Jason Carr

So! Here's version 3.2 beta 2. This now has the import process to go along with the export, and fixes all the recent bugs that have been reported (both with the import and otherwise). You can see a list of all the recent bug fixes here (just look at the Updated date): https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues?kind=bug&status=resolved I really need the import and export processes tested as extensively as possible. Also, please test any previous bugs you were running into (from the list I linked) to ensure that they are resolved. I'd like to put out the next release after we iron out any issues with beta 2. Thanks, Jason

Gotta say, this is really strange. For all the examples here, where you don't get a release date, I'm getting the release date just fine on my machine (both in the drop down list and upon selection). So that's pretty odd. I wonder what the difference is. I suppose it could be some sort of random glitch on TheGamesDB, but I don't think that's likely since this issue seems to happen often for you, but never for me. Are you from the US? What are you language settings set to? Thanks, conehead.

Hmm, good question. I believe LaunchBox starts with the visible games and caches them, and then moves on to the invisible games in the background and caches those as well. But I do need to revisit that code (I don't exactly remember the specifics).

Here's the list. The first item is the name on TheGamesDB and the subsequent items are the ones that I look for in addition. "3DO", "3DO Interactive Multiplayer" "Amiga" "Amstrad CPC" "Android", "Droid" "Arcade", "MAME" "Atari 2600", "Atari", "2600" "Atari 5200", "5200", "Atari 5200 SuperSystem", "5200 SuperSystem", "Atari SuperSystem", "SuperSystem" "Atari 7800", "7800", "Atari 7800 ProSystem", "7800 ProSystem", "Atari ProSystem", "ProSystem" "Atari Jaguar", "Jaguar" "Atari Jaguar CD", "Jaguar CD", "Jag CD" "Atari Lynx", "Lynx" "Atari XE", "Atari XEGS" "Colecovision", "Coleco", "Coleco Vision" "Commodore 64", "C64", "C=64", "CBM 64", "VIC-64", "C 64", "CBM64", "VIC 64", "VIC64", "Comm 64", "Comm. 64", "Comm64", "Comodore 64", "Commodore" "Intellivision" "IOS", "Apple", "iPhone", "iPad", "iPod", "iPod Touch" "Mac OS", "OSX", "Mac OS X", "Mac OSX", "Mac" "Microsoft Xbox", "X-box", "MS Xbox", "Microsoft X-box", "MS X-box", "Xbox" "Microsoft Xbox 360", "Xbox 360", "360", "MS Xbox 360" "Microsoft Xbox One", "Xbox One" "Neo Geo Pocket", "NeoGeo Pocket", "NGP" "Neo Geo Pocket Color", "NeoGeo Pocket Color", "NeoGeo Color", "NGPC" "NeoGeo", "Neo Geo", "Neo Geo Multi Video System", "Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System", "MVS", "AES", "Multi Video System", "Advanced Entertainment System", "Neo Geo MVS", "Neo Geo AES", "NeoGeo MVS", "NeoGeo AES", "NeoGeo Multi Video System", "NeoGeo Advanced Entertainment System" "Nintendo 3DS", "3DS" "Nintendo 64", "N64" "Nintendo DS", "Nintendo DSi", "NDS", "NDSi", "DSi", "DS" "Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)", "Nintendo Entertainment System", "NES", "Nintendo", "Famicom", "FC" "Nintendo Game Boy", "Game Boy", "GameBoy", "NGB", "GB", "Nintendo GameBoy", "Nintendo GB" "Nintendo Game Boy Advance", "Game Boy Advance", "GameBoy Advance", "GBA", "Nintendo GameBoy Advance", "Nintendo GBA" "Nintendo Game Boy Color", "Game Boy Color", "GameBoy Color", "GBC", "Nintendo GameBoy Color", "Nintendo GBC" "Nintendo GameCube", "Nintendo Game Cube", "NGC", "GameCube", "Game Cube", "GCN" "Nintendo Virtual Boy", "Virtual Boy", "VirtualBoy", "Nintendo VirtualBoy", "NVB" "Nintendo Wii", "Wii" "Nintendo Wii U", "Wii U", "WiiU" "Ouya" "PC", "Computer", "Personal Computer", "Windows", "MS-DOS", "DOS", "Microsoft Windows", "Win32", "Windows 3.1", "Windows 3.11", "Windows 95", "Windows 98", "Windows 2000", "Windows ME", "Windows XP", "Windows Vista", "Windows 7", "Windows 8", "Windows 8.1" "Philips CD-i", "Philips CD-i (Compact Disc Interactive)", "Compact Disc Interactive", "Philips Compact Disc Interactive", "Philips", "CD-i" "Sega 32X", "32X" "Sega CD", "CD" "Sega Dreamcast", "Dreamcast" "Sega Game Gear", "Game Gear", "GameGear" "Sega Genesis", "Genesis" "Sega Master System", "Master System", "SMS" "Sega Mega Drive", "Mega Drive", "MegaDrive", "Sega MegaDrive" "Sega Saturn", "Saturn" "Sinclair ZX Spectrum", "ZX Spectrum", "Spectrum", "ZX" "Sony Playstation", "Playstation", "Play Station", "Sony Play Station", "PS1", "PSX", "PS", "Sony PS1", "Sony PSX", "Sony PS" "Sony Playstation 2", "Playstation 2", "Play Station 2", "Sony Play Station 2", "PS2" "Sony Playstation 3", "Playstation 3", "Play Station 3", "Sony Play Station 3", "PS3" "Sony Playstation 4", "Playstation 4", "Play Station 4", "Sony Play Station 4", "PS4" "Sony Playstation Vita", "Playstation Vita", "PS Vita", "PSVita", "Vita" "Sony PSP", "PSP", "Sony Playstation Portable", "PlayStation Portable" "Super Nintendo (SNES)", "Super Nintendo", "SNES", "Super Nintendo Entertainment System", "Super NES", "Super Famicom", "SFC", "Super Comboy", "Comboy" "TurboGrafx 16", "TurboGrafx-16 Entertainment SuperSystem", "TurboGrafx-16", "TurboGrafx", "TESS", "PC Engine", "PC-Engine" "WonderSwan", "Wonder Swan" "WonderSwan Color", "Wonder Swan Color"

Good call on this, bd. I guess I hadn't really thought about that (Brad probably brought it to my attention but I must not have understood it or something). I did come up with a list of platform names that is supposed to help resolve this issue (for example, for Super Nintendo, I look for Super Nintendo, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, SNES, etc.). I then make sure I'm searching TheGamesDB with the right platform. What platform(s) are you seeing the issue on (what did you have in your platform field when adding ROMs)? I might be able to add it to the list. I'll post my current list below and add whatever you guys can think of that is missing. Beyond that, you're right, probably shouldn't rename the platform from the results on TheGamesDB. I'll add an item to get that fixed.

Okay, bd, no worries. Brad will do a fine job indeed. Brad, think you can come up a list of wikis to create? Probably best to start a new post for it.

It is a tile, yes. I'll experiment with it and see how it does. And yes, I'll make sure to make it adjustable.

...and I've fixed the issue with the popups. Let me know if you see any further issues.

Conehead said it would be really helpful if you could add a "Site/Forum-Support" section in the main "Off-topic" or other section . so that people would be able to give suggestion regarding the website. Just added a new forum called "Website/Forum Support".

Ha, whoops. Good catch, I'll get it fixed.

Hey guys, I'm not sure what the best solution for a Wiki is yet (never done one before), but yes, we could definitely benefit from a community-driven wiki of sorts. However, I'd rather not have it public until we have a decent amount of information in it, and then we can open it up to the community. Brad is helping in laying out all the options we have, so we can make a good decision as to where and how to host it. Bd, because I'd rather it not be "live" until we have some decent content, I like your idea of using the forums to build up the articles. Would you be willing to take the lead on that (and potentially the resulting Wiki as well)? I have a feeling you would do an amazing job on it all. I'm also confident that Brad would do an awesome job with the videos, and it sounds like he's up for that task. I really appreciate all the work you both put into the community; can't wait to see what we can do with the Wiki (hoping you're on board, bd).

pogowolf said Game Edit form: =========================================== 1) Does the edit game auto-update theGamesdb.net? you have the option to add a game to the DB if there's a game it doesn't know.. what about game updates? (like adding the ESRB rating) 2) What does 'status' mean? there seems to only be one option. this could be used to download the game information in the background.. 3) Source? what's source? 4) Download images from the TheGamesDB should look to the configuration to know what to download.. instead of downloading everything by deafult. (like I don't really need the fan art..and would like to be a global setting) 5) Add ability to find and download the games manual? 1) Edit does not auto-update TheGamesDB. Unfortunately they only allow additions or updates via the website itself. 2) All of the drop downs are populated via the existing games in your collection. There's only one item for you because you've only specified one value in your games. I use Status to keep track of games that have problems, etc., but it's meant to be an open-ended field that you can use for whatever you want. 3) Source is meant to be things like "Physical Media", "Steam", "GOG.com", etc. It's automatically set to "Steam" when you import Steam games, for example. 4) Yes, have a global setting for this planned. 5) Yup, planned as well. Thanks for all that...did find a few things to add.

pogowolf said Main Menu: 1) File - EXIT - kinda seems pointless... I understand why it's there.. but still. *laugh* 2) Game - Configure - Doesn't highlight for ROM or SCRUMM? what's this? 3) Game - view image -- better description as 'view Images'? 4) Game - save image as -- better placement of this feature under the view image form? 5) Game - flip box -- perhaps better description as choose default image? 6) VIEW - Button Bar - Turning this on and off moves the background image up and down. 7) tool - Install DOS/Import Games - combine the installers into one wizard? 1) Import allows you to change the platform from the ADD emu VS ADD game. 2) Platform should be saved after input to be used in other drop downs. 8) tool - Export Selected Games - 1) You can export nothing, this should be tested for. 8) tool - Clean Up Images - Could be a setting.. clean on launch? 1) Lol, it's there for standards reasons, but also because it tells you what the keyboard shortcut for Exit is. 2) Configuration application path is in the edit dialog, by the application path. Specifically for DOS, many DOS games had a SETUP.EXE or similar to configure sound, etc. 3) Ah, true, a relic from what it was before. Makes sense. 4) Yeah, have a to do item for that already. 5) Do we actually say "flip box" anywhere? What do you mean? 6) As designed, because the image is centered in the view. Same thing if you resize the window. 7) Yeah, it'd be nice to do it all at once. Might get there eventually, but it does present some challenges. 1) Confused...explain? 2) Not sure what you mean by this either. 1) How were you able to export nothing? I throw up an error message if no games are selected. 8) Good idea...I'll add it to my list.

pogowolf said Welcome form: 1) Don't show welcome again - This is grey'd out. 2) Add the version somewhere on the form.. perhaps either in the title (Welcome - Version 3.3 - Beta) or in a smaller font under the 'intro to..' movie ?? 3) Don't like how, on start up, the welcome form is model but the parent form opens full screen. 4) the help spread the word.. might want to add support for Twitter and Tumblr as well. 5) Remove the 'minimize' button from this form. it's not needed and really could lead to confusion since it's a model form.. Same with the maximize button. 1) That's greyed out only in the beta releases, on purpose (don't want a beta release going public and anyone being confused and thinking it's official). 2) Sure, at least for beta releases, that's a good idea. 3) Shouldn't really be a problem I wouldn't think, since most people will hide the form on startup (just more of an issue for beta releases). 4) Good point. 5) The minimize button is there on purpose...so you can minimize LaunchBox while the form is open (though I do understand the confusion, but I prefer it there). The maximize button is disabled (just how Windows does it).

pogowolf said 3) Perhaps the background could/should be set to a launchbox screen by default.. with options to change it.. little more 'advertising' instead of setting it to the current windows background. Not a bad idea at all, but I'm hesitant to display something that could be considered annoying as the first thing a user sees when they open the app. Still, could do some more advertising with the default background.

pogowolf said Observations, Thoughts, Comments, and Ideas: Version: Launchbox - 3.3 - Beta 1 General: 1) Need a test script to explain what we should see. If we don't know there should be a list of Platforms when you import your first game, how would we know it's an error? 2) Need pages with screen shots as walkthroughs along with the how to.. movies. I know, personally, I hate "how to" videos because I need to wade though the movie to get to the information I want unstead of being able to skim a page of text/screen shots. ?? Agreed, test scripts would be nice, I'm sure. I try to explain what's necessary for testing but of course sometimes I don't explain enough. And better documentation is planned as well, of course. I have to pick and choose my battles for the moment though, and for the most part actual development has been the priority (and probably will be for a long while). So at this point I'm shying away from much else that takes too much time.

Thanks guys. I'll look into the errors and the missing exe before the next beta release. Pogo, thanks for the details there. I'll respond shortly.

Thanks Ed for that. Yes, I am hoping to add multiple disk support here shortly. I've actually added it already to LaunchBox (DOSBox multiple disks support, in the beta release), but haven't gotten it into the wizard yet. Thanks for the feedback though guys. Do post here if you run into any other problematic games.

Agreed, bd, I've actually planned on adding that but it kept slipping (and I don't think it made it onto the list). It absolutely does make sense to allow darkening the background; thanks for the reminder. I've added it to my list. I like the default background with the image thing too, that's neat. Might be a performance issue though, not sure.

Thanks guys for the good discussion. Some thoughts/responses I had while I was reading: Per-game XML files vs. one large XML file...in this case it's actually faster to use one file (no matter how big) vs. many. So if anything, performance would decrease if we switched to local XML files. However, I'm not against using local XML files on import, for instance, though I don't currently consider that a high priority (it does present some issues, such as keeping the local XML files up to date). As far as using an actual database instead of an XML file, believe it or not, I am using a relatively cheap database of sorts on the backend. I load the XML file up into a data set with tables and such. So saving and loading is just an import and export to and from the data set. This does mean some extra time on save and load, but that helps to allow for more portability, and allows for running LaunchBox on several different machines all at the same time without overwriting changes on any of the machines (synced via Dropbox or similar). Speaking of portability, let me explain why it's useful. On a thumb drive, no, it's not very useful. But in my situation (and it sounds like bd's as well), we keep our entire LaunchBox installations and games library inside Dropbox, so that we can sit down and play our games (with saves and all) between all the computers we own, seamlessly and without thought. I consider this an important feature (it was one of the main reasons I built LaunchBox to begin with). On using more cores...modern Windows applications written in .NET can automatically take advantage of CPU cores. It's not always the most effective or performant way to do it, but in general it does do a good job at it. More importantly, in .NET you cannot directly tell CPU cores what to do (Microsoft built it that way on purpose). Therefore, no, I can't improve performance by "using more CPU cores", unfortunately. That said, it should be doing a decent job at it already. On to images. There's no image resizing going on on-the-fly, other than the first time images are loaded. Images are then cached to RAM and to disk. The main issue I need to resolve here is to stop caching every single image in RAM, and do better in choosing between the hard drive and the RAM cache. That should solve the problem, just haven't gotten to that yet. Resizing downloaded images won't make anything any faster, because I already cache the perfectly-sized and and drawn box art (with the border and such) to disk and RAM, so there is no resizing or drawing going on except for when you resize or replace the box art. Also, the only images which are a problem RAM-wise and performance-wise are the box art images. Fan art, etc. is loaded from disk only when needed. Since there's only one of them at a time, it's not an issue. Only box art is cached in RAM. Finally, only the currently shown front/back box art is cached into RAM. If the back is displayed, the back is cached. If the front is displayed, the front is cached. So unfortunately I can't cut the RAM usage in half that way, as I'm doing that well already. I think that about sums it up. Thanks again guys. Hoping to put out another beta this weekend.

Yeah, just to recap, good idea Vinicius, but unfortunately there's most likely no good way to get at the images. The HTTP cache folder is just a cache, so wouldn't necessarily contain all the images. And since Steam most likely does not want me auto-stealing their images... Probably can't be, unfortunately.

Eek...okay...good to know. Thanks tazrex.

G'night, Vinicius. Can anyone else test for that EXE?

Vinicius256 said From what I tried so far, it seems to work fine, but when I export the games, even though the option to include LaunchBox is selected, the LaunchBox .exe isn't on the .zip file. Huh, that's weird. I can't seem to replicate that. What else did you select? Does it happen if you leave everything at the defaults?

Awesome, thanks.