalion75, I will look into this. Sorry we missed your original post.

Beta 4 is out now with the following: - Fixed the null reference error when adding a new platform - Fixed playlists not sorting properly in Big Box - Fixed a bug where Big Box was taking a long time to exit (staying open in Task Manager) when Allow Sleep is enabled in the Big Box options - Fixed various bugs that were causing platforms and playlists to show up both in the root and in their respective platform categories (and various other related issues). When migrating from the old platform category system on update, platforms and playlists without a platform category should now be placed only in the root, while platforms and playlists with a platform category should show up only under their respective categories. Basically, things should look as they did before on updating. Anyone who has a backup of their data before upgrading to the betas and wants to test this, it would be appreciated. I am currently taking a short hiatus from new features for a bit to focus on performance improvements and bug fixes, both related to these new changes and bugs that exist but that are rare (and that I haven't been able to replicate), such as the controller performance issues that a handful of people are experiencing.

Hence why I think maybe we need to restrict it, to reduce that confusion. Categories should be used anywhere you need a parent category that won't directly contain any games. There's no point in using a playlist for a "Regions" node, because all it will be doing is hosting playlists, and won't contain any games directly in itself. Unfortunately, there's not really a good way to switch it from a playlist to a platform category currently. I don't think this will be a big issue once we reduce the confusion, but it might be. What you can do right now is just delete that "Regions" playlist and then add a new "Regions" platform category to the same spot. The child playlists should all be thrown into the root, and then you can move them back into the new platform category. Seems like that could use some work though.

Thank you @mdreffet.

Okay, after looking at your data @Dan I see what's going on. This is an interesting thing to think about though. The issue is that the "Regions" item is a playlist instead of a platform category. Since that playlist contains no games, it is showing 0 for the count, instead of the number of nested items underneath it. If you change it to be a platform category instead, it should fix the issue. However, that is certainly an area of potential confusion for folks. I'm wondering if there's ever any reason to nest things under playlists? If we restrict that it might help to prevent some potential confusion. Thoughts, anyone? I know that confusion will be significantly reduced already, now that we've updated the side bar right click menu so that you have to select a platform, playlist, or category when you add a new item. I think part of the problem here is that it was confusing what you were adding in previous betas. But I still think we might be able to reduce confusion further by only allowing things to be nested underneath platforms or categories; I can't think of any specific reasons why people would need to nest things under playlists.

Okay, though if we have a bug with adding playlists to platforms I still need to get it fixed. If you can replicate, let me know. Then you can PM me your data and I can look into what's going on.