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SentaiBrad said That's good then. My fear was that it did sound difficult with the wide range of options. There is really no standard. I was trying to think Ease of Use. Yea, setting up LB and scraping takes a while, but once you have that setup too, its as simple as carrying over images and config files. Web based games just happen to change a lot, that's the nature of web development I think. I'm all for it if it can be done easily and make sense for a majority of users who want to use this set of features. It shouldn't be anymore difficult for the end user. If they are going to add browser games, they are going to add browser games, nothing will change except it will load full screen. If they use Xpadder, they already know that part. If they have set up a HTPC, this will be a breeze. Yeah, setting up is time consuming and scraping is a big problem at the min, which reminds me, are you any closer to adding that wiki scraper?

SentaiBrad said Except that defeats the purpose of the controller. You can map opening and closing, then how do you map playing? Per each game? The point of an HTPC setup is to run setup once or import config files, then not having to touch it again unless something breaks. All I am saying is for the time you would have to spend doing this, you could have just loaded up Kongregate.com, looked through a few things you are thinking about playing then just clicking on the game. They're not suited for a controller. Edit: And I talked to Jason about being able to include button configuring in LB and it handeling config files and including emulators etc. But even if that happened, each flash game differs wildly. At least with consoles its the same button layout, that never changes. I wasn't talking about adding button configs in LB, I use Xpadder for that. You can add keys to open and close AND play the games in the same config. I have not set up my controllers in most of the emu's I use, I just create a profile in Xpadder using the default keys provided. 9 times out of 10, that leaves me free controller buttons to map to things like closing the emu, adjusting the volume, saving/loading save states, etc. All I was asking Jason to do is add a timed keystroke (F11) when launching browser games, to save users who might add browser games the trouble of creating scripts or finding other workarounds. I thought it was a fair request and one that should be very easy to implement. As for the time it takes me to do this, I am unsure of what you are referring too? Launching a browser game from LB? Well I suppose it may be quicker not to use LB at all, go to your browser, and navigate to Kongregate.com and find the game you want to play. However, the same can be said for PC games, just create a shortcut on your desktop and double click it. Or ROMs, just open your emulator and load the rom, or better yet run it through RoM Jacket and create an exe or a .bat file and again just launch it from a folder on the desktop with a double click. But that is not what these frontends are about now is it? Or were you referring to Setting up Xpadder? It actually takes no longer than setting up the controllers within the emulators. Or do you mean because each browser game is different? This is true, but to be honest I very rarely play browser games so that is not a problem for me, but it may be to others and that is exactly why I am trying to think of ways to make this simpler for them. Since people seem to be adding browser games to LB, I tried to consider what would make this great for them and offered some suggestions. I was just trying to help. Also, a lot of browser games of similar genres often use the same keys, so a general configuration would work a lot of the time. I use X360 controllers and I map the mouse to the right thumbstick and the thumbstick button to the mouse click. This works fine for navigating menus. I was actually going to suggest people who use Xpadder, to start uploading profiles for browser games (and emulators) and we can try build a nice repository to save others time. For anyone interested, I have tried a couple of browser games and Xpadder works fine for both game controls and general keyboard/mouse actions, it could work with a HTPC setup without a keyboard and mouse with a lot of games. I can load a browser game from LB, have the browser load automatically to full screen, navigate the menu, play the game and exit back to LB all from the controller. So if anyone has a HTPC and some browser games they would like to set-up, all while avoiding having to use a keyboard and mouse, it can be done and is not very difficult. If anyone want's some assistance setting it up (Xpadder/full screen script/etc), just ask and I would be happy to help.

SentaiBrad said Honestly... It is a great idea, but for my purposes completely unneeded. I am glad people are finding ways to use LaunchBox to their desired effect. Considering right now it seems the direction is aimed at more Theater PC or HTPC setups, pointing back in to a browser completely defeats the purpose. However, regular laptop and desktop users could find that very handy. If you want to step up web integration Jason, I would suggest looking at Kongregate.com. Probably the best place for web based gaming. You may even find some rudimentary scraping options but I think it would be the same problem as MobyGames. So does this fit with the program in my opinion? Sure, anything can. Does it fit with ease of use? Not at all. Like I said though, im happy people are finding more awesome functions for LB. That gave me a thought! If you want more of an HTPC experience, you can open the browser full screen. Then close with alt+f4 when finished (can be mapped to a controller button if using xpadder) and automatically return to LaunchBox. To open your browser games full screen you can press F11 (again, can be mapped to controller button with xpadder), or if you are using chrome I think you can use the command -start-maximized in your shortcut to automatically launch fullscreen. I don't think there is an option for Firefox, please correct me if I am wrong. If you do use Firefox, you could download Chrome Portable and save it to your emulators directory and only use it for browser games you launch from LB. Like an emulator. *EDIT* It is probably possible to use the "additional applications" feature of LB and a small script that emulates the F11 keystroke shortly after launch of browser. Might do that this week sometime. Or maybe Jason could add the F11 keystroke emulation into LB when launching browser games so this wouldn't be necessary?

Hmm, OK. I can't upload eps or svg files and i get an error when trying to upload a zip, saying I have exceeded the max file size limit, 78kb If anyone want's them just let me know and I will host them elsewhere. *EDIT* HaHa! Fixed it! I just removed the png logo from the zip file. 4kb now

Vinicius256 said Hey Jason, do you have by any chance a PNG file of the LaunchBox logo? I want to try to make a video ad of sorts for LaunchBox using Vegas, it would be fun to do and could help me learn video editing better. Jason Carr said Thanks, bd for helping Vinicius. Vinicius, I'm excited to see the video. The 128x128 image is actually the largest I have anyways. OK, here is a larger version of the LaunchBox logo since Jason does not have any other available sizes. Now it is by no means perfect, but it should suffice for now. I did not re-draw this, this is was an automatic trace and vector conversion. I removed some odd artefacts and straightened some lines and added the drop shadow that got lost in translation. Like I said, it is not perfect, you have lost your gradients and it could do with some more work to tidy it up. I have attached the vector files if anyone wants to spend some more time on it.

Jason Carr said Good point about encouraging users to spread the word. I have zero marketing experience. Anyone have any ideas as to how best to encourage people to spread the word? Agreed about the licenses for beta testers; yes, that was the plan but obviously I do have to draw the line at some point. Everyone on this thread currently will get a license but I'd rather not hand out licenses to everyone who puts in a minimal amount of effort beta testing (otherwise we'll have people just hopping on to do the least amount of effort to grab a license). Significant contributors like all of you obviously are a different story. Like I mentioned earlier, give them some incentive. Free premium licenses for spreading the word. They must be able to prove what they have done and you must deem it enough. You are right about the beta testing, you must also be cautious about offering the free licenses to anyone who asks, providing they have a good reason why they can't. No offense to people who really cannot afford it, but anyone can just say they can't at the end of the day. That's even easier than being a fake beta tester. If users can't afford it, let them earn it. There is no shame in asking them to do that, it is fair. You scratch my back and I will scratch yours. This takes me back to the first paragraph of this post. As for how, Brad just mentioned some great examples, but you don't need to just focus on nerd sites, if you're going to do that there is no point in making LB simple. Take a blanket approach, "anywhere you can" just get LB out there. Ask your users to post in forums, write blogs, make youtube videos, etc. etc. All the usual stuff, facebook, twitter, google+, etc. etc. Reviews, recommendations, anything. Anywhere. Spread LB around torrent/p2p/file sharing/usenet/etc (with no pre-made libraries of course). Jason, you should approach some of the more well known sites that rank high in Google. Send emails, ask them to review LB and share your future plans with them. They are always looking for new things to write about, you might find it easier than you expect. Literally anything you can think of, is better than nothing at all. Vinicius256 said Hey Jason, do you have by any chance a PNG file of the LaunchBox logo? I want to try to make a video ad of sorts for LaunchBox using Vegas, it would be fun to do and could help me learn video editing better. Here, I extracted it from the icon for you. Could only get it at 128x128 pixels, if you need bigger you will have to wait for Jason.

Jason Carr said Thank you jtrain for donating! Vinicius, I know how that is, and even after going premium I'm likely to just hand it out to people who want it but have legitimate reasons why they really couldn't pay. Thanks for sharing your input, and I'll make sure that people who have major issues paying for things on the Internet (or flat out can't afford much at all) will still be able to ask for and probably receive a copy. To be clear, I am envisioning that anyone who pays would get a lifetime license to the premium version. I'm not looking to nickel and dime folks, that's for sure. bd, you're right, I haven't done any in-app advertising asking for donations. In fact, I've wanted to completely avoid it, because I know how irritating it is. That said, obviously it will need to happen at some point. Maybe for the next version we can advertise on the welcome dialog at least. What I want to avoid entirely though is spamming people with advertisements who've already donated or already purchased the premium version. I dislike forcing that welcome dialog too, because I know it would piss me off. Anyways, thanks everyone for your feedback. It does sound like we will probably look to create a premium version eventually, though it will probably be at least a couple versions before it happens. Yeah your right, not being able to disable it would be too much, forget I suggested that. I hate ads in apps too, but I do understand why devs need to do it. What we are talking about here, I don't really consider it as an ad but more of a notice. Seeing notices in free apps saying "If you like this app, please donate..." never bothers me like true ads do. I also think you should start encouraging your users to start spreading the word about LaunchBox, but that's just my opinion. I also think anyone who helps you in beta testing, should get a license too.

jtrain said I wouldn't mind paying $5 or $10. If your're up in the $40 range then I might have a problem. Also, I hate subscription models or having to constantly pay for new versions so I would prefer a model where I can buy a lifetime premium license. Donate $10 now jtrain to secure a lifetime license and support the developer

It is always sad when a project reaches this point, but it is usually inevitable in situations like this. Don't feel bad though Jason, this is a very common milestone and those of us who know how much time you are & will have to put into this project understand. They are some things you can do before you need to go "paid-for" though, if you choose too. In a nutshell: 1. A marketing campaign to increase user-base and hopefully boost donations. Get your current user-base to help with this. 2. Special Offer: All users who participate in the marketing campaign get a free premium license for life. They must prove what they have done and it must be enough. 3. Special Offer: All current users who donate will get a free premium license for life when/if the app ever goes premium. 4. Put out an update with a pop-up message at start-up, like you do now, but DON'T allow users to hide it next time LB starts (a temporary nag message). Include details of the situation, etc. etc. Remove it in the next release (make that clear in the message) after you have made your decision. You need to let all users know of the situation, not just the forum users. Also, get a message out on Facebook detailing the "drive". You need to make it clear to your users, the direction you are taking LB. Things like themes and the sidebar are big changes that I believe could be just enough to get people participating. It is not ideal I know. It is never great when developers have to do this kind of thing, but it is necessary, simple as that. At least if you do have to go premium, you have offered your current user-base a chance to earn a pass. I also have a few things in my mind if you decide to go premium (especially without DRM) but I will save those for later.

The dark theme looks very promising, it needs some tweaking but it is a great start. As for donating, I dropped you a donation (5GC654934T697832D) a couple of weeks ago and that on top of other donations I have made the past couple of months to other projects and charities, I'm all "donated out" right now. Sorry

Well I am glad to hear that and I know what it feels like and how it affects the people around, I have been through it myself. It's good that you have not closed up too much. Remember, your girlfriend works hard to support you through this, so a little house work won't kill you it will actually make you feel better. Anyways, about the program. I agree with the options thing and I am probably the biggest culprit, I need to stop. I agree, sidebar is definitely the best choice in my opinion. It would be much easier/user friendly to use than any of the other proposed suggestions. I am not sure about the sidebar changing automatically, this could get very annoying for some users. I think this will depend on the size of the users library. People with large libraries will definitely prefer this feature because they would use it a lot. However users with smaller libraries probably won't use them and would more than likely find it annoying. They would just want the platforms to remain down the side most of the time and when an occasion arises where they need the extra options, they could just click a button to access them. I'm still torn.

Also, the same principle will work for flash based offline games and the like too. But you don't need to create a shortcut, just link directly to the file.

No probs Scraping browser based games is not available, so you will have to add all the info and images manually, but that's not so bad.

How about banners? e.g.

I don't think this is unnecessary or infeasible and I think it is a great idea. LaunchBox is designed to get all your games in one place, why should browser games be any different? Are you sure it is not already possible? To get the games to launch at least? Are these games online, with a web address? Have you tried creating a shortcut and pointing LB to that shortcut? If you be a little more specific, I could probably make it work for you. Welcome to the forums btw

Jason Carr said Wow, bd, thanks for all that good work. All those mockups will really help to make decisions I think. What are your thoughts? What would be the preferred approach at this point in your mind? I think I'm favoring the OpenEmu approach, especially with the mockups you created with the charms bar and the tabs (combining the filters, etc.). I think that'd be really great. Thoughts? And I agree about the dark theme, I've thought that from the beginning but would have to figure out a way to re-theme the default Windows controls (as they don't support theming by default). But that will probably be necessary for this. I do like the concept of OpenEmu collections as well, though that might have to be another subproject. Anyways, thanks again, gonna go hit up the Beta Testing thread to tell people to check this and out get their 2 cents. Yeah I agree, I prefer the sidebar approach too. I would however like an image of the console somewhere. Would you consider adding a small panel at the bottom of the sidebar for a console (genre/developer/rating/whatever people prefer to arrange by) image? Make it off by default, and have the users add their own images if they want it turned on. Something like this: The images could possibly be entered in the emulator settings, since each platform is tied to an emu or an instance of an emu. Although this would be a problem for PC and DOS games. Which brings me onto the emulators. Could you also add the ability to open the emulators from LB (something like I drafted in the exp/col mock-up) purely for ease of access, LB is a launcher after all. Hmm, clicking the image at the bottom of the sidebar could be a nice way to implement it. Also, access to the emulator settings without going through a game is also a must in my opinion. Maybe a right click menu or charms bar on the console image would work here. Food for thought. SentaiBrad said Just skimmed through. I was going to go about creating Pixel representations of consoles and controls because I knew that this was a direction Jason wanted to go, but It doesn't look like I need to do that anymore. If you are talking about the little icons for the sidebar, please continue. The mock-up i created used a screenshot of OE for the main sidebar. I did not want to be recreating that just for a draft and I didn't have the time anyway. So please carry on, don't stop on my account. I have seen some of your pixel work and it is great. As far as which look, I prefer the Left Sidebar view, but I have a big screen. For those with a smaller display maybe there can be a choice on the initial start up but detecting that would be difficult but either way, make it a choice honestly. Saying that, I realize that could be a nightmare so I personally would go for the Left bar styled look. How about a hybrid of the OE and expanding & collapsing? For example, if someone has a genre selected the games would still be separated by the ribbon, so allow them to collapse. If the ribbons collapsed, this would also mean users could turn off the sidebar if they did not want it and still have the grouping option available to them. As for showing the content you want. Why make it so overly complicated? Sorting by developers I find strongly useless. Platform, Genre, Rating, maybe Year or Metacritic Rating (for those that want it) would be fine. Someone would like the developer sorting too, but I think it needs to make sense. The way I saw that was you Click a filter, like Snes, then you hit another Filter like Electronic Arts, etc etc. That's what I took away from the layered look. If you went a left bar route you could choose the master sorting method. I.e. Genre or Platform. Then from there a choice indented from your master choice pops up. From there you can pick year or anything else you can come up with. Similar to how you can refine searches in Amazon or NewEgg. This is all of course predicated on the fact that TheGamesDB has every game in your library, which they do not for me. Not even close. Yeah, I agree the layers way is not great, my least favorite in fact. That was originally thought up as a way to separate platforms and nothing else. I would never/rarely use most of the other options (developer/publisher/etc) either, but others probably do and it is nice to have the option there if you ever wish to use it. Still for me personally, I think t would probably be set to platform most of the time and genre/rating/etc on occasions. As for the deeper sorting, using platform as an example: Maybe when a platform is selected the sidebar changes to show some advanced sorting/searching/filtering/whatever options for that platform, with a button to go back to the full platform list at the top. This would need to be optional though, because I could see it getting annoying. Hmm.. more options Or, maybe have a little charm at the end of the platform name (when selected or hovering), that when clicked shows some advanced options for the selected platform. So powerful sorting is fine and all, but Wikipedia searching is a must. That said, and I'll put this in the Beta Post too, but I changed over to the new version, and even though I imported all my images, they are all gone. Whats more is that TheGamesDB has some games, but no images. So I also think that if an image is missing it can populate the game system with it saying something along the lines of "No Image Available" especially since even with Wikipedia searching, finding images is still going to be a pain. I agree, the scraping options available are not great and TheGamesDB is not adequate as a sole scraper option. It is a shame a gamefaqs scraper is not possible, because I have not come across a game I could not find on there. However DOS games are categorized under the "PC" umbrella, so that would probably cause problems. I don't know about Wikipedia so I can't comment on that, how would it work? Do they have a games DB? If so, i would imagine that it is one of the most complete ones available? Edit: Also, sorry I haven't been saying much recently. My images bug pissed me off, but there has been some stuff I've been thinking about for LB, and bugs I've been needing to talk about. I've just been really trying to focus on my YouTube and my other stuff... I need my YouTube to finally take off and im sure Jason can agree, trying to make your own way and not work for someone else, like a YouTube channel or creating your own program, is very hard. Sometimes I get really depressed and reclusive for a while. I saw this and thought of you: http://www.xda-developers.com/android/join-the-xda-developer-tv-team/ You said you love tech and you would get to play with all the latest mobile devices. You know your way around video editing apps and you probably have a camera. It is voluntary work so you don't get paid but you may get to keep some of the gadgets and you could probably find a way to push traffic to your youtube channel. XDA currently has 5,728,116 registered users and who knows what it could lead to? It would probably improve your confidence too and in turn, squash that depression. Trust me, the hardest part is doing something about it, but once you get going it gets much easier and you will be glad you did. I realize you probably disagree and it is not that simple for you, but why not give it a try and see.

Almost forgot, you could add a simple place holder for platforms with no logo, for example:

Expanding/Collapsing

Does this happen even when TheGamesDB records have a release date? Their database is far from complete, so you need to check when info is missing that it is actually there in the first place. If not, you can create an account and add it yourself. If the data is there and it still doesn't fetch it, you need to wait for Jason (the dev) to come online. He will investigate further. Welcome to the forums btw

That's all for now. I realize some of these are not great, but I did not have as much time as I would of liked to create them and they were rushed and corners were cut. But hopefully they paint a picture. If someone throws out some ideas, I will create some more if required.

"Layers"

OE Style

Top Ribbon

Bottom Ribbon

Ok, no matter how you do this, I think you are going to have to change your "arrange by" set-up, except for the expanding/collapsing option... maybe. Things like "Version", "TheGamesDB.net ID", "Release Date", "Date Added", etc. will not really work with the kind of grouping your looking at here. You could create "Groups" or something, then have sorting options within them (Groups would be things like platform, genre, developer, rating, star rating, etc.) One group would be "All Games" (or All Platforms/Developers/Genres/etc/whatever), so your current "Arrange By" set-up could remain the same, only nestled under the group. Some "Arrange By" options would need to be removed from other groups. I still think you should have the option to turn off the interface also. (All games, with the extra bits of GUI removed - would just look like LB looks now) Hmm.. I suppose it would be just like having some preset filters, with additional GUI added to access them and some sorting options for the results. Anyway, I have created some mock-ups that will hopefully spark something for you.