SentaiBrad

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

shinra358 said I noticed that under import batch games that the option to type in what file extensions you want to capture is gone. This is useful for when you have games that are 2 files (like bin and cue for example) in a game's folder. Without that feature, launchbox picks both types of files and you end up having to going through every single file to exclude one or the other. Can we have that back (along with what we have currently) so that when that situation comes up, it wouldn't take so long to set up? If that feature is still there but somewhere else, then ignore this. And if so where is it now? It was removed because of the way the new importing works, it was made redundant. When you import rom files select 'Add Files'. Then select the folder that has all of your roms or CD based games in it. In the top right there is a Search box. There you can type *.iso or *.cue and it will filter all of the files in that folder and in all of the sub folders. Then hit Ctrl + A and Open. It might lag a bit when parsing all of the files but this is how it can be achieved now. Once it parses the files you can select Add Files again and search for another file extension so this also solves the problem of not being able to previously select multiple file types. With the latest beta, using the option to use the folder names instead of the file names was fixed as well.

spiffyfitz said Hi and THANK YOU for LaunchBox... Bought the paid version last night. It is going to make my mini arcade I bled sweat and tears (and spent about 20 hours) downloading and attempting to set up about 15 different pieces of software and NONE of them perform and work as easily and quickly as LaunchBox! I love it so far. Since I'm new to the software, this feature might already be included but it's not very clear to me: One feature I'd love to see is a bulk Game Info management (much like in iTunes you can select multiple songs, right click and edit the metadata for all of them at the same time). So when I have platforms like "GameBoy Advance" and "Nintendo Game Boy Advance" I can just consolidate them all at once. I love the image (gamesdb) and text data (wikipedia) download function. It is totally awesome... although it misses about 30% of my ROM collection, it's really not that big of a deal to go back and go into the info for that particular game and grab the info really quickly from the search box... However, I am very quickly running out of space on my (very small) SSD. It would be awesome to be able to pick and choose which images to bulk delete from the Images folder, (I do not care for fan-art or backs of boxes, for example)-- and would save many precious GBs on my SSD. I think I've seen similar requests here on the forum, about picking and choosing which images to download. Secondary request: A teeny tiny music player that loops music from a playlist and starts playing when LaunchBox starts, and stops when it loses focus! This would complete the package! Alternatively, I could probably manage with a 64GB USB drive, but that would mean another purchase I can't quite justify yet! Anyway, thanks for LaunchBox! -spiffyfitz Thank you for the support! It helps Jason and I a lot. So bulk edit kicks in when you select two or more entries and click edit then the bulk edit wizard will appear instead of the original edit context menu.

mattjyk said I'm using pcsx2, which doesn't have a retroarch core. i've tried messing with pcsx2 to get it to open on the tv but it doesn't work. right now i'm trying to find a way my controller can hit winkey+shift+left to move pcsx2 to my tv. ds4windows can make macros but it's bugged atm. Xpadder could do some keyboard to controller mapping for you. I also saw that DS4Windows update, I never bother with macro's generally so I had no clue it was bugged. There is an alternative that I have used in the past, the only problem I had with it was some performance issues. It is called UltraMon. It is software for users with multiple screens. One beauty of the program is you can specify to it if you want a certain program launching on what screen and how. http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/tour/shortcuts.asp There are multiple desktop program alternatives, there a re a few out there. but I forgot the name of the other one I used. They're not free however, so try their free version to see if the feature I described works or if you even like it. I'm sure you could find it online if you really wanted to.

mattjyk said i've searched the forums and tried google and haven't found a way to solve my problem. i have my pc hooked up to my tv as a second monitor with launch box on it. when i launch a game on launch box from my couch it opens the game on my computer screen. is there a way to make it launch the game on my tv? Is it launching on the monitor you want when you launch it with just the Emulator? I have a feeling that this is an emulator issue. If it is a LB issue, it could be the command line. Are you using any command line arguments on the specific emulator? There might be an argument to launch it on a specific monitor regardless of who's issue this could be.

shinra358 said "However, it is a challenge (it's actually very difficult to do, believe it or not), and depending on the emulator it may or may not be possible to have LaunchBox insert discs while the emulator is running." Technically you already have this feature implemented except for it is in the right click menu only. The only systems that use multiple discs are PS1, PS2, a small amount for Dreamcast (if not just one game), and some games on Dolphin. But I hope a solution can be found. There are actually a handful of Dreamcast games that have more than 2 discs, some up to 4. They're just CD's not DVD's so 700-800mb per image. I've just recently gotten one and I love it. As for disc switching, most emulators will allow you to save state on the "Disc Swapping" screen, load the next image then reload the save state. If we were to have LB handle all of this, we would need to know the default save state buttons, perform it, send a command prompt (if it can receive those while the program is running?) or a command to kill its self, relaunch with the next disc and automatically load the swap save state. There are a few problems with this however. What if the user changed the default save state buttons? What slot do we choose and what if the slot chosen has a save in it? Sending a command to close the emulator is also an issue. How does LaunchBox know which Disc to swap to? Can we have a script / LB load a save state upon relaunching? So we've talked about adding more UI markers to LB. Like a Favorite Icon, Console Icon, Romhack Icon and a Disc icon on top of the images. Most of that would need to be user input, including LB knowing what Disc is what. So we could use that info to determine which disc to swap to next. We would have to force the users to keep the default Save State buttons. We could let them change what LB would use, but it would most likely need to stay a keyboard command. We could also allow them to select which save state slot to use for Disc Swapping as well. This would however also be a task in its self. LB would need to know each possible popular emulator and the various settings we talked about. Last is, can we even perform any of this with a script calling keyboard shortcuts and LB being pointed in the right direction? Some Emulators maybe, but others most likely not. We would also then need the user to let LB know what emulator its using, or build that process in to the process when you select emulators for LB to use. Suffice to say, there is no real easy way to make this a streamlined function for the end user which is what we want. There is also the question, is this a premium feature? Because swapping discs can be done very easily already, we don't need LB to perform any of this. It is just a nice feature to have, if possible.

smodell said I am able to run Master of Orion 2 but it is in a small window. When I run it in full screen mode, it is too dark to see. How can I run it in a window, but increase the size of the window? Thanks. Learn up on DOSBox config files and what each setting does. Go in there and edit the Window Resolution.

Xananax said I know I totally contradict my first post (community too small to support LB development), but I'm just presenting another point of view. I have no idea if it is hard to get people to pay for it or not. I just hope it's not. Sadly, it can be. We had our doubts before we launched Premium. While he cant stop and focus on this full-time or even more than he does now, its still respectable, appreciated and humbling what we do get. We are amazed and happy at the rate of success.

Duckeenie said Behold my flannel ... (English(Yorkshire?) slang for verbal drivel) I would imagine it's quite hard to get people to pay for the type of software that can commonly be found for free. As a result I think it is really important that the free version doesn't lack any essential features and that the price remains within the realm of impulse purchase. I don't have any hard data on this but speaking from my own purchasing/donating habits they tend to be based on the responsiveness of the developer. Therefore I recommend you remain as active as you already are on the forum and be as responsive as you can when it comes to fixing small bugs etc.. He's as active as he can be, doing this in his spare time. Jason is the only developer, and I have no coding skills to speak of. Mine comes in the form of Audio / Video production, design, UI, UX. That sort of thing. So with a full time job and a family, I think he does fantastically well. LaunchBox would never become an expensive product either. In my last post I said $15 max, and that is even pretty unlikely. The free version will stay functional, and that's the point. Every time we have a new feature planned we also ask if it is right for the Premium version, and will it make the free version harder to use by not being there. Chances are, some features will, but then there would be no incentive to upgrade. We want to make the free version as best as it can be, while still giving the user an incentive. As well, I think both versions are better than any other Front End out there. Some are just focused on one Emulator, which is fine. Some have a different goal and mission statement in mind, and that is all right too. I don't want to even say that 'we care more' than the other people, because they probably care just as much as we do. But even with all that, I still do think LaunchBox is a superior program to most, and that is why I joined on so easily.

Xananax said I just fear the business model won't be enough to keep Launchbox afloat. 10$/lifetime is a great model, I love it, but isn't the community a bit too small in size to provide with enough revenue? I just ask that in case it isn't, you reach out to the community before things get too hard on you. I, for one, would gladly pay more if it allows me to keep the development of this great app running, or pay a second time, or whatever. I've seen too many great projects being abandoned because people weren't paying enough, and I really like launchbox. That truly warms out hearts. We could open up a donations page if people really wanted to, if one doesn't already exist. Jason likes the idea of this becoming a full time job, we've talked about it before. Candidly, that would be amazing. Besides time, this doesn't cost too much extra. The site at the very least isn't extremely costly to run per month either. If the premium features list kept growing and growing, I could see it going up to maybe $15 for a lifetime. Or hell, adopt a yearly license. All topics to be had for discussion; but I know Jason is ok with how things are right now. Regardless of how things progress, thank you very much for even buying Premium to begin with, let alone wanting to give more. It makes what we do that much sweeter. Thank you.

ianrace said Thanks for seconding the motion, so to speak. To the best of my knowledge, there is no gaming front-end that let's you sort by series. I think it could prove to be a very handy feature. And I agree that this, if implemented, would probably go in the premium features because it would most likely rely on user-generated input. Having said that, Wikipedia lists which series a game falls under, at least for the larger titles. So that could probably be at least one automated source for the data. Wikipedia is very hard to work with sadly though. It's not perfect with its API and since that is also user input, one person will use the correct formatting and another user wont. That's why when you get errors with data when using Wikipedia there isn't much we can do.

Jason will see this when he gets back from his business trip, just so you know this isn't being ignored. Also, I saw it... and I like that idea. Only, this is something the user has to set, and I honestly see this as being a Premium Feature. What do you think? As far as the idea, I do like it a lot, it makes sense.

HYRO said Not evryone know how to do that, that's why I've created this topic, and it is too much hassle, easier would be installing the game without Launchbox, but that's not what we expect from Launchbox, we just need this program to run games in easy way, don't we? I would argue that that is also not 'the point' of LaunchBox. It's not to make playing your games easier because its not an emulator. It's only interpreting your library and giving you a big visual of what you have. Granted, DOSBox isn't the easiest thing for most new comers to wrap their head around, and LaunchBox will help take some of that guessing out of the equation, but LB ships with a perfectly fine version of DOSBox. Therefor if you want to replace it with another version, go right ahead, but it is going to be a bit of work. For those who want to replace the versions LB ships with, they probably already know what they are doing if they are conscious enough to know that there are multiple versions of DOSBox out there that they can mess around with. For those who just want to play their games, then LaunchBox already achieves its mission statement well better than most other front ends. Regardless of which version is better to ship is now not even a question, now what you're posing is does LaunchBox achieve its goal?

ianrace said So far, I have been very pleased with this launcher. It provides a very attractive and simple interface for accessing my collection. There is one thing I haven't been able to figure out, however. Is it possible to access the Filter pane on the left using only the keyboard? So far, the only thing the arrow keys are capable of is moving around the main area. I can't get the selection to move over to Filter pane without first grabbing either a mouse or a 360 controller, the latter of which must first be activated before starting LaunchBox. Once I have the cursor over in the left pane, usually via mouse, there is no way to move it back again that I have found using just the keyboard. I'm assuming at the moment that there is a magic keyboard combo just haven't discovered yet. If not, I would request that this functionality be added. I have a remote control programmed with FLIRC (software that allows a remote control to emulate a keyboard, for those who might be interested) to navigate my HTPC. While I do use a 360 controller for certain games, when playing emulated games I prefer to use a retro game controller appropriate to the system, and these do not appear to be supported by your software. Otherwise, I have been very happy with how LaunchBox is coming along. At present, no there is no real way to get to the filters list using your keyboard. What key combination do you think would be easiest? The reason why so few controllers work is because of the API used. The fact is, 360 controllers are everywhere. A lot of people have wired ones or bluetooth devices to pair them to their PC. The PS4 controller also uses the same API, and the PS3 controller will work if you tell its software to emulate a 360 pad. Any other controller that uses this API should also be supported as well. Personally I use my PS4 controller, its got a good DPad which I need for most older games that just used that, the sticks work great for anything else with a thumbstick and it literally matches the PS1 and PS2. The N64 and Gamecube are still a bit... odd to play on another controller, but that is the case with any other controller you use unless you get a USB N64 and/or Gamecube controller... which I think I am going to have to do.

jamdvd said it would be nice to develop additional themes for the program interface. I think this was a part of Jason's road map for LB a while back. The problem was with the license he had to purchase in order to make it an open system. The theme we have now can be changed in the options menu. It could be possible to allow users to create theme scripts like you would for Windows, point LaunchBox to the file or something like that, but I am not sure Jason has thought of this since we got the new themeing system. My understanding is, he's really happy with it. Curiously, what do you want more of? More colors or the ability to create a theme based around images like what a Theme for Steam would like? I'll point him towards this thread so when he's available he can send his reply.

jamdvd said All ideas and suggestions to the application interface. The program turned out great! then it would be important to add video games and little variety of interfaces allow the user to create a theme or make a few different topics with the animation. What is this... even in regards to? I am kind of confused as to what you're trying to say or ask.

Simon said I came here to specifically ask if custom builds of DOSBox can be specified. Good to see it has already been suggested and is under consideration! It doesn't necessarily have to be redistributed with LaunchBox - just configurable to be used externally to the LaunchBox structure (without hacks) but the user still has to install it. But if it can be bundled that's great! Just put your custom version in the same folder as DOSBox. Backup the DOSBox install that you have and make sure the new exe matches the same name as the default one. You will also have to edit the settings separately.

dashingw said This works awesome, do you have this for android at all, Dosbox Manager is a pain in the a$$ No we do not, and not with any plans anytime soon sadly. The only other platforms we're looking to expand to are official support for the Raspberry Pi, and Linux.