Jason Carr

Thanks for the sleuthing. We'll look to get that fixed.

It is possible that that part could take a very long time with the Arcade platform on lower end devices, due to the number of games. It might be worth trying it again and waiting longer. But it's also possible that the device is running out of resources. It makes sense that it could be pushing the device to its limits.

What is happening when you try to import them? We'll need as many details as possible in order to help.

Oh, one more note: I did attempt to get Citra/Nintendo 3DS working, but unfortunately neither Citra nor Citra MMJ work properly with frontends (they start up but they don't launch games). If anyone knows otherwise or knows of a frontend that works properly with them, please let me know.

Hey all, beta 7 is out now with some fixes for lower-end devices. This new beta may work on some additional devices that it didn't work before on. I was able to get this version working properly on my old tablet from 2015. I also sent out a new download email to everyone just in case, for anyone who wasn't able to run previous versions of the app. Any testing you guys can do would be appreciated. @Nally @SupaGrova @TheMadMan007 @Nora

Thanks guys; I have the translations updated for the next beta, which should be out later today.

Okay, sadly, I'm afraid that probably has too low of specs. I'm still coming up with hardware requirements, but I'm fairly positive that is just too low in RAM.

How old is the tablet? How much RAM does it have? I have noticed that my old Galaxy Tab S2 from 2015 can sometimes run out of RAM and crash the app, depending on how many background apps are running. Okay, I'm stumped. What happens when you open a file browser app on the device? Are you able to view and edit files at all? The FX file browser is one that I've found that's easy to navigate with the controller.

@SupaGrova @TheMadMan007 I was finally able to replicate that issue. Here's what I did: I disconnected my external drive, which is *not* configured as "device storage" on the Shield (it works when I plug it into a Windows computer, as it's running the exFAT file system). I plugged in a different external drive, and told the Shield to format it and use it as device storage. I disconnected that drive. Now when I start up LaunchBox, I get that error. The Shield warns you when you disconnect a "device storage"-formatted drive that things won't work. So I think the Shield moves important data and files over to the drive when you use it in "device storage" mode. As far as I'm concerned it's a really stupid way of doing things, but I guess it's just the way they've done it. That said, if I re-connect my external drive that is formatted in "device storage" mode, then I am able to start up LaunchBox just fine, so at least on my model, it should work fine in that case so long as you don't ever disconnect the drive that you formatted in "device storage" mode. But that seems to be a scary and unfortunate way to do things, and it's not that simple either, because I've also noticed that after I connect my "device storage" mode drive, the Shield will sit in "scanning" mode on that drive for ages before it actually becomes available. During that time, nothing is able to access that drive. You can confirm this with a file manager app. If you're not able to access the drives on your system with a file manager app, then LaunchBox won't be able to access them either. Here's what I would recommend doing (though I recognize that this is likely to be a pain in the rear): Connect your "device storage"-formatted drive to your Shield. Go to Settings > Device Preferences > Storage and wait for your external drive to no longer read "Scanning...". Once it reads "Total space" instead of "Scanning...", select it and select the option to "Erase & format as removable storage". Proceed through the prompts, taking note that you might lose some apps and/or data. You can always back them up first by connecting the shield to a computer via USB if needed. After the Shield is done formatting the device, you should be able to run LaunchBox just fine. You will now also be able to connect the drive up to your computer to put stuff on it if needed. Let me know if that works for you guys, or if you'd rather not format your external drive.

It won't prompt you to update if there's a connection issue and it can't reach the servers, so that's probably what was going on. I'm not aware of any connection issues on our end though.

Interesting, so my model number is actually greater (it's P2897). Honestly I wasn't aware that was a thing (I thought there was only one model). So that could be the issue, or at least the discrepancy. I'll send you a link to beta 6.

@SupaGrova @TheMadMan007 I can't seem to replicate those issues for the life of me; starting to wonder if we have different devices somehow, or at least different Android TV installations. Can you both go to Settings > Device Preferences > About and share with me the Model Number, Version, and SHIELD Android TV SW Version fields? Also, what happens if you delete (or just rename if you don't want to lose the data) all of the LaunchBox folders you have in the root of either internal or external storage, or either of the NVIDIA_SHIELD folders? Does LaunchBox start up? If the Shield is reporting a read-only folder error, then for some reason LaunchBox just can't write to whatever folder it's using. The problem is we don't know what that folder is at this point. Also, assuming you have an external drive of some sort attached, you might try temporarily detaching it to see if the issue is the drive somehow. Edit: One last thing: make sure you have the latest beta installed (beta 6). If you need a download of beta 6, let me know.

I suppose we could provide that as an option...though it's not really one that I would want personally. We can consider that going forward though, not a bad idea. It's available in the latest beta on the desktop. It will be out in the official release next week.

Android is a complete failure in this regard. Controlling that process properly is impossible, sadly. If you fully exit the game/emulator, it should automatically take you back to LaunchBox. But often times you have to use the app switcher to completely exit the app in order for it to work. Strange. I have the same device and I've been testing it on since the beginning. I'll do some further testing with a complete reinstall/device reset and see if I can replicate. I do know that there are several ways to configure your external storage; how is your external storage configured? It should not be configured as "device storage". Maybe that's the issue?

Where the app is installed doesn't matter as to where the LaunchBox folder is, so that's worth noting. Is there an NVIDIA_SHIELD folder on your external storage? If not, try creating one.

Are you looking on internal or external storage?

Certainly not that long, but I didn't have that information from your initial post. What text is displayed when it's locking up? The more details you can give us, the better we'll be at figuring out what's going on.

You may just need to wait a bit longer and stop killing the process. In some rare cases, Windows will report the process as not responding even when it's just working hard.

Beta 6 is out now with the following: Added Retroarch Plus from the Play Store Added a .nomedia file to the root LaunchBox folder so that the game images don't show up in the Android image galleries

We are planning on recommending the full-fat sideloaded version of Retroarch, and not any version from Google Play, because of the Google Play restrictions. We're also considering adding a feature that automatically downloads and installs the sideloaded version of Retroarch, but that won't make it into the 0.34 release. Regardless, yes, we can add support for that from Google Play.

Yup, absolutely. Please email us at support@unbrokensoftware.com with your Google Play email address and we'll send you a forever license. We wanted to do that automatically, but Google Play won't give us a complete list of email addresses for privacy reasons.

Good to hear. I would highly recommend getting some sort of a game controller device for your phone. It's more annoying to carry around but it really does make the difference between playable and worthless, at least to me. I can't use the on-screen controls to do anything really. Check out ETA Prime's channel on YouTube if you need some reviews.

Hey all, it's that time again. We're hoping to release both LaunchBox 11.16 on the desktop and LaunchBox 0.34 for Android (yes, it's coming back) early next week. We would really appreciate some translation updates, if you can fit it in. Thanks as always for all your work. @Kondorito @Cauptain @Nyny77 @Opak @dukeemu @cyanjiang @Just001Kim @MajKSA @gamehacker @alexposad @k_kutsugi @Bardock

Yeah, we do, but I feel that those are much less intrusive than having gameplay videos of so many different games on our servers. That's not really as big of an issue as the other two, though. We do have a lot of changes/fixes planned for the database, and also quite a bit in progress. It doesn't sound like our vision completely matches yours, but we do recognize that a focus on improvements to the games database is a good idea. We didn't put it on the poll, because it's in progress, and we're working on it regardless of poll results. That's not a bad idea, but it would also be a huge undertaking and I'm not necessarily convinced that it would appeal to the majority of the audience. Still, it's a great idea for the next poll.

This is not currently in the plans. There are several issues with the idea: It's a legal gray area still (much more of a legal gray area than fair use with images, and it might not be likely, but it could get us into hot water with overbearing companies like Nintendo) Our games database server costs are already extensive, and it's only getting more expensive as it is; therefore, I'm not really interested in the massive additional server costs that would be required We don't want to deal with the likelihood that people will just start uploading EmuMovies videos to our servers; we have no good way of preventing that and we don't want the bad press or drama involved with it