Jason Carr

It doesn't ask for the location because proper MAME does not reference the files themselves when launching the game. But regardless, I recommend just waiting for the next beta which I'm hoping will be out later today.

It looks like I'm gonna have to add another step to the wizard to ask for the folder path, just for the sake of Retroarch or any other emulator that users might want to use. I'll do that shortly, which should solve all the issues.

Lol! Nevermind, I'm removing the custom theming from LaunchBox completely.

The new MAME arcade full-set importer is only for full sets, so no, you would get no benefit if you're not interested in an automatically-filtered full set. Hmm, the names on the games shouldn't be changing afaik, unless you're overwriting all metadata. Perhaps that's an issue when you overwrite metadata? If you delete your games, the ROMs and media will remain, but you'll lose the metadata attached to the games (though the same metadata will be picked up on imports so you only have to worry if you've customized the metadata). The LaunchBox.Next interface should be completely customizable; there are very few limits, and any limitations can be removed with a plugin if necessary. You could create a brand new interface that's near unidentifiable from LaunchBox if you wanted to.

@djFai Sorry for the trouble. Please see the details in the beta thread here: Regardless, yes, you can safely install the latest beta over top and you won't lose any data. Just make sure you install into the correct folder.

The favorites and recent sections there were never tweaked much because they were never very popular (and they're not used much in custom themes). It's true that they don't really work with clear logos. I don't currently plan to do much with it for the time being, but it's certainly possible to fix things up in XAML.

It's a pretty sweet little device. Runs Big Box butter smooth without that controller issue. Having MAME on the go is amazing.

I just acquired a GPD Win 2 (which is amazing BTW) and I'm seeing the same thing; hiccups are there, but only with Use All Controllers enabled. I'll look to see if there's anything I can do to fix that, if possible.

Beta 5 is out now as well. Sorry for piecemailing all of these betas. I found a couple of beyond stupid bugs that I should've caught before the beta 4 release. @kmoney Noted about Rocket Launcher. @JesseBlue That is as intended, as most people want to prioritize their own region, rather than import the true original non-clone. That said, I see how we're missing that functionality to import only the true non-clones, regardless of region. Is there a reason why that's your preference? I just need to figure out if I'm missing something there. My understanding is that the original non-clone ROMs aren't necessarily the best versions of the games to run.

Beta 4 is out now with a small fix for users getting a "ROM file not found" error on starting up the newly imported MAME games. Thanks to @neil9000 for pointing the issue out. Also included in this beta is this: - New Premium Feature: Big Box now has options to allow or disable sleep, reboot, shut down, switch image type, switch view, and switch filter type (view type) while locked One question we still have with the new MAME full-set importer is whether or not it will work with Retroarch. MAME does not use files when launching games, which is why we had to create a whole separate import process for full sets, because we constantly had issues with missing games and such because there are some games that do not have any associated ROM files. Supposedly, though, from what I'm hearing, Retroarch does use the files, which doesn't quite make sense to me since sometimes the files don't even exist. If you use Retroarch for MAME, and can test, let me know how it goes. I don't use Retroarch for MAME personally, so I'd have to set it up to test.

Glad to hear it. I honestly don't think that would be a common request though, so unfortunately I don't think we'll likely be adding that (unless a bunch of users come forward to suggest otherwise).

No, nothing will be overwritten or lost if you update manually.

Sorry for the trouble. See the details here:

Hi @ZeSystem, I believe it's the ThumbnailListView and the ThumbnailGameView.

Local RAID 1 (mirroring) is a good idea. However, in my personal opinion using any other version of RAID is just asking for trouble. Experience tells me that more complicated versions of RAID (such as RAID 5) should never be used for backup purposes, because recovery can fail, rebuilding can fail, RAID cards can fail, etc. RAID can have software bugs just like everything else, and while working enterprise jobs I've seen companies lose massive amounts of data because a RAID card failed or technical support told them to do the wrong thing during a rebuild process. However, I do highly recommend services like Backblaze or Crashplan (I use Crashplan currently but it's expensive and now it's only focused on businesses). If the service is reliable and you have an unlimited internet connection, it does actually work out very well, though it does take months for the initial upload. I have 12 terabytes of business and home data in my Crashplan right now, and it keeps all past versions of all my files as well. Pretty useful. So my local solution is a NAS with RAID 1 arrays, built with OpenMediaVault (recommended as far as I'm concerned). That NAS also automatically backs up to Crashplan in the background. That, along with my Dropbox sync keeps at least four copies of all my most important data at any point in time. I probably go overboard a bit though because I have business data.

Alright, beta 3 is out now with a fix for the updater. Sorry for the trouble there guys. Unfortunately, the updater will only be fixed for upgrading *beyond* beta 3, because it was the update process that needed fixed. So, this still means that you'll need to manually run LaunchBox\Updates\LaunchBox-8.6-beta-3-Setup.exe after LaunchBox closes out with an update. Then, going forward, it should work as usual.

Sigh, I just realized I broke the updater with the last beta. I'll get it fixed, but it means that if you're on beta 1, you'll need to manually update to the next beta. After LaunchBox prompts you to update, it will close, but it won't automatically run the setup at that point. After it closes, you can manually run LaunchBox\Updates\LaunchBox-8.6-beta-2-Setup.exe, which will finish it up for you.

I would start with the RAM upgrade if you can, and see how it performs.

Certain themes can tax even relatively well-equipped systems. Unfortunately that hardware is no longer considered high-end. 8 gigs of RAM can be limiting in Big Box, as well as the 780ti. It also could be a hard drive performance issue if you're not using an SSD.

Good to see the new theming engine getting some good use already. Beta 2 is out now with the following: - New Feature: A new "Import MAME Arcade Full Set" wizard has been added to LaunchBox (under Tools > Import); this wizard will allow you to import a full set of the latest version of MAME games, and will work with merged, split, or non-merged sets. As a result, MAME imports no longer have to be tied to files. - New Feature: When importing a full set via the new "Import MAME Arcade Full Set" wizard, clones are optionally imported into additional apps. This allows you to have all clones accessible without cluttering your collection. - Improvement: The LaunchBox MAME metadata (used to filter and gather metadata for MAME games on import) has been updated to the MAME 0.200 data, and a new backend system has been put in place to easily update the data for new MAME versions in the future. Hooray! This completes the first part of the MAME overhaul item from the latest poll; the second part will be to implement a proper solution for MAME software sets. The new MAME importer will work with your existing games, but you'll get the best experience if you remove all of your arcade games and playlists and start over (you can of course keep all your media). It's also recommended that you have the latest version of MAME and the associated full set (0.200). Let me know how the new MAME Arcade Full Set importer works out for you guys. The data is a million times cleaner than the previous data, so I'm pretty happy with it.

This would be caused by system performance issues then.

Good to hear. The Use All Controllers option is certainly more resource-intensive. What it does is searches the computer for new controllers every so often, which may be causing the hiccups, as well as the previous threading issue that I fixed. So that is good to know. Let me know if you start to see any issues again with that option turned off. @thetwistedblue @noiseordinance Please try turning off Use All Controllers in the options to see if it fixes it for you as well. If Use All Controllers is the issue, I might be able to fix it, but I might not, since it's just the nature of parsing the system for new controllers.

Alright, sigh. Back to the drawing board then I guess. Can you all try turning off Use All Controllers in the options to see if that makes any difference?

...the betas do not yet consolidate the cache folders. I'm not sure of the exact method we'll use at this point, but something like that.

The polls are the best representations of milestones that we have, as I do my best to focus on the most-voted features as the priority. Unfortunately I'm not comfortable making further predictions or further public plans due to the frequency in which they change and the general flexibility of development.