Jason Carr

Hi @sagaopc, I know payments are unfortunately a struggle for some people outside of the US who do not have a credit card. I need to put some more work into other payment method possibilities; however, it is often difficult or impossible to implement payment methods that are meant for other countries without having a presence in that country. I've had trouble with this in the past, unfortunately.

New beta is out guys with some additional options for the voice recognition, including being able to change the spoken prefix as well as change the speech synthesis voice, thanks to @jadekitten. However, sadly I still have no idea why some of you are unable to get it to pick up your voice. You can now say, "arcade", "computer", "LaunchBox", or "Big Box" by default in order to wake it up, in addition to any custom spoken prefix that you specify in the options. Do enable debug mode in the voice recognition options if you're having trouble getting it to hear your voice, and let me know what the audio levels are as well as what it thinks you're saying in the voice debug dialog on top. If the voice debug dialog at the top of the screen is not showing up with debug mode enabled, then I'm willing to bet there is a configuration issue on your machine that is not allowing it to work. It could be any number of things from voice recognition not being installed properly in Windows to something weird like incompatible microphone drivers, or not having a default microphone set up properly on your system, etc. Hopefully I can get back to this at some point for folks who are unable to enable it and try and add some additional debugging information to see what on earth might be causing the problem. Thanks all.

Alright, and here's another new beta guys. We fixed one NullReferenceException we found with the VLC engine. Since then, I've been running it for 3 hours now in attract mode on my bartop with no issues, so I'm really hoping that the VLC crashes at least have been resolved. Please test it as much as you can and let me know if you run into anything with the VLC engine in Big Box. I think we're finally close to getting it all fixed up thanks to @higan. @bundangdon Can you get me a screenshot or something as an example for the VLC video size issue? I'm not seeing those issues on any of my machines and I haven't been able to reproduce it. Also, what theme and view are you using? Do you have background videos enabled? @kyoken Oddly I'm not seeing black borders with the VLC videos on my 16:10 monitors, so same questions: what theme and view are you using? I assume you're using background videos? @ThePolish I suspect that the double audio problem is likely because of moving too quickly in and out of platforms. Are you able to reproduce it consistently if you move quickly? Also, this new beta has some new voice recognition options. You can now change the voice prefix, as well as the voice to use for the speech synthesis (thanks to @jadekitten). Next I'm heading back to LEDBlinky to fix those issues. @kmoney, then the only issue is that your pause, start, and exit buttons aren't staying lit? That is pretty weird, and sounds like it's not even possible for me to control that. I think we'll have to ask @arzoo on that one. Do you think the MAME issue is an issue with the LaunchBox code? Or is that just because of the MAME issues with .170-.175?

Another new beta is out guys. This latest beta has some fixes from Higan for the VLC engine; let me know if you can crash it. @kmoney I haven't gotten MAME working properly for my cabinet either. I've noticed that Nintendo Entertainment System is properly showing the two buttons that are used once a game is launched, but other than that I'm not sure that any game or system-specific things are working. I have attract mode working well as well as switching systems and such though. But yeah, I'm not sure that LEDBlinky is all the way there yet. Hopefully @arzoo can help out by telling us what needs fixed yet. Got the email @Maddoc1007; that does look pretty awesome. Here's the video I was referring to: This shows you how to change an image path based on the platform that is selected, which is basically what you're looking for I think.

Thank you guys. Yes, Higan is still working on the VLC stuff. I know some of the video alignment is off currently with it too. Just put out a new beta that fixes a bunch of issues with LEDBlinky. Now that I have my cabinet, I'm of course able to test it all out. Also fixed a few minor issues with the voice recognition (including a volume control crash and the debug window showing up whether or not debug mode was enabled for the voice recognition). @Maddoc1007 The tutorial videos show how to use a different GIF per platform, but getting a guy to walk across the screen sounds like it might be pretty difficult, unless you used a full screen gif. So a video might be a better option for that. I do plan to add built-in scanlines options here soon as well.

Makes sense @ckp. Feel free to add a ticket for that.

Thank you guys very much.

This is definitely possible. My current image folder is around 14 gigs, and I really don't have that many systems in it at this point. Images can be rather large, and we've chosen to allow very large images on the LaunchBox Games Database, so yes it can take a very large amount of space. There are utilities you can use to compress/reduce the size of the images. There's a recent thread around here that might help, but I don't have the link handy for the moment.

Thank you for that rundown @Zombeaver! I can confirm that all of that is accurate to the best of my knowledge.

Thanks guys; I'll have a new beta out shortly. That said, I have not been able to identify anything that might causing a problem for people who it won't initialize for. For example, if the audio level dialog isn't showing and you don't seem to be getting any input from your microphone, I'm lost currently with that issue. It is possible that your Windows installation does not currently have the speech recognition features, or that for some reason your microphone is not getting picked up. If a microphone is not found, though, I believe it should throw up an error on launch if you're in voice debug mode (check box in the voice recognition options). My current observations are that it seems to be working well for people who have a good quality microphone, use "computer" instead of "LaunchBox" as the voice recognition trigger, and are not having a problem with the initialization. I do think the initialization issues are just system configuration issues, but of course that is difficult to confirm. If you haven't already, check to see if you have speech recognition options in the control panel.

You're not alone there @snoopaloop83. Sadly I don't have a fix for you but I have been having all kinds of problems in that area with Retroarch lately. Often times I can't get clean audio out of it either as of late. This is while testing on several different systems.

Yes, that is correct. Sorry for the trouble there; I should have a new beta out tomorrow. Per the issue with Links though; I wonder if maybe it disables the Microsoft voice recognition when it's installed?

Hmm, the Windows speech recognition features are installed by default, but it may be possible to turn them off if you install or uninstall things manually. See if you have a Speech Recognition option in Control Panel or any way of configuring speech recognition. I don't have Win7 so I can't check if it's any different from Win10. Also, try enabling Debug Mode in the voice recognition options in LaunchBox and let me know if you get an error when you first load up LaunchBox.

This thread does seem to have a few clues: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/592017/my-images-are-blurry-why-isnt-wpfs-snapstodevicepixels-working I'll give that stuff a shot here soon.

Yeah, agreed. That makes sense. Somehow I need tap into that rendering engine but as of yet I haven't found the way. I haven't checked the DPI of the images, but it seems so random that I doubt that would be the cause. Let me know if you're seeing otherwise.

Hi @Firefairy, I think the best way to tell would be to just try launching them. Often times games will have two versions that are available though, which is sometimes the cause. There are also databases of Steam games that are available online that may help to clarify as well.

Sadly I already tried that @Nielk1. Believe it or not, not even that fixed it. Pulling my hair out here.

Hi Overload, I'm using the SHGetSpecialFolderPath Win32 API call to retrieve the CSIDL_COMMON_STARTMENU value. It'd be pretty strange if that was returning the wrong value; is it really pointing to a nonexistent folder? Permissions-wise, I know that on US English versions of Windows 10 (and previous versions) that folder always has read permissions for all users, so all I can figure is that it might be different for other language versions. Pretty strange. The folder is used to display all of the icons in the start menu that are displayed for all users, so it seems to me like the traditional Start menu wouldn't even work properly without those permissions. But who knows, Windows 10 does things pretty differently now I'm sure. Originally I had added the ability to open a game by any number of the words in the game's title, which I'll probably add back once we fix the performance issues.

Sadly we thought this had fixed the issue, but my original suspicions ended up being correct. The issue is not fixed, no. The issue isn't with the resizing but instead with the actual WPF rendering of the images, which makes it very difficult to resolve. It's still on my plate.

That is great to hear, Lenny.

Hi Daniel, yes, it is safe to approve these. The image is in fact not being removed; it's just not being shown twice since only the image type is changing (but the image stays the same).

Thank you guys. @mattsoft, that is planned and should be implement soon. @steve73 LEDBlinky is actually already implemented in the latest beta. We're still in the process of testing it, so you might find some bugs, but it should be mostly there already.

Thanks, Lenny. It's worth noting that the recognition gets significantly better when it switches into listening mode. We're able to restrict which options are valid when it's listening for commands, but it's trying to pick the prefix words out of any random speech when you tell it to listen, so yeah, it's not overly accurate for the prefix words. The recognition should get better over time, though. Try saying "computer" instead of LaunchBox and see if that helps.

Very cool @Maddoc1007. @kmoney Thanks for testing that stuff. It should be easy to get stuff like that fixed once I finally receive the cabinet tomorrow. I feel like it's being shipped by snails lol. I have been in contact with @arzoo via email so hopefully we're all on the same page.

Hi @jallen99, I'm sure this is a configuration issue of some sort, as these things don't just break. That said, I do know that it gets confusing and there are a lot of places that have to match up, so we should probably step back and take a look to see how we could simplify it. The most common cause for confusion with Retroarch is of course the cores. Make sure the command line parameters for the platforms listed in the Retroarch emulator are using the right cores, and that the files for those cores do exist in your Retroarch cores folder.