Jason Carr

Beta 3 is out now with the following: Improvement: New LEDBlinky option to use advanced logic for filters lists in Big Box (primarily for addon devices); enabled under Tools > Options > Integrations > LEDBlinky in LaunchBox Improvement: New LEDBlinky option to disable starting the LEDBlinky screensaver when attract mode starts in Big Box; available under Tools > Options > Integrations > LEDBlinky in LaunchBox Improvement: LaunchBox performance improvements when blurring excessively large background images Fixed: The default emulator wasn't being automatically assigned when adding a game manually in the Add/Edit Game window Fixed: The MAME full set importer was not properly obeying the option to "Skip clones entirely" if checked

For the 11.5-beta-3 release, I've added some code in to resize images that are larger than the screen resolution before attempting to blur them. It does seem to significantly help performance with excessively large images.

I'm not an expert on NUC devices, but the NUC is likely an underpowered device when it comes to the GPU and RAM. 8 gigs unfortunately these days is rather underpowered for Windows 10. Even just Firefox as I'm typing this is taking up more than 4 gigs of RAM. I'm not sure what graphics it's running, but I would guess that they're fairly underpowered. Usually the issue comes more from the wheel scrolling so quickly during moving operations, and image caching, not catching up between moves. Yes, pretty much everyone uses clear logos, myself included. Come to think of it, could the issue be that the performance issues and/or crashes are caused by running it off of a slow-ish external drive? That might be worth testing.

Unfortunately I'm doubtful that having the drive would really help here; we've done enough testing to narrow it down to an operating system or hardware configuration/performance thing. I've done some more testing today and I think what's really happening is that Big Box just starts to eventually choke and die when the hardware can't keep up with attract mode. Especially on something like a Nuc, the hardware can get overwhelmed and the software starts falling behind pretty quickly. Attract mode runs on a timer, so if it queues up enough operations, eventually it'll just overflow and die if the hardware can't keep up. That's a serious challenge to fix, but the simplest thing to do would be to just slow attract mode down. It runs lightning fast currently, which may be the cause of crashes on lower-end systems. I'll look to add a setting for that here soon, which will hopefully help.

@Lahma Sorry for the added difficulty for plugins with the 11.4 release. I understand the frustration. I do wish the .NET Core upgrade had been a smoother experience, but I still feel that it was necessary, even with it being the major challenge that it was. Thanks for those helpful notes @JoeViking245. Let us know if they help you get back up and running @Lahma.

@lessthanzero33 Updating to the latest beta will likely fix this issue.

Windows 7 isn't optimized with the latest drivers or Microsoft optimizations, so that makes sense. Running Windows 7 at this point in time is definitely not recommended. It's back to the drawing board then with those crashes, which I still have not been able to replicate with any consistency. I was able to get Big Box to crash once after running attract mode for 4 or 5 days straight a couple weeks back, but that's all I've seen since. Unfortunately I didn't get any leads on what caused that particular crash, but we'll keep our eyes open for anything new to look into.

Woot! Good to hear.

I see. I can't see us getting that working on incompatible systems, unfortunately, but there is an option to turn off audio muting during transitions, which should solve the problem.

@Mr. RetroLust @lexx I believe that issue should be fixed in 11.5-beta-2.

This may be an issue with the custom theme (that's all I can figure). Just tested this and it seems to be working fine for me. The pause screens do temporarily mute the system iirc, in order to prevent some jarring audio hitching that happens with some emulators. Is it staying muted for you?

Thanks for the note, we'll look to update it here soon.

I think it may be choosing the wrong "clone" as the priority. We'll look into this. Thanks @Just001Kim. This typically happens when a particular translation is out of date. @Bardock was handling the Dutch translation, but it looks like it hasn't been updated since July of last year. If you're interested, please see this thread: There's instructions there for updating the translations. I think it's safe to say that you could certainly take it over at this point if you're interested. Just read the first few posts of the above thread for instructions. Thanks!

Unfortunately I haven't been able to replicate any of these startup issues that are new to 11.3/11.4, but it's possible that the latest beta may fix some of them. @degetalwolf Can you try upgrading to 11.5-beta-2 and let me know if it fixes those issues for you?

@Owls21 I've tried to replicate issues with the Retro Console and Simple Detailed startup themes, and everything seems to be working smoothly for me. I am on the latest beta though. Can you try updating to 11.5-beta-2? What specifically isn't working?

@faviann Thanks for the run-through. Unfortunately even just loading and resizing a 25,000 X 14,060 pixel image is probably going to be a serious performance hit, but I would guess that it's gonna be marginally quicker than blurring it. I'll do some testing and see what I can do.

Beta 2 is out now with the following: Improvement: Games database metadata updates are now more robust in order to help prevent corrupted metadata downloads Fixed: Spanish Edit Emulator form control placement issues Fixed: Rare LaunchBox list view column index error

I get you, but it makes zero sense to name a game in LaunchBox purposefully different than the correct name of the game that is on the ROM file. It makes a lot more sense to change your method of arranging games rather than to use incorrect titles.

Unfortunately I think the latest releases have a bug with the Spanish translation here. We'll get it fixed here soon; sorry for the trouble.

@ToniBC I tested a complete import of NES games; Contra and Probotector were combined together properly. If you allow the importer to combine versions together (just leave that option checked), then they'll be properly combined. There's really no need to do it manually. However, @C-Beats mentioned to me that if you insist on doing it manually, you can use the LaunchBox DB ID field in Audit to look for duplicates to combine.

Hey all, the first 11.5 beta is out now with the following: Improvement: Better theme compatibility for installs that don't support symbolic links (such as on network drives or external drives running the exFAT file system). Not all themes are supported in this scenario, but theme support should be much improved. We still do not recommend running LaunchBox or Big Box off of a network drive or an external drive with the exFAT file system. Fixed: Logging out of Origin was not always working correctly We may end up working on more fixes for a bit before diving into new features, but we'll be focusing on the remaining poll items here shortly.

It's a driver incompatibility issue specifically with the newer .NET Core version. Sadly, there's not much we can do to fix it as it's either a Microsoft bug or a driver bug. Feel free to downgrade to 11.2, but hopefully it'll be fixed with a new driver or a Windows update shortly. Just out of curiosity though, what model is your video card?

I've seen glitches with Microsoft's C++ update with one other person. I sent them this link: https://appuals.com/fix-the-feature-you-are-trying-to-use-in-on-a-network-resource-that-is-unavailable/ I believe they were able to fix the issue by running this tool: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17588/windows-fix-problems-that-block-programs-being-installed-or-removed

Correct.

For what it's worth though (and I realize this is a pain), but if you re-format that drive as NTFS, it will fix the issues.