SentaiBrad

So, a Linux port of LaunchBox will more than likely never happen sadly; though that would be bad ass. We've had conversations about that too but Jason is one man, who doesn't have the time really to port it. Maybe one day...? Maybe if we were at a nearly feature complete LaunchBox... but would that ever happen? More than likely it would take someone else to port over the code for it to run on Linux. I haven't tried WINE and LB yet either. Scraping Origin icons can happen if they have an API, which I am fairly certain they don't have. This is EA after-all. PSP and PS3 Icons... PS3 would be pointless as there is no emulators for it. However, PSP Icons can be read from the disc image so all that would take is to find say PPSSPP's code (if its freely available) and use that. Jason would just need to make sure .iso, .cso and .dax files are supported. The only downside is that the images found within the iso's are really low quality. They only needed to be used for a PSP screen.

Oh random tip that I thought about. When working with higher quality materials, make sure that Anti Aliasing is turned off. I am unsure if there is an option when working with stuff in GIMP for it, but it will make your lines more clean and provide less fuzzy edges in some respects.

I do have extensive knowledge on Photoshop, so if you need any help just ask. If you have Steam I can add you if that makes things easier. I am also thinking about doing something like this with some of the more well known platforms but with video. "Platform Trailers" if you will.

It can't really be perfect. Data that users input them selves and a Website that we can't contact for help.

It's not always that cut and dry though. More times than not it would put in a lot of wrong entries more than good ones for all the platforms.

DOS76 said If you load many of the European or Japanese games in the Genesis category you won't get any results for metadata so it would be smart to add them as Mega Drive games originally and then bulk convert them after you have covers for them. I've set up Genesis/Mega Drive on two separate PC's and did one where I combined them all and added my own covers (labor intensive) and then did the other where I did Mega Drive and Genesis separate and while I still had to search for a good amount of box art a lot of the stuff is found if you use the distinct platforms. Now if only there were separate platforms for PC-Engine and Turbo Grafix 16 doing the PC-Engine platform on its own caused me a huge headache due to lack of metadata. That's odd. My European games on Genesis got found just fine. I mean if the category doesn't exist on TGDB then there is no chance it will use it. Wikipedia on the other hand can be more accurate, but its also a lot more buggy since its a catch-all for information.

If you want your European games to be Mega Drive then you should separate them. If you want them to be labeled Genesis then you shouldn't need to change anything. If by chance a game got labeled as Mega Drive then you can just change it. I have GOG games that will get labeled PC from time to time that I just make sure I put back.

Jason Carr said @LeviWB, welcome. To combine platforms, you would select all of the games from one platform, and then right click and Edit them. This will bring you into the Bulk Edit wizard. From there, you can set all the games to be the other platform. Not sure if that solves your problem, but that's how you would combine platforms. This is how you would do it assuming all of your Genesis games are European otherwise you need to pick and choose then bulk edit. If you add them in as a custom / different platform they are easier to sort.

Borders for any of the consoles (which there are tons) adds something cool I think to videos. I do my own custom thing, but it just takes an extra step, albeit simple, towards immersion.

Just another case why we need to figure out / strike a deal with GameFAQ's or create our own custom database. If you want anything automated there needs to be a framework and the more obscure stuff wont have a framework unless you find one or make it. Also, if the category doesn't exist on TGDB, there is little to no chance it will ever exist. We've tried to talk with them and just got cold shouldered. I'd love to be wrong about that, but a majority of the time it feels like the lights are on but no one is home type of deal.

You can name what ever you want to what ever you want in LaunchBox. However, when you scan something and it needs to check against TGDB records is where it gets troubling. If they don't have a category for it, there is nothing you or we can do sadly. For example, I love DOS games and I have a ton of them. If they get picked up from TGDB it renames DOS to PC. DOS is / was a PC but not all PC's are DOS. PC is Personal Computer which is the device but DOS and Windows were the platform. It is not like Consoles in this regard. So unless they add it, it can not be changed. So you can put all your European games in a new folder and just name a new platform. It gets tricky but my new "philosophical" question, why does it matter? I don't see most users name Japanese Super Nintendo games Super Famicom even though that was the console name. Same with Famicom games. European games showed up on SNES, but it was just called SNES over there unlike N. America with the Sega Genesis. The reason why it only changed names anyways was because of a copyright at the time on Mega Drive. Really random questions, but I also like knowing peoples answers to these types of questions.

Homebrew games will fall under the licenses that the creators want for it as well. Treat them as if a full Publisher or Developer created them.

We've had a few threads on this already. GameFAQ's is vastly superior, but for reasons that are out of our control we can not and will not use GameFAQ's for the foreseeable future sadly. Jason and I both would love to drop TGDB for GameFAQ's database. Licensing issues, no API, and potential ban's for the users of LaunchBox are among some of the most prominent reasons. No API is able to be worked around, but the fact is from the outside looking in they don't want people to connect to their site and download their data in droves. There is evidence from other Front ends that they ban IP's temp and perm to users who do it.

Yea the legality part is the only major issue LaunchBox has to deal with, and its everywhere. It's just that most people don't think about it, don't know and in some cases don't care. So yea, I can certainly appreciate the license researching. People want to protect their hard work, and rightfully so.

I personally don't find the NES game Ports to be a bonus. The emulation that was originally there was ok to bad, but the resolutions are all off. Emulating the NES is the better option here. Here is my main source of information on a lot of things emulation, besides personal research and experience. http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Game_Boy_Advance_emulators#Emulators If you scroll down a bit it will show the differences between the emulators too.

garbanzo said Cores don't come packed with the installer anymore - you have to actively download them. So I don't suppose it matters much which core is set as default in LB - if the user hasn't downloaded that core, it won't mean a thing. Honestly if someone uses RetroArch I would guess they know what they know their way around the command line and don't need help setting default emulator options :) This was the train of thought Jason and I had. We want to try and make sure we get the best emulators with the best compatibility and can achieve good speeds. The general user more than likely wont care that a frame drop happens once or twice, or that the emulator is using speed hacks and isn't very accurate. Either case, they want their games to run. They want to be able to make it to the end and use save states. If they are a power user and are a stickler for any one of the things I talked about, then yea they know how to change around and experiment with emulators and cores. For clarity too, Jason never said we wouldn't ever change the default core, we just need to make sure that it is better in the long run. For example, I point anyone to the Dolphin fork thread to see what I mean.

tony971 said SentaiBrad said Have you tried the latest VBA-M from their Sourceforge page? Curious. I also wonder how it compared to the GBA cores in RetroArch. It was benchmarked at 30% faster months ago. It's only gotten better since. But I wasn't talking about the retroarch core. The standalone program is excellent. The dev made the retroarch port herself and keeps it in the master branch, I believe. So either version of mGBA should be acceptable. But like I said, it's only the recent nightly builds of the standalone program that got the functioning fullscreen command line. Yea, surprisingly most cores carry over very well. The only ones I don't wanna try are DS and PSP games. I feel the emulators are just a bit better and more tailored. As far as speed and compatibility, I haven't had any issues with VBA-M, Program or core, or VBA-Next's core. All good quality with a good / max speed, so mGBA has me curious.

What is the full path of the game and the full path of the art? "System.ArgumentException: Illegal characters in path." This tells me you tried to put a character in somewhere that Windows doesn't like. There are some that it will not type out. Other than that, there is manual XML editing if you are comfortable with that. Download Notepad++ and open up the LaunchBox.XML with it. Ctrl + F inside of the file and search 'Monkey Island' in the Find box and press search. It should move the file to the line and highlight it. Here, you can either edit the paths to see if you can fix it or you can carefully remove all of its lines. Make sure not to remove to far up or too far down as you can effect other games. Also, do the editing with Lb closed and save the XML before opening it up again.

The Mednafen core in RetroArch is the one we're currently suggesting. It is more or less the same thing, inside of RA.

Have you tried the latest VBA-M from their Sourceforge page? Curious. I also wonder how it compared to the GBA cores in RetroArch.

Maybe its the homegroup that has the limitation then.

A good test you can make. Set up a homegroup and try to copy a 1GB file from one PC to another over the network and watch the speeds. It's not a direct 1 to 1 for streaming games etc but you can start getting an idea.

Actually, if your network is under a constant drain then it can. Once something is loaded, its loaded true. However, if your Router and Modem are already servicing a lot of connections then it can affect speeds for anything. We have a modem and two routers. 4 PC's, 4 tablets, 2 phones, a laptop sometimes, and anywhere from 2 or 3 to 5 consoles. I service video to Christina's (my girlfriends) PC every so often. My mother in-law does it from her PC to her PS3, she does Netflix, Hulu etc. Sometimes I'll service video to my Wii U, etc etc etc. So we are using the network a lot. We don't have AC dual band routers or anything but we can get by. Every so often her wifi devices will take a sec to render but I hardly ever get it, I am wired. Optimized content for streaming or network can be different than a full game to an emulator. It is just one thing to keep in mind. The more steps anyone adds to their setup is another step that needs troubleshooting if a problem persists.

Do you have a decent speed Router / Modem, and do you have a lot of PC's / devices connected to your network? I assumed the bottleneck would be more of the Network less of the computer.

There are programs that can make mirror images of a hard drive as well. Say you have a 4TB internal, and a 4TB external. You plug in the external and let the process go overnight. When its done safety unplug the external and leave there. If you need to add something small you can either do it manually or have the program do it again. I know what you mean by the size. I have a big PS2 library. It's several hundred GB's. As far as running it over a network. I would not suggest running PS2 games over a network. N64, maybe even PS1 and older would be fine. Maybe even up to DS. After PS2 / Gamecube onwards... they start to get big. Your computer still loads that information as needed by the Emulator in to ram. Load times can increase, the emulators can become unresponsive, etc. Hell, I would say disc based games in general I wouldn't run over a network, but it's really something you should test out. It is more than easy to set it up, you have LaunchBox installed on the computer you'll be using, you then import games and instead of the computer you have LB running on you point it towards your network. In Windows case, it'll more than likely be a Homegroup. My girlfriend and I do this with Kodi and Plex for video.