CliveBarker

SentaiBrad said Merry Christmas Clive! So the forums will stay at what it is, a place to discuss things. The Features section can still have threads related to current features or discuss new features in depth. The BitBucket page is to just keep track of everything, however "add feature a" isn't necessarily descriptive or even helpful. The forums can be to discuss features that are in the BitBucket, discuss new ones before adding them etc. The BitBucket link is being pushed because its new, and not a lot of people even know about it. It's there just so Jason doesn't have to take time to add everything. It still needs to be pruned every once in a while but this is a much easier task and most users can search keywords before adding this. Though... lets be honest, a lot of users wont. ;) As per format, the forums don't really have many rules other than don't be a complete and utter dick, don't be racist etc etc. I don't know how it will be handled, but I think something similar to what you propose is a very good idea. It's just getting people to know about the rule, know about BitBucket and then follow it. I think the Report Issue / Feedback button needs to be renamed, though most people probably ignore it as is. It's.... stupidly tricky. I like being able to have a discussion about anything, including a discussion on having discussions. xD I think that is a very good thing that is fostered on these forums and I still think that even though I get, lets face it, jerks. Sometimes people don't want to hear a truth, don't want to see another way other thinking (not that anyone here forces their way on to someone else) or simply be told no because they feel some sort of ownership and entitlement. So yea, the current sub sections of the forums still have meaning, all of them. They just need to evolve like the team behind this software evolves and like the software its self evolves. Thanks for the elaborated response. And you are right, no matter what someones do to force rules, not everyone will follow them I just feel like not everyone knows what BitBucket is and don't know how to use it and to vote issues, specially those with little English understanding. It would be nice if somehow there was an automatic translator at the forums, but seeing how awful Google translate is, I don't see any other automatic translator doing a good job. Maybe in the future with AI, the automatic translation will be flawless.

Hi everyone. I made this thread because of the recent change to the features proposal method. In order to make your "to do list" more organized and to save you time, you asked us to make the feature proposals directly to BitBucket. I don't have any kind of problem with that, I like it more that way but there are some questions in my mind about this: -Does this means that the Features section of the forum is no longer needed to post features? -Do you still want discussion to be made about features in the forum? Yesterday @garbanzo made a thread proposing an idea: https://www.launchbox-app.com/forum/features/idea-support-for-multiple-libraries The replies on that thread made me wonder about this and that is the main reason for this thread. I have a small proposal to make: What if you @Jason make a sticky thread with some guidelines about proposing features. At the end of the day this is your software and I don't have any issues if you tell me how you want features to be proposed, since this will save you time and it will be more organized. My idea of a good format for feature proposals could be something like this: 1.-The user creates an issue at BitBucket. 2.-The user proceeds to create a thread at the Features section with the same name as their issue and the link to it. 3.-This thread will only be used to discuss and if the user wants to change something because a new idea came from such discussion he has to make the change directly at BitBucket at the issue's description. This is all, I have made some issues already at BitBucket but I still don't make any thread about them here. P.S. When I talk about issues I am refering to enhancements and proposals only, not bugs. Maybe something similar can be made for bugs, although I don't really know if they need to be discussed. Edit: I forgot to tell Merry Christmas!

tony971 said Higan doesn't load "[game].rom" files. Instead, it loads a folder with a bunch of different files stripped out of ROMs. These folders will be named "[game].sfc." To load Higan libraries, LaunchBox needs the ability to associate folders as game files. If you want to use some trickery, knowing that the folders all have the pseudo-file extension ".sfc," that should hold constant for all Higan game folders. Since the folders are all named after their respective games, the folder tiles (minus ".sfc") could be used for the scraper. If you want more info on this, I'd take a look here: http://byuu.org/emulation/higan/game-paks Feel free to propose it as an enhancement here https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/new in order for users to vote it. I use FCEUX and Higan for my NES games, Higan is pretty good and just yesterday had a huge update.

SentaiBrad said No sadly. There will more than likely be no progress made here unless a Linux / Mac developer came on and help. There are just not enough resources right now to make that work. There is a hope though. The reason why LaunchBox isn't working right now in Linux through Wine is .Net's fault. Direct X works fine in Wine (otherwise games wouldn't work) but Mono isn't a good enough replacement for .Net. Supposedly the next major version of .Net is supposed to either allow it to work in Wine or allow someone to be able to get it to work in Wine. Either way, when we can make it work there (albeit in Wine) the user base will know about it. Wine 1.8 was released yesterday with big improvements, maybe someone can test it, I don't have any linux distros at hand and my download monthly cap has been reached.

marcowy said There is cool possibility in Launchbox to import whole Steam collection, both installed and non-installed games. So if I want to play racing game I can quick arrange my enitre backlog by "racing" genre. It's superb feature which even Steam client is missing. I have over 200 games on GOG. I want to be able to import them without need to install all of them. I know, that GOG has no public profiles yet, but in mentioned service isthereanydeal.com I was able to import my GOG collection easly with https://github.com/ssokolow/itad_importer. I assume tht there are more people who want this feature. Btw do you have any wishlist poll, when I can vote for requests? I am interested in this feature, and the same with Origin, Desura and Uplay, but as Sentai said, there is no API to work with, maybe in the future, since GOG Galaxy is still in early development. The isthereanydeal GOG games importing approach is interesting, maybe Jason could figure something similar later on.

sagaopc said I was wondering if you could create a type of database just to videos for PC games, for Emumovies has no such area. So I am even creating videos of gameplay, I have 63 videos, which are A and B. I'm leveling each video separately, but botarei one pack with them compressed to anyone. I wonder if we could organize ourselves to create videos for PC games, and then put in the database for those who want to download. I can do a tutorial to download the video and convert to the format I'm using the videos. I'm using Total Free video converter, which is very simple to use and fast to convert and edit videos. The video formats are MP4, 2.5 mbps, 30 FPS. each video is about 1 to 2 minutes long and medium-sized 20MB each I also have quite cover, fanart, logos and screenshots, which could be added to the database (about 395 PC games), I can offer to anyone. They are improved covers (a good part of them) or covers created by me do not exist. Download videos (separated) https://mega.nz/#F!v8sRRbTI!8_L_agtp2lM4RPQYNEI3MQ Thanks for listening This seems a nice idea, I don't know if there are any copyright issues if Jason hosts all these videos but if not, I will cooperate

scree said If you're looking for free game videos better than 240p then here is a site which does 480p, mp4 format. It's mainly for Arcades but a few other platforms are in there also. The videos are named as per the games' filenames, so LB should pick them up once they're in their correct folders. http://arcadeartwork.org/index.php?/page/game_video_previews Downloading is free and does not require registering. The downside, unfortunately, is that as far as I can tell they need to be downloaded individually. I've grabbed quite a few MAME ones as well as some MSX1 and MSX2 ones and all work fine in BigBox. The site may occasionally throw a google 500 error when navigating out - just try again. Thanks for sharing this, I don't mind downloading individually, its a good way to procrastinate.

Specular said SentaiBrad said Because the names are not formatted properly. The other ones were just lucky. "mslug" is generic enough for LaunchBox to leave it blank. If the rom name was Metal Slug then it would find it during the first import. The first one is a bit more strict so that it doesn't pick wrong games. It still can, but the more loose it is the worse it will be. I am surprised a manual search found something based on "mslug". These were the original rom names, which were left as-is. FinalBurn Alpha correctly identified all of them by the same names. Whereas the manual search on TheGamesDB.net was for the full name. For a free version it would be fine as there aren't any great expectations but as the product also has Premium version for $20 with the same core issue it's not saving the user any time. I'd expect it would be able to more accurately identify the ROMs considering how such files are commonly named as abbreviations. The Neo Geo bios file was also incorrectly ID'd as a game. The fact that there is no difference in accuracy between the premium and the free version tells you that the developer of LaunchBox doesn't like to make the free version purposely bad, and that its a thing I really appreciate about him. I have discovered that most of accuracy issues are solved by simply changing the name, its really not that much of a bother.

scree said Before I discovered LB I used two separate frontends: EmuLoader and EmuCon (same author). One was for arcade emulation and the other was for console, computer and handheld systems. Both of these were able to display times played, last played and total playtime for the games. The arcades frontend stored this data in an INI and the other used a TXT file. So it can be done. The source code for both is opensource, developed with Delphi and is free to download. You can also adapt and reuse as you see fit with certain conditions - best check beforehand with the author. I've browsed the code, but as I'm no programmer (I struggle with batch files) I soon got lost. One point though is that these frontends are dedicated; they specify which emulators or systems they will work with. LB is more open in it's approach. Might this be an issue in calculating gametimes? Wow, that even makes sense for me and I know little about this. Storing the data in a txt file sounds good.

Jason Carr said Yes, that would definitely be an issue in calculating game times accurately and consistently. Even Steam struggles with that sometimes, though, so it wouldn't need to be 100% perfect. It's still a challenge, though, of course. In rudimentary form, it's really not that difficult to detect when a game opens and closes, but there are some bad caveats, and we'd have to make some assumptions that would likely be broken here and there. For example, if you loaded up Retroarch to play Super Mario Bros., but then loaded a different ROM from inside of Retroarch instead of exiting back out to LaunchBox, the time would be reported incorrectly. There's lots of other potential related issues as well, such as some games using a launcher EXE; that would pretty much break the feature for that game. That said, it may be time to implement this soon, regardless, at least in rudimentary form. I honestly don't think it would be worth the time and effort to integrate with every single game, emulator, etc. in order to do it properly, but it wouldn't be that difficult to do it generically, even though it would probably be fairly inaccurate. And I will be more than happy to test it!

Making an interpreter/fork sounds like a tremendous task and Jason is the only coder for LaunchBox as far I am aware. Sometimes I am reluctant to post suggestions or feature request because I know Jason has already a ton of to do´s in his list. I wish I could help him as a volunteer. I didn't know that RetroArch and LaunchBox were competitors, sad they wouldn't cooperate with LaunchBox I will add you to Steam once I have completed the game to give you my insight.

SentaiBrad said We've discussed this before a while back actually. It would be very hard. Our current theory on how to make it work would be to start tracking when you launch a game and base it off of the name you have set for the game. However, how do you tell LB to stop? There would need to be a system to autodetect what emulator you are launching with that entry, then monitor your processes on windows to make sure it is accurate. However, if you change games while still in the emulator it will still think you are tracking the other game. When I realized that ROMs doesn't show as processes, I came to the conclusion that this could be imposible, of course I have a very limited knowledge in programming so you and Jason could come up with something. I think this feature would work better if it was implemented by the emulator itself. I don't think Jason can convince every emulator developer to implement such thing tho. Is it possible for launchbox to "read" what the emulator is doing? Thanks for the reply, and can I ask you something? I am playing a lot of rpgs lately and I am actually finishing them to completion. So can you link me to the thread where you showed your RPG? I want to play it but I can't find it.

Hi Jason. Is there a way to implement a game time tracking feature in LaunchBox? I am currently riding a nostalgia train and I am playing a lot of old games. I would like to be able to see how many hours it takes me to complete the games. I don't know how can this be done, since ROMs aren't executable files and they don't show up at the task manager as process when I launch them. But if its possible, it would be awesome.

Jason Carr said Well guys, now PayPal has ended the relationship completely and permanently. No more PayPal payments. Boo hoo. I did just now add support for Alipay (primarily for China) and Bitcoin (yay!). I'm going to post the entire ridiculous statement from PayPal below: And for the record, we're not even breaking any part of their ridiculous "Acceptable Use Policy" to begin with. They're just too ignorant and lazy to do any research to come to a legitimate conclusion. One last time, good riddance PayPal. I am surprised these people even know how to turn on a computer. Fuck them, here in Mexico they throw us fees over fees over fees and we can't even send or recieve money as gifts, they restricted my country in a lot of aspects. Sadly Paypal turned into crap after the Ebay buyout, if only Elon Musk still be in charge, maybe it would't be like this.

Same error as Zombeaver

Thank you very much for the effort you put in this I will be using it!

I really don't know how to help you because I have zero knowledge in programming, I can only translate to spanish but I don't think that will be useful for the overlay. Anyway this is awesome. You can also try to find some help at r/emulation, there are a lot of programmers there and a lot of people like LaunchBox in that subreddit.

Hi @JasonCarr I have tested the new EmuMovies implementation, with very little success. It seems that EmuMovies has VERY little flexibility with the platform and game names. Out of 10 platforms and 10 games tested, 9 failed with "unable to find platform" "unable to find game" sort of messages. Only one platform/game was found: Gamecube Pokemon Colloseum I don't think this is something to do with LaunchBox or with you since EmuMovies is a third party. So I have an idea, maybe its a fool idea because I am no expert but here it is: Recommend or force some sort of "naming convention", so in that way, both platform and game names in a LaunchBox library will be exactly the same as the ones at EmuMovies. I don't really know if what I am saying is viable but that's all I can think of. Maybe I did something wrong but I can tell you that I am using the standard platform and game names. There is a small thing I noticed at the last step when adding a new ROM, the spanish translation is too big for those boxes. here is an example Send me a notification when the spanish resources are ready for the new features to be translated. Cheers!

garbanzo said Thanks for list view! It's still a bit problematic though. LB doesn't seem to know which game is selected when hitting the Edit button or using the right-click menu. Once you have it working properly, I hope to see a few "essential" features to go along with it: 1. Box art display in side panel when in list view 2. Ability to choose which columns to display 3. Find-as-you-type is now more important than ever! 4. A button to toggle list/thumbnails would be helpful Also, I'm not clear on how to use the "versions" feature? I'm truly impressed at how quickly LB is being developed - thanks! EDIT - Trying to use the "Add Filters" window causes LB to crash (I'm running the latest beta). Good suggestions!

I'm late for the date... @Jason Carr New list view is available for premium users Custom AutoHotkey scripts for all emulators, MS-DOS, or Windows games Proper support for MAME game imports Spanish: Nueva Vista en Modo Listado disponible para usuarios Premium Scripts personalizados de AutoHotKey para todos los emuladores, MS-DOS, o juegos de Windows Soporte mejorado para importaciones de juegos de MAME

Jason Carr said Alright, I've been killing myself trying to resolve this bug, so big win tonight. I was getting nasty crashes occasionally when starting and exiting games; turns out it was related to the new AutoHotkey implementation. No one had reported it, so not sure if anyone else was seeing the crashes, but it sure was driving me nuts. Let me know if anyone sees any crashes in Big Box or LaunchBox with this latest beta. Now I think I can *finally* get back to this list view... ;) So far I haven't seen any crashes. Do you have ads in this site Jason? I use uBlock and if you are using any kind of ads let me know to whitelist the site to support it. Also, have you been aware of the number of new forum members lately? It has grown a lot, maybe its time to fix the Wiki, let me know if I can help with that.

Jason Carr said New beta is out! I managed to pull off DirectX rendering for the games list and game details. Game scrolling is now smooth as butter. Jason I have just tested this beta and let me tell you something: This change deserves to be the headline of the next official release. Even with weak hardware my LaunchBox and BigBox has no stuttering and everything is smooth. This is the more noticeable change in performance that I have tested. Thanks

Ruthalas said (I performed a quick search and didn't see anything related to this.) I am slowly adding my collection to Launchbox and am greatly enjoying it. The ability to bring emulated games, PC game, and anything else into a single interface is wonderful. I am having a spot of trouble when it comes to adding visual novels. TheGamesDB doesn't have listings for a several visual novels in my collection. To remedy that lack of metadata, I'd like to request a a new source for metadata: the Visual Novel Database It has comprehensive listings, and my understanding is that it has an open API. I think it'd be an excellent addition that would allow Launchbox to be used (smoothly) with a greater variety of games. Whatever you decide, thanks for putting out an awesome software! (Your monetization setup is also great. I will likely be purchasing the premium version soon out of a desire to support you, rather than nagging popups or missing features.) Adding this would be awesome, I know a lot of friends who loves Visual Novels

Jason Carr said @CliveBarker Can you translate these for the release notes? Here are the biggest changes for this release: New Big Box home theater/game cabinet view for premium users New platform/image management features New translations for Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and French @Jason Carr Aquí están los más grandes de esta versión: Nuevo modo de vista tipo teatro en casa/gabinete de juegos para usuarios premium llamado Big Box Nuevas características de gestión de imágenes/plataformas Nuevas traducciones en Portugués Brasileño, Chino Simplificado, y Francés

Hahahaha @Jason Carr sorry for this but I just realized there is no overlapping. For some reason I thought that every line of text in the Options should have a checkbox, so when I saw that those didn't have one I though it was overlapped... My bad, but at least I think the Spanish 5.0 its ready now