Jason Carr

Hey folks, bd's done some great work on some mockups for the nesting interface. If you can, hit it up and vote for the approach that you like the most. https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/features/library-brainstorming

Wow, bd, thanks for all that good work. All those mockups will really help to make decisions I think. What are your thoughts? What would be the preferred approach at this point in your mind? I think I'm favoring the OpenEmu approach, especially with the mockups you created with the charms bar and the tabs (combining the filters, etc.). I think that'd be really great. Thoughts? And I agree about the dark theme, I've thought that from the beginning but would have to figure out a way to re-theme the default Windows controls (as they don't support theming by default). But that will probably be necessary for this. I do like the concept of OpenEmu collections as well, though that might have to be another subproject. Anyways, thanks again, gonna go hit up the Beta Testing thread to tell people to check this and out get their 2 cents.

Yeah, definitely. I'll pin this post for the heck of it. My Steam name is deepest_seed.

Oh, just thought of something. If I remember correctly there might be a delay from when you update information in TheGamesDB to when you can download the updated data. So if you had just updated the release date, for instance, it might just be a few minutes before the import would download it. Could that be the issue?

Hey again conehead; what version of Windows are you running? I can't seem to replicate the issue. Does it happen every time for certain games? Does it populate at all for any games? It's possible that it has something to do with your custom theme, believe it or not. But we should fix it either way. Thanks, Jason

Hi Conehead, thanks for those suggestions. As far as the game completed star, I'd be afraid that it would be too confusing with favorites and star ratings. I agree on the shortcuts though; I've added that to my list.

Thanks for the thread. I've been doing some more thinking, and really, the concept of "libraries", as in multiple XML files, really solves a nonexistent problem. The original reason why I was thinking of doing separate libraries/XML files was for performance/RAM usage reasons. Since then, the performance is great, even with humongous collections. So really, the only issue we have left is RAM usage, and that's only because of the images, and I think there are better ways to solve that problem than separate collections, after thinking about it. So we definitely still need to talk about how to design the nesting interface, but I think the multiple libraries idea would just be unnecessary development. Sorry for leading you and everyone else down the wrong path there. The issue with the RAM usage will go away when I switch the games list backend to use web technologies, which I plan to do before 4.0. Basically, I want to switch the list of game boxes over to a web page type of backend (using the Chromium Embedded Framework most likely). This shouldn't change the appearance or behavior much, but will allow much easier flexibilty as far as animations and customizations inside the games list (especially since it'll all be controlled by simple HTML and CSS). At least that's my current idea. Anyways, so we're back to either nesting or OpenEmu-style. With either approach, I want the presentation to change based on the current Arrange By setting. For instance, if you're currently arranged by developers, then the new navigation would show a list of developers. If by platforms, the it'd show a list of platforms. Thoughts?

Yeah, I'll probably still keep them included in the EXE by default, but use the external images if they exist.

Agreed, drag and drop would be very nice. The more I look at that OpenEmu interface, the more I like it, I have to admit. Still torn on which would be better, nested or a similar interface to OpenEmu.

All great ideas, bd; I've added all of them to my list. The in-app document viewer though would be pretty difficult, so that one in particular isn't very likely, but agreed, would be nice.

Ah, sure. Skinning came up before but that does sound a lot easier than I was thinking. And I can see it being pretty cool and allowing some awesome customization. Would the PNGs need to be able to be different sizes than the default? Or would it be good enough to just always have them the same size? I do have font customization on my list as well, but not per game. All good ideas. Are you a designer/artist by chance?

Ah, I see where you're going. You want one game per screen, ultimately. And configurable spacing and such. That makes sense. Added to my list; I'm not sure what the difficulty of that will be but I'll look into it soon.

One more thing to note...I've already done one thing for version 3.3. I eliminated all the DLLs that LaunchBox used so that they're all built in to LaunchBox.exe instead, and also built DOSBox, CDRDAO, and ScummVM into the EXE as well (DOSBox, CDRDAO, and ScummVM are extracted to the folder if they don't exist). This means that LaunchBox can now be distributed as just LaunchBox.exe, and it'll work just fine. I don't plan to get rid of the setup, but users can choose to just distribute LaunchBox.exe if they want (and it'll help with the imports and exports if you choose to export with LaunchBox included).

SentaiBrad said So I have a new image bug. I installed the new release, I started the program then exited out. From there, I copied over the Images and XML file. Well when clicking on games, the background still changes art but the games front box art doesn't show up. After editing a game then simply hitting OK on it however the image shows back up. I didn't have any problems with just changing out the Beta exe's but this time I chose a new location for the new release. Bah, okay. Have to look into this in another late-night session.

SentaiBrad said Also Jason, I personally don't care about game ratings, but I know some people do. Could we look in to a Metacritic API? Some people could find that info useful. Sure, great idea. Added to my list.

Vinicius256 said Hey Jason, about the library, you could make it like OpenEmu. Take a look to see what I mean: http://openemu.org/ They have these lists by platform on the left side of the program. They also have a drag and drop function to easily import games to your library. Just an idea though Thanks Vinicius; that is certainly a nice and simple interface and one we should consider. I'm definitely not against it. I'm curious what bd's and everyone else's thoughts are on that interface vs. nesting, as we've previously discussed. Drag and drop is a bit more complicated because of the various types of games, but yes, certainly would be nice. I believe I have it on my list already; could start up a wizard of sorts when you drag and drop files. Also, yes, please do speak up and speak up often.

bd00 said I am going to drift away from the matters at hand for a second and I would like to suggest something and here your thoughts. A really great feature would be if LB could organise your files. Rename, create directories and save images and nfos to those directories, etc.. Then add a local scraper. This would allow users to easily rebuild libraries without having to download everything again, and any customisations made could be permanently saved and carried forward. Also, a lot of people already have this sort of setup from other apps and it would make it an easier transition to LB for them. You could even add the option to move everything to the LB directory. Most emulators are portable, they could go into an emulator folder, the games into the games folder (organised and renamed if they wish), etc. You could even give LB the ability to download emulators and set everything up automatically, however, you would need your own repository of emulators. And if you could somehow add Xpadder automation, that would be the icing on the cake. If you could do this and make everything a million times faster and easier than the big players, you are on to a winner. I understand this would be a big job, maybe check out "RoM Jacket" for an example. This does pretty much everything I just said, but it does so using a bunch of scripts. It is all very chaotic and messy and complex and there has been questions raised over whether it can be trusted, so if you plan to run it, consider doing so in a sandbox or a virtual machine because last time I checked it still automatically downloads a lot of stuff without asking you. But maybe it could help or be some kind of guide on how to approach something like this. The idea of RoM Jacket is great, the principle is amazing and nothing else i have come across offers this kind of automation, but it is a mess. What this market is missing is simplicity, automation and organisation and so far you have proven that you can deliver just that. Thoughts? Sorry for the long post, believe it or not I tried to keep it brief. Ah, thanks for that. Starting to understand your vision there. Yes, agreed, my biggest goal is to make everything as easy as possible. I do see the advantages of using an XML file and images per game, and placing them with the games themselves, like XBMC. I think that would work great for ROMs and probably DOS games, but of course it gets to be pretty much impossible to keep XML and images files with Windows games. Another thing that complicates matters is of course that LaunchBox can't always control the files outside of the LaunchBox folder (permissions issues, UAC, etc.). So obviously all games managed this way would have to reside inside the LaunchBox folder. I don't really want to *require* that all ROMs or DOS Games live inside the LaunchBox folder, so of course you'd have to choose to enable this scraper-based system, I guess. Which I'm torn on, because again, I want simplicity. But you bring up some definite good points about how we should proceed. For ROMs, DOS games, or anything else that *can* be easily moved around, we should encourage people to let LaunchBox manage the files and keep them inside the LaunchBox folder, asking people if they want to move the files. The DOS install wizard gets partially there already, but not all the way. So I'm definitely with you there. Not sure about images and metadata files with the games, but I can see the benefits there for sure. Maybe the import/export process should use that format? Thanks bd.

bd00 said Something came to mind regarding the import/export features and I don't know if either of you have thought of it, or if it is just a little... taboo?! but read between the lines here. I think the import/export feature could help spread the word about LaunchBox. Users could set up a system, with all the games, the emulator, the game details/artwork and LaunchBox and have it all packaged up in a tidy and solitary zip file. Users can then move this zip file wherever they want and just unpack to a ready built complete library, no work required. One of your biggest hurdles is getting LaunchBox "out-there" and this has the potential to reach a lot of people, very quickly. If it can gain traction, it will be like a snowball rolling down a hill. Please feel free to edit this post. Yeah, I actually thought about that (it was the primary reason I wanted to make imports and exports a focus). For instance, I want to be able to export a few games here and there for my son's computer. And I want to be able to distribute packages with abandonware games. I don't want to encourage piracy of any kind, but as far as I'm concerned, if you can't buy a game anywhere, it's fair game. And yeah, I see huge potential there as far as getting LaunchBox "out there". bd00 said Next, I think the option to separate the games by a platform is a necessity, both for performance and ease of use. It all works fine using the filters, but having an option to visually choose a platform and only load games from that platform is a desirable feature. Like I said using the filters is fine, but it is not so easy for my son. If he could see an image of the platform and click that to view the games from that platform, that would be great. It's not just beneficial for children either, some people would just prefer visual representations of platforms that they can click to see the games, rather than having all their games on a single page and having to use filters or endlessly scrolling to get around, simple but true. I think the key here is "the option". Don't make either way compulsory, let the user decide. One simple checkbox would be all that the users would need to see, on or off. Under the hood, split everything up on a per platform basis, this could still aid users who decide to stick with a single page; e.g. LB could load only libraries that are visible on screen (or getting close) and if the filter menu is accessed, it could proceed to pre-load all platforms (images last, if at all at this point), then dump the ones not in use when the menu is closed. Some good points there. We have some interesting things to discuss regarding how to do the libraries thing, and I'm not sure if I want to nail it down to a library per platform. I was more thinking any number of libraries, and you could divide them up however you wish. That might get too complicated though, I'm not sure. Just like the game details view (or worse), we'll need to have some significant discussion on this one. Might be good to put it in a separate thread.

Sorry it's been so long guys, just had a really busy week. I'll be on later tonight to read through and respond to everything. Everyone's input is always appreciated (even if I can't get to it right away).

Yes, obviously imports and searching are important. I'd like to get the import/export going sooner rather than later for my own purposes, but the library thing I see as being more long term. How would you streamline adding games? I have the Add option in the button bar, in the Game menu, and the right-click menu. Just not sure what else we could do there. Yes, for the exports, there will be plenty of options. Obviously exporting everything would be useless as the app is already portable; the main point is allowing people to export certain games in their collection. I'm hesitant to collect usage stats as I don't want to go all big brother on people. Privacy is important to me there, so if we did something it'd have to be opt-in.

I went ahead and posted the final version of 3.2. If anyone finds anything critical we can put out a rush release. Here's a couple things that have been rolling around in my head. First off, I'm looking to add the concept of "Libraries", which would essentially be different LaunchBox.xml files. I'm thinking you could have more than one library in your collection, and be able to switch between them using some sort of nested interface like bd00 mentioned a while ago. I want the user to be able to have an infinite amount of games, but RAM becomes an issue, as well as the problem of scrolling through thousands of games. I think the library thing will help those issues, as well as provide the requested nesting functionality. Thoughts? Secondly, I want to add an import/export feature which would package up your LaunchBox games, files and all if you wish, into a zip file, and optionally even include the program with it. This would allow users to distribute packages of games, or easily move games between LaunchBox installations. Thoughts?

Cool. I think I'm gonna get rid of them. Have more testing to do or do you think we're ready for a release?

Thank you Vinicius; all good ideas. I've added all of them to my list here: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox

Thanks, bd. What are your thoughts on getting rid of the 4 default demo games?

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