spycat

Hi folks. Prior to LaunchBox 5.2 in order to get WinKawaks to automatically open games you needed to use script files in emulator mode, or else use WinKawaks in application mode. With the latest version of LaunchBox, it's no longer necessary to create scripts to launch WinKawaks games. Image 1 shows the emulator settings for WinKawaks, and Image 2 is just a sample game setup. My paths are shown, but your's will be different.

Hi Derek. I have ColEm set up in LaunchBox and the emulator launches and automatically opens the games when the boxart covers are clicked. See my 2 images below for my setup. Paths will be different for you.

Not sure if this will be of help, but there's no need to use a batch file to launch Project64 1.6. as the quotes issue was resolved a while back. The emulator can now be added directly and will launch games. Note that the Don't Use Quotes box in the Edit Emulator window needs to be ticked.

Now that's a Metal Slug collection! I never knew that so many existed. Thanks for sharing. It makes my little collection of eight look real puny.

Hi Ruthalas. If these screen helper apps support a command line parameter to close themselves, then you could add this as a 2nd additional app to automatically run after the main app (the game) has finished.

Hi Jason. I love both the LaunchBox and BigBox modes and I can't think of anything to remove. And now a few BigBox suggestions follow: Customising of the fonts like we can do in LaunchBox itself. Scrolling for the Platform Details, Game Details and Game Notes boxes where the text is too lenghty to be seen all at once. An option to assign a platform's Device Image as a global background for all games in the platform.

Nice work! For me it has to be this one.

Hi Brad. I've never used RetroArch. I tend to go for dedicated emulators. I'll have to check this one out.

Hi sagaopc. When you say Category (GameCube) do you mean Platform (GameCube)? If you are talking about using more than one emulator or more than one version of an emulator with a platform so that some games use one emulator and other games use a different emulator, this can be done in LaunchBox as long as none of the emulators are given default status. I use 2 emulators with my PlayStation platform. Most games are set to run under ePSXe, but a handful use pSXfin (mainly due to in-game music issues if emulated with ePSXe). And with my Arcade platform I use 4 emulators: Mame, Kawaks, Zinc and Dice.

Hi Derek. First off I have no experience of these games. I believe they are PC based needing no emulator as such but are fussy about which graphics cards they work with. I also think they may need some additional files but not too sure about this. You might like to check out another frontend called ArcadePC Loader. http://www.emucr.com/2011/08/arcadepc-loader-v14.html And a user's comments on using it to launch games. http://www.emu-land.net/forum/index.php?topic=66241.0 Note that VirusTotal returns a fairly high detection ratio for this app. Some say malware, others say false positives. Make your own mind up before running it!

Hi alobar Are you talking about settings screens like the one in the image below? The tick boxes should toggle with mouse clicking. You should be able to cycle through a selected Transition's effects with the Enter key. If nothing at all is working in here for you, but you can still use BigBox to move through your Platforms and Games, then something funny is going on for sure. Best wait for Jason to clear it up.

Hi Jason. I seem to be getting some issues with the new Platform and Games Details transitions, especially when I try any of the Rotate functions. I'm curious to know if anyone else is seeing similar effects.

Hi Jason. The new sound effects play fine in BigBox and I can replace them ok with custom ones. However, if I disable a sound effect (untick it's checkbox), then when I quit and restart BigBox, the sound effect is re-enabled. Edit: The Startup sound stays disabled, but the other 3 automatically re-enable themselves on BigBox restart.

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.