Jason Carr

@flores9, the reason for these issues is that the LaunchBox.xml file is split up for beta 1 and beta 2 and the Data subfolder is used instead of the LaunchBox.xml file in the LaunchBox folder. Try deleting the Data subfolder while LaunchBox is closed and then try the latest beta. Something is going awry when splitting up the LaunchBox.xml file that I need to address. Let me know if you figure anything out in that regard. Actually, it might be helpful for me if you were able to zip up both your LaunchBox.xml file and your entire Data folder, as then I could look to see what might be going on. I'd really appreciate that. You can email a zip file to jason@unbrokensoftware.com if you can get them zipped up. We do have a glitch here that I definitely need to address, but it's been hard for me to identify. Thanks!

Ah, gotcha. Per #1, I haven't ever tried that to be honest, I just did a web search and that's what came up. I hadn't thought about that for #5, so that might not be possible currently. I'll add both of those options to my list to take a look at soon. That is looking really great though!!! @Sithel, yes the star ratings do not currently come from the games database as of yet, but that is on the docket to add.

Hi guys, we fixed all these related issues in the live stream this morning, and beta 3 is out. Please let me know if anyone is seeing any additional issues with the Escape key in the latest beta.

Hi @Imgema, to be honest I'm doubtful that the speed differences you were seeing previously with the 6.4 and 6.6 versions had anything to do with code differences; most likely they had to do with the size of your collection. So I'm doubtful that going back to 6.4 or 6.6 would speed things up, and for that reason I don't think we're going to get it a whole lot quicker for 6.10. Thanks @ckp. You're actually only a couple hours away from me (I'm in Modesto). I'll let you know if I ever head to that area.

This will have more meaning in the future, @ckp, especially once we add functionality to search folders for new games automatically. It's currently used to populate default folders and such, and also to specify where to copy/move ROMs to when importing and copying/moving, but that's it currently.

Hi @Tony, apparently this is happening for some people during the migration process to the split XML. Try deleting or moving your LaunchBox\Data folder while LaunchBox is closed and restarting LaunchBox.

Unfortunately those are false assumptions, @ckp. You may find that the box art view is faster, yes, which makes sense considering that the list view shows ALL the data where as the box art view shows only the titles and images.

The beta I just put out today does focus on some performance improvements.

Wow. Try the LaunchBox.xml one first, but you'll need to temporarily remove the Data folder (just move it somewhere else for it to be picked up. Hopefully that works.

Hi @viking, awesome progress here. 1. This might work: <TextBox CharacterCasing="Upper" Text="{StaticResource String1}" /> 2. If you change the name of the TextBlock, it should no longer be automatically dynamically sized. TextBlock has these properties which should help: TextWrapping, TextTrimming, HorizontalAlignment, VerticalAlignment 3. I need to come up with a solution for the stars there; added that to my list. 4. In ThemedStyles, there's the ListBoxItemStyle.xaml and ListBoxStyle.xaml files. I think those would be the best place to set the font and color for the text lists. 5. The platform logo can be turned off in the options, or you can simply get rid of it from the TextListView.xaml file. You can add it somewhere else and refer to the Documentation.pdf for that. I can elaborate more on any of these if needed.

Lol. @lordmonkus, only if I can pretend I'm kissing your monkey lips. @rebelone Is it just that the emulator field is getting cleared when you select a game from the list? That could be because the default emulator has not been configured for that platform. Let me know if I'm not following. That does sound like it can be improved.

Are you guys seeing this with EmuMovies or the LaunchBox Games Database?

That is probably because images are no longer being cached in the background. Assuming you have the RAM cache enabled, LaunchBox was previously caching all those images after it loaded up. It still does that but only once you scroll to the actual images.

Awesome. Thanks @Deej.

I'm guessing the setup just got cut off half way through, @ALIE. It should be safe to install the latest setup on top and it should keep your configuration. It is always dangerous when that happens though because data loss is always a possibility. If it was just in the setup though, hopefully it shouldn't be any configuration files that would be messed up.

Hi @flores9, sorry to hear about this issue. It does sound like corrupted XML somehow. Are you able to restore a backup XML from the backups folder? Are you on a 6.10 beta now or the 6.9 official?

I have yet to confirm, but I've been in talks with Plays.TV and they have added LaunchBox.exe and BigBox.exe to their blacklist. Supposedly restarting Plays.TV (or waiting overnight) should update their blacklist in the app and it should no longer cause the problem. If anyone is able to test, let me know. I can't say I'm a big fan of their blacklist method of fixing this issue (largely because so many applications are going to be affected and this really screws over the little guy who doesn't have an amazing user base to identify the issue to begin with), but I do appreciate how quickly they got back to me on this.

Maybe "Show Broken Games"? I see that that's unchecked.

Hi @Deej, thanks for the purchase! Some email clients might change the file name of the file. It should work to just rename the file to "License.xml" and place it in your LaunchBox folder. Or, you can use the Help > License Registration option in LaunchBox. Email me at jason@unbrokensoftware.com if it's still not working for you and I can get you all fixed up. Thanks!

A fix for this is coming guys.

I got in touch with Plays.TV and they are adding LaunchBox and Big Box to their blacklist which supposedly should solve the problem (though obviously that's still going to cause problems for many other applications, so I don't think that's really a great solution). I'm waiting to hear back from them on whether or not the fix will take effect immediately or if we'll have to wait for a new version of Plays.TV.

Just put out a new beta; I focused primarily on performance in LaunchBox when switching between platforms. I improved the rendering, caching, and data population routines all to be more performant. It was actually the rendering/painting operations that were causing the biggest amounts of lag when switching between filters and repopulating the boxes. The single biggest performance gain came from caching the rendered text that is displayed below the games. The caching routines have been significantly cleaned up and also simplified. Previously LaunchBox would cache images in the background, but this was causing quite a bit of confusion ("Why is LaunchBox using so much CPU usage!?") as well as hurting the performance elsewhere a tad. In this beta, images will only be cached once they've been scrolled to. However, we now do a much better job of refreshing the images that are actually displayed on the screen first, so I don't think this will be much of an issue. That said, leaving LaunchBox overnight will no longer automatically cache all of the images. We may add that back in based on the feedback from these betas.

Looks like I need to test deleting platforms with the new XML model; will do. Per RocketLauncher, we are aware that this will "break" the existing implementation. Things should still work but changes to your collection will no longer be updated in RocketLauncher until the new version of RocketLauncher is released (simply because RocketLauncher will continue to use the LaunchBox.xml file which is no longer updated). I notified bleasby from the RocketLauncher team of the changes yesterday and he will be integrating the new file formats soon.

I know, I keep putting this off. My apologies. Part of the reason for it is the upcoming Retropalooza; I've been wanting to do quite a few things before the conference. I should be able to get back to the database this week.

Unfortunately nothing has been done to prevent this for *new* games. When importing games via the ROM importer, you get to choose the platform anyways. For Steam, however, it just defaults to Windows currently. I think the Steam and MS-DOS importers are probably the only things affected by this, but perhaps we should add an option to select the platform name for those importers.