Jason Carr

bd000 said The 'open folder' option does nothing for Steam games, you might want to remove it. Done.

@Maddoc1007 pointed out that we're missing Game Boy Color. I skimmed the thread and didn't see it; let me know if I missed it. Looks like somehow I left it off of the initial list.

Just made BBM obey the Steam banner preferences like the desktop version. Eventually we'll have separate settings for all these things for just BBM, but in the mean time, this works.

Kriven said In BBM I decided to test out the game launching and all that, so I went to Adventures of Dino Riki (my go-to test game) and flipped the box art, just to test that feature. When I went back to Library View and linked Dino Riki to an additional app, the image automatically switched from "Steam Banner" to displaying the back of the NES box. I can't get it to revert back, even though I have my library set to prefer Steam Banners. Edit 2: I fixed it by flipping the box image again, ha. Maybe have box images automatically return to default when you close BBM? I think this issue is mostly there because I never implemented Steam box art in BBM. I think once I do that, the discrepancy will go away.

Kriven said In general I think it's looking really cool. My one gripe with it at the moment (and assuming better navigable features will be included in the future) is the way it handles artwork which is wider than it is tall. I think either an alternate view will have to be generated for displaying the information below N64 box art instead of to its side, or I think this might be an opportunity to add the "Posters" image functionality I had mentioned in another thread, so that in BBM users can customize the display image so they better fit the space alotted in BBM. @Kriven, I love the way your wrapper looks. That's a great idea. The only trouble there is we'd have to customize it on a per-platform basis, which is a lot of work, so we would have to put that off until most other things are completed. It sounds like ideally we might need reformat things depending on the aspect ratio of the box art.

It turns out that the game launching errors are due to the setting to "clear RAM cache when launching games". At least it looks that way. Big Box Mode was trying to clear the RAM cache, but there is no RAM cache in Big Box Mode, hence causing the errors. So that's an easy fix. :) The two TargetInvocationExceptions are a bit more difficult to figure out though. Bd, in your last exception above, oddly it looks like it can't find LaunchBox.exe. I'll have to look to see if somehow the current folder gets changed or something. It expects LaunchBox.exe to be in the same folder as BigBox.exe, of course.

Gotcha. Thanks guys, this should help me resolve the issues. I'll have a new beta out tonight, of course.

Ah, yes. LaunchBox is definitely in need of a better setup solution. Right now it's basically just a WinRAR self extractor. What happens in this situation is that LaunchBox takes too long to shut down (it stays open for a few seconds and does some cleanup work while shutting down after the window closes), and then if you jump to the next page in the setup too quickly it will try and write files while LaunchBox is running.

I only ask about the vector because it'd be nice if we could use the logo as a background, and with 4k monitors becoming more popular, the higher the resolution the better. That said, we probably don't *need* it as a vector image; it would probably do just fine as-is. That large-form LaunchBox logo will be really nice to have as well. Over the years I've learned to accept gifts rather than push them back (which took me a long time lol). I really do appreciate it, bd. Thank you; you do great work. If it's easy to vectorize and make it (even) bigger, that'd be awesome. Otherwise, it's more than workable already. :)

Hi shinra, are you referring to the new Big Box Mode? Or is this in the desktop application?

That was very encouraging to read, my friend; thank you for that. That is most certainly the goal, though of course I feel like I constantly fall short of it. That is awesome that you're so involved; sounds like an extremely good use of your time. And yes, it definitely sounds like you're exactly where the Lord wants you. It also sounds really busy! Lol. I know it goes without saying, but I'm really glad you're here, John. :)

Looking boss as usual bd! Some killer PC images there; gonna be hard to decide which to use as the default. :)

Dude! I do still need an icon for the EXE, and also a logo to use in the app. What you've done here looks awesome, I'm really impressed. Actually, I wouldn't change a thing. What did you use to build them? Is it a scalable image? Whatever it is, I want to run with this, for sure. For both the icon for BigBox.exe and the logo inside the app. We'll use the dark version as the background for when the Exit/Switch to Desktop Version items come up. The only thing we'd need to clean up is the edges of the blue boxes; they're a tad bit rough. Otherwise I'd say it's golden. :) And I know you didn't do it for the money, but the prize is yours. :)

@Hippyshake, yeah, for sure. That's the only way I get to play anything, really. One of these days I'm gonna put more time into guitar. One of these days. I actually never owned a classical guitar, I just had a standard Fender acoustic at the time. Probably one reason why I sucked. ;)

It turns out my lovely Comcast internet was out for most of the evening, so I didn't make near as much progress as I wanted to. However, I did fix a couple of key issues. I fixed the Platform dialog error on adding new platforms, and no longer show platforms with no games in Big Box Mode. Per the glaring "games not starting" issue, believe it or not, I can't seem to reproduce it. Everything is working fine for me. I added better error tracking to Big Box Mode so we can see what the real error is. For everyone who is getting errors running games, please give the new beta a try and either click the Report Error button or paste the error text here. Thanks guys! We'll keep making progress. :)

That's awesome to hear, Hippyshake. I've always wanted my main work to be some sort of a ministry, but haven't gotten there yet. I know I'm personally not called to be a preacher, though I was a youth leader for a good 10 years. I just stopped doing youth ministry because it was becoming painfully obvious that I was slowing down a bit too much for the kids. ;) I'm relatively denomination agnostic; I tend to go where I feel led. That said, I do consider myself Wesleyan, so I've mostly stuck to the United Methodist, Free Methodist, and Nazarene denominations.

Awesome bd!!! I love the second DOS one lol. The Windows ones look good as well. :)

@Hippyshake you're a preacher? What denomination? :)

Awesome, John. Yeah, I listen to a pretty wide range of genres, that's for sure. I have to admit that it's pretty rare that I find a CM artist that I really like, but Demon Hunter is absolutely amazing; one of my favorite bands. What I find hilarious about them is Demon Hunter isn't even Ryan Clark's main gig...he's a graphic artist for other artists. Lol. I did grow up on CM though so I'm pretty familiar with it all. Unfortunately, my classical guitar training was cut pretty short and I didn't focus on it near as much as I wish I would have. I enjoyed it when I actually practiced, but in college I tended to be too focused on recording my own music or (more seriously) programming the next big thing (TM) to do anything really productive. Lol, funny how that worked out, just took a while. These days I crave time alone to play guitar; that's hard to find because the kids are either with me, or asleep. I can only play the Dora theme song so many times... ;) So I guess I never really switched, per se. I've also never really been a good lead guitarist, though I'm slowly getting there these days. I'd call myself a sufficient metal rhythm player, but hardly lead.

Sure; I think more uniform might be a good thing, but I would value attractiveness over uniformity, I think, after using it in the app. I'm loving all the images, personally, sans for the PC and MS-DOS images, which could use a facelift. I like the Nintendo (SNES, NES, Wii, GC) ones the best. :)

Good finds guys. I'll be focusing on fixing the issues first here tonight and then I'll throw out a new beta before the night is out. This feedback is all really helpful; so I'm hoping you guys can keep beating this up until we get all the issues ironed out. :)

Alright, I'm excited to announce that the beta is out, including of course the new Big Box Alpha. It's certainly still a little rough around the edges, but the main functionality is there. I'd say the biggest issue with it right now would be occasional performance issues. There's nothing on the screen that tells you when it's working, so it feels awkward at times. Hopefully that isn't too major of an issue though. Excited to hear everyone's feedback! Tweak it, break it, make it yours. :)

Hell or high water, I'll have the first version of the alpha out tonight. It might be a late night, and it might be broken, but it's going out tonight regardless.

I never figured that out either Clive. I guess we'll just let people chuckle. ;)