Jason Carr

Yeah, no question, they look great in the app. The aspect ratio is perfect too. Though I might want to re-think the background images.

Anyone want to take the lead on that thread and start compiling images? In the mean time I'll see how bd's images with that aspect ratio look in the app. :)

Holy crap! Nice, yeah, that's what we need. It'll be difficult to get those images going for every platform, but that's a great start.

Sure, thanks bd. We need to finalize the name, first, of course. But we will want a very large logo, ultimately, I'd say at least 1,000 x 1,000 pixels. Ideally, the logo would be made in Illustrator or similar, using vector graphics. Per the format, it doesn't really matter. We are not changing the LaunchBox logo, but incorporating it will not be required. Also, keep in mind that the logo will need to scale well from large to relatively small.

I started taking that route, because I'm not sure if we'll be able to find good images for all platforms, similar to the Wii image above. Definitely could use some help brainstorming what to do there. Like the clear logos? Hate them? Should we use a device image? Etc.

Exactly. That's perfect. :) I'm also trying to get clear platform logos to work as well, instead of an image of the device. However, that's a challenge because of the various spacing of the logos.

Ah, no kidding. Well, I can't say that *should* be happening, but at least we've found the culprit. Did you have "Use Any Controller" enabled?

Not bad, Martin. I'm still stuck on Couch and Big Box though. Any votes for yay or nay on those? Anybody oppose those names? Also, I'm gonna need a logo for whatever we end up with. I have a decent logo guy that I think could probably do a great job within my $100 budget. That said, I want to open it up to you guys first. If anyone's interested in building a logo, let me know. That $100 is up for grabs. That said, I'm extremely picky when it comes to logos, and it needs to be very attractive and professional, so I'd only suggest attempting it if you have good experience with that kind of stuff.

Nice, bd. That's an improvement for sure. Rather than a description of the console, I'm thinking maybe we show some details like the number of games, etc.

Good to know, guys, thanks. I'll look into it.

I just did some testing. I'm seeing around 0.3% activity when not focused. When focused, it fluctuates, but does go up to between 1 and 2 percent. This is what I would expect when everything is working properly. What I would suggest trying first is turning features on and off one at a time to see if they affect the CPU usage. Both game controller options and side bar counts are known to affect performance, especially, so try turning off game controllers and side bar counts. Also try hiding the side bars. Let me know if any of that affects the CPU usage, and then we can focus on that if needed. If not, it's gonna be harder to troubleshoot. Thanks, advocate.

Here's the current state of the Platforms screen: Honestly, I'm not overly happy with it, because I feel like it conflicts too much with the look and feel of the games view, which looks like this: So, I'm a bit torn there. I do really like the functionality of having the Favorites and Recently Played sections. I also want there to be a Recently Added section as well. Any ideas?

Hi guys, thanks for all the discussion here, and the demo, Kriven. The initial alpha will not have any kind of a letter bar, but we'll look to add this shortly after. So far I'm most fond of bd's original letter bar concept (on the left). We could make it optionally show up only when going left, always visible, or just turned off.

Nice! Good stuff. I'll keep screwing around with it and tweaking. My goal is to get an early alpha in everyone's hands tomorrow night. :)

Lololololol. I'm currently torn between Couch and Big Box, I think. I keep going back and forth, wanna vote guys? I do want to finalize the name tomorrow if we can. :)

Right now, the boxes just leave space underneath for N64 style boxes. What do you mean a pop out from the right for the side letter thing? Yeah, please do feel free to keep tweaking some mockups. We may wait until after the initial alpha to make any big changes to the placement of things, but we'll probably have multiple views eventually and we'll want the best possible layouts, ultimately.

When LaunchBox is focused, it does do quite a bit in the background. There's definitely more that could be done to improve this. However, when LaunchBox isn't focused, much of that processing should be subdued (so CPU usage when not focused should be less than when focused). Also, very rarely I've seen an issue (really it's more of a Windows glitch but somehow I need a workaround to fix it), where LaunchBox constantly repaints itself. I've only seen it happen a handful of times, so it's really hard to pinpoint. But I suspect that that may be the culprit here (of the 5% CPU usage). Let me know if it stays that way or if it goes away after a reboot.

Yeah, thankfully, Windows doesn't prompt with it on automatic upgrades. It only happens when you download it via a web browser and then run the setup, I think.

We have a winner. I'll change it for the next version. :)

Great ideas, guys. @bd000, the wall I hit had to do with aesthetics/placement. I'm pleased though because I think we have that solved, at least for the alpha, thanks to you guys. One issue I'm seeing is that the fonts are still too small for the living room (I did a test last night). So we're still trying to fit a bit too much on the screen there. I do like the concept of using icons/graphics to help with that (and I love your ESRB idea Kriven). I've had plans to add those family features for ages, so that makes a lot of sense to add soon, indeed. Game music is easy, btw, I already have that added. :) How did you guys envision that side letter thing? Always visible, or only when you go left? Would it be enough to gradually scroll really fast and pop up the current letter big on the screen?

Ha, yeah, that too.

Yeah, unfortunately though it comes back after every update. I haven't done enough testing to see if it really is going away. Does anyone know for sure?

Been a pretty productive night tonight. :) After experimenting with the menu items on the right, it ended up working a lot better with them on the left, simply hiding the list of games. Which I think makes the most sense anyways, as we're drilling into a particular game. I'm excited though; I think it's looking really nice...and you can actually use it to play your games now! ;) If we're really lucky, I might have the first alpha ready in the next few days.

Good job ol2ec, and welcome. :) Yes, the tab is as you would expect, but yup, some games are pretty picky. Glad you got it working.