Zombeaver

Thank you Jason! Thank you for all the hard work you put into making Launchbox and Big Box what they are and for giving us such fun tools to fiddle around with

Happy to help!

Yeah, the short answer is "no". The longer answer is "It depends on the platform, but generally still no". Some platforms like 90's PC were kindof a free-for-all when it comes to form factor, as Jason said. There are also platforms like Playstation and Sega Saturn that went through multiple iterations of their game boxes (long boxes vs standard cd case). Even something like the SNES, while it had predefined box dimensions (barring weird things like Earthbound and Mario Paint) the layout of the covers themselves were somewhat inexact which means there's generally some variance in the dimensions you'll find between covers online (which is exacerbated by the fact that you're dealing with images uploaded by myriad different sources). There's a really interesting article on Gamesradar that shows some of the incremental changes in game packaging and illustrates some of this. All of that said, I wouldn't mind having the option to force covers to set dimensions in LB/BB, by crop and/or resize. It's not a huge deal and it might look bad in certain cases, but it'd help keep things a little more consistent visually as well.

For banners it does work, yes. For clear logos, however, it doesn't - you have to refresh the clear logo image cache for those to change. Glad you like these

I had a bit of trouble making up my mind on this one so I've got a couple options available. Ninja Gaiden was the first attempt; not entirely sure I'm satisfied with it which is what led to the Phantasy Star version. I hope you guys dig one or both; I've been staring at them for too long to be objective. I'm seeing everything in various shades of orange at this point Normal - Ninja Gaiden: Sketch - Ninja Gaiden: Normal - Phantasy Star: Sketch - Phantasy Star:

In Launchbox go to "Manage Platforms". You'll probably see one that's blank. Based on your screenshot it should say that it contains 1 game. Just delete that platform and you should be good to go. I had this happen at one point a while back.

Here's an Amiga banner to go with the clear logo I made recently. I need to make a Master System one as well for that reason. Normal: Sketch:

Jazzphone said I was curious if there was any progress made with Downloading Images and Metadata without changing the Platform the Game is associated with. The weird thing about this is...it's a relatively recent development. It was only a few betas prior to the latest official when it was working correctly. I didn't go all the way through the last batch of betas - I think I was on like 6.5 beta 5 and it was still working normally but when I went to the following official and beyond it started happening. I know this for sure because I was adding a lot of ScummVM games at the time and almost all of them were actually DOS entries in the DB and it remained what I had specified (ScummVM) even after scraping; now though, it overwrites it. @Jason, I don't know if this helps narrow it down much but it seems like it's a pretty recent issue.

Yeah when I got home I checked and I actually don't see such an option anywhere. The only delete option I found related to the web collection was actually on the site itself just by clicking on individual entries. I don't see anything in LB that seems relevant to that.

You can also add additional "emulators" for other cores (for the same platform) if it's something you need to alternate between frequently. If it's really just a one-off, a specific command line parameter like @lordmonkus suggested would probably be the best bet, but I have certain things that I like to alternate between pretty frequently. So, for example, my "Arcade" platform is setup to default to just "Retroarch". I have it setup to use the Final Burn Alpha core for that platform. However, there are instances where FBA isn't the best option or an option at all in the event that the game simply isn't supported. For those, I'll either use MAMEUI or the MAME core of Retroarch. For the latter option, I just created an additional "emulator" entry that only contains "Arcade" as the platform and is directed to the MAME core rather than the FBA one. This way I can quickly switch back and forth whenever I want without having to type anything in - all I have to do is go to the "emulator" used in the game entry and change it from "Retroarch" to "Retroarch - MAME" or vice versa. If it's something you're going to end up using as a variant on a frequent basis, this is what I would recommend. Retroarch: Retroarch - MAME: Emulator drop-down:

No problem! I see what you're saying about the resolution now. I'm not sure why it only has desktop, original and "0x0" in the resolution drop-down (0x0 is actually the same thing as "desktop" as far as DOSBox is concerned). I feel like it used to also have some common resolutions like 640x480, 800x600, etc. but it's been a while since I looked in there. I pretty much always leave it as desktop unless there's a problem like videos playing at the wrong size (small). If you manually edit it though, it'll stay like that for any other games unless you specify otherwise with a unique .conf. Honestly, I use the "create" function for almost every game anyway - I just use the default as a starting point. I've got about 150 DOS games in my library so it's something I'm very familiar with. If you have any more issues I'm happy to help.

In LB you create a base/default profile via the "Edit Dosbox" menu (it has some default settings which you may or may not want to change). After that, any DOS games you add to your library will use those default settings unless you tell it to do otherwise. If you do want to use a unique .conf for a particular game, all you have to do is open the game details section and go to dosbox tab and in the field for specifying a .conf click on "create". This will create a new file that has the default settings that you specified previously but you can change them and it will only affect that specific game.

Ah okay, I understand now. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to resolve your issue. The "my collection" feature is still "alpha" so there may or may not be a way to do this currently. It's not a feature I've spent much time messing with, to be honest. I will say that if you click on one of your game entries on the "My Collection" site that you can click the "remove from collection" button to remove it. That's only one-at-a-time though. I'm not sure why the delete option in Launchbox would be grayed out, that seems odd... maybe a bug or perhaps it just hasn't been implemented yet. Maybe @Jason can confirm. Sorry I can't be more help on this

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Can you provide a little more detail? What is it exactly that you're trying to do?

I've always loved the artwork for Shadow of the Beast. It has virtually no relation to what's in the game itself but it looks completely awesome nonetheless. I like it so much that I felt a bit guilty filtering it at all, so I went ahead and made a separate variant that's unfiltered. Normal: Scanlines: Unfiltered - Normal: Unfiltered - Scanlines:

DOS76 said As to the scraping as DOS as default are all the support games for DOS? The vast majority of games covered under ScummVM were DOS. As I said, the files themselves for the ScummVM versions aren't directly usable in DOSBox but most are from that era. Space Quest file comparison: I don't think that that's actually 100% of the games though - I think there's probably a mix of W95 stuff based on their compatibility list. The Backyard Baseball series, for example, were W95 games. DOS76 said For some reason I thought I read before that some of the games are Windows 95 era but I may be mistaken about that. Some of them appear to be, yeah. I'd have to look game by game but there's at least some that are W95 games. But it's probably further complicated by the existence of something called ResidualVM that covers some 95-era stuff as well. It currently only covers Escape from Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Myst III. I think the distinction is that these required specific hardware accelerators to function. FistyDollars said Yeah, that's basically what I was thinking. It just doesn't seem to make sense to have an emulator listed as a platform in what is ostensibly just a games database. Yeah, I get what you're saying. As long as it doesn't negatively impact ScummVM importing into Launchbox, I'm fine with it. The actual metadata itself should be identical to preexisting data for DOS and evidently some Windows. Jason Carr said Thankfully, removing the ScummVM platform won't do anything to prevent games from playing in LaunchBox. ScummVM is currently always manually configured (there is currently no ScummVM import process), so there's nothing to worry about there. I guess you have a point there. It's all setup/scraped manually anyway during the "import". I don't know if it's the best method but this is the way I've done it thus far for adding games.

I guess the only concern would be with how this would impact ScummVM as a platform in Launchbox, because it absolutely needs to remain a dedicated platform there - most ScummVM format games aren't natively run in DOS; many don't have a dedicated .exe and are just a collection of data files that are really only readable via ScummVM. DOS and ScummVM generally aren't interchangeable when it comes to playing the games themselves. In general you can't just take a ScummVM formated game and just boot it up in DOSBox. In some cases you can use the DOS version in ScummVM but not the other direction. It could be that the ScummVM platform in Launchbox could just be setup natively to "Scrape As" DOS and then the separate ScummVM section in the DB could be eliminated. That could probably work. Basically, I just don't want to do anything that makes ScummVM importing into Launchbox more difficult/time-consuming than it already is, because it's in dire need of an overhaul/streamline as it is.

imdavid555 said I guess all you can do is backup all your fanart and then remove it, leaving only a single image in the area I mentioned earlier. That would technically work yes; but uh...yeah no haha. I'll just wait for the option to be implemented natively. I've been experimenting with making some platform backgrounds to go with the other art that I've made for Big Box and I'd like to have the option to just disregard individual game fanart and always use the platform fanart for everything in that platform. I'm not sure what I would prefer in the long run, but I think it's worth implementing as an option. More options for customization are always good in my book.

imdavid555 said There definitely is a way! Place your background image in Launchbox>Image>Platforms>"Select any System">Fanart. This works for me. I have a nice single image background for all games within that system. That's what I have now... that doesn't work. That only uses the image if the individual game doesn't have fanart. If the game has its own fanart it overrides the platform fanart. I'm talking about a single image for the entire platform, and ignoring a game's individual fanart.

Okay cool, just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing it somewhere. I think it might be a nice option to have for people that just want one constant background for the entire platform. Having game-by-game fanart is great... if the fanart itself is great... but I think we all know that's not always the case

On that note, I've figured out how to disable the clear logos as game backgrounds via image priorities (yay!) but... am I missing something or is there not a way to force it to always use a platform background ("fanart") for everything in that platform? It's currently using it if the game itself doesn't have fanart, but if the game does have its own fanart it uses that instead. Is there a way for me to force it to always use the fanart for the platform itself? I didn't see a separate designator for "Fanart - Platform" or similar in the priorities list.

Whoops. I fixed it.

I actually found this while I was looking. It's some guy that does paid voice impersonations. The third example on the right is Morgan Freeman haha.

(in Morgan Freeman's voice) "Uh...excuse me young man...I'm not sure if you're aware, but 'big' and 'box' are two separate words... so I'll have to charge you for three words. Thank you. My name is Morgan Freeman."

I was really unprepared for the equal parts awesome and nightmare fuel that is the Kasumi Ninja cover. I like it