Zombeaver

First of all, I want to say thank you for this wonderful piece of software! I’ve been fiddling with emulators basically since their inception back in the mid 90’s. I remember scouring Zophar’s Domain for every tidbit of information I could get - it was a real treasure trove in its heyday! I’ve been consistently amazed at how far emulation has come since those early days and by the hard work of so many enthusiasts out there. Having something like Launchbox bring this all together in such an organized and aesthetically pleasing way is a godsend. I didn’t realize how much I needed something like this until I used it; and now, after using it for only a week, I know that I could never go back! It helps that it totally feeds into my own OCD tendencies when it comes to organizing and showcasing large amounts of media (you should see my Plex/Kodi libraries) I’ve been hard at work for the last week getting everything set up the way I want (and I still have a LONG way to go), and during that time I’ve come across a couple things that I’d love to see added and a few things that I think might need to be tweaked a bit. I apologize in advance if there’s already a way to do any of these that I’m just not aware of yet. Anyway, here goes. 1. I'd like an option to play music instead of video preview audio; as in, it still shows the video preview when you select a game, but it plays music that you've imported for that title rather than the video's audio. The way it works now is certainly serviceable, but I just think this setup would make it really classy! 2. Don't play the "move selection" sound for each entry while scrolling through titles; maybe just the first move and again when it stops. I think the sound in and of itself is fine, but when you hold down a direction and scroll through a lot of titles and hear that "GRRRRUUGGGGGG" noise that it makes... it's pretty awful. I had to disable the sound as result 3. Horizontally center video previews - this would make vertical shooter previews look a bit less odd (they seem to be left-aligned currently) 4. My 360 controller (official) is recognized and works perfectly under normal usage in both Launchbox and Big Box; however, the inputs aren't recognized when using Steam's in-home streaming. The keyboard input still works, and the 360 controller works just fine once an emulator is actually launched and running, but it's not working to navigate Big Box itself. I don't have a Steam Link yet but I'm planning on getting one and have been testing out their normal In Home Streaming in the meantime (which is functionally identical). I'm not sure how much you can do about this, and it's certainly asking a lot, but it would definitely be nice to be able to navigate with my controller while I'm on my couch. I'm going to have a wireless keyboard/mouse combo hooked up to the Link anyway, so it's not a huge deal, but it would definitely be nice. The only thing I can assume is that Launchbox isn't actually using Xinput? Everything that I've tested with In Home Streaming that actually uses Xinput (or even hacked/patched Xinput support ala ePSXe) has worked flawlessly. I know that when the controller is connected to the computer it does show up as “Xbox 360” controller in the input section of LB/BB but the buttons for the various functions are “Button 1, Button 2, etc.” as opposed to “A, B, X, etc.” which is how they normally appear via Xinput. 5. ePSXe crashes through a Launchbox launch if you're using Shark; not a huge deal though because all I was using Shark for was Pokopom's Xinput plugin and I can achieve the same result with the PeteOpenGL2Tweak plugin. Definitely not a big issue for me, but may be a problem for some. 6. Big Box mode doesn't appear in the windows taskbar. If you alt-tab the only way to get back to it is also with alt-tab. It’s not a huge deal; it just seems a bit odd to me. 7. When hovered over a platform name (and probably anything in the corresponding "recent” section) I’d like it to play a random song from that platform's music folder. 8. In Big Box I think pressing up or down while in a platform’s recent list should move to a different platform - it currently does nothing and you have to move all the way back to the left in order to change platforms. I’ve had a few instances of “Why isn’t it letting me change platforms? Oh...right.” 9. I’m a little concerned about multi-disc games. I’ve got several multi-disc PSX and PS2 games setup via the “additional apps” method but unless it’s a game that prompts you to save prior to switching discs (some will do that, and those should be fine) I’m not sure how exactly that’s going to work since 1) as far as I know, doing it via additional apps isn’t really a disc swap - it’s just re-launching the emulator with a different predefined disc and 2) most of the emulators need to be setup to close on ESC to really work the way you would want them to in BB. ePSXe won’t even launch a game correctly unless you use -nogui which kills it on ESC anyway. I haven’t had a chance to really test it out other than to simply check that the right click menu option and the corresponding Big Box menu option for the additional discs are, indeed, loading those discs properly (which they are). I’ll probably mess around with this on Riven on PSX since that game has 5 discs and you can get to a disc swap very early. I just have the feeling that this could be problematic as currently designed. 10. An option to preview art prior to importing. I’ve come across a number of games that have had some extremely questionable “fanart” that I would never have imported in the first place if I had seen them beforehand. I’ve just gone back in and deleted them afterwards, but having an option to approve/reject individual images prior to pulling them in would be nice. 11. Setting up PS2 games to launch with custom configs for each game (which is really the only way to go) is pretty time consuming currently. In fairness, it’s really no less time consuming to setup outside of LB, but having to go in and tell it “not to emulate” and then adding in custom launch commands to direct it to the correct config file...and then LB tells you that you “need to use an emulator” to play the game... The process just feels a little unrefined at the moment. I’m not sure how many people even use custom configs per game, but for me it’s a must since there is no “one size fits all” setup for PCSX2. Ideally you could have a checkbox when you edit an entry in LB that says “Use custom config (for use with PCSX2)” or some such - when you click on it, it appends --cfgpath=”...” to the game's launch options and then enables a field/button to browse to a folder, select it, and then it inserts it into the cfgpath string. This would make my life so much easier! That’s all I’ve got...for now In all seriousness though, thank you so much for everything you’ve done here. I LOVE IT! Thank you thank you thank you! Oh...and if anyone’s interested (and as a show of my appreciation), I’ve made a number of platform banners for myself that others might enjoy as well. I’ll probably submit these to the images thread as well. I'm planning on creating more (and maybe some alternates - I discovered by accident that they can have multiple images associated with them which Big Box seems to choose at random when you select a platform... which means I'll probably make multiples with different games in the background) but I've still got a lot more work to do elsewhere!