Jason Carr

Okay, sure. That is probably pushing it. I work on improving performance all the time, but that is a big challenge for such a graphical frontend. I suspect in your case that your CPU is the bottleneck here. I'll see if I can get back to performance for large libraries soon. In the mean time, the only thing I can suggest to help speed things up would be to use separate instances of LaunchBox for each platform. I know @bd00 has done this in the past, and used another instance of LaunchBox to "launch" all the sub-instances. This is far from ideal, but that's all we've got for the moment for such large collections. However, I can say that upgrading your hardware (specifically your CPU) would do wonders for improving performance, of course.

Hi appollo, welcome. :) Are you using the ScummVM tab in add/edit? The process is really just a matter of checking the box to use ScummVM, browsing to the game's folder, and selecting the right game from the list.

Hi Bil, welcome. How large is your library? What are your machine specs? That performance is pretty poor, so hopefully I can get it resolved. But first I need to know how the specs. :)

Hello all, we need a proper set of platform metadata for all platforms. I started tackling this, but it was a bigger job than I envisioned, and was taking significant time away from development, so I stopped. The trouble with collecting platform metadata is the data is often hard to find and not always correct. TheGamesDB.net has platform metadata for all its platforms, but it's not always accurate. Therefore, it's best to cross reference information between several different sites to validate the information. Wikipedia is also a decent source, of course, and Google usually fills in the gaps. If you're interested in helping, it'd be much appreciated. The easiest/best thing to do is to simply populate the fields for the platforms in the Manage Platforms dialog inside LaunchBox, and then you can send me your LaunchBox.xml file. Let me know if anyone is interested. :)

Very cool, thank you guys. I'll get the rest of the images tested and added soon.

Lol. I keep putting it aside. Maybe I should ask for the community's help. It's actually more of an undertaking than I figured it would be.

Ha, great idea @bd00. I love it. Any other ideas before I jump on that one?

No offense taken, @portachking, I appreciate you keeping me in check, as I do not want to be blindly offending people when that was not at all the intent. Yeah, I replaced it with what we had just so I could replace it quickly. I'm very much up for ideas! :)

You raise a good point, @portachking. I most often don't even think about video game mistranslations from a racial perspective, but I imagine some people could be offended by it. @DOS76, you're very right, the over-sensitivity is getting ridiculous. That said, I'm not out to offend anyone, and especially not racially. So, sigh, I'll have to take it down.

Ha, too much boring stuff to do. :P Have to add all the default platform statistics.

Ha, you're welcome Stimpy. :)

I jumped into last night for a bit. Looks really promising, I was impressed. :)

@portachking, no worries, no rush. It'll be a while before the official release. :) @bd00, they all look great. I've tested every single one of them in Big Box and the vast majority of them work really well. These are the problem-child images: Android (not terrible but doesn't stand out very well against brighter images) Atari 7800 (that red blends into the background a bit too much) iOS (the gray is a bit too dark, would probably work well if we just white-washed it) Nintendo Virtual Boy (again with the red blending in) WonderSwan Color (the WonderSwan works fine the but the Color letters blend in) TurboGrafx 16 (looks great but it's too tall to put on top of the games list) Thanks once again, bd. I can jump in and tweak them if needed. :)

@Maddoc1007, I'll keep you in prayer.

Looking good, @bd00. I'll pin this topic.

Very cool, bd. I'll start testing the images. I'd put up backgrounds to test against, but really it's best to test against multiple images, because every logo is good and bad with different background images. It'd be best to put it in the app using Manage Platforms to get the best idea.

Alright, beta 5 is out. Still no new features, but the performance should be much, much better. Hit me up with any errors or observations.

Yeah, it'd certainly be easier to put it in LB. That said, there are a lot of options, and probably isn't best to clutter up the desktop Options screen any more than it already is. Not to mention, yeah, as a user I'd prefer if it was in Big Box Mode. So I guess I better bite the bullet and just do it proper. ;)

:) Yeah, we will be providing some sort of theme options eventually, but honestly I think having a dark background will stick. You're sort of crazy if you want an in-your-face white and bright experience. I don't see the concept of light text on a dark background changing much. As for dimensions, I have been making them as big as I can, basically as big as the original image source allows. This way they can be used as backgrounds too, if desired, eventually. The aspect ratio works better though, of course, when they are wider than they are taller. I should also note that they should all be 24-bit transparent PNG images. Yes, the stroke is because, for example, the red of the SNES logo is too hard to read against the background. This is unfortunately common. Awesome to hear you're hopping on board, @bd00. Thanks a million.

BaunchLox the Unfortunate Hippo

Thanks guys. Yes, all these features are eventually planned. I do plan on allowing you to customize which images to use where and such. I really like your animated gif idea too, @AFaustini. :)

Here are the logos that I've done and included already:

@bd00, thanks for all your excellent work. Not to push you, but since @portachking is asking, the next thing that would be nice to have is clear logo images for all the platforms. You can take a look at the ones I've included for GameCube, NES, SNES, MS-DOS, Windows, Atari 2600, etc. They show up on the top of the games list when you load one of those platforms in Big Box Mode. They can be tricky to create, because some platform logos work great as-is, but some need some tweaking. I've found that in a lot of cases using a white Stroke effect in Photoshop really helps. We also want to make sure they're relatively big, 100% clean, and just look good in the app, which is part of the challenge. Any help there would certainly be appreciated. But of course, everyone does better work when they work on what *they* want to work on, so by no means should anyone feel like they need to do just that.

@bd00 lol, sorry to hear about that. Yes, I will add that as an option soon. I can't decide if I should put the configuration options for Big Box inside of Big Box itself, or if they should go in the desktop mode's Options menu. Any thoughts all? Per that error, ick. That one's gonna be hard to pinpoint; I'll see if I can figure it out. I may have a new version out tonight; I'm hoping so. I've been focusing on performance, so I'm hoping the next version will no longer have any performance issues...should be fully responsive.

Maddoc1007 said Hi Jason sorry havnt been on in few days reason of health. Just downloaded the latest beta 5-4 WOW tried this list emulators:- BlueMSX, Dolphin, DOSBOX, ePSXe, Fusion, Magic Engine, Multiple versions of Mame, Neo Pop, Nestopia, nullDC, PPSSPP, Project 64 version 2.2.0.3 (anyone downloading this version download a little program called Unchecky and install this will stop any thing else but the emulator installing), Scumm, Snes9x, Virtual Jaguar and Sega Model 2 thanks to BD000's script which works flawlessly i might add. All games i can report are opening (have them all set to fullscreen) and work superbly and might I add launch faster than they do in Launchbox itself. Also as a BONUS i have a previous version of LaunchBox installed (version 4.9) for media ie:- dvd drive, music player (Jaangle), Films and T.V. Series (set as shortcut in Platforms called 1. Media Players) and they all launch through BigBox. No errors of anykind so far i can report. What can i say Jason? its fast, fluid and very responsive. Thank you so much for such a suprise with this Beta, only thing im short off is platform images for ScummVM and Capcom, which would make images for everything (well for me anyway) Thank You Jason Carr i have to really commend you on such a fantastic Frontend it surpasses all my wildest expectations. Thank you Martin! All great to hear. I trust you're back up to par with your health?