SentaiBrad

I saw it and was going to get to it soon, then I saw your thread pop up in my inbox with the title and watched it immediately. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, I'm giddy. That was frikin awesome.

Well the Database is all community ran. We had a base to start off with, but we've severely expanded on it, enhanced it and we're trying to make it as feature complete as possible. Jason barely has enough time to get in all the features he wants, sadly, we don't have too much time to also populate the Database sometimes, with console images or game images. Someone was kind enough to make a thread with Metadata and Media for all of the consoles that were missing, and some consoles that had partial images or images that could be improved. Doing that though still takes time from Jason, or if Alex is around to help us but we don't want to ask too much of him as he donates his time.

When Nested Filters is available, you'll know! You can also check the Change Log in the About section in LaunchBox after every update.

Yea, the AES doesn't have images for the hardware yet on the database. It's actually got no images at all. You can grab a Clear Logo pack to insert in to your library manually, but there are a lot of systems that need media updates that will happen at some point. I like the Silver Ring Clear Logo pack myself if you want to use that:

Careful with batch resizing, aspect ratio's can get off easily and if the image is smaller than your target resolution then up-scaling automatically happens and can make it look blurry. Also, Game Gear has borders and official portions of the boxart (not the art portion), so you put the full box art inside of a border?

Yes, you can totally upload these as a separate category. I would actually consider these Reconstructed, but FanArt Box - Front works too. Since you have premium, you have access to Image Priorities in the options menu too, so check that out. Once the images are approved, you can even have them scraped, downloaded, and have them be your default image.

If HS made them, then it's murky. If they are hosted on EmuMovies, then LaunchBox would automatically download them during import if it matches the names of any other boards. To be honest, all of your questions are 100% valid, especially with crediting, so I honestly think that it would be best if we tabled the discussion right now. I was ok going forward and making the edits later, but there are too many that would need to be done, and there are too many new fields that would need to be added in the first place that now makes me uncomfortable going forward. The team knows that Pinball is heavily requested though, so we're not ignoring it, we just need time.

Well, it would be best to uncheck the box to download 3D images during import or if you update your media going forward. However, if you have some left over, I would go to the ../LaunchBox/Images folder, in the top right of that window in Windows, I would search "Box - 3D". In this case, you also need the quotations, otherwise it will grab other folders and this is no good. If you accidentally delete something, press Ctrl + Z to undo it, as long as it was the last thing you did. Anyways, This will search in the folder you're at, and any sub folders, and show you anythig labeled Box - 3D, which should be all the 3D folders. Click on a folder, then Ctrl + A, then delete them. Restart LaunchBox and or refresh your image cache in the options, and you're good to go.

If your only purpose is to download media for LaunchBox, and are using the downloader within LaunchBox, then no, there isn't really a reason to. At least not that I know of. If the game you have in LB is differently named than it is on EmuMovies, like the Database, it should have a little bit of variance and still catch it. So, if a game name is a little off, and it's caught, you download the video during import or after the fact, it will put the video in the proper location and have it be the proper name as well. I don't know if it's a major issue, but if the files you download are named slightly off from your rom file or the name of the game inside of LB, even if you manually put it in the right location, it wont automatically attach. You'd need to rename the rom file (which leads to other issues), the entry inside of LB, or the video file. Multiply that by however much. So the tool is obviously very beneficial, but since LaunchBox has it built in, with a little bit of leeway and features tailored for the users in LB, and LB is your only focus, then I don't really think so.

I think you're over thinking this a little bit. I do get why there is some confusion, but sometimes the rules may not apply to a system because the system inherently doesn't follow the rules we've set up. There are no Pinball related guidelines because it's never been needed, it's never been discussed. I have questions about how this should be handled in the first place. To follow current convention, I think MAME is the closest analog. There are many different subsets of Arcade, but everything is housed under Arcade regardless. So, in the same token, it seems like a Future Pinball and Visual Pinball category doesn't make sense, but then also this is still different because these should be considered the platform, not just the emulator. In the case for Arcade, people want to split them up based on Emulator mainly (though there is some discussion as to if it should be split based on the arcade board specifically). In this case, obviously you're not playing the physical pinball table, it is being emulated in a unique platform, so should these be considered the platform? So for now, I think FP and VP tables, all tables, should of course get added. This is just in terms of the Database, we're not talking about anything that may need to get changed for LB to make Pinball easier to deal with. In terms of the Database, I don't see why it shouldn't move forward. There may need to be new image categories though, unless the images currently fit. So MAME uses "Flyers", and in terms of verbiage related to the Guidelines, you would consider these Front Box Art. Does there need to be anything added to clarify Pinball specific stuff past that? What ever would be considered front box art should be treated as box art, original, re-created etc. These would share the image categories with the Arcade images, like Marquee and Table images, but they're not labeled for Pinball currently. So some stuff would need to be added to the Database, but these are things that can get edited later if you wanted to proceed. As for the watermark, if there are watermarks as you actually play the table... then there is nothing we can do about that. Ignoring the conversation about how crappy that is, if it's included then we can't get around that, and that might be the only rule I need to add-on to. When related to Visual and Virtual Pinaball, if watermarks are built in to Gameplay, then they can be included in any related media. If the media has a version without Watermarks, this is preferred though.

Bug that may be related to the memory feature in BB? No clue, not related to CityHunter though: Edit: It actually shows 2 bugs, where the box art images get removed when changing views too. Edit 2: It seems that the reason I thought the view switching bug was happening isn't what it is. It's not related to the Big Box memory because it's happening on 7.4 official. Seems to only happen when viewing all games, not when viewing single platforms.

Opening the audit page and closing it while it's still scanning: Version 7.5-beta-2 System.ObjectDisposedException: Cannot access a disposed object. Object name: 'AuditForm'. at System.Windows.Forms.Control.MarshaledInvoke(Control caller, Delegate method, Object[] args, Boolean synchronous) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.Invoke(Delegate method, Object[] args) at (AuditForm ) at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Desktop.Forms.AuditForm.PopulateGrid() at (AuditForm ) at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Desktop.Forms.AuditForm.<AuditForm_Shown>b__5_0() at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

Of course, both things are on the to-do, but we have one developer and the person who was working on the Database is donating their time, so things are moving a bit slower than usual.

There was a discussion about the dates on the Discord, and I think we will stick with the first date a game has. When alternate dates becomes a thing (multiple dates with region association), then we'll move forward from there.

As long as you keep the data PCSX2 wants in your PCSX2 folder, and not in your documents folder, then you should be good to go. I recall every version of PCSX2 coming with in an installer and an archive that was "portable", but it's been a while. You won't need to worry about the file paths per-se in PCSX2 as long as LB is still using relative paths.

I agree, try setting Big Box to a delay, so it opens up after other programs may potentially steal the focus away (including Windows it's self).

Yea it's been there from the start, but I get why it's confusing. We do need the ability for alternate dates. I've been debating on changing this rule to say that the date should reflect the facing name. So if the facing name is NTSC-U (which it should be), then the facing date should also be NTSC-U. If a game never came out here, then the name used should be the date for that region.

Yes. the NTSC-U is just preferred as the top as that's been the focus for quite some time. When alternate names are finally scraped from within LB, then the facing name should still probably be NTSC-U related, but it won't be as big of a deal. It's also hard to say that the entry should have been removed at all. Since the names were different, I would have been ok leaving the PAL version there, so someone with the PAL version could get metadata and media. Once LB reads alternate names, then it should have been merged. I would say at this point just go ahead and change the name, add the alternate name, add the artwork under the proper regions and edit the existing artwork to the proper region and submit that. For the most part it's been ok, but there have been odd instances of people just not paying attention, and I know it's annoying. X_X Edit: I don't mean that we should start adding multiple versions of each game, the alternate name form should be used going forward period, but if both entries were already there and the ability isn't quite there (it seems like it might soon be though), then leaving the entry alone for a few more days / weeks would have been fine.

We're not Android centric, but you can just use the Download functions inside of RA on android like regular RA.

The reason why it's probably not working is because the pathing is all wrong, most likely. If you're taking a hard drive from one PC to another, Windows will assign it a different letter on different machines (assuming it's using absolute paths). So if it's an E drive at home, at work it might be a D drive. If LaunchBox, the emulators and roms are all on the same drive, then it should be using relative paths (you'll know it's using relative paths if you see '../' instead of a drive letter when viewing the paths of roms and emulators. If you're set up with relative paths, then my guess is it could be a setting. Also, I would still choose Bsnes Performance over Snes9X also, so if you do get it working and Bsnes Balanced is still not performing as it should, then try Performance. Compatibility should be just as good, but accuracy will take a hit where Snes9x has accuracy and compatibility issues.

Manually is an idea I hadn't actually considered, but it certainly wouldn't be the ideal set up. It's a really good idea though. Automatic has it's issues as you've read. No ones really talked about it recently, and im sure the ticket hasn't gotten any more votes on it either, so the focus has been other things, especially with the issues we've talked about, there'd need to be some time to figure it out too.

Yea, the menu's might look different, or RA might be a bit older, some cores may have been renamed, removed or moved around, but the process is still exactly the same. NES you can use a few different cores, FCEUMM, Nestopia, bnes are good, and for SNES bsnes Balanced is the best. I showed these off in those tutorials as well (NES might have only been FCEUMM at the time, but the other two I've come to like as well).

Sweet! I try. Glad it's working now though.

The tags in brackets is a good idea, but maybe having the audit tool ignore them might be the best option?

Try and delete the metadata.xml from ../LaunchBox/Metadata, or bring over the XML from your working install. Try deleting it first though, because we want it to be updating for the future.