spycat

I'm on beta 34 at the moment and when I just launched BigBox I got an error linked to the update window - see images. Actually there are 2 error boxes associated it seems with the 2 buttons in the window. If both error boxes are closed, they can be made to reappear one at a time by hovering over NO followed by YES after you close the NO error box. LaunchBox itself pops up the beta update window without errors.

Hi Jason. Love the new transition options. All are working seamlessly for me, with the exception of the Explosion effect which jerks and stutters a bit, but I won't be using that one anyway. I'm still experimenting with these to get a setup that I will keep. Plain spoilt for choice! A small bug. While all changes to the transitions take effect immediately, the option to change the BigBox background fade percentage does not. It seems that you need to exit BigBox (either fully or to LaunchBox native) and then reopen BigBox fot this effect to take place. This is not a big issue, as you'll probably only need to set this once.

This could very well be true. I'm using a relatively ancient (2008) Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop with integrated Intel graphics chipset and I have no lag whatsoever on the BigBox images animation when scrolling through my platforms or through the games in the platforms. I only have 410 games in my LaunchBox database and my Images folder is 224 MB. Just for reference I have .NET framework 4.5.2 Version 4.5.51209

Hi Jason sorry you can scrub the mouse issue. Just grabbed another new beta (29) via BigBox and the YES button now reada my mouse.

Hi Jason. The new image transition effect in BigBox is really nice and is not causing me any lag, and I'm on a 7 year old laptop. Just one little issue. If you go to the BigBox options page that shows Back, About, Options etc. and you bring up the About info box, and then either select Back to return to the platforms page, or Options to go to the options page, the About info box doesn't close. You either need to Exit BigBox or jump back to Desktop mode and back to BigBox again to solve this issue. On the BigBox update box YES button ignoring my mouse clicks, yes I have mouse enabled and can use it in BigBox, with this exception.

Hi Jason I just installed this beta via BigBox. Installed perfectly, although I couldn't get the BigBox Yes button to accept mouse click. No sign of the db files issue that Martin had.

Hi Jason. Regarding the platform MTX, the data for this is the same as for the platform Memotech MTX which is already in place.

Hi Martin. You might find this link of interest regarding the files with the db extension. http://www.file-extensions.org/db-file-extension

I just updated from beta 23 to 25 (I must have missed out on beta 24). Everything is still normal. I'm not seeing the little red image unavailable boxes for game screenshots, fanart images when I open a game's Edit window.

Hi Maddoc I haven't grabbed this beta yet. I'm still on beta 23 and this adding of a number, -01 -02 etc to images in fanart, screenshot etc folders was present then. However all is fine with my beta 23 and I'm not getting things like the little red X in the Edit Images that you are getting with the latest beta.

For physical copies of 95/98/XP era Windows games an OS that's compatible with both the games and with LaunchBox is your best bet as Brad pointed out. Once you go up to Windows 7 or later the ability to play these games (natively) more or less ends. XP would be 1st choice, although I remember reading somewhere on the Forums that LaunchBox does not take XP support into account. Vista32 can handle quite a lot of these games often without having to play around with the Compatibility (Win95/98/XP) settings. However, downgrading your PC to Vista32 just to be able to install and add these games to LaunchBox and actually play them makes no sense to say the least. For what it's worth I'm still using Vista32. Feel free to snigger here, all my friends do! I have a small collection (18) of these 95/98/XP era games that I've installed and added to LaunchBox. 17 games run perfectly, while 1 has in-game speech issues. If you have a more modern OS such as Vista64, Win7 or later then something like GOG is the way to go. Yes I know I really need to ditch Vista32 and join the modern world, but it's worked flawlessly since it arrived on a Dell back in 2008, so I'll see if I can eke a couple of years more out of it!

Hi Jason. Beta 23 downloaded fine but then gave me the error screen that Brad also got. I had to open the Updates folder and run the download and this brought up the Installer. I then had to change the path to install to as it was incorrect. The install then worked ok and Beta 23 is now up and running. Edit: I just noticed that the new Installer creates a System Restore Point, something the old Installer did not. Nice.

Hi Jason Just come across an error popup in BigBox (beta 22) when using PageDown to move down through a Platform's games list. The first 3 uses of PageDown work fine, but a 4th press brings up an error box. This is only happening on Platforms where PageDown needs more than 3 presses to get to the end of the games list. Also with the games lists that cause this error, if you go to the end of the list and try a PageUp it returns an error too.

Hi Jason. I just caught your ask on BigBox updater before I got beta 22 so I ran BigBox and I got the new version available etc box. The blue YES button wouldn't accept mouse clicks so I just hit Enter. The download and install worked perfectly. When the update is done installing, LaunchBox reopens to desktop mode, not back to BigBox. Everything looks good.

I'm having the same issue with this beta.

Hi Jason. An option to use the Platform Device Image background as the background for all games in a Platform would be nice. I know it can currently be done by adding the device image as a fanart to each game in the platform, but for say a platform with 100 games, I would need to have 101 identical images installed, 100 for the games plus 1 for the platform itself. It would be nice to be able to set the Platform Device Image as the background image for all games in the platform by means of a tick box. I've done a mockup of the BigBox Game Images Options screen with the new suggested option added (option 3 in the list) to show what I'm on about. By the way, Beta 21 installed ok, and I haven't come across any bugs so far.

When I source rom images for N64, SNes, Genesis etc games the zipped image will either have 1 version of the ROM, usually the good verified one indicated by the [!] in the rom name, or it might have a load of different versions - different regions, trainers, and so on. I only need 1 of these and I remove all the unwanted ones. I keep my N64 roms zipped, but extract my SNes and Sega Genesis ones. Where possible I use the verified version. If I also want other versions, such as a trained or other region version, I add them as Additional Apps labelled Play USA version, Play cheats version etc. Here is some information on ROM codes.

A revised platform image for the Emerson Arcadia 2001. I wasn't too pleased with my original one.

Just come across what might be a bug. If you edit a game and change an image type for example from a fanart to a screenshot then the original fanart image becomes a new screenshot, but the original fanart image is not removed like it used to be. So now if you had four images you now have five.

Clean up images for me is approx 15 seconds. But my games database only has 399 games. It's still much slower than it was with the old Images folder layout.

Hi folks. The Memu emulator is for anyone interested in exploring the Memotech MTX 500/512 home computers of the 1980's and their games. This emulator is command line based and has no GUI, although there are dedicated frontends for it, and I believe that MESS supports it. To use it with LaunchBox the 2 essential command line parameters are as follows -vid-win-big -snd-portaudio These 2 parameters set the screen size and sound and can be shortened to -v -s The screen size parameter can be replicated to create a screen size to suit your wishes. For example I use -vid-win-big -vid-win-big -vid-win-big to give a window that fits my display vertically. The default palette is used where games look like they did on a real MTX with a tv screen. If you include the following optional parameter you get a "richer" look to the colours in your games. -vid-win-hw-palette Launching a game with a COM or RUN extension will start the game. Launching a game with the MTX extension will wait at the MTX BASIC screen prompt where you need to type LOAD "" to start the game. The emulator comes with a range of MTX games. COM and RUN versions are in the Games folder and MTX ones are in the Tapes folder. This emulator is nowhere on a par with some emulators for contemporary platforms - no save (that I can see), no fullscreen etc, but it allows vintage MTX computing and gaming to be experienced. Some games use the Arrow keys to move and HOME is action, others use Z X # / and SPACE, and some games recognise both sets of keys, and a few have odd keys usually configurable. Here is a good site for information on the emulator and it's games. www.nyangau.org/memu/memu.htm And here is my emulator settings image and a sample gameplay image. Enjoy, I have.

Out of sheer idle curiosity what are the funny named files in the new Cache folder for?

Hi Jason. First off, the update to beta 16 worked flawlessly. All images migrated ok. BigBox mode is working fine for me. No hanging, freezing or delays found. Everything runs like clockwork. So on to a few requests/suggestions for BigBox mode. These may be too late for the imminent official version 5 release, but might be considered down the line. There are some Additional Apps that could be described as background apps, in that they are intended to work with the game. For example apps that run a game profile or mount a disc before the game starts, and close the profiler or unmount after the game is quit. An option (tick box) would be nice to hide an Additional App from showing up in the LaunchBox right-click and BigBox mode game menus if it is not intended for running outside of it's main (game) app. The Notes information shown in BigBox mode could do with a scroll-bar to allow big entries to be viewed. Also the ability of the LaunchBox games details/right sidebar Notes section to show screenshots and fanart images might be extended to the Notes display in BigBox mode. And now to the nit picking. The order in which the Additional Apps are listed in BigBox mode is based on the order in which the apps were created. LaunchBox desktop mode lists them alphabetically - nicer. The Released On data is in Month Date Year format. An option to show it in European Date Month Year format would be nice. And here is a screen capture to help with what I'm talking about regarding the Additional Apps listing and Notes cutoff in BigBox mode.

The official documented way to exit ePSXe is via the ESCAPE key. This is a poor choice as most emulators use the ALT+F4 method and it's easy to forget and use ALT+F4 for ePSXe sometimes. On the subject of ePSXe being an abandoned project, nothing could be further from the truth. It's had several updates over the past 8 years, the most recent being in January 2015. The emulator, it's devs and their website are very much alive.

You're more than welcome. And a very happy Independence Day to you