Jason Carr

Beta 6 is out guys! I believe I've solved the lack of screenshots bugs when not showing a video, and also the startup threading bugs that were occasionally happening since the startup performance improvements. But plugins have still been the focus here. There are two more plugin types now: ISystemEventsPlugin and ISystemMenuItemPlugin which will allow you to plugin into startup, shutdown, etc. events (the former) and add items to the Big Box System/LaunchBox Tools menu (the latter). I've also added a bunch of additional documentation: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com Thanks everyone!

Wow. That is most definitely the best sleuthing I've seen in a while, @DOS76. You're amazing.

Good to know, that makes sense. It's possible that we may have a discrepancy where images are evaluated differently between the two (maybe one includes region folders and one doesn't?); just a guess. I will look into.

@Maddoc1007 @Nielk1 Thank you guys so much for working through those theme designer issues. It makes perfect sense that we need to add a reference to the Default theme project to the new plugins DLL. I'll get that fixed here shortly (but of course it won't automatically fix any existing plugin code).

Thank you so much @eatkinola. I'm really excited to have all you guys help here now. Lol.

Great to hear @Izegod.

How many are you finding that it is duplicating? If it's just one or two, my guess would be we have a bad checksum value on the server for that image. It's also possible that the image was replaced on the games database or something weird like that.

Wow, that's pretty incredible Maddoc. Nice find!

Good to know. I have seen some bugs/crashes on startup that I do need to address. Maybe it's related (it's a threading issue). That has been an issue since beta 3 though, so I'm confused.

Honestly that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Has anyone else seen any significant performance differences between beta 5 and beta 3?

That is a good point; I hadn't thought of that. I'm not sure how that would work running on a 32-bit system, either. Obviously LaunchBox and Big Box do work on 32-bit systems, so I'm a little confused how all that works. Everything LaunchBox official is built using "Any CPU" of course so that it works properly on both 32-bits and 64-bits (and supposedly will still take advantage of 64-bit extensions via the framework).

Gotcha. LaunchBox and Big Box do a decent job of trying to apply settings properly across various pieces of hardware, but yes, there are certainly more involved situations that could use some customization options there. Good to know.

Ah, is it only when Use Game Background Videos is checked? That would explain why I haven't been able to reproduce this. I'll look into it.

Thank you Maddoc, I'm still seeing this myself too unfortunately. It doesn't prevent you from working on it, just gives trouble with the previews. I was talking to @Nielk1 about it and we think it has something to do with the constructor of the CoverFlow class, but my experimentation so far unfortunately has not solved it yet.

It's certainly not a tremendous amount of effort, but I'll need to spend a few hours on it to do it right. Sorry that's been a pain point for so long. You can of course add games individually just by using the Add button, but I know that's much less convenient. Hopefully I can sneak something like that in soon, but I don't think it will make it into 7.10.

Sorry to hear about these issues guys. I've looked into the controller stuff pretty extensively and the only thing I can find on the issue is that it's probably corrupted or buggy drivers or a corrupted DirectX install. We use both DirectInput and XInput for controllers. I haven't ever been able to replicate these issues so it's been difficult to understand exactly what is going on. I'm sorry I don't immediately have a solution for you guys. I hate to ask, but have either of you guys tried installing a fresh copy of Windows (or tried another computer) to see if that resolves the issue?

Thank you so much for that @eatkinola. There is actually a plugins section over there already, so go ahead and upload plugins there. We might separate it out a bit yet for subfolders and such, but I can move things around as needed when we do.

That is so awesome @pdavis! Thank you so much. I can't wait to try it out here. We should work together to figure out exactly what you need to make this ideal. I'm on the live stream right now but I'll check it out later this afternoon. If you can tell me exactly what hooks you need, I'll get on that. I know you need something for when the user logs in, so I can certainly add that.

Yes, it's true that LaunchBox and Big Box require faster hardware because they're using newer technologies. But exactly, development would take twice as long for literally everything (or longer) had we chose to go more old school (and would also require a complete rewrite to go back to that). I am a firm believer, especially at this point, that it would be unwise to build this stuff in C++ this day and age. Microsoft uses .NET even for operating system stuff these days.

Amazing! Awesome to see you making a cool plugin already @superfurry

@cammelspit @ninjagaidenguy Great to hear guys, thanks. @emko We used to skip the DirectX install, but depending on what version you're coming from it is needed, and we've run into so many issues in the past with LaunchBox not working because of missing DirectX DLLs. So unfortunately we have to keep it in there.

Alright beta 5 is available for download now, which should fix it. Sorry for that folks. If needed, you can download beta 5 directly here and just install it on top of your existing folder: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nzdxq8aa8m4gik9/LaunchBox-7.10-beta-5-Setup.exe?dl=0 That file in the Dropbox link is still uploading but should be ready momentarily.

No worries; I know what the problem is guys. Sorry for that. Uploading a fixed setup now.

Okay guys, on it. Gimme a few.

Beta 4 is finally out guys, and the plugin features are available. I'm still working on fleshing out the documentation, but as a reminder, it is available here: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com I will of course be adding many more plugin types and such here soon, but if you're a developer and want to develop something and need a new hook, please just PM here. Here are the current plugin types available already: IBigBoxThemeElementPlugin - Add an element/control to a Big Box theme, access the data, and accept user input. IGameMenuItemPlugin - Add a game-specific menu item to the right-click menu in LaunchBox and/or the game details menu in Big Box. The former will basically let you build a control to do whatever you want in Big Box. The latter will let you add a menu item in LaunchBox so you can do whatever that way. Hit me up if you run into any issues guys.