Jason Carr

Now I'm starting to see something I can be proud of. I ran with bd's latest suggestions, and I'm really liking it. I still kind of wish it wasn't obstructing the view of the box art, but I think the added functionality benefits well outweigh that disadvantage. I can provide an option to turn it off anyways, if the user is so inclined. Anyways, this version now has icons for zoom, flip, details, and play music. All should be functional. Please give it a test (with both the mouse and a controller if possible) and let me know if you run into any issues. If not, I'll go and wrap up a few remaining things and we should finally be close to an actual release. Do let me know if you have any more suggestions, of course, as well. I do plan to expand significantly on the game details view (with description, screenshots, etc.), but that probably won't be in this next release. Thanks, Jason

Thanks for detailing this, bd. Yes, I do think it would be easier to implement than multiple layers, and I agree that it would be a good solution. I worry a bit about being able to do any animation to open and close them, but animation or not it'd still be useful. I'll look to add it after we get the game details squared away and squash the outstanding bugs. Thanks again.

Thanks bd. On top of all that, we have to worry about the icons being large enough to be easily clicked with a controller (as accuracy is much less with that approach). So it does become quite a bit of a pain. That said, I really like your zoom and flip icon concepts. That'd be really great to add. The transparent bar at the top might work, but of course the challenge is being able to use it easily with the controller. All great input, thanks!

SEK, glad to hear you got the platform figured out. Thanks Dexter. A wiki would certainly be nice, agreed. As for the moment though I need to focus on the development, so unless someone volunteers to create the wiki, we'll shelve it for the time being. It's not obvious, but you actually can enter in the game's ID in the title field, hit search, and it will find the game. There are a number of issues with that search, but there's little I can do to fix them because the issues are unfortunately with TheGamesDB's search engine. I've contacted them (and even donated) asking for them to fix it but I haven't yet received a response. I do have plans to add the ability to customize the DOSBox and ScummVM versions (and ideally allow different versions for different games). It's not exactly priority for the moment, but I'll bump it up a little. I agree that emulators make a bit more sense to be in the options window, that's a good point. I do want to keep them accessible from the game editor, but I'll add a todo item to put them in Options as well. Please do let me know what else you have. Thanks for the feedback.

Dexter, yes, I do plan to somehow scale the icon (whatever it ends up being) with the box art if I can, depending on whatever solution we end up with. I had tried just a number of different images on top of the box art, but I wasn't liking much of anything. Thanks for your input as well.

nmc, good point on disabling the icon. Thinking about the possibility of putting icons above the box art; that's not a bad idea. I'll do some experimentation with that. And I do plan on adding the game notes to the game details (and also importing the description from TheGamesDB into the game notes). I agree that it would be nice to show a platform icon of sorts, but I'm not sure that that should be the game details button, as I think it'd be confusing to click on the platform to show the game details. Still, if the icons above the box art work out, that'd be a good thing to add. Thanks for the great feedback.

Nice, Dexter. Looks like that worked out pretty well.

Ha, yeah, "less than a week." Sorry for that. I guess I got carried away with the game details. I should get it into the next official version, though.

Alright guys, been a long time coming, admittedly, but I have a new version for testing. I've fixed a lot of the various issues with the game details popup (many of them involving game controllers). I've also implemented the promised "click the icon to show the game details" feature. Automatically showing the game details on selection or on hover are no longer the defaults, though they are still available to select under the View menu. If you can, please do test all modes, starting with both "Show on Hover" and "Show on Selection" unchecked, then test with the options checked. I did also add a close button to the popup, and fixed the star ratings click issue. I do, of course, have a lot more to do to add more features to the popup, but the goal of this beta version was just to get the concept down, mostly without flaws. Please let me know if you run into any issues, and how you like the default mode. Lastly, I'm not overly happy with the graphics/placement/whatever of the little "i" icon that shows the game details. I experimented with a bunch of things and just haven't yet found anything that I really like. So please do provide feedback on what I have and any suggestions as to the visual representation of the icon that shows the game details. Or, if anyone wants to take a stab at coming up with a graphic, I'd gladly take a look at it and credit you if we end up using it. Thanks again everyone, Jason

Hey miles, in fact, I have a working version in development with this feature. Check out the beta testing thread. Let me know if you want in on the beta testing and I'll add you to the group.

So, after toying around with things for a while and taking in other people's suggestions and such, my current plan is to change things up to just show a little tiny icon in the corner of the games, only when you hover. Then you can click on the icon to show the game details. I'm finding it just too annoying to have it always showing up everywhere. That should allow for more stuff to be added to the box as well, without being too intrusive. Hopefully I'll have a new beta with this implemented, out soon. I need to put out a new version shortly though to address a few minor bugs, so might not get everything (like game images on the details) into the next official version. Thanks guys.

Great idea RZenith. I'll look to see if I can get that added. And welcome to the forums.

Ah, yeah, wasn't letting you edit it after they had been replies. Try it now; it should work.

nmc, I've added you to the trusted members list, so you should have access to the beta downloads now.

Thanks, bd. Sorry, guys; I've been really busy with real work lately. Hoping to get back on stuff this week.

Hey bd; Origin and Uplay games should work fine if you just point LaunchBox to the EXE file. I would like to implement imports for them like Steam though, yeah.

Good to know, thanks Draven.

Armin, sure, makes sense. I tend to implement features by request, and that had not yet been requested. I'll look to add it soon. Thanks, Jason

For all following, Deathbringer122 is now Dexter. Dexter, I actually went and installed iTunes after all to take a look at it, and ended up experimenting with the drop down tab thing (was reminded how it worked). I do like the concept, but it turns out that I don't think it's great for LaunchBox at this point, partially because the LaunchBox box arts tend to be a bit larger than the iTunes cover arts do, and so it feels like you can't get enough on the screen. But also, the drop down animation is very important to implement it well (otherwise it just feels too clunky and confusing), and I can't really do that until we get going with DirectX. So it looks like that approach will at least have to be shelved until the DirectX interface overhaul. Still, that was a great suggestion. I particularly like it because stretching the entire width of the screen allows me plenty of space for pictures and everything else. But, alas, not gonna happen for the next version. So I'm back to the dilemma of space in the popups. I don't want to make them too big, and cover up too much stuff, but also would like the ability to add pictures and such. I'm not necessarily sold that another panel would solve the problem either, but I guess that's the next thing to try. For anyone confused on the iTunes thing, here's a screenshot:

Back to deathbringer, yes, I have some tweaks to make yet with the star ratings. The clicks won't work like that with the final version. The backup system should only keep a maximum of 10 backups; eventually, yes, I would like to add a configurable option there. Just didn't put it in from the start. The Backups folder would be a good idea as well, but I'll have to program that in. LaunchBox saves more often than you would think (like every time a game starts it's tracked), and a backup is made on every save. Your notes are and have been useful, so don't back down.

Hey guys; thanks for all the responses again. I'm toying with the concept of somehow docking the panel, though I haven't come up with anything I like yet. Deathbringer, glad the emulation stuff is working well. Fading it in would be nice of course but isn't an immediate priority. Animations like that will require a DirectX implementation of sorts, which is coming, but is still pretty far off. It does make sense to allow configuring of the hover time though; once we get the solution narrowed down we'll look to add stuff like that. Can you explain more of what you mean by the iTunes browser? I've seen iTunes before but don't have it installed for the moment and don't really want to install it. bd, the buttons are actually a pretty good idea; I can see that working well. Though I like having the ability to arrow key through the items and view the info as you go, so I'm a bit torn on it. I'd like to provide options for all this stuff but the more options I put in the longer everything is going to take, and I don't want it to get too convoluted either. I'll keep experimenting and see what comes out of it. The scraping and the joystick cursor (what you were seeing) haven't changed at all in the beta releases, so if they have issues, those issues existed in the previous version. The image issue you were seeing was most likely caused by connection/performance issues with TheGamesDB; I have seen that happen occasionally. The joystick issue is probably because you have a joystick configured (or something is pretending to be a joystick) that LaunchBox is picking up. You can turn off joystick/gamepad input in the Options dialog.

Here's a new version for testing. This version has options in the View menu for Show on Mouse Hover and Show on Select. It also fixes the click through issue and star ratings can now be clicked. Give it a try and let me know. I'm still torn on whether I like the concept of the details showing up next to the games, or if there should be a panel of sorts. A panel would be more work at this point, but might make for more flexibility. I'm also envisioning the ability to click on the developer, publisher, etc. and automatically filter on them. I think I'm going to focus on this one for a while, make sure we get it right, and might put it out as a 3.0 release.

I do like the images, though we might have some issues with spacing (things getting too big) for various sizes. I'll see what I can come up with.

Thanks Beresford, yeah, all noted. Close button is planned as well as a fix for clicking through. What is your opinion (and bd's) on doing it in a panel instead of an overlay like this?

All good points; I still need to download the description from TheGamesDB. And I haven't worked in the controller support yet, but I have modified it to show on selection. I'll get a new version up soon. Thanks guys.