Kriven

Wow. I don't know what to say. Really, the gift card is more than plenty. Just having created such an awesome program and hearing my suggestions out has been more than plenty. It's an honor to be of use to a project engineered by such a humble, talented person.

Got fed up with what Calibre does to file names and the fact that book databases are pretty well useless for scraping usable info from. Attempting to reconstruct the library in LaunchBox instead, though it's slow going since the program isn't really built for it (and thus, cannot pull cover data straight from the CBR/CBZ/PDF files). Also making banners for everything, which is proving to be trickier than I anticipated. I'm finding the "Additional Apps" feature to be useful for organizing Annuals/Specials with my comics, as well as other supplementary material like magazine articles and art books. Right now I have it set up to handle each file extension as a different console, with specific reading programs as the emulators. A custom field, "Media", handles the specific style of book (Comics, Encylopedias, Novels, etc.). Developer field for Authors.

The only thing I can think of that would actually look nice would be to give users the ability to toggle between "Favorites" "Recently Added" or "Recently Played", and put that five-game selection beneath a large image of the console itself...

I made a demo in Game Maker to hopefully better help me get across what I'm trying to explain... https://www.mediafire.com/?bcqc7c21sya7lj2 Escape will quit the program, pressing Enter while over one of the letters (only #-C work because... well, small demo) will narrow the games list. I forgot to add a method of returning to All Games, but I still hope this gets everything across okay.

Your original mock is what I mean: Tap left or right to snap between the letter ladder and games list. For example, if I'm on "Halo" and I hit either the left or right arrow key, the highlight snaps to the "H" on the letter ladder. From there I can Up and Down through the alphabet. After selecting a game, the ladder goes away and both the Letter Ladder and the Games List are replaced by this display: There's no reason why the two menus cannot be side-by-side.

I just want to add, and I meant to include this inititally, that the reason I think the letter ladder works best on the left side of the screen is: First: We read left-to-right. Any kind of slide-in that happens on the left is going to be more easily recognizable than one that occurs on the right. Two: Everything else the player can manipulate is along the left-hand side of the screen.

IMO, having the letter ladder on the left as originally conceptualized is the perfect, cleanest solution. I'd prefer it to be there as long as the user was browsing the games, but to disappear when the user selects a game and the "Play" menu appears. I really, really hate having the letter tabs pop-up as you scroll through the library, though. That's always a pain in the neck. Maybe you could implement multiple options and allow the user to define their preference? Example: "Letter ladder on left or Quick Navigation Pop-Up" "Letter ladder always present?"

I like what I see, and I definitely like the ideas you're getting. I think the letter navigation sidebar is a key component that could put you ahead of the competition here... I really hate the way XBMC and essentially every similar "Big Picture Mode" type of program handles navigation; the letter bar would certainly fix things. (And bd000's suggestion of music is great). The one thing I'm thinking about is more on the function side than the display, because I think you've got this display setting down (I mean, I have ideas for other display modes, but I don't know if you're looking for those...) I think some kind of local profile system would be nice for families... So the Parent Profile would be able to designate "Well, my kid can only play games up through the T rating" and lock the child's profile to those games (and excluding all unrated and rated pending games). That's the only suggestion I have, really. The only cosmetic suggestion I have, and it goes along with the whole "family use" thought, is to put the ESRB rating tag in the upper right corner. I know that information is in the data on the side, but I feel like it should be a little more visible. As an alternative thought, you could put an icon there that designates how many players the game supports (and whether it supports local play or online play). I don't know if the current databases have that information, but maybe it could be considered in the future. Edit: Right now all the images you've shared use games with traditional tower box art. How does the program react to games which have front art that is wider than it is tall? (Like N64 and SNES games..)

I personally like LaunchBox Couch... I think it evokes all the right images of lounging at a distance and browsing leisurely.

Honestly, there's a lot that could be done with LaunchBox from a showcasing angle. Here's what I imagine its future could look like: "Front" would be the actual box art as defined presently. All the other options would be of defined dimensions and there for the express purpose of creating a clean-looking and uniform display. "Poster" would be traditional DVD-case type of imagery. "Tile" would be jewel-case styled imagery. "Banner" would be images using the Steam Banner dimensions. "Wide Banner" would be the long banners presently found on thegamesdb. Each of those four could have generic templates to suit the individual design tastes of every user. "Icon" would be the game's actual file icon (although a launchbox-specific icon can also be defined).

Would it be possible for LaunchBox to generate generic images using a template for games which lack, for example, a steam banner? That way users can activate the "Prefer Steam Banners" option to get the nice uniform grid even without having images for every game. Along these lines, maybe..

To differentiate between different services, I've just been making them unique systems. For example, once the scraper has downloaded all the information for my Steam copy of Mirror's Edge, I just change the "Console" data field to read "Steam". Then I do the same thing with my Origin copy, so it reads "Origin". That way the left navigation bar will read, y'know "Origin --- Sega Genesis -- Steam". It's working for me pretty well (I'm also separating games by Operating System if they aren't linked to a service.)

I've had a few ideas that I think are simple-ish in concept and hopefully execution that could improve the user experience. Probably the biggest issue I've run across is using JoyToKey in conjunction with LaunchBox. I use JoyToKey for all my emulators because it allows a much greater degree of control than their built-in input configuration, but I've had issues getting the program to work from the "Additional Apps" menu in LaunchBox. For whatever reason, having JTK load during game start-up causes issues with screen resolution. Also, I'm not entirely sure how to get JTK to open a specific control set at LaunchBox's command... or how to make it close when I close the game. Here's what I propose: Preferrably, LaunchBox would be able to generate a drop-down list of existing JoyToKey profiles. Understandably, this might be impossible or overly difficult, so a simple "Browse" function would work just as well, since JTK stores control profiles as individual files. I imagine that either way, LaunchBox would have to know the proper commands to send to JTK. I'm also not sure if "Close after game" is a possible feature, but it sure would be nice to have. Ultimately, it would be nice if LaunchBox had its own JoyToKey type of functionality, but that seems like something far in the future, if ever. Possible premium feature: The ability to not only designate specific JTK profiles per game, but specific JTK profiles per game and controller. Second Idea: At the moment LaunchBox features a "Game Date on Hover" option, but this isn't useful when browsing the collection with the arrow keys. It would be nice to have a "Game Data on Selection" option as an alternative. Possibly with an adjustable timer, so I can indicate that the game data should appear only when an item has been selected for three seconds or five seconds. Maybe even the option to link the Game Data pop-up with a key press? I know the game data sidebar is toggleable, but it's much more intrusive than the game data pop-up window. Third Idea: Steam Ribbons I've been running into this problem when using the "All" library tab, where I have the same game for multiple systems or services, but it's impossible to tell when browsing through all my games which system a specific game iteration is for (particularly in instances where I have both the Steam version of a PC game and a ripped .iso of that same game). To remedy this, I've been adding little console ribbons to my collection, like so: My Tomb Raider grid icons. The ripped PS1 game is first, then the Steam. Perhaps it's possible to make the graphic ribbons a toggleable feature in LaunchBox itself? Doing it manually is fine for now, although it does make things somewhat ugly and confusing when just browsing my Steam games and I have all these games with a Steam ribbon on them (not to mention it brings up the question of which banners to ribbon and which system gets the honor of wearing the beautifully untarnished banner). Theoretically, the ribbons could be overlayed above any image type, not just the banners. If you were willing to integrate this, I will at least attempt to create ribbons for all of the default platforms (and a few that aren't listed as well).

Honestly, I think this idea would work well in the future, although not in the current environment and not really how you've set it up. I can see tabs (and have actually been thinking about making this suggestion myself) working in this manner once Jason (would you prefer a less familiar tone in the future?) decides if he wants to turn LaunchBox into multimedia program, as opposed to just games. At that point, the tabs would be a clean and convenient way to sift through one's media library. For example, tabs could be: Games -- Movies -- Shows -- Books -- Comics -- Music -- Images -- Apps Perhaps even a premium feature that allows users to generate custom tabs? (By the way, since I know allowing LaunchBox to manage other medias has been a consideration, I'll just throw in my two-cents there: there are a number of good programs that manage books, comics, videos, and music, but there aren't very many easy-to-use programs which can manage large image collections).

DOS76: Have you tried using Calibre for your comic book collection? It greatly resembles LaunchBox from a visual standpoint, and does feature batch importing and the ability to draw a cover from the first image in a .cbr/.cbz file.

Can I suggest adding some kind of scraper for http://steambanners.booru.org/index.php once the feature is implemented? I'm pretty sure this is where programs like Ice draw from when incorporating custom banners in Steam itself.

I know that you can point LaunchBox to an .exe file via the Add Game function, but is there a way to move the file into the LaunchBox library like you can with ROM files? It will be a lot easier for me in the future to have as many games actually in LaunchBox's folder hierarchy as possible, in the event that I want to move the library to another drive.

Jason Carr said Thanks for that info guys. Maddoc, how long does that show up when exiting? How long does it take to exit? Kriven, I'm curious what you mean by "really slow performance." What in particular is slow, and how long does it take? How big is your collection? What are your machine specs? What language is your operating system? I've had one other report of the app being really slow, so I'm wondering if it's related. When browsing through the library and using the arrow keys to navigate from one title to the next or when clicking on a title (both right and left click), it takes/took several seconds for the title to become highlighted. Essentially the whole program would hang while it selected a new title. At this time, my collection was under fifty games. I'm running a quad-core capable of 3.7GHz. I have 8GB RAM. Running Windows 8.1. American English. As I mentioned in the other thread, the problem seems to have fixed itself after I imported my NES collection... if it crops up again, I'll try to capture some video to show you exactly what's going on. Edit: I forgot to mention that I'm not using a Beta install.

I have it installed to an external hdd, I don't understand the audio crackling question since the program doesn't have audio... no other audio has been crackling, though. At the time I made this query I only had imported my Steam library to the new install (I didn't update directly, because I am always wary of bugs... so I downloaded to a new directory and started over). That's 47 games. The problem seems to have fixed itself after I imported my NES library :-\ I'll post here again if it returns.

The first game console I ever played was my mom's NES when I was maybe a year old. Either Super Mario Bros. or Balloon Fight. When I was about four my uncle gave me his old SNES, so that was the first console I actually owned. The first game I ever played on a PC (which, for me, was an eMachine running Windows ME) was the PC port of Sonic R. Well, I suppose it was technically this little called Pig Pen (some weird Pac-Man clone) my friend had running on his computer (which was an old bugger. I don't even know what OS it ran). He also had a text game called Rockstar, though I didn't play that so much as exist in the same room while my friend played and narrated it to me. At school there was SkiFree, but I can't remember if that was before or after I was playing on my own PC.

I am getting this behavior in 4.7, as well as very slow performance.

I just updated to 4.7 this afternoon, and it is incredibly slow in comparison to the previous version. Clicking a game or navigating with the arrow key now takes several seconds to highlight the next game. The previous iteration moved to the next selection almost instantaneously.

If you do follow through with creating your own database, do you think you could treat each Operating System as a unique console? It's a massive problem that all the current databases lump them under the generic "PC" label, particularly when you've got games from Windows 3.1 or 95 that aren't compatible with modern devices.