CADScott

Looking forward to this one, all ready for testing!

Nathan DiYorio said I'm sorry to butt into the divergent conversation... I use my LaunchBox install to track everything. Music, Movies, TV Shows, Games, Books, Comics... Everything. I prefer LaunchBox to other programs primarily because of its "Additional Applications" feature, which allows me to do some very versatile things with the program. I can use it for track listings, I can use it to sort shows by episode, I can use it for the special features in a dvd rip. It also provides a better atmosphere for collecting and exploring elements like insert and inlay scans and music videos by associating them with the appropriate album, and its metadata isn't limited to what a specific filetype can manage. Prior to this, I used Media Monkey to manage my collection... and I'm still putting that mess back together. In fact, I've spent the past week organizing my music in LaunchBox one album at a time and inputting all of that metadata by hand. I'm much happier now with all of my collections than I had been using other programs like Kodi or Calibre or MediaMonkey. What I do is take my preferred application (Media Monkey for music, VLC for videos [although I use GOM for some specific instances], CDisplay for Comics, etc.) and download a portable version of it, if available, and simply plug that into LaunchBox as an emulator. Of course there are certain limitations, such as being unable to build a "Now Playing" list (opening a new album will close the old one), but I am generally very happy with my collection. To be honest, I use LB more for my other media than I do for games at this point. How do you do the artwork and metadata, do you import it from somewhere, or do you enter it manually. This would be great for all media if you can scrape the metadata automatically, but if it is manual I think this would take me way too long, my comic collection alone is over 10,000 files!

I voted (For LaunchBox obviously!), now up to 26.75% with 42 votes, creeping closer to Hyperspin. Impressive support from the emumovies site, which seems to be only populated by Hyperspin users.

Seems pretty good, anything that helps to get difficult systems to run with little fuss is good in my book, thanks!

Yeah, it is a bummer when you want to get some of the big rom packs. I had to stop my Mame CHD download and split it over 2 months just so I could get it all without being throttled. It is very easy to go through 10% of my monthly limit in a night when I am getting larger games like Wii or PS2. It means I have to constantly watch my limit and plan when and what to download. But I am one of the lucky ones with cable service, most people use ADSL, and they have much slower connections. In my last house I paid a similar rate and only got 12Mbit connection, which dropped out when it rained! Pretty strange to have to plan large downloads for dry days.

Wow you guys have it good there, at least you have some options. In Australia, we pay heaps for a really slow service, and almost every service is capped, and throttled when you reach your limit. I currently pay $90 a month for 30Mbit down 1Mbit up connection with 500GB download limit that is throttled to 256kbit when I hit my limit (This is only available on a 2 year contract and I am forced to have a landline that I do not want or use!) I dream of Gigabit with no caps.

That looks awesome! The homepage was looking a bit dated, looked too much like a blog site, but now it looks very professional. Great work Jason!

Awesome barrel roll!

Just tested this latest version with all the supported systems that I have, and it is working perfectly! Many thanks @mathflair loving the extra info in my LaunchBox details panel.

DR9 said I would use a Pi3 instead of PC parts, then you can use a normal wall adapter for power. LaunchBox will not work on the pi, and it is seriously lacking for emulation power, even N64 struggles on it, let along Gamecube, Wii or PS2!

im4potato said Hi Jason, nice to get a reply straight from the top. Those rules seem like they would be very effective, but like you said would require a good group of mods to maintain. I do want to elaborate on what I was talking about regarding submission guidelines though, because I think they could be just as important as having a good mod team. In my opinion, there were quite a few issues with the consistency of the content submitted to thegamesdb, such as: 1. Lots of duplicate or hacked titles cluttering up the database. 2. A very broad range of quality for the box art. I realize that it's not always possible to get a totally clean scan, but the quality of some of the images was just terrible. 3. No set resolutions for box art. Having consistently sized images is the first step towards having a decent set of box art. The size could be chosen based on the physical dimensions of the systems original box and some PPI value. 4. This is probably my biggest issue with the other databases. The game descriptions need to come directly from the maker of the game, and in the case of boxed titles, it should be the text directly from the back of the box. There are so many games listed in other databases that have descriptions that sound like someone casually talking about it to a friend, instead of the colorful, entertaining language that's usually on the back of a box. That's most of what I can think of off the top of my head, I'm sure you've already thought about some of these problems. At the end of the day, I'd really just like to see a database that had a higher focus on quality. PS. LaunchBox on Linux would sure be nice! I must say that I agree completely with all the points above from @im4potato, but we also need to be careful that it does not become too difficult to submit data, or else people will not submit at all. I especially agree with the issues with box art quality and resolution. For me it is very important that the box art the correct aspect ration, which is the original aspect of the released media cover. There are so many cover sites where the artwork is stretched or cropped strangely, and it would be fantastic if the desired ratio per system is set in the submission guidelines. This cannot be a mandatory rule though, because every system has some strange releases that came in odd shaped boxes that don't fit the norm. I think we also need to be careful not to confuse resolution with quality. I have seen many high res covers that look awful, and many lower res that look much better because they have been cleaned and formatted correctly. Jason, would it maybe be possible to have multiple versions of the covers available for download, and by default select the most popular. This would allow for alternative covers for different regions and maybe even custom covers. Sites like The Movie DB do this for movie art and it works great.

I Can't seem to get the new decompressing of archives to work with PSX files when they are being emulated through Retroarch. When I launch the 7zipped image in LaunchBox I get the following errors. These are actually the same errors that I get if I pass a compressed image directly to Retroarch, so I suspect that the extracted file is not being correctly passed on to the emulator.

That is actually a very good idea, will have to experiment with NTFS file compression, I had forgotten about that completely! It will definitely help with ROMs that cannot be compressed due to the emulator not supporting zipped files. The compression that is in windows is no where near as aggressive as 7Zip's compression, so if you can compress the Roms and play directly, like in Retroarch, this is a better option in terms of space saving.

Wow, just wow! Both of your tools look fantastic, and I would love to try this one out as well! Awesome work, look forward to any release of these, even alpha for testing if needed, I have complete 0.171 MAME rom set here waiting!

That looks truly amazing! I am waiting with baited breath to try this tool out!

Antropus said Can you send me a screenshot showing the structure of this favorites list? I never used it so I'm not familiar. I could write a parser for it. It should be pretty easy if it comes from a text file (ini, xml, etc). edit: I just checked and the lists are no more than ini files with a header, some sessions and a simple list of the games under the session. This is pretty easy to do. I just need to parse those lists, removing the unnecessary stuff and I can extract the Platform name either from the ini or the ini file name. The ini file name seems to be a good way to go. I then can load those files into arrays, compare them to your rom folder and generate just the matches based on what you have, creating all lists from your favorites. Are MAMEUIFX favorite lists different from MAMEUI lists? I hope not, so more people can use this feature, as it is a little specific. -Kris The MAMEUI favorites list is just a text file with the ROM names listed each on a separate line, without the extension, as such: 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945kiii 25pacmano 3wonders 64street 720 88games abcop acedrvrw aerofgt agallet airduel airwolf aliens altbeast aodk aof aof2 aof3 I have attached a sample.

Awesome work, keep them coming! Could you also share or link to the PSDs you used, would love to do a few of my own.

This is coming along very well, looking forward to trying this out, I have not yet added my MAME files to LaunchBox, so this will be a great way to test it out!

Jason Carr said Let's use this thread though to keep track of people who want to be in the beta group for submissions and moderation. I think we'll probably open this up sooner rather than later. :) Please sign me up as a beta tester for the database, I would love to help out with this for both submission and moderation if required!

The issue I have is that it needs so much intervention to get the DS4 controller working in Windows. I am trying to get a PC up and running that needs only a controller for everything, and the amount of issues with the DS4 mean that this is impossible, so I have been forced to go back to the 360 controller!

This sounds fantastic @Antropus, I have one request, would it be possible to have the images and movies import into another location of our choosing other than the default one inside the LaunchBox directory? I keep all my media in a different structure to the LaunchBox default setup.

I have been experimenting with using the Dualshock 4 controller for the last week or so, and have had nothing but problems with it. I am running Windows 10 with the controller plugged into USB, and cannot get the controller to stay in exclusive mode for any length of time. It always seems to disconnect and reconnect, and change out exclusive mode when it does, which then adds a second controller to windows and stuffs up retroarch. I have tried InputMapper and DS4Windows, and the issue is there with both. I can get the controller to connect with bluetooth, but the latency was very high as soon as I started playing any game, and the input lag would be awful! Might have to just switch back to the wireless 360 controller, which I have never had any issues with connecting.

There does not seem to be any link to the Merch store on the main page anymore. I thought there was a link at the top of the page originally, but the only way to get to it is through the link in this forum post, might be restricting sales a bit!

There is a setting under the View menu in the main window to auto-play videos.

When you overwrote the existing file in your MAME directory, you have replaced the working rom with another one that, while having the same name, does not work with the version of MAME you are using. As Brad said, MAME is VERY picky about having the correct roms, and you should never dump new roms in your directory unless you are absolutely sure they are for your version of MAME. The only way to fix this is to use clrmamepro to audit your roms, which will fix it perfectly, but requires quite a lot of learning on your part to get it to run properly. It is worth learning thought, as it makes it very easy to manage all your roms, not just MAME. There was an excellent tutorial written on this forum not very long ago for clrmamepro, but I cannot seem to find it in the search box, not sure why.