Jason Carr

Hi all, sorry for the trouble. I've responded in another thread, but I will respond the same thing here as well: We can confirm that the reports are indeed false positives, but that's all we can say. Every single release we put out, we end up fighting with a million and one broken anti-virus programs to do our best to eliminate any false positives. But every release that task becomes more daunting and more difficult. It's very rare that Windows Defender reports a false positive like this, but Microsoft apparently updated the definitions today and it is now being reported as a false positive. Obviously we couldn't catch that because when we released 11.14 it wasn't being reported as a false positive. I'm going to look to attempt to put out a new release that does not throw a false positive, but it may or may not be possible, depending. The unfortunate truth is that most anti-virus programs are absolute garbage and report more false positives than true viruses, so they're much like the boy who cried wolf. They become useless because they cannot be trusted when a virus is reported. Windows Defender has a much better track record than most third-party anti-virus programs, but it's not perfect. When you're searching new developments for a series of bits and bytes from well over 30 years of viruses, it's nearly an impossible task to do without getting it wrong. Regardless, you're getting a very false sense of "security" if you're trusting an anti-virus program (especially a third-party anti-virus program) to tell you whether or not you have any bad or malicious software on your machine. That's the sad truth these days. We'll do our best to fix the issue. If you can, please report this to your anti-virus providers as a false positive.

No, it's the truth. What would you expect us to say in this regard? We've run every single file in the release through Virus Total. We always do before all official release. We're very confident it's a false positive.

We can confirm that the reports are indeed false positives, but that's all we can say. Every single release we put out, we end up fighting with a million and one broken anti-virus programs to do our best to eliminate any false positives. But every release that task becomes more daunting and more difficult. It's very rare that Windows Defender reports a false positive like this, but Microsoft apparently updated the definitions today and it is now being reported as a false positive. Obviously we couldn't catch that because when we released 11.14 it wasn't being reported as a false positive. I'm going to look to attempt to put out a new release that does not throw a false positive, but it may or may not be possible, depending. The unfortunate truth is that most anti-virus programs are absolute garbage and report more false positives than true viruses, so they're much like the boy who cried wolf. They become useless because they cannot be trusted when a virus is reported. Windows Defender has a much better track record than most third-party anti-virus programs, but it's not perfect. When you're searching new developments for a series of bits and bytes from well over 30 years of viruses, it's nearly an impossible task to do without getting it wrong. Regardless, you're getting a very false sense of "security" if you're trusting an anti-virus program (especially a third-party anti-virus program) to tell you whether or not you have any bad or malicious software on your machine. That's the sad truth these days. We'll do our best to fix the issue. If you can, please report this to your anti-virus providers as a false positive.

Yes, we will definitely migrate to MAUI for the Android app at some point (and thus look at a native Linux release of it). That's not really feasible for the Windows desktop, however, since we rely so heavily on WPF for the desktop theming engines. There's still nothing out there for any platform that really comes close to competing with WPF, so I don't see us navigating away from it any time soon for the desktop apps.

Because the Android version runs on Xamarin.Forms, which is the precursor to MAUI. You cannot port the desktop version to native Linux, period, because WPF simply doesn't run on native Linux. All Microsoft's MAUI is is the next version of Xamarin.Forms, which we were already using for the Android version. It's also worth noting that we do already use quite a bit of code from the desktop version in the Android version behind the scenes. MAUI is good, yes, but the desktop version as we know it cannot currently be built with MAUI. MAUI has come from mobile technologies, not desktop technologies.

That is a good point. Perhaps we should have made a note of that in the poll. We ended up putting it on the poll just because of the number of votes it has on BitBucket.

Go home Neil, you're drunk. No, but really, apparently he's drunk. Sorry y'all. I seriously hate putting up with this crap. But sometimes when you deal with volunteers, you get put between a rock and a hard place.

Sure, 11.14 should have addressed this. Let me know if it hasn't. That was an accidental bug, not something we did on purpose. We actually pulled the 11.13 release over that temporarily until we put out 11.14.

Just a quick clarification here; the Steam Deck will just as easily run Windows as it runs Linux. And when Valve says that it will play the "entire Steam library", they absolutely do not mean that it will play the entire Steam library on Linux.

Every new feature we always build can be turned off. I can't remember the last time we forced a new feature on anyone. That said, we always reserve the right to put customization options behind the premium version.

Yes, that is also true. We've always done our best to cater to the majority, not the vocal minority or (even worse), the richest minority. That is one huge advantage to a paid app over an open source app like Retroarch, where the highest-paying users determine more of the outcome of the product. Don't get me wrong, we love the crap out Retroarch. Open source is just open source.

There aren't enough Linux users to support any kind of a Patreon thing; that's been proven over and over again by a lack of interest. That said, please see my post above about the Android version. We do have a longer-term plan for a native Linux version, based on the Android version. However, it will be catered to lower-end devices, because the number of folks on Raspberry Pi style devices far outnumbers the number of desktop Linux users.

Keep in mind that we may still tackle those items at some point. The fact that they are not on this poll does not mean we won't implement them. We reduced the new poll down to 10 items, instead of the 40 that was on previous poll, in an effort to ensure that new polls will come up more quickly. There will be plenty of options for the future in this regard. Additionally, marquee features we have planned regardless of the poll results. Parsec integration, however, unfortunately is not a common request, so that one is a bit unlikely.

@Koroth @Daliant Please remember that we have thousands of requests coming in. Just because you've seen something a handful of times does not mean that it's our most requested feature. When we come up with poll items, we have to consider community requests, votes, as well as efforts to implement it. If something is requested a ton and easy to implement, of course we're gonna implement it. However, if something is incredibly difficult to implement, we may not tackle it even if it's often requested, or at least not until we feel like we can prioritize the time required to tackle it. For example, I don't feel like integrated controller mappings are really all that high up on the request list, but it's also a very time consuming undertaking. That said, part of the Retroarch integration future features that we can see tackling would be similar to that.

Those of you who might be interested in a new version for Android, please see here: Also, FYI, in the slightly more distant future, this Android version should be able to be ported to native Linux, as well as eventually Windows for use on lower end devices. That's a ways off, but this is our current plan for lower end devices.

Hey all, just a quick teaser. Development is coming along nicely. We now have a few new views with wheels, Banner Box-style banners, etc., as well as favorites, folder options, and more. I'm hoping to get the new version out within a few weeks.

Thank you @viking! Both Colorful themes available in the Themes Manager in Big Box have been updated, so if you have downloaded them from the themes manager, you can update them from there. Otherwise, if you've downloaded your theme from the forums, the forums themes have been updated as well.

We are looking into this one. Not currently, but we'll keep it mind for a new release.

What do you mean by no longer seem to be working? Do you have "Play random game videos for platforms" checked in the Big Box video settings?

An update to the Colorful theme is in the works. We've already solved the issues. The theme should be out soon.

Thanks for the report. I've reverted the release over this, so the official release is now back to 11.12 until we can get that issue fixed. We should have it fixed and have a new release out tomorrow. You're free to stay on 11.13 for now, or you should be able to downgrade to 11.12 by just installing 11.12 over top.

Thank you all. Btw, I have all three translations into beta 7 (actually I think they were in a previous beta as well). We're planning to release on Monday.

We still have never been able to reproduce this, so we're not exactly sure what to do there.

Hi Claudio, for some reason I don't see the upload here.

Hi all, we're nearly ready to release 11.13, so it's that time again. Thank you all so much for your work on the translations. We're hoping to release early next week. @Opak @cyanjiang @Bardock @MajKSA @gamehacker @Kondorito @Nyny77 @alexposad @k_kutsugi @dukeemu @Just001Kim @Cauptain