Jason Carr

@Invader @neil9000 I remember reading somewhere that the retroachievements.org API is for some reason bugged with Sega Genesis, so unfortunately I don't think there's a way to properly fix it currently. I will stop that error from coming up though.

...and it's out!

First 7.15 beta is out now guys:

The first 7.15 beta is out guys with initial support for retro achievements! We may add more features before the official release, but the important stuff is there in LaunchBox. You can add your retroachievements.org account under Tools > Options > Search > Retro Achievements, and then achievements should start showing up in the sidebar. I'll be adding the achievements into Big Box next. Of course I'm open to feedback on the achievements stuff, because it's actually quite new to me, though I'm very excited about using it. Let me know how it goes.

Eventually, yes, however I don't think we'll be adding support for multiple users for this next release. Retro achievements will be mandatory, I say! MANDATORY!!! There are various different emulators available on their site. I do believe Retroarch is supported. Though honestly I'm not the right person to ask because I'm still new to it myself, in all honesty. Yup.

The only thing that could be an issue is that this could significantly increase their traffic once it officially comes out. So hopefully their servers can keep up. If not, we could certainly help out.

They're smart and they implemented an API early on to do exactly what we're looking to do. I did get the conversation started over there, but haven't received a response yet: http://retroachievements.org/viewtopic.php?t=5527 I have no doubt though that they won't have any issues with it. This is pretty much exactly the use case they're looking for I think.

Hahahaha. And even the monkey costume.

FYI guys, retro achievements are in development. Here's a quick teaser:

Hey all, just a quick teaser so you guys don't think I'm being lazy over here. Currently working on implementing Retro Achievements, which is a slightly bigger undertaking than a lot of things, so that's why the next beta is taking a while to come out. Here's a quick teaser though; look at the game details sidebar on the right: This is still early, but this is the general approach I'm hoping to go with, for LaunchBox at least. I have the retroachievements.org API implemented, now I'm just getting it integrated into the LaunchBox interface. There's a lot that can be done, but for starters, we're going to focus on letting you view your achievements and available achievements in the game details sidebar. Let me know your thoughts.

5-15 seconds isn't "normal", but it does depend a lot on your hardware, of course. LaunchBox does have a lot more data to display at once, so that is at least partially the reason why it's not as fast as Big Box. As always, though, there's always more that can be done to speed things up.

Sorry for the delayed response here. Yes, I am in agreement that we should not be changing the titles of games with duplicate names to include the publisher or the developer. The games database website, as well as LaunchBox and Big Box, can be programmed to solve this issue properly, such as automatically including the publisher's name in parenthesis where it makes sense if it's a duplicate title. This isn't the highest priority, but I would prefer not to rename a bunch of games in the mean time.

@ckp Has some good troubleshooting steps above. Beyond that, try installing a new copy of LaunchBox to a different folder; that will help determine whether it's a data issue or an issue running Big Box at all.

Here's the general best troubleshooting process: Reboot. Back up your LaunchBox\Data folder and then remove it. See if LaunchBox starts up. If it does, then something got corrupted with your data. I am more than willing to examine a data folder to see what might have happened to prevent it in the future, if you zip it up and PM it to me. If it's still not working then it's likely a crappy anti-virus solution that is blocking it. I've also seen corporations block unknown applications from all computers on their network, so that is also a possibility.

The only way to solve this issue for good is for us to have many servers across the world, and unfortunately we are nowhere near big enough to manage or afford that on our own. I know what lots of open source projects do is allow colleges and such to host their own mirrors, but I'm doubtful that would work for us due to the nature of our content. I'm sorry @coleroddy for your issues and I'd do something about them if I could, but the fact of the matter is that this is just the nature of the Internet and there's literally nothing we can do. Multi-threading the downloads won't fix the issue.

Hi @jacobsclub72, yes, this is how the renewal system works. It adds a year to the expiration of the license used for the renewal.

I should do some testing with this theme then. Good to know.

I've been testing on an 8-year-old Core 2 Quad with 8 gigs of RAM, and it seems to do fine with my collection of ~15,000 games. I've tested it with City Hunter and the default theme and it does fine with no slow down over time. Certainly lower hardware can be used but I think if you go much lower than that you'll need to start turning off effects and videos and such. These days you can literally get a machine similar to my base test unit for around $100, so you can't really go wrong there. For the lower-end I'm more concerned with mobile devices like the GPD Win, which still can be a smooth experience with a bit of the effects turned off.

@FistyDollars Maybe it's collection-specific then. Can you try PMing me your data folder? I'll need to know what games are causing the issue as well. I updated the Vlc.DotNet library to the latest version so it's probably related to that, though the previous version had other issues so I don't really want to downgrade. It hasn't been a very reliable library which is the reason for the VLC-related stability issues in LaunchBox itself, but ripping it out at this point would take some serious time.

That does make sense. Startup speed is definitely affected by the size of your collection. As will in-app performance, but much less so. Huge libraries are not a problem anymore, but you will find that things do get slightly slower as you add more stuff. That's mostly unavoidable, just the nature of software and data. Of course hardware matters a lot too.

This is still planned but it's quite a nightmare unfortunately. I looked into all this stuff in the past and spent several days on it but none of it works exactly as you'd expect.

Odd. I figured this would be easy to replicate but .webm videos are working fine with 7.14 on my end. Are you guys running Windows 7?

Odd. I figured this would be easy to replicate, but of course all my .webm videos are working fine with VLC in LaunchBox. Are you guys running Windows 7?

Platforms can be hidden by hiding all of the games in that platform. It should be that simple.