SentaiBrad

March 25, 2015

CadetStimpy said I doubt this is in the correct Forum, but I didn't know which one to pick. Anyway, which directories and/or files should I Back-Up, so I can re-install LaunchBox (e.g., PC rebuild) without having to manually add all my games in again?

So, its really easy to do. As long as all of the emulators and roms are in the same file structure with the same drive letter (which you can change if you need to, cause a windows reinstall can change around drive letters depending on how many internal and external drives you have... it can get messy). With that, just copy the LaunchBox.xml file that is in the LB directory you installed it to. It is kept with the exe. If you have a premium license too make sure you copy that file that is kept with the exe. Or you can copy the entire folder. Its a portable app. This way DOS settings are also kept. But the roms and emulator paths still need to be the same.

March 25, 2015

Here you go. When Jason is available to tell me the Font we use I can make you one with text on it if you would like, but I forgot the 'official' LaunchBox font. http://i.imgur.com/h9AdvaU.png

March 25, 2015

rad4Christ said Thanks. Quick request. Any chance you could make a Steam Banner for Launchbox? I can't find an image of your logo large enough to do it myself. Just need a simple log on background that's 460x215 in size. Then Launchbox can look all cute and perfect in Steam Big Picture mode!

Sure. Give me a bit.

March 25, 2015

CadetStimpy said I have a game (Simutrans) that isn't in TheGamesDB. When I try to add it to LaunchBox, it only finds "[TheGamesDB] Smithereens (Magnavox Odyssey 2) (1/1/1981)". Is there a way to add it to TheGamesDB, so if others try to add it to LaunchBox, it'll be there? Websites: Simutrans or Simutrans at SourceForge

Yes, go to their website, create an account and follow their instructions. Fill in the info boxes, upload the artwork and save the entry. It should take effect automatically when you his scan in LB. I've added many DOS games to the database (lets not get started on no DOS section on their site) while my edit box was open and his search right away.

March 25, 2015

kamyk2000 said What's not to like? It does exactly what I need it to do. It shows a nice list of platforms, and then shows box art of each game I have for each platform, and then shows metadata details on top of that. Then I get to doubleclick to start the game. Saves me from having to put up with dozens of desktop or start menu shortcuts and having to jump through those programs file menu hoops to run my games. Some of the other programs like this aren't bad, but all the ones I found gave a great big list of every game owned. I don't want to scroll through hundreds of games to browse them. The only one I found that was very much like Launchbox was outdated, didn't seem to work right, and required you to join a forum by email to even try to get the metadata part working through some sort of passcode. Launchbox is quality software with no crap to go through to use it, and he even made it free with a voluntary purchase for extras. Now all my consoles can go to a well deserved retirement, and I can play hassle free. And so far I have to say that the Dev, the support, and the forum user base are all very friendly and helpful.

Yea this software single-handedly makes my new show on YouTube 100x easier. I could have achieved the result without it but its so much easier and I can show off LB, albeit quickly because its more about the specific game, to a wider audience.

March 25, 2015

IF Jason was one of those dev's, he'd have snapped at me several months ago. xD I probably give him information overload at times, but that's how he fixes bugs and adds new features. I like seeing all that information too because it means someone else other than myself is passionate for this piece of software; Other than Jason of course, I just mean people who aren't a developer on the project.

March 25, 2015

In most Anti-virus programs, there is a section to white list a specific .exe, .bat or file so it is unrestricted. I would give LaunchBox that access so that way you wont need to fully disable the program if that makes you uncomfortable.

March 23, 2015

That's strange that it added RetroArch command line parameters to other emulators. This could be a bug? Command line parameters are added when you start adding Emulators to your internal list. When you add an Emulator LB knows, it fills in the command line parameters. They're not all perfect or the same settings that everyone wants to use. For example, I take off any fullscreen parameters LB add's, but in some cases like ePSXe and RetroArch, some of them are needed for the emulator to run with how LB runs. More specifically with RetroArch, you need to put those proper DLL's in a folder names cores with RetroArch. The fact that it stuck RetroArch command line parameters on EVERY emulator entry says to me its a bug. Jason will have to look in to this for the next beta to get resolved. Can you walk us through how you added an emulator? Did you add RetroArch first by any chance? -Brad C

March 23, 2015

This would be fantastic.

March 22, 2015

paladin181 said OS: Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) Version: LaunchBox Version 4.6 Premium Issue: When right clicking a game where the launcher or additional apps are located on my external drive, if the drive has gone into sleep mode and needs time to access, the action crashes LaunchBox. The device is a Seagate Free Agent 1TB USB external HDD. Would it be possible to get a timeout extension on requests to devices like this before crashing the app? It's not a huge deal; once the drive wakes up LaunchBox can read from it normally and can access any title with a file located on the device. It is an inconvenience however should I forget to click on it elsewhere to wake it up.

There are ways to make the drive not go to sleep, then this should fix the current problem. However, I still think Jason will want to fix this as the crash is still unintended and good to fix. I'll pass along this thread to him.

March 22, 2015

DOS76 said I am importing the files for Sega CD and when I do it gives multiple files for every game is there anyway to just get it to display the one that will launch the game not all of the wav. files and anything else in the folder.

That's because it selected everything. When you select the option to add a folder, it will select everything in that folder. Select the files option, choose the folder you wish to import or the folder holding all of the game folders and in the upper right where it says "Search" type in the file extensions you want LB to import. For example ".iso" will find everything with a .iso at the end of it. Include the " " when you use the search box to tell Windows to find files ONLY with that match. It will search that folder and then you can select which items to add. Hit ok then you can search again if you need to for another file extensions. Like mdf, img, bin etc etc. How ever many times you need to. Then continue with the import like normal and select any other options you'd like.

March 13, 2015

scree said I'm now using LaunchBox 4.5 and I've come across what might be an issue with the game boxart right-click menu. This menu now displays an option to allow you to open a game's emulator if it uses one. This new feature works fine until you right-click games that use Additional Apps. Whenever these games are right-clicked, the menu adds more instances of the Open emulator option and the menu keeps getting bigger and bigger, eventually exceeding the screen height. This is annoying, but fortunately not permanent. When you close LaunchBox and restart it then things are back to normal, at least until you start right-clicking again! Anyone else having this issue? By the way this underpriced piece of software has the potential to eventually be the leader in it's field. Have you given any thought to restoring the Donate button?

Whoa, this one slipped past me because I never have anything use additional apps. Good find, I'll pass this on to Jason. Edit: I can't reproduce this. I set something in the Additional Apps menu and nothing out of the ordinary is happening. What do you have set in additional applications and what is checked?

March 12, 2015

allan_rex92 said I have set VBA Emulator to launch Zelda - Link's Awakening which is a GBC rom, however when i try to launch it its doesn't launch the game and gives me an error saying unsupported file type, I have tried different commandline but nothing seems to work, I've attached image od the erroe

When I see that error, my first thought to ask is, is the file format set correctly? That is, is Links Awakening DX end in .gbc? This is, as far as I know, the only accepted GBC file format. The next thing I would say is, are you using just VBA or VBA-M? VBA-M is a more up-to-date and feature rich emulator. http://vba-m.com/index.php?ind=downloads&op=section_view&idev=3 I would suggest using this. Links Awakening and all other GBC games launch just fine with no command line parameters needed for myself. -Brad

March 8, 2015

Jason and I were typing at the exact same time, damn it, he beat me to it.

March 8, 2015

odeonx said Hello Launchbox community! First of all I would like to thank and congratulate the development of this application. It's something I was looking for a while and it was very comforting to find it. Taking into account the spirit of the forum, I took the liberty of adding to my proposals, those made by other users that I find interesting. I saw that many of these things have already been taken into consideration for a future release. It would be interesting to have a list of points in development. Surely the testers may have access to something like this, but for the rest of users would also be interesting to have this information. Proposals: 1. Language pack for the application. If you require someone to translate it to Spanish count with me! 2. Support for other sources of metadata. It's a shame that you can not include MobyGames, which seems to me the best source of information. Archive.org may be an alternative? I also propose that the community of LaunchBox devote an effort to complete the source is determined to be the best. It would be thegamesdb? 3. Alternatives to display the games on the main screen in addition to the covers (the different views proposed by Etock library). These alternatives could be banners (proposed by Xananax and Param), text only (proposed by p.bizzy and scree), the cover without the text, screenshots, etc. Basically have the option to display any type of image you have. 4. Add additional types of images such titlescreen, console image, media (proposed by bd000 and p.bizzy). Add the possibility of multi value selection on "add image" (proposed by haniobaid). 5. Support for videos on the details section (and perhaps on the main screen instead of the covers?) (Proposed by p.bizzy, Etock and bd000) Support for Emumovies (proposed by Etock). 6. Add the fields of "language", "players" (2 players, multiplayers, proposed by Rufus, AnUnusedMoniker and AndromedaToast) and "region" (USA, JAPAN, EUROPE). 7. Importing libraries from Origin, Gog, Desura, uPlay, etc. 8. Custom playlists and custom fields (proposed by bd000, Oussama, tazrex and KyaeroSaber). 9. Using Fullscreen options and Autohotkey properly configured, you can claim a steam's big picture mode similar interface. It would be excellent to further refine these having to steam as an example, especially if you develop an integration with raspberry pi.... wow !!! I think they might have an opportunity here to increase your income! 10. On left sidebar, suffix each entry with the number of items (proposed by haniobaid and ps4isthefuture). That's all for now, thanks again, and please forgive my english !! Greetings !!!

Thank you very much for joining the forums and taking your time to write all this out. So yea, you said it yourself, a lot of what you want is already planned. But its still nice to see which ideas should go higher up on the list. The more people that want a specific feature I would assume the higher on the list it goes. Adding more info and media for each game has been discussed and were still trying to figure out the best way to do all of that. My suggestion was for it to stream data in. This way its not taking up a ton of HDD space. Multiple Language Support I am sure is on Jason's list. Its just that He and I primarily speak English, and so far so has the community. I'll talk to him about what it will take to translate the program. As for scrapers. Jason originally chose TheGamesDB because it was easy to implement with their APIl and They had a license that allowed us to essentially take the information their website has. We added Wikipedia next after he realized that TDGD just isn't comprehensive. That took a lot to get implemented even with its API and its severely broken. And of course, most Wiki sites run with the license of free information so there was no problem there. MobyGames is a tricky site to mine data from, and by design. When ever they make changes to the site the D-Fend Reloaded developer has to change code in the program a lot. Regardless of if they don't mind sharing their information, they make it hard to mine for. We would actually love to have GameFaq's be our go-to site. They have a ton of information all of the time about every game I throw at it. Similar issue with MobyGames however, how do we mine that data effectively. There are several more open websites we are looking at, and it seems that we are going to have to just use multiple sites in conjunction with each other to most likely get the data we want properly. Or, create our own comprehensive database that serves only LB. Both of which are very hard. We plan to do a Steam Big Picture type mode... I think? Jason and I talked about creating one, but he questioned if it would be useful. If you or anyone else thinks it would be, please let us know. We do also have plans to replace the default LB image, the one that shows up when you have no image. Probably with one of the console. Then to create new, smaller images icons to signify different things with an opacity setting on top of the images so that you know the console, possibly favorite, amount of players and other things you choose to show on top of the images, so you know things at a glance. If we did go down this route, it would be an option that we have the user choose to turn on or off however. At least this is what I pitched to Jason. We do want to have a system in place to help import from other services like GOG and Origin. Getting the new DOS importer to get going was hard though, so we ask that everyone give us time in this regard. As for custom lists, technically we have a method of doing that now, you just need to be a premium user. People keep asking for a more robust version of this, and I think that's what were going to turn the custom filter in to more or less, but I still see it as being a premium feature. Along with some other stuff in this post that I've mentioned. Thank you again for showing interest in LaunchBox. It means a lot to the both of us.

March 7, 2015

donarumo said Thank you, Jason. I'm taking a look at the main xml file and LaunchBox's folder structure now. I see no reason why I couldn't add an export to MEAGRE to create LaunchBox compatible xml entries. I'll let the board know if I come up with something that works and release an update.

Also, I am sorry if I was rude. I for some reason didn't see that you were a developer. Even though it was right in front of me. So I apologize if I made you mad or upset you. That said, and Jason can vouch for this, I'm willing to help test anything if you need it. I can find odd bugs in software for some reason.

March 7, 2015

donarumo said I would love it if LaunchBox imported the information from the ExoDOS collection in MEAGRE. It would actually be a fairly simple process initially of scanning each folder for the .ini file or for the meagre folder itself (each game has a meagre folder). This parent folder can then be used as the application location, the game can be set to use DOSBox of course, and the custom .conf file is always going to be called dosbox.conf and reside in the parent folder.

So, one major thing I learned from working with Jason on everything is that things are never as simple as you would presume. I assumed certain things would be easy functions to implement and were in fact hard as hell. Wikipedia scraping is a perfect example. It took a lot of work to get it in there, and its flawed as hell. He could spend another 40 hours working on it and edge out better performance but... holy crap. So I still say, say never count anything out regardless of its size. Anything and everything is at least on the table for discussion, but it really is a question of is this worth it. Will a majority of our users like or even use this feature and how long will it take to implement it. We have an importer for D-Fend, although broken because it hasnt been updated in a long time, hardly anyone uses it. Which is probably why its broken. Hardly anyone uses it so there is no reason to update it. Especially when Jason is developing new and better import features.

March 5, 2015

EviLEd said
Maddog said Just downloaded it today, so I should have the latest version. I did tinker with adding it manually but could not get it to work when I came to the DosBox prompt. It tells me when i run setup, which is the installer, "illegal command win" and it automatically puts "win" before setup when I press enter.
illegal command win means that you cannot run this in DOS. You must run it in windows. I remember running this game in Win95 or Win98se. Check out what i did here with another game from that era https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/games/the-simpsons-cartoon-studio-1996-no-dos-install

This is what I was trying to discern, I just didn't want to get there without knowing the game.

March 5, 2015

Maddog said Just downloaded it today, so I should have the latest version. I did tinker with adding it manually but could not get it to work when I came to the DosBox prompt. It tells me when i run setup, which is the installer, "illegal command win" and it automatically puts "win" before setup when I press enter.

What game are you trying to install? And is it a CD you are using, an ISO or the files.

March 5, 2015

Maddog said I'm having an issue using the Installation Wizard and my copy of Interstate 76. When it's ready to perform the installation, I get an error that reads "Object reference not set to an instance of an object". Can anyone assist? Thanks

That is a bug in the software right now. Do you have the latest version of LB? In the meantime, have you tried installing the game with a different method?

March 3, 2015

AnUnusedMoniker said Hey, Couple things I forgot: On dosbox: An example command line that is from GOG that's impossible (as far as I can tell) with the dosbox tab is: H:\Games\I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream\DOSBOX\DOSBox.exe -conf "..\dosboxnomouth.conf" -conf "..\dosboxnomouth_single.conf" -noconsole -c exit Or: H:\Games\Star Control 1 and 2\DOSBOX\DOSBox.exe -conf "H:\Games\Star Control 1 and 2\Star Control 2\dosboxSC2.conf" -conf "H:\Games\Star Control 1 and 2\Star Control 2\dosboxSC2_addon.conf" -noconsole -c exit Input on input: It'd be really nice if the program could strip off quotation marks from app paths. When you're inputting large amount of games, there's the need to manually take off the quotation marks from about 90% of GOG's shortcuts that are all along the lines of this: "H:\Games\Spacecom\SPACECOM Game Manual.pdf" which need to be H:\Games\Spacecom\SPACECOM Game Manual.pdf And finally - I found a solution for the lack of additional documentation support in this version - add everything as an app. Thankfully Launchbox doesn't challenge the command line for a PDF as not being a .bat, .exe. or .com. Please don't change that. Thanks again, -Conor

We've had some people run their entire OS more or less through LaunchBox. They manually added programs and files they wanted and played around with launching them through it, so this is just as cool. Edit: I said through DOSBox, I meant LaunchBox. I've been awake a while, but not waking up.

March 3, 2015

p.bizzy said While I realize this almost goes against the original intent of the organization of roms by boxart for LaunchBox, I would like to add to the request list to have a detailed (that is text only, or text with icon only) view. Similiar to how you can optionally do with Steam. This of course would also have to be per platform though. Reasons would include some platforms have too many missing images that dont exist online, such as Atari 2600 Goodset, and my collection of hacked roms. In addition, it would be a nice option if/when speed is the priority on the larger platform sets. You've said yourself it starts to slowdown around the 4000 mark, which I've noticed as well. Could be a good help.

Jason I think already has this, or something similar planned for LaunchBox in the future.

March 3, 2015

Jason Carr said Per GOG's version of DOSBox, I actually tend to disagree with Brad there; GOG is historically not very good at using the best settings or DOSBox version for certain games. It can be hard to make them work on any kind of system, but I've found issues with GOG's settings many, many times. So from that perspective, yes, it would be good to centralize them to LaunchBox's version.

Really? I never had problems with it, so I never wanted to change it. Why try to change something when it was working. Takes time away from playing the games. I need to test DOSBox Daum on it then.

March 3, 2015

AnUnusedMoniker said Hey there, So I've been amassing a large collection of games from GOG. I've also got some ROM's kicking around. I tried Launchbox this weekend and compared it to other programs like Photon's Game Manager. I decided I really like it, purchased a premium version, and set to entry. I really like the interface, the filtering system, and all the little things like: -The ability to mark games as completed. -The support for emulators -The Support for game music - Sorting titles Anyhow, there are some things that have been bothering me as I set up everything (which is a lot of time with 200 some games), which have come to mind so far (some of which I might have just not found the button for): 1. I've gotten a lot of older games downloaded, and some originally came with lots of things like maps, quick reference cards, and hint sheets. GOG has gone so far as to include a few more bonus items with some of them - walkthroughs, guides, and so on. Unfortunately, I'm limited to exactly one "manual" link. I figure I'll be working around this by populating the additional applications with links to a PDF reader, and command lines to get it toward the additional PDFs. It's going to be pretty annoying. 2. GOG includes DOSBox and Scumm as needed for applications, and while I could continue running the copy of whichever application is needed for the game from the folder it's included it, it seems that if dosbox or scumm were ever updated, I would have to update all of the individual versions in the folders. So it would seem that I should centralize. Now, Here's an example command line run: In Application Path H:\Games\I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream\DOSBOX\DOSBox.exe In Application Command-Line Parameters -conf "..\dosboxnomouth.conf" -conf "..\dosboxnomouth_single.conf" -noconsole -c exit Now, if I'm going to switch this to a centralized copy of DOSBOX, in the menus provided I can select a configuration file, but I can't add on any Command Line Parameters...so (and I'm pretty rusty on dosbox), I think that I would probably have to try and effect the command line changes into each individual config file. Which sounds like a monotonous nightmare. I've noticed that Scumm and the Emulation options also don't allow command line parameters, and I'm a bit confused as to if the "Application Command-Line Parameters" box would include them in the right place, or if that would be included at all when using those subapps. I guess any suggestion on this would be welcome. 3. I paid for the upgrade, but the help menu still has the option to upgrade, and it still links to the purchase page. 4. At some point I'm going to start exploring making all the boxes I have look nice and neat. However, I can't seem to find a spot on this site that has info on the perfect size of box, or anything like that. Any suggestions on that would be greatly appreciated. As would any information on the correct range of size for user submitted art and other stuff. 5. I'd like a way to get rid of "Thegamesdb.net ID" filter, since it just shows me which games I've had to get off of wikipedia's game database. Though some of them appear in the filter as (exists) with wikipedia tags. I don't know if they're somehow cross referenced out there in database land, but it's not a filter I would use to find games. 6. I'd also like the ability to mark out which games are multiplayer, co-op, or single player. The ability to pull up a list of games that are co-op enabled would make having a friend over and letting them choose a game pretty easy. Anyway, this is a great product, and it's helping me turn a disorganized mess of games into something really cool. Regards, -Conor

Welcome, and thank you for purchasing a premium license. Jason and I appreciate it very much. Before I answer some things specifically, just know Jason is constantly developing new features, but he is one person. So I just ask that you know it can be slow sometimes, but even then personally I see him faster than other developers... so. So lets talk about GOG. In no particular order I'll address a few things. We do want to work on an import process that is similar to importing Steam games but for GOG and Origin. We think that could be invaluable in the long run. Without creating new features for LB the extra's part of GOG will have to remain separate. In the future though, I could see there being fields for GOG or any other games where you specify extra content. Linking to a PDF guide, Magic list, monster list, soundtrack etc. I also see that as a premium feature. As far as updating the version of DOSBox and ScummVM that ship with the game... GOG has gone out of their way to guarantee that the game they ship works with the version of the emulator they shipped it with. That's not to say the game wont work with a more recent version, if there is one for a specific game, but this is what they chose at the time to promise it works. I would suggest, not changing the version they shipped with. It sucks having to re-do settings for each game, but some games are tied in very closely to the files they install with and some even rely on the Registry to know what they are doing. I had to reinstall my OS and while some games worked in my GOG folder, some didn't and I had to reinstall them, albeit to the same folder, but they needed the Registry and p potentially any other hidden files to be repopulated. LaunchBox specifically you can change the version of DOSBox we ship with. I have been playing around with DOSBox Daum personally. The exe's are the same name and it just works out of the box. I have to edit the settings separate and its not as tied in to LB, but it works. I would assume the same can be said for ScummVM though I haven't needed or wanted to try. The images don't really have a standard. The theory behind this is that we support games going all the way back to 1980 up till 2015. The standards for a lot of aspects of video, images and computers change every 8 months. Not to mention, what works for one person, doesn't work for someone else. That said, you're more than welcome to use your own custom images and keep them all the same size if that is what you would want to do. If you want the front art or box art to all be landscape instead of portrait you're more than welcome to put it all at 720p for example. It is really open. It's hard to also create a standard when screenshots, fan art, box art and maybe CD art are all just wildly different. As for being able to mark games with more options. We're playing around with the idea of various different tags. For example I kicked around the idea for Jason to create a Rom Hack label. The best option for now that we have would to be able to create a custom filter for it, which you can do. You can specify specific games then just go to that custom filter when you want to. I think a custom list option would be cool to expand to and make it even easier then this solves everyone's problem and there is no need to implement 40 different flag types. I see this as being the most probable outcome. Also, the tag for "Thegamesdb.net ID" is an older remnant from when we didn't include Local or Wikipedia meta data scraping. All this field knows is that an entry has a Wikipedia or TGDB ID attached to it. When you edit an entry you can see a blue link in the upper right portion of the edit screen. You can even click on it to go to the games page that its using. Thank you again for joining and purchasing the license. It means a lot to both of us. Thank you also for the suggestions and feedback. We read everything between the two of us on this site and think that it is all invaluable. -Brad

March 2, 2015

shinra358 said When viewing the sidebar, categories seem to do fine. But as soon as you hide the sidebar, all games merge together. May I request an option for the title bar 'arrange by' to share the same setting configs as the sidebar 'arrange by' or something similar that would solve this?

They're labeled the same, but serve two different functions. The Side bar is filters based and the top right one is more ordering based. When you hide the sidebar, I think LB just assumes that you can't filter anymore, so it selects 'All'. A solution I think is to create another drop down menu next to 'Arrange By', called something like 'Filter By'. Would that suffice?

Profiles

Forums

Articles

Downloads

Gallery

Blogs

Posts posted by SentaiBrad