Jason Carr

Alright, here's beta 4. This has batch editing and some other stuff you can check out in the changelog. I do need the batch editing tested well if you can, and of course we still need much more testing on the DOS Game Installation Wizard. Yes, integrating Wikipedia should be very doable. It's still a lot of work, but an API is available and should have everything we need. That said, there's no fanart or anything like that on Wikipedia, so it's not on the same level as MobyGames, but it's an improvement. This new version fixes Brad's complaints on the TGDB name scanning as well. Brad, everything imported from Steam is marked with a status of "Imported from Steam" and a source of "Steam". So trying to find games to delete shouldn't be an issue, and the new bulk editing should let you easily set the platform. I do have plans to add a bulk TheGamesDB search, but haven't done it yet. Thanks guys for all your help.

Brad, have you seen this error since? I still can't reproduce it, so I might just call it a fluke.

Thanks, Brad. I'll be putting up a new version tonight that should fix the object reference bug.

Come on, Brad, why can't you read my mind!?

Sure, thanks. I think for bugs that you find in the beta releases, they do probably go best in the beta testing thread. Other bugs I figured troubleshooting was a good place for.

Thanks, Brad. Sounds good.

Thanks, bd; no worries. Life is life. For anyone who's interested in outstanding issues, features, etc., I created a BitBucket issues list a while ago and just opened it up to the public. It's not exactly complete; I've just been using for new issues/requests (I have some old ones I haven't added to it). https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox I'd prefer not to have people entering issues there directly (rather use the forums), but it does serve as a good outlook on what there is to do.

Wow, weird. That one's gonna suck to troubleshoot. Because we might not ever see it again. Let me know if you do see it again. Looking into that error, it could be some bad memory in your system, but not necessarily. It also could be one of the low-level Windows calls I make, though none of those have been changed in a very long time. So the fact that I've never seen it before likely means that it's pretty ridiculously rare. Anyways, do let me know if you see it again. I'll experiment with changing filters to see if I can maybe make it happen. I suppose that it is possible that somehow the filters code I wrote could be causing the problem.

Lol, that'd work. Actually, in all honesty, a thread per suggestion/issue is helpful. Just because then we can focus discussion on that particular thing in the thread. I'm not Steam during the work day. Can't really talk much from 8:30-5:00 M-F.

Thanks, Brad. All sounds good. I did recently add another large new feature: bulk game edits (finally). That one was seriously needed, badly. So I'm done adding big new features for this particular release, but might work in some tweaks (from your list above). We'll get them all tackled, though, of course. Thanks for starting a new thread for unrelated discussion, that should help. Looking forward to you and bd's testing results on the DOS wizard. The auto-update folders would certainly be nice; I'll add it to my long-term list. We'll have to talk about what you mean by the smaller images. I'll likely have a new release for testing tonight, but the DOS stuff won't be touched. It'll only be new stuff (and maybe some changes per bd's list above). So don't let that stop you from testing. We still really need the DOS stuff tested well, especially. Thanks, Jason

Alright, here's beta 3. Been talking over IM to Brad to see if I could improve the performance, and I think this should significantly help. The filters drop downs now only populate when you actually drop them down. It's not quite as pretty, but saves a whole lot of waiting time with large collections, and you can still use the filters without populating the drop downs. I also sped up game population in general. And of course I fixed that wizard issue that you found, bd. Can you retest? Thanks to all.

Brad, in your laggiest setup: - How's the performance when you first start the app? - How's the performance when you edit and save a game? - How's the performance when you change filters or arrangement? Mainly, how do they all compare. There's slightly different stuff going on in all three scenarios so it might help identify some of the culprits. I need to come up with a huge collection so I can test. I think I'll probably import a bunch of ROMs. Thanks, Jason

Yeah, agreed. I have an old Pentium II just for that. But that said, it certainly would be nice to be able to run them all from one machine.

Okay, sure. Interesting. I'm hoping I can work on the performance some this weekend and put the next beta out.

Jason Carr said SentaiBrad said Also it may be more trouble than its worth, but the way you wrote the program is there a way to have a debug console? I was thinking there could be a debug console and a way to write that console to a txt file and we can post it for you. That way you can get developer and code specific notes that bd and myself just can't see, and maybe an even more accurate resource count. Edit: Also you can add me to steam if you'd like, I can still make my posts here on the forums so my findings are logged, but if you have more questions or anything like that you're more than welcome to do that there. That goes for anyone else on the forums. http://steamcommunity.com/id/SentaiBrad/ Just added you on Steam. I do like to keep most discussions open and documented though, of course. A debug console is a great idea, but of course it would take a long time to implement (as I haven't built any debugging messages and I'd have to add them everywhere). Still, I could add it and then just add in debug messages when necessary (when something needs debugged), so I'll probably do that next time run into something that's tough to resolve. Might take a while for performance though. Sorry, I should have clarified better, but I'm more interested in the total RAM usage with a large library. It is possible that the high disk usage was due to too much RAM being used. What is your total RAM usage with a huge library, after slowly scrolling through it all?

SentaiBrad said Also it may be more trouble than its worth, but the way you wrote the program is there a way to have a debug console? I was thinking there could be a debug console and a way to write that console to a txt file and we can post it for you. That way you can get developer and code specific notes that bd and myself just can't see, and maybe an even more accurate resource count. Edit: Also you can add me to steam if you'd like, I can still make my posts here on the forums so my findings are logged, but if you have more questions or anything like that you're more than welcome to do that there. That goes for anyone else on the forums. http://steamcommunity.com/id/SentaiBrad/ Just added you on Steam. I do like to keep most discussions open and documented though, of course. A debug console is a great idea, but of course it would take a long time to implement (as I haven't built any debugging messages and I'd have to add them everywhere). Still, I could add it and then just add in debug messages when necessary (when something needs debugged), so I'll probably do that next time run into something that's tough to resolve. Might take a while for performance though.

Oh indeed.

What I'm most curious about, though, is how performance is (and 3D acceleration even perhaps?) between VirtualBox, VirtualPC/Hyper-V, and VMware. Brad/Ed, have you compared them?

Ha, nice. Glad you guys got this figured out. I completely missed the fact that Ed hadn't mounted the CD directly in VirtualPC. Thanks, Brad.

Thanks, Brad.

SentaiBrad said I gues I'll make a new post for this. What would be awesome for LaunchBox too, would be to launch any game on your system period. Steam has its own client, GOG is soon to have it own client, Desura is a client, Origin is a client. Then there are individually installed games from other sources or retail discs that don't go to a client. What about being able to import exe's? You could do a blanket search like with importing roms, then a check box pops up asking for each entry, making sure its only adding in games and not programs. Some games from some clients may not launch from .exe's though, but some Steam games don't like that as it is now too, so. The alternative method would just to add one game at a time if you're like me and have games installed in different locations, but my GOG installs are all in one giant folder in their own separate folders. It can pull its name from the parent folder, which can be tricky for some games like The Sims 3 where its .exe is in a Bin folder... but that you can add manually. This would give the program the ability to launch any game from your system period. Steam, Desura, GOG, Origin, DOS, Rom and anything else in between. I just thought of that because I was thinking about all the GOG games I have installed and It would be cool to see them in a list. You can also create a new Filter settings. "Platform." This would allow to sort by Steam, Origin, Desura, GOG, Regular Install, Rom and DOS. I'm not sure how to implement that yet but it would allow for more sorting options when your library starts to get like mine. Yeah, definitely, have that planned as well. As you mention, there are some interesting challenges, but it can just do its best and you can manually follow up wherever needed.

SentaiBrad said I only have images for what TheGamesDB has found. I'm not sure I could give you an accurate read on it, maybe about 50% to 60%though. Ah, still, that's interesting. Can you check your total RAM usage after slowly scrolling through your whole collection? I'm curious.

SentaiBrad said Edit 2: Sorry, trying to not make so many posts. Is there any way to expand how LB searches for Games? When importing most of the time it catches about 70% of that romset, sometimes ... not much at all. Is it based completely on TheGamesDB? Cause sometimes when I go back afterwards and search for a game, I don't have to edit the name at all and it finds the game. Sometimes I have to edit the name a bit then other times it see's nothing at all. Which can either be name discrepancy or just that GDB has no entry for it. So, can the search rules for LB be expanded? I would think that they could, and it would probably help when we get the ability to start searching on Wikipedia, MobyGames etc. Though with Wikipedia the internal search would have to include so much more like "Game" so that its not searching movies or books. Yes, the search is all based completely on TheGamesDB. But also, it requires a 100% match in the title, sans for punctuation. I did it this way because that way at least you know that everything that *is* matched is correct and what isn't is obvious. In other words, I didn't want any accidental false matches. But certainly, this could be improved to better match things up (I do already do some checks for & vs. and, etc.). And yes, definitely plan to add some other search options for other sites.

SentaiBrad said As far as resource usage, the value I saw shoot up, granted on the official release, was Disk Read Writes. I just opened the program and it fluctuates a bit. Right now, CPU goes from 6%-11.7%. RAM usage is at 20.9 - 74.8mb. Firefox at the same time uses 30.8mb - 257mb and that doesn't lag like this. So ram usage honestly isn't that big of a deal for me personally. So if your program comes in under a regular browser, that's a decent pull of ram. Disk Usage is at 5 - 6.5mb/s while Firefox is at a .1 mb/s and Steam was getting up 15mb/s only because it was downloading and installing. Otherwise it idles at 0mb/s. After scrolling through my library once: Disk Write/Read shot up to 7.8mb/s and stayed above 6 for quite a while. i have a feeling that Disk Usage could be the culprit. I want to try reimporting my library, or at least enough to make it lag, on an internal drive. I have it right now on an external hard drive where the read write access is slower. The only internal drives I have though are my OS drive which wouldn't do too much good, and the internal drive I write my video too. It needs to be dedicated for FRAPS and my HD PVR2, so if I wanted to record and use Launch Box to get me there, I doubt I would have video write complications, you never know. That said, I also have all my roms on the external hard drive, but as far as we know it could be slow while reading the XML filing too. Which is at 7.11mb file size just in case it helps. I also don't have everything imported yet, but we don't need it all imported yet. Hope the clarifications and addendum help. That's interesting, especially with the RAM usage being so low. You must not have images for a lot of your games? Having the images is what boosts the RAM. If that's the case, though, that's good to know because it would mean that the images are not cause for your slowdowns.

SentaiBrad said D-Fend and ScummVM importing. I know ScummVM has a method to scan its games folder to see what is inside, scan the files, give it the name of the folder then add them in. The D-Fend import function isn't in an intuitive place actually. I lose where it sometimes and I know it exists. Under Extras -> Scan games folder for new games. So with that I assume its searching for .exes, bats or com files. When importing or searching for DOS games in a folder. You could set a note to make sure its only one DOS game per folder. When it finds the files in there it will use the folder name as the naming convention because who wants 40 files named DOOM, HELL, STAR etc etc. Ah, gotta love weird interfaces (D-Fend). I'll check that out; that makes sense. I remember when I was integrating ScummVM I was surprised that their interface allowed for game auto-identification, but that there was no way to do it from the command line (which is what I'm using). So yeah, I'll have to see if I can dive into the code to see what they're doing (or better yet, maybe contribute to the project to make it all work from the command line).