Jason Carr

@pasteko This will be on the upcoming poll, and we will see how much of a priority it truly is. It's entirely possible that it really is what the community wants the most, but it's also entirely possible that it's only desired by a handful of very vocal power users. We'll find out, and if it turns out to be a priority, I'm more than happy to implement it. Per retro achievements and community ratings, I can guarantee you there is more excitement in the community surrounding those two features (at least for retro achievements) than this particular feature. One man's necessity is another man's wasted effort.

@teeedubb Per the above, you'll need to wait until tomorrow and then re-run the Download Metadata and Media wizard to get the proper star rating values. Going forward it shouldn't be an issue. I suspect that the star ratings in Big Box just aren't working because of the weird values, so that should be fixed as well.

And beta 11 is out guys. I updated the version of 7-Zip and fixed @alnyden's issues above.

@alnyden I believe I figured out the performance issue. There was an issue with the background caching happening unnecessarily when a game was selected *if* you override the sort type for a playlist. I'll have a new beta out shortly. Glad we got this one figured out.

I am actually seeing some performance issues there on my system as well, but only when using your data. So that's good that I'm able to replicate it. It seems to be related to playlists (having a bunch of games and a bunch of playlists). I'll look into it; I may or may not be able to improve the performance before the official release, but I'll give it a shot. I don't want to change *too much* stuff before the release at this point. Per the other weird community star rating value issue, I'm really glad you reported that lol. We apparently had some ratings coming in from people with different culture settings that were insanely high, and that was skewing the ratings. I've put several safeguards in place now to fix it, so we should be good to go. However, you will have to download new metadata using the wizard in order to fully fix it. The catch is that you'll also need to grab new metadata from the LaunchBox Games Database, and LaunchBox will only do this once a day, so you may have to wait until tomorrow. Whew.

@tbm I've played with this a bit and haven't been able to replicate it, but I'm wondering if maybe it's because the platform is set to a different theme? I don't have all your themes in my test, so that could be it. Try setting the platform to a specific theme, and then set it to a specific view and see if that solves the issue. There's some complications there because certain views are unsupported in certain themes, and so that can make it a tricky process. It's also possible that I have a glitch related to non-existent views in various themes, but I think this should fix the issue regardless (hopefully).

Good to know, guys. I've updated it for the next beta.

Good to hear @alnyden, though unfortunately I can't make sense of that since nothing I changed would likely have anything to do with performance. So just FYI, I'm not sure that whatever was causing the issue had anything to do with the update. I'll download your data and check out the star rating problem.

@imagamejunky Unfortunately I had to remove those file attachments for security reasons, just in case they contain any sensitive information like your EmuMovies credentials. Instead of posting them here one by one, please zip them up and private message them to me. Since attract mode is working perfectly, my guess is that there's something screwy going on with keyboard or game controller input. That also means that most likely I won't be able to reproduce it since I don't have your hardware, though we can certainly try. The first thing I would do though is remove any attached controllers or extra keyboards, etc. to figure out if there's a specific device that's causing the issue. We've even seen some weird gaming keyboards that act as game controllers in some cases with crappy drivers that cause problems.

That is indeed correct. The only information sent up is a user identifier (just a random ID to prevent you from rating multiple times), the game ID, and your star rating value. If you are logged into the cloud in LaunchBox, then that ID will be tied to your account and your ratings will also show on the LaunchBox Games Database website for you as well. If you're not logged into the cloud, then all we know about you is that you're a random person with ID "323DF-E2353-FDSEF-ERES43-34225" for example. (And of course that you rated Super Mario World at 3 stars. Shame on you.)

Thanks for the purchase @ernie12121! Glad you're all set.

Thank you @dukeemu; I have the translation updated for the next beta. Should be out later today.

Hey all, new with LaunchBox 7.15 (which should be out early next week) are community star ratings features for LaunchBox and Big Box. These features will allow the community to share what the best games are for every platform. You can download all the community's ratings for your games by going to Tools > Download Metadata and Media in LaunchBox, and then you can sort and filter by the ratings in both LaunchBox and Big Box. Your ratings will also optionally be submitted to the games database for other users when you rate your games. Check out the screenshots below: There are many pieces to these new features; ETA Prime will put out a tutorial video shortly after the 7.15 release next week, but we can use this thread for discussion in the mean time. There are a few related settings you can tweak under Tools > Options > Search: They should be mostly straightforward and obvious; the minimum number of community ratings setting will allow you to specify how many community ratings are required before they are considered valid and show up in filtering and sorting (for games that you have not personally rated). Remember that you have to download the ratings via Tools > Download Metadata and Media before any community ratings will show up. Enjoy!

Hey all, with LaunchBox 7.15 which should be out early next week comes retro achievements. They are of course currently available in the latest beta. Retro achievements really are a game-changer; we think they'll add a new level of fun to your retro games. To get started, just sign up for an account at http://retroachievements.org, plug your credentials into LaunchBox, and all of your achievements will show up in both LaunchBox and Big Box. Here's some screenshots: A tutorial from ETA Prime will be out shortly after the release, but in the mean time we can use this thread for discussion. Do take note that unfortunately Sega Genesis does not work currently due an issue with the retroachievements.org API; they are working on that issue so it should be resolved soon. Happy achieving!

@imagamejunky Please try rebooting, first off. It's odd that there would be any performance difference between those two betas, so my immediate guess is that your machine just needs rebooted. The added media certainly wouldn't cause any performance issues, but I do know that playlists can increase startup time, but it shouldn't affect anything else in the app.

You may also need to refresh the image cache using Tools > Refresh All Images or select the games and right click > Refresh Images.

Alright, beta 10 is out now guys. It includes translation updates as well as the following fixes: - Fixed: When using the Text with Game Details view in Big Box, the logo at the top of the list was sometimes not updating - Fixed: Viewing videos full screen from the Big Box game details menu was sometimes not showing the video I've also spent some time trying to fix the occasional startup video black screen issue, but as I'm unable to replicate it regularly, it's both a challenge to fix and a challenge to even know if it is fixed (sigh). So it may or may not be fixed for this beta; please let me know if anyone is still seeing a black screen come up for the startup videos. Typically when this happens the sound will play but the screen will stay black while the startup video plays.

Thank you all! I have all translations updated in the latest beta which should be out shortly. We won't be putting out the official release until Monday (most likely), so there should be plenty of time still for the other translations and/or tweaks.

@tbm I'm having trouble replicating this. Can you PM me your LaunchBox\Data folder? Just zip it up and send it to me in a private message. That way I should be able to pinpoint it.

Finally got this issue fixed. It was quite a pain to figure out, but it just had to do with the order of how some things were loaded and how long the different videos took to load. The fix will be out in the next beta. Sadly no; that'd be nice to kill two birds with one stone, but no luck. That's what I just fixed...viewing videos fullscreen from the game details menu. Were you referring to something else?

This relies on the platform's folder being set to the correct value (Tools > Manage Platforms). I agree that we should automatically set that value in some cases, but it's tricky because we don't always want to set it and overwrite whatever the user has there. We may want to do something like only set it if it's the default path and there's no ROMs in that folder, or something of that nature. Something awry is going on there. I haven't seen either of those issues; just confirmed that Super Metroid is displaying properly for me. Retro achievements are disabled by default until you add your Retro achievements credentials in the settings. Can you zip up and send me your LaunchBox\Data folder @alnyden? That way I can look to see exactly what's going on. Be sure to PM it to me instead of posting it here for privacy reasons.

I can confirm this is a real issue, regardless of whether you're using WMP or VLC. I am able to replicate it with VLC, but only on some videos. It's a pretty strange issue, but I'll get it fixed.

Thank you all very much. Got this finally figured out and fixed for the next beta.

@tbm I wasn't aware of this issue; thanks for reporting it. I'll take a look and see what I can figure out.

Thank you for reporting this @Wanderer189. Found the problem and fixed it for the next beta.