Jason Carr

Alright, beta 8 is out. We finally have the rest of the LaunchBox.Next system menu working properly, though there are still a few items that will just say "Coming soon" due to missing LaunchBox.Next features (such as the game details sidebar, image groups, etc.). From here I'm planning to focus on fixing any obvious glitches and adding a few housekeeping things like automatic updates, and then we'll look to put out the official release early next week. I believe the issues with the Options screen are fixed in this beta; let me know if not.

LaunchBox.Next is still beta, so you must use a beta release. We'll release it officially when it's ready (and we're confident it's not going to mess up people's data, for instance). You can always install another copy of LaunchBox, update to the beta, and play with it that way.

The options menu is what screwed everything up, including the language. I'm looking into that bug.

Odd. It sounds like somehow your XML files got corrupted @We1Dont7Die when LaunchBox.Next crashed. I guess this is why we always emphasize that people need backups if they use the betas especially. Regardless, I'm sorry that happened. Your best bet to get things back the way they were is to try and restore XML files from the LaunchBox\Backups folder. Let us know if you need help with that. If you have a complete separate backup, all the better.

As mentioned above, beta 7 is out now with a bit more implemented in LaunchBox.Next:

As best I can tell, this seems to be a one-off, as I haven't heard this from anyone else. If you can zip up and send me your Data folder in a PM @Drybonz I'll see if I can figure out what's going on. The options will apply to Big Box (they'll actually have separate settings for Big Box hopefully), but that's not quite implemented yet. Let me know if you're still seeing this in beta 7, which just came out.

One more thing; please let me know if games are still not populating on first launch in beta 7.

Hey all, beta 7 is out now with more of the LaunchBox.Next system menu working. All menu items have been populated in the system menu, but not all of the items work (and some of the Tools menu items currently just don't do anything at all...working on that). However, I have the bottom progress bar working section implemented, and a number of items do use it properly, such as Download Metadata and Media. I'm still trudging through implementing all the menu items, which is the worst part of all of this, but I expect to be done with the rest of the menu items by the end of the week, after which we'll likely put out the official release. After that we can focus on getting image groups and arrange by working in LaunchBox.Next, and then of course the right-hand game details sidebar, which is the bulk of the remaining features to implement. We're getting there. At the same time, we're also working on the two Retroarch-related items from the poll: including Retroarch cores in the Launch With menu and simplifying Retroarch core selection. Those may or may not make it into the next official release. Thanks all.

Hey all, please let me know if this is fixed in beta 7 which I just put out. If not, I'll circle back.

The RAM cache code has not been touched in literally a year, and I haven't heard about any issues for a very long time, so I'm pretty doubtful that it has a leak at this point. That said, the RAM cache has nothing to do with the total RAM usage, so you can't really assume that it has a leak based on total RAM usage (there's a lot more in LaunchBox that uses RAM than the RAM cache). It's also worth noting that the "RAM cache" as it's known in LaunchBox currently will be removed entirely once LaunchBox.Next is completed and we finish that migration. WPF has its own improved methods for managing images cached in RAM. To answer your last question though @We1Dont7Die, it flushes out the last used cover art to make room for new art when the RAM cache fills up.

Thanks @eatkinola; I'll look into that.

Thank you Alec; that makes sense. That was probably a side effect of how the original LaunchBox was programmed. You should be able to get the startup folder with System.Windows.Forms.Application.GetStartupPath(), which should ensure that you're in the right folder.

None of them are sorted incorrectly for me in my testing. I ask the questions that I ask for good reason lol. Glad to hear that the plugin issues have been fixed.

It doesn't really matter if it happens or not in the old LaunchBox; I'm guessing that somehow the plugin is assuming that the current directory is a certain directory (an unsafe assumption), which is likely causing the issue. Yeah, I get that. I'm wondering though if it happens for any of the sidebar options or just for Publisher and Developer. My hunch is that it happens for everything except for Platform Category. Ah, I see. Yeah, I haven't yet implemented background fading for LaunchBox.Next.

Beta 6 is out, though it's only fixes for this beta. I'm hoping the issue that some users are experiencing where the games list is empty on initial startup is fixed. Please let me know if anyone is still seeing that issue.

Beta 6 is out now guys with fixes for the plugin issues and the items listed above. @eatkinola Let me know if you see any more plugin issues.

I'm hoping this is fixed for the next beta, which should be out shortly. This is related and should be fixed once the above issue is fixed. This issue appears to be caused by that plugin; somehow the plugin is looking for the PCSX2.EXE file in the wrong place, and so it's getting a FileNotFoundException. I don't think there's anything I can do to fix this since the plugin is somehow getting the wrong path. I'm guessing this is a "current directory" issue somehow, but the plugin developer will have to solve it. Image types are not yet hooked up, so currently it always just shows the Front Boxes image group (which may have a series of priorities depending on your settings). Background images should be working properly and the same as LaunchBox, so I'm not sure what's going on there. Fixed for the next beta. Controller automation has not yet been implemented in LaunchBox.Next. That's odd. Might be the same weird sorting bug we ran into with LaunchBox. Of course I can't replicate it, but I'll look into it. Does this apply to everything except for platform categories?

Whoops. Yup, I'll fix that for the next beta guys. Sorry for the breaking change there.

Beta 5 is out now guys, finally with the options to filter out games that are missing images or videos: - New Feature: Five new options have been added to the View menu in LaunchBox to hide games missing videos, front box art, screenshots, clear logos, and/or background images. These options will trigger a process to populate a missing media cache that will allow quick navigation. There's also an option underneath these five items to "Refresh All Missing Media" in case you've manually added or removed images directly from the file system. Getting this to perform well without any issues was a major challenge; we ended up adding properties to each game to specify/cache whether particular media is missing. You can force (re-)populating the cache using the "Refresh All Missing Media" option. It should automatically run the necessary process when you check one of the options as well. If you don't check any of these options, things will behave exactly as they did before and you won't ever have to worry about any of it. LaunchBox.Next has also been updated in this beta with the beginnings of the main menu (hamburger icon). The Tools and Help menus are still empty, and some of the items that are there will pop up a "Coming soon" box, but we're getting there. I have two more major things to implement in LaunchBox.Next before it's mostly there: the game details side bar, and the working/progress functionality on the bottom. We'll implement the remainder of the menus as we work on those features. I haven't decided exactly when we'll put out the next official release, but it will likely be out before everything is completed with LaunchBox.Next.

@ckp Thanks for those reports. Much of that has not been hooked up yet. I'll look into those error messages. @Chris Kant We're gonna hopefully get those to save before the official release.

Beta 5 is out now folks. The main menu (hamburger icon) is now partially implemented (Tools and Help menu are still empty, and some items will pop up a message saying "Coming soon"). We're getting there...

Maybe for the future, yes, though I can see that being just as much of a drama causer as a solution.

I wasn't the one to mark it deleted, but I can see why they did. It's a community-driven site, so if the first three moderators all agree that it should be deleted, it's deleted. This is by design.

@Undertherainbow I'm sorry for the wasted effort there. EDuke32 though, as awesome as it is, is still Duke Nukem 3D, of course, so I'm not sure that it qualifies as homebrew. It's more of a mod, though I guess it could be considered a port, since it's available for multiple OSs. Also the verbiage about vibrators is unfortunately inappropriate for the site.

Okay, I just re-sent the license email. Let me know if you still don't get it. Not sure why our emails wouldn't be getting through to you.