Jason Carr

Ah, I see. I assume you mean in LaunchBox and not Big Box? Sorry, my mind has been all-too focused on Big Box lately.

It's a long ways off, of course, but I do see heading in that direction. I think the first step is to create our own game metadata and images (and hopefully even videos) database, then the social features become more possible.

Hehehehe. I haven't added Martin's latest round of metadata yet, but I believe we have all that we need. I'll confirm once I get it all into LaunchBox.

Okay guys, new beta is out. There are now options to change, and disable, all transitions: General: Screen Transition Game Images: Background Transition, Main Image Transition, Image/Video Transition Platform Images: Background Transition, Image Transition Fixed a few bugs as well. Note that of course Big Box in this beta runs off of .NET 4.5.1. I'm curious to know whether anybody needs/needed to install it, or if everyone already had it installed.

Mine is off of a standard hard disk drive. I have an SSD in my system for Windows but LaunchBox and all the images and games are on the hard disk drive. I suspect that it is because of the size of your collection. I'll do some testing to see if there's anything I can do speed it up. If you can try testing with a smaller collection to see if it's quicker, that might be helpful.

Also, on the platforms screen, the first time you load up each platform, it has to cache the box art images. That can be cause for lag when you first start it up after clearing the image cache (refresh images in LaunchBox). However, the cache is written to disk so it is persisted between launches.

The lag may be due to the size of your library, potentially. So that's worth figuring out. My 1,000 game library is pretty much lag-free. My CPU is an i7 Haswell.

Thanks @GameLounger. What are your system specs? Yes, as I already promised, I will provide a way to turn off the animations before release. How does your performance compare to Brad's video above?

Great. .NET 4.5.1 it is. :)

Sure; I get slightly less lag in Big Box myself, but there's probably not much I can do at this point to speed it up any. I'd call that a win.

Hopefully that fixes it for @GatoSoft and @Game_Lounger as well then. I guess we'll just need to require a later version of .NET. I'm not going to compromise on features to keep a lower version.

Thanks, Brad, but the video is private.

Alright, for everyone who's experiencing problems with the animations in Big Box (@SentaiBrad, @GameLounger, @GatoSoft), please download the attached zip file and overwrite your current BigBox.exe and BigBox.exe.config files with the files in the zip. Basically, Big Box currently runs on .NET 3.5. I kept the version number low so that far fewer people would have to be bothered with installing a newer version of the .NET framework in order to use it. However, I am seeing some reports that using a newer version might help to resolve some of these issues. So, first off, you might need to install an updated .NET framework. Try running Big Box and see what it says. The files I attached use .NET 4.5.1. If the issues are fixed for any of you, we'll just have to make it require a later framework. It makes sense that Microsoft might be fixing these bugs only in the later frameworks.

Welcome @PattersonCZ, thanks for the purchase. :) #1 is definitely coming, but it's admittedly quite a ways off. #2 should be happening sooner rather than later. It's pretty high up on the list. #3, unfortunately, like Brad said, is probably never going to happen. There are a million things that would make it unfortunately pretty close to impossible. #4 is coming as well, probably sooner than #1. Thanks!

Sure; I'll add it to my list. I'm a little confused what the benefit of that is though...can you elaborate?

Thanks everyone. I keep putting out new betas lol. Fixed the issue with the About box and languages; everything in Big Box should be translated properly now. @Game Lounger, good to know that you have the same issue as @GatoSoft. Can you give me as many details as you can on your Windows version and system specs? Also try updating your video drivers and make sure you're all up to date with Windows Updates.

Just put out another new beta to fix the languages issue in Big Box. Everything in Big Box should be translated now. Thanks @AFaustini.

Oh yes, I remember noticing that a few days back. Thanks for reminding me. I'll do my best to get that fixed today. :)

Great to hear @CliveBarker. Just put out a new beta that I'm hoping will resolve that error for you. Let me know. :) This beta also includes @cyanjiang's latest fixes for Simplified Chinese.

Thanks guys, those are two different errors (@CliveBarker's and @GatoSoft's). @GatoSoft, unfortunately that error is a hard one to resolve, but it's usually associated with video hardware or driver problems, according to Microsoft. So first things first, try updating your video drivers. Also, remind me what version of Windows you're running? Supposedly the issue most likely has to do with the hardware acceleration required for the animations, and for whatever reason your system is tripping up on them. We'll see if anyone else has that issue. I'll be adding options to disable the animations, so worst case scenario, you can disable them and at least be able to use Big Box. It looks like I might be able to add an option to disable hardware acceleration as well, which might resolve the problem for you. @CliveBarker, I'll get that fixed. :)

Just put out another beta with some Big Box animations; I didn't want to be adding things this late in the game before 5.0, but I can't leave well enough alone. I'm pretty pleased with how it all turned out. I have a pretty killer animation engine behind it all, so the possibilities are pretty much endless. I left it relatively toned down because I haven't gotten around to adding settings for transitions yet, but if you can envision it, I can add settings for 10 or more different transition options for everything separately. So I think that is gonna be pretty awesome. I'm curious how well it all performs for everyone, especially on older machines. Obviously, we will provide the option to turn all animations off before the final release (in case your machine doesn't measure up or you just like to keep things simple).

Makes sense @Xananax. Scripting/plugin support is something I keep getting reminded about, but still haven't yet been able to focus on. What scripting engine would you want to use?

Ah, thanks @scree. Good to know.

Bil said This may have been mentioned before, but when I adjust the details sidebar position, it never saves. Instead, it reverts back to its default position the next time I run LB. Hmm, that's strange. I've actually never heard that before, and of course I can't reproduce it. Can you upload or send me your LaunchBox.xml file to jasondavidcarr at gmail dot com? Thanks.

scree said Hi Jason I just installed this beta via BigBox. Installed perfectly, although I couldn't get the BigBox Yes button to accept mouse click. No sign of the db files issue that Martin had. I assume you have the mouse enabled in Big Box?