Jason Carr

Yeah, I actually put significant time and development into exactly that. But as it turns out, that implementation is very slow, ugly, and only half working. So I ended up shelving it after a couple days of work. In theory, you could get it working with a lot of effort, but it was so slow and just wouldn't be a good solution. Edit: The (mostly) good news though is that the MAUI development on Linux is based off of that same solution, so they're not really starting over from scratch, and there's certainly hope that it will eventually become a good solution. The problem is just that it's very young and immature, and hasn't been optimized, or even fully implemented as of yet. A good number of the features that we use Xamarin.Forms for on Android just don't work on GTK yet. I'm tempted to dive in and help with that development, and I may at some point. As of right now though, I've got my hands full. Once our new hire comes on board and gets up to speed, I might be more freed up to do something like that. But that will probably be a while.

@Juan Ruv @Pluckyhd Thank you both; we'll be looking forward to your emails. You can expect a response some time next week.

That is exactly the goal of the item on the poll, yes. We also plan to include an easy export/package creation option as well.

We are very much open to technologies other than .NET. That is not the issue. The issue is that most, if not all app development technologies are many years behind Microsoft's offerings. Microsoft has always won on the desktop because they have the best development tools. Good progress has been made by other organizations/companies on the web, but not really on the desktop with app development. But yes, we also need a solution that we are able to build and support with our expertise. The Linux audience is still much smaller than the Windows and Android audiences, so it would not make any real sense to devote more (or even the same amount) of resources to it as we do for Windows or Android. A relatively smooth transition is necessary here (a rewrite with completely new technologies isn't in the cards). Regardless, the GUI/theming engines that we have on Windows (WPF) and Android (Xamarin.Forms) are immensely powerful and crucial to the rapid development that we have for both platforms. We're not aware of anything on Linux that is anywhere near as powerful or as flexible as those technologies, and writing something like that from scratch would take our whole team years.

Just an update on this; we are trying to create a native Linux port. But the available technologies on Linux make it WAY more difficult than we'd like, or we initially thought. Our most current plan of action is to port LaunchBox for Android to MAUI (the latest tech from Microsoft). However, after trying to port it in its current state, MAUI is clearly just not ready for that yet. It's still a very early and immature platform. On top of that, despite Microsoft's previous claims, MAUI doesn't have an official way to use it on Linux. Microsoft is leaving that up to the community to develop, so that's also a significant hurdle. We would love to develop a native Linux version without those technologies, but we would literally have to write a theming engine from scratch and throw out all of our existing themes, which isn't really ideal or feasible. So there's no real way to take that strategy. Development on Linux is decades behind development on Windows (and even development on Android). So that's the real challenge. All of this just to say that yes, we want to be on native Linux. But until there's a good way to do it, we're kind of stuck. We're still looking to see if there are any other good options out there. Otherwise, we're waiting on MAUI to be better fleshed out before we can take the plunge.

Per Linux and the Steam Deck, see here:

Bezel Project integration will integrate the Bezel Project into media downloads for games, for automatic use in RetroArch and MAME only. Emulators that do not support bezels will not be supported. It's the same with the Bezel Project currently.

That's odd. I'm guessing maybe there might be a corrupt image or video download for that game. Can you try deleting all media associated with that game?

Just FYI, this is already possible using the Filter menu item while on a games list. I've noted the other items. Thanks, noted. It's been a while since I looked at the export process regarding multiple versions of the same game, but I thought that was working fine last I tested. I'll revisit.

They are under LaunchBox\Images\Platforms\Clear Logos on Android. However, they will only show up there if you choose to change them to images that are different than the default images.

@Calvin harry Where are you getting that error? Are you running the old version of LaunchBox for Android from Google Play?

Unfortunately we haven't added that functionality yet. Android doesn't do a good job of classifying all games in the games categories, so those games don't currently show up due to Android's poor categorization. We do have an item on our list to add the ability to manually add an app.

Most likely there are permissions issues with the drive. It is extremely difficult to troubleshoot these issues without own the device/drive, unfortunately. There is likely a way to configure the drive so that we do have permissions to access it properly, but it's hard to say exactly how without having the device on hand.

This is unfortunately the nature of Android; it just doesn't handle this well. Unfortunately it does require that you exit RetroArch in order to launch a new game. Sadly, it's not possible for us to do that for you, because of Android's overbearing permissions restrictions.

No, we are not ignoring those requests. I've confirmed that we have your email. We will get you an upgrade tomorrow. Sorry for the delay.

Development takes time. I will have a beta out soon enough.

Unfortunately not likely soon. Both Brian (Faeran) and I fulfill that role at this point. Thanks for reaching out though.

At this point, you do need separate media folders for LaunchBox on Android. It's probably possible to hack things around, but it wouldn't be a good solution to use the same media folders as with another frontend. Sorry for the late reply.

Thanks @reppin916; I'll look into these issues. The Nvidia Shield as of late has been horrible because of their terrible firmware updates, so that may be part of the problem, but I'm not sure. I will say that I haven't seen any major stability issues on my own Shield TV, but who knows. Still, I'll look into the issues.

I've added MSU1 to our list of platforms to add. Thanks!

@khathaway I don't exactly know what's going on here with the initial information, but sorry to hear about the trouble. I guess, first off, what views are you using for your platforms and your games? Videos are not supported in all views.

Hi Viking, can you email us at support@unbrokensoftware.com? We'll get you taken care of there.

Good catch; I think this is just an oversight on our part. We may not be taking the sort title into consideration everywhere we should. I'll put this on the list to review. Thanks!

Also make sure that the file system that you've installed LaunchBox onto is NTFS.

Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to do that right now in the Android app. But that's good to know; it's not something that we had considered.