Jason Carr

Nice! Very cool. I've been fascinated with miniature computers for a while now. Let us know how LaunchBox runs on it. ;)

Hi kujo, not with the automatic mounting. But what you can do is you can leave the mounts and the application startup file empty, and then create a custom DOSBox configuration, and use the Autoexec commands (in the DOS tab) to do whatever you need to.

Ctrl+B is the shortcut for Big Box. Or you can get to it from the top menu with the Alt key.

Okay, I have a solution to our setup woes, thankfully. There's a product called Inno Setup that saves lives. It's the best thing since sliced bread, and it's free. I created a new setup that has an uninstaller, but writes nothing to the Windows registry, or anything other than optional Start menu/desktop icons and the destination folder. The uninstaller lives in the destination folder only, and doesn't end up in Add/Remove Programs. So it is still truly portable, and hopefully makes everyone happy. And hopefully it actually works. ;) After the first update, it should update hands-free as well, and take you to Big Box from Big Box and LaunchBox from LaunchBox. Those things won't work though until the next update is completed (because they require changes to the LaunchBox code). Let me know how it works for you guys.

Awesome! Thanks @AFaustini; I'll get a new beta out tonight with the translation included for testing. :)

Hi Martin, sorry for that, that happened only because I was in there screwing around, trying different things with the setup. It should work fine now.

I've reverted to the WinRAR setup for now. Hopefully if you try it again it should work fine. After re-evaluating it all, it looks like I can probably make the WinRAR setup work fine for most things, but the DPI issue is still a problem; there's no way to size the text in the setup correctly for high-DPI environments. I've submitted a bug report to the WinRAR team, but it looks like a difficult problem to solve, so I'm not sure that they'll have a fix any time soon. So I'm still looking for a solution. I know I could use something like NSIS to create the setup, but I've already spent 2 nights on this and it's taking away from development otherwise. So I might just leave the WinRAR setup for now. It just bugs me that the very first thing that people see, if they have Windows configured with a high DPI, is a broken setup program. :/

Sure; thanks @esareias. The issue is that it needs to automatically populate the correct installation folder in the setup, based on where LaunchBox is currently located. I'm betting that there is an issue with that piece in particular.

Good to know, thanks @esareias. It would suck to have to drop my work on the new setup program, but we'll do what we have to. There are apparently many more issues with it than I expected. If we found a better self-extractor that didn't have the same issues as the WinRAR one, we could potentially use that. An uninstaller could probably be made without touching the registry or any files outside of the LaunchBox folder. I'll probably have to go back to the drawing board, unfortunately. I could try tweaking the new setup, but tweaking an MSI setup to not put itself if add/remove programs might not be feasible, not sure.

@shinra358, trust me; you can't use C# to write a setup program. That's the problem. The languages/requirements all change for setup programs, as they need to work no matter what, without anything installed. I *could* write an installer in C#, but it would be a pretty bad idea. Yes, it'd be really easy if I could, but unfortunately that's really bad practice for a lot of reasons.

@shinra358, everything you know development-wise goes out the window when building setup programs. It's never that easy.

SentaiBrad said http://i.imgur.com/MukrARQ.png How did you get that? It happened on updating?

shinra358 said Never install games in the system's program files. This is how you use windows: System C drive is on an SSD. All your games and programs should not get installed on your system drive. Instead, they should go on a hdd with a different drive letter. This is also helpful when you need to reinstall windows and all your stuff will still be intact. Secondly, installing a program and moving it elsewhere afterward is bad practice. This is asking for registry problems or just a messy registry. If this must be done (because those requests come from users who don't know how to use windows correctly), you could make an option button that says Use registry/Don't use registry. If one presses Don't use registry, then it would unpack the way it use to. If the other option, then it would do it this way. Problem solved :) Yeah, sans for the unfortunate complication of figuring out how to build that. ;)

The setup should not require admin privileges. However, LaunchBox was always meant to be installed to a location that does not require admin privileges (like somewhere in your user folder).

Alright, let me clear some things up. First off, LaunchBox is still portable, and will stay that way. The only reason why I'm attempting to use a real setup is because I've been getting too many complaints about people putting LaunchBox in Program Files and getting errors, people complaining about the lack of an uninstaller, etc. The WinRAR solution I've been using also has an issue with high-DPI monitors (the text is too small to read). So, one way or another, we need another solution. @esareias and @GatoSoft, where is your LaunchBox installed? Also, what versions of Windows are you using? Unfortunately, @GatoSoft, half of LaunchBox's features these days don't even work in Windows XP (none of the wizards do because of XP's missing features), so XP support has been long gone for a while.

Just put out a new beta, but the only real update this time around is a new, proper setup. The setup should have an uninstaller now, among other things. Please test and let me know if anything doesn't work right. The setup should automatically point to the right folder for your LaunchBox installation on updating.

Keep in mind that it's often easier to find the game for a console; if it happens to exist. If it's on N64, GameCube, PS1, or PS2, chances are, you can play it that way.

Yeah, Windows 95/98 era games are still extremely problematic, sadly. It really sucks because it's a big collection of games that are really, really difficult to play. GOG helps for the really popular games because they make them work again, but of course they're missing a ton of games.

That's a great idea, @kriven. Unfortunately I'm not up on which codecs to install, though, myself.

That is awesome. You really do need to document the build. Or at least give us pictures along the way. :)

Yeah, I'm still working on making the interface more responsive. Every once in a while input is missed because it's too busy catching up.

Yeah, we had this implemented before (searched the hard drive for installed Steam games), but it was horribly glitchy. Unfortunately, there's not a good way to do it.

It sounds to me like it was caused by the XML file getting corrupted, which can happen if LB crashes or force closes. It shouldn't happen often, but unfortunately it does happen (which is why we have backups). I need to make it just automatically restore a backup, at least, if that happens.

Yeah, I miss that feature too. I'll see if I can bump it up on the list.

Hi @advalderama, welcome. That is indeed planned.