Jason Carr

Hey all, it's that time again! Hoping to put out the next official release early-to-mid next week. I won't be adding any new features at this point until the release. As always, thank you all very much for your work. Here are the latest release notes for translating as well: - Big Box startup videos have been overhauled with many new features - Big Box now supports separate themes for each platform/playlist - Media items and Windows shortcuts can now be imported more easily Thank you!

Beta 10 is out now guys with fixes for the theming conflict issues with the Select Theme popup as well as the selected theme not saving for playlists. Please let me know if anyone runs into any further issues with the startup videos or the theme-per-platform stuff.

This is mostly due to there being a default application on each game as well as the additional applications, so it becomes difficult to determine what to keep and such. That said, more could probably be done to detect duplicates. Unfortunately though it's not currently a high priority to revisit.

Nevermind on this; I think I found the issue. It appears to be unique to playlists. Should have it fixed for the next beta.

This is a theme-specific issue, and only happens if the theme is overriding the foreground color. I'll see if I can force it though so that themes don't mess with it.

I can't seem to replicate this @kmoney. Can you do some testing for me? Go ahead and set a few themes and views for various platforms, then exit Big Box and check your Data\Platforms.xml file. Each platform should have a BigBoxView and BigBoxTheme property if it has been set. Can you check to see if they're set correctly in the XML? That will help to narrow it down. Also, any idea if the issue is specific to playlists or platforms?

Alright, beta 9 is out. I'm hoping that all the issues from the last beta listed in this thread are fixed, including the startup video occasional black screen, the not remembering views/themes issues, and the various focus issues. I've also worked on reducing memory usage some more and some performance tweaks (but honestly the performance tweaks probably aren't very noticeable on most systems). I fixed a few minor error messages/bugs as well. We'll be looking to put out the official release here soon.

View > Show Versions is the setting. Though, we may have a caching issue if deleting the cache alone made it disappear.

Heads up guys, been working on performance and memory requirements tweaking for the past couple days. Currently working on fixing the reported issues in the thread. I'm not live streaming again today because I'm not feeling 100%, though I'm still working on stuff. Hope to have a new beta out later today.

Good to know guys. We'll take a look at it soon.

Yeah, it's somewhat complicated. It will pick up roughly matched images in some cases, but it does just go ahead and rename the image files if a game is renamed in order to prevent false or missing matches, etc. @Zombeaver's link does provide some of the details.

@angelobodetti Yes, that is something that I still need to add. I agree that we should tackle it soon.

Assets are renamed because the images are found strictly via the file name. In other words, there's no internal database that says "these images belong to these games". So if a file is tied to the game via the game's title, and the title is renamed, then unfortunately the image does have to be renamed or it will no longer work with the game in LaunchBox. Unfortunately we're not going to change up the way all images work with LaunchBox and Big Box at this point, as the current approach has many advantages that we would lose if we took a different approach.

Nothing has changed here recently, but I'm guessing that it was just caused by a different situation somehow. I'll respond in the other thread.

...aaaaand another new beta is out to fix a slight performance regression with the last beta. I caused some minor performance issues while disposing of previously used objects, but that should be addressed in this beta.

Thank you @gamehacker! I hadn't created a package for it or anything though so hopefully it will still integrate without any major issues. I'll do my best to integrate it here soon.

Thanks for all the issue reports guys. I'll be coming back to them later this week to fix everything up. Just put out a new beta to reduce RAM usage a bit more; I've been doing a lot of running attract mode overnight to try and catch any leaks. Once we get all the issues ironed out we'll look to put out the 7.12 official release.

Yes, less memory usage.

Beta 6 is out now as well with reduced memory requirements. @wirtual82 I'm not fully following; the game details currently do always use the default theme, so I am aware of that. However, I'm not aware of any theme-specific issues. Can you explain those? The last set view may be reset if you switch to a theme that does not support that particular view.

Alright guys, and here's another new beta with the following: - New Premium Feature: Different themes for each platform can now be used in Big Box; simply map a key or controller button to the new "Switch Theme" item under Options > Keyboard Mappings or Options > Controller Buttons - Fixed: Refreshing platform wheel images in Big Box was not working in some cases We could definitely use some extensive testing on the new "different themes for each platform" features, so let me know how that goes. Happy weekend everybody.

Alright! Beta 4 is out now which should hopefully fix all of the remaining issues with the startup videos: Fixed startup video getting cut off slightly for long startup videos Fixed startup sound playing at the same time as the startup video Startup video will now show up on whatever screen is marked as the primary screen in Big Box (previously always showed up on the first screen of the system) Fixed startup video causing issues with Big Box not being focused on startup (hopefully at least) Curious to know if anyone has any further issues with keys not working in Big Box on startup; that is simply caused by Big Box not being in focus once started up. Of course you can alt-tab to fix it if it happens, but we want to avoid it altogether. I've fixed it on my system but it is notorious for being a difficult issue to fix. Also, please let me know if anyone is seeing any further issues with the startup videos, or if the above fixes aren't working for you. Tomorrow I will be live streaming implementing the "different themes for each platform" item from the poll, which should get us fairly close to the next official release. Thanks all!

@cleverest PM me a zipped copy of your Data folder and I'll look into it.

@wallmachine I've been in talks with folks over there for a long while, but haven't heard back recently.

Thank you guys. I'll be working through the issues with it this week. Per the startup video sound playing at the same time, noted; that makes sense. Apologies for the extra files showing up; they are created by Dropbox when there is a syncing conflict and I didn't realize that they were there. We'll fix that for the next beta. They are of course safe to delete. @ckp Nothing changed with the file naming, at least not for a very long time. However at one point previously I may have simplified the logic there in order to fix some performance issues, so I'm guessing that's why, though that would have been months ago. @emko That's surprising. Can you check to see if it's a particular startup video file causing the issue? I don't really have any clue why there would be stability issues introduced, but hopefully we can get it figured out. Currently, the startup videos always use VLC (though it's used in-app instead of just launching VLC, of course). I may change this going forward though, especially if it helps us troubleshoot the issue that @emko is seeing. Do you have any issues if you use VLC in Big Box @emko?

If the LaunchBox Games Database was more complete and less fluid, I'd say that would probably make sense @Chris Kant. But the way it is I'm currently thinking the No Intro approach might be a better approach.