Jason Carr

There is no way. Just kidding, but I really have no idea what that means or what your collection actually looks like. Regardless though, if you can't update the metadata, then the playlists and most of the new features are not going to work.

Also, with your permission @dragon57, @Padou, and @CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT, I'd like to get you guys' videos uploaded to the server so that they can be downloaded directly via the theme videos downloader in LaunchBox. Just want to check with you all to make sure you're okay with that. You can PM me if needed.

First off, I want to thank all of the amazing media and theme creators we have in this community for the incredible work they put in day in and day out. I'm constantly amazed how much awesome stuff gets uploaded here (and elsewhere) and I'm forever grateful for all of it. I wanted to let everyone know that LaunchBox 8.6 will be released soon with a lot of new features, including themes for LaunchBox (same theming engine as Big Box!) and a huge MAME overhaul, with updated metadata and a brand new full-set importer for MAME 0.200 (which is easy to update for new MAME versions). Most importantly though, there are a bunch of brand new automatically-populated playlists that will be immensely useful for peoples' libraries: 2-Player Games 4-Player Games Ball & Paddle Games Beat Em Ups Board & Card Games Fighting Games Flying Games Light Gun Games Maze Games MultiGames Pinball Arcade Platform Games Puzzle Games Racing Games Rhythm Games Run & Gun Games Shoot Em Ups Shooter Games Sports Games Of course all these new playlists will need images and videos! Thanks to @RetroHumanoid we already have some great videos available for most of them, but as we have so many video options for the rest of the platforms and playlists out there, I'd love to see some more options for these as well. And of course we'll need images: Clear Logo Banner Fanart I'll be able to include the best clear logo and banner images with LaunchBox as we've done in the past with all the other playlists, and of course we can make all the videos available for download using the "Download Platform/Playlist Theme Videos" option in LaunchBox. Thank you all once again for all the amazing work, and I can't wait to see what's to come.

I don't think it will matter with this latest beta, sans for clones (which you're not using) and games that might have been removed or added from MAME since your set was created. Let me know if you have any issues with the playlists though, as that would mean that some of the metadata didn't come through. You might find that you get better results though if you start over with a full set and prioritize regions with using the new full set importer (assuming you have the disk space).

Adding a single game will still use the updated metadata.

Beta 8 is out now with a fix for the Namco System 22 playlist, which was incorrectly set the to CPS3 games. If you use Tools > Create Missing MAME Playlists it should fix the issue (assuming you had already downloaded them all from beta 7). Edit: It looks like you do have to first delete your existing Namco System 22 playlist, however.

A few minutes isn't normal though, but this could be due to a bunch of different factors, including the size of your collection and your hardware specs.

I just tested it myself editing a single game. I think what you're seeing happening in the background is just simply the data saving procedures. Any time data is saved, the process happens in the background and it's very good these days at maxing out the CPU, as it should be. On my system it takes around 5 seconds for the CPU activity to calm down, which is normal.

I'm guessing what's happening is that games are re-caching or refreshing. Any game that is edited automatically clears its cache and then the cache is rebuilt. It's possible that the progress bar at the top isn't updating in that scenario.

Alright, beta 7 is out now with the following: - Fixed: Gif images were not displaying in the LaunchBox Game Details Sidebar - Fixed: The list view in LaunchBox was not sorting secondarily by title when other columns were the primary sort - Fixed: LaunchBox was occasionally creating Manuals, Music, and Videos folders in emulator directories - The very last iteration of game controller performance improvements have been reverted to the previous version due to feedback suggesting that it made it worse; we should still be good to go so long as "Use All Controllers" is unchecked on afflicted systems - The right-click menu cache on startup was causing some delays, so that has been removed; it was mostly moot anyways since calculations need to run on a per-game basis. The main menu caching does still happen; let me know if you're still seeing significant startup delays as a result. - New Premium Feature: Now that MAME/Arcade metadata is much more accurate, the MAME/Arcade playlists have been overhauled to use the auto-filtering playlist system instead of a list of games (which turns out to be much more effective and also more performant). In addition, many new playlists have been added, including playlists for 2-player and 4-player games, as well as various genres like Beat Em Ups, Racing Games, etc. These new playlist options are available in the new "Import MAME Arcade Full Set" wizard as well as the "Create Missing Arcade/MAME Playlists" option from the Tools menu. Please keep in mind though that you will need to update and overwrite your metadata for your MAME games or the new playlists will not work properly. - Improvement: The Download Metadata and Media and Import ROMs from Files wizards have been updated to prioritize the new, more accurate MAME data For users that have used the new full-set MAME arcade importer in previous betas, you should be able to re-run the wizard and it will automatically update your metadata with the new information (Source was added to the MAME metadata in order to facilitate the new playlists). It will also offer to create all the new playlists. The good news here is that you shouldn't have to delete your MAME games and start over. For users that have not yet used the new full-set MAME arcade importer, it is definitely recommended to delete your Arcade platform and playlists and start over, because you'll get a whole ton of new features (such as additional apps with the clones and much better filtering/prioritizations). However, if you don't want to start over, you can run the Download Metadata and Media wizard and tell it to overwrite all metadata (uncheck all media so that you don't re-download anything). This will update your MAME games to use the much improved MAME metadata, and allow the new playlists to work properly. The new playlists won't work very well at all if you continue to use the previous metadata. Finally, you can create all the new playlists and update the old ones by going to Tools > Create Missing MAME/Arcade Playlists.

@Axenn I think we actually might have a bug in .Next that I need to resolve with the plugins (they're not showing up in at least one specific spot). This should be resolved soon. Feel free to add your work to the Downloads section at any time, assuming it's not harmful or anything like that. If it's potentially buggy though, it'd probably be best to let folks know that in the download thread.

No, you can simply re-run the importer and it will use the updated MAME data and add any missing games. The one thing it will not do, however, is remove games that have been removed from MAME. So if you want the absolute cleanest set, then yes, you would need to remove the games and reimport. However, that shouldn't really be necessary.

The Razer Hydra is a motion sensing controller. It sounds like either it's not configured properly or maybe it's sending out a signal while it's not being used. You should be able to just disable the controller in LaunchBox (turn off Use All Controllers and just select the controller that you want to use instead of the Hydra). Either way, it's quite an edge case and unfortunately I can't spend $400 on one to troubleshoot it.

Good to know; I'll get this fixed for the next beta. @neil9000 is correct in saying that the new importer is not going to work well for you unless you use a proper full set (that's why full set is in the title of the new wizard). You can always continue to use the previous, normal ROM importer just fine.

Lol, wow. Alright, I've reverted the code to what it was when it was confirmed working. I'm more confused on this one than ever, honestly. I hope the testing isn't just being misleading. Anyways, the changes will be out in the next beta later today. The strange thing is I tested everything on the GPD Win 2 and had no issues at all, even with Use All Controllers checked. But if it's fixed for when it's unchecked, I'm just gonna leave it alone for now.

This will actually slow the theme down, not speed it up. It increases the size of the image cache. Edit: Oic what you mean. No, it's optimized by default, so it's best not to override it.

@ReignStumble I forgot about this, but there's a property on the FlowControl that you can use like this: MaxVerticalImageResolutionOverride="1000" I think it should be safe to have a high value in there for platforms, since there's typically not very many of them. For games though, if you set it too high then users will start running out of RAM in big games lists.

Wow, then I'm somewhat baffled. If you want to PM the theme, I'll do some testing to see what's going on.

Hi @ReignStumble, excited to see the theme. Make sure in your Big Box options as well that you have the highest setting for CoverFlow quality. Beyond that, if it's still blurry, it's probably because there's not enough RAM in your system in order to manage displaying all the high-res images. Are you on 8 gigs of RAM?

Hi @GzStation, no need to send any more money our way, though I do really appreciate the purchase. I'm not exactly following everything in your post, but if a Steam game isn't in the LaunchBox Games Database, then metadata for that game won't be downloaded. Per things disappearing when changing play mode settings, honestly that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Feel free to open another topic and we can work through whatever's going on.

It's been that way since the beginning, and it's by design. If you just want to get rid of it, you can turn off banner images.

Try rebooting, and try going back to the official 8.5 release. Honestly, I'm doubtful that the issues you're having have anything to do with the betas, but that would be a good test. It might be faulty drivers or something of that nature, so I would check to see if any drivers were updated or Windows updates were installed recently.

It already is in a separate thread, but something in the detection algorithms apparently still manages to hitch things up (makes sense that the controller specifically would be lagged). However, I seemed to have fixed the issue with the latest beta on my GPD Win 2, so it might be fixed for good.

I just put out beta 6 which does have some minor controller performance improvements, but I still doubt it will fix the lag with Use All Controllers. I'm going to be doing some more testing with my GPD Win 2, but feel free to let me know if there's any difference. The way the "Use All Controllers" feature works is that it parses the system for new controllers every five seconds, and if you want LaunchBox to automatically find new controllers, there's not really any way around it that I can see. So beyond what I've done, we might be out of luck. At least most people will be able to just turn that feature off if they're experiencing lag.

Alright, beta 6 is out with the following: - Changed the new MAME arcade full-set importer to ask for the folder path of the ROMs, and then use the full path for the application path instead of just the MAME game identifier. This should hopefully solve issues launching MAME games in Retroarch or other emulators that don't work as MAME was designed. - Fixed the issue launching additional apps when the file does not exist, and made the removal of that error message more robust by checking if the platform is Arcade or MAME. If the platform is Arcade or MAME, or if the emulator name contains the word MAME, or if the "use file name only without file extension or folder path" option is checked on the emulator, then LaunchBox will not check to make sure that the ROM file exists before launching the game. This is still needed, because even with full ROM paths in the application path field, some of the ROM files may not actually exist for MAME if the user has a merged set (or is launching a ROMless or CHD-only MAME game). Whew. - The image cache folders have been cleaned up proper. Upon starting up LaunchBox or Big Box, LaunchBox will check for the old image cache folders, delete any unused files that are relics from the old LaunchBox interface, and rename the folders to LaunchBox\Images\Cache-LB and LaunchBox\Images\Cache-BB. This should remove any confusion about what goes where, and get rid of any unnecessary wasted space. - The main menu and the right-click menu in LaunchBox are now being cached on startup, because I've noticed that sometimes the menus take way too long to load the first time you click on them. Caching them on startup seems to have done the trick, and it shouldn't affect startup time since I'm doing it in a separate thread. - Made some minor controller performance improvements. In the Big Box controller lag thread we've confirmed that the previous changes I had made fixed the controller lag issues, but only when Use All Controllers is unchecked. I'm not certain if the additional changes I just made will improve things for when Use All Controllers is checked or not; we'll see how that goes. Beyond what I've done though, I don't think there's anything else I can do, since there's no getting around the additional control parsing that happens every 5 seconds if you want LaunchBox to automatically pick up any controller that it finds. It's worth noting though that if you're experiencing controller lag of any kind, it's recommended to disable Use All Controllers in Big Box.