CriticalCid

Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. I didn’t only meant the spinning thing, I also meant the whole concept of the box overlapping the disc. Before I go into detail I just want to say that I really appreciate it that you took the time to create this mockup and that I really like it, especially how clean it looks. The only issue I personally have is the clear logo on the top left. I don’t see the point to feature it again when you already use it for the wheel. Alone in your mockup you can see the logo 4 times (with box and disc combined). With that said, unfortunately you can’t keep such a perfectly trimmed design if you want to make the view universal for all platforms (that’s what I try to achieve with CriticalZone). One of the main problems is that you have all kinds of different aspect ratios for boxes when it comes to different platforms, so it would be really hard to find a compromise that looks good for most of them. That’s gonna be even harder if you take cartridges, diskettes, etc. in there as well. Like I’ve said, if I would add something like that I would want it to work for everything and not limit it to just the few disc based platforms. It just doesn’t look right when in some platforms the disc/cart is right beside the box and in other the box is hiding 90% of it. To solve that problem you either would have to completely separate the two media types from each other or manually optimize the view for every single platform; and I definitely won’t do the latter. The spinning disc is just a separate issue on top of all that. Another problem that I’m seeing is that I’ve already modified all available horizontal wheel views, so I would have to replace one of them with it and that’s nothing I would really want or plan to do anytime soon. And to be completely honest: CriticalZone already has enough horizontal views as is. So after telling you what I can’t do I say what I could do. I still have 2 vertical wheel views left and I’m currently in the brainstorming process for CriticalZone v2. So I’m open for any ideas about that, just keep the universal platform approach in mind

Hey @Charco, here you go. Sorry for the delay. I removed the Rayman Legends part of @viking's video because that absolutely isn’t an Indie Game at all and it felt very out of place for me. So I hope you are okay with that. Microsoft Windows (Alt - Indie Games).mp4

Funny thing, in fact I already wanted to do something similar like that but currently there are some technical restrictions which prohibit me to realize the whole disc part as I would want it. Of course I could talk to Jason about implementing some of the stuff I would need for it but at the moment there are just too many other things for the theming engine I would like to see first. So unfortunately that won’t happen anytime soon, sorry.

Sort Titles for Platforms are already included in the latest Beta versions of 7.8. The official stable version should be released early next week

It works fine when you put them in the general fanart folder of your platform: ".\LaunchBox\Images\Platforms\*PLATFORMNAME*\Fanart" Only the theme specific fanart folder seems to not work right.

If you provide me with everything I need for that than I would be happy to create this theme video for you. I’m not an artist at all, I just merge media together that already exists. So I'm sorry to tell you that I won't be able to create a logo for you for this. Everything I would need from you is listed in the start post of this thread. @Charco Do you have a clear logo I could use for your request?

Just tested it and you’re right. If you put the image in the fanart folder of the theme than it only shows up in the platform selection menu but not for games which don't have their own background image(s) . So I guess @Jason Carr has to look into that.

I can confirm that the sorting issue for platform categories seems to be fixed on my end as well. Everything is sorted properly even with the side bar options checked that caused problems in the last betas

Just do as @neil9000 said. It won't overwrite anything in your Data folder

I checked both while testing, that's why I've said that I'm defintely sure that the sorting issue for platforms is now fixed for me

Just tested it and it seems that it works slightly different for me. The platform categories are correctly sorted if I have none or all three “Show” options checked. If I only check one or two of these (doesn’t matter which ones) it gets out of order. The platforms themselves are definitely fixed on my end because unlike the categories they aren't affected by these settings anymore.

The platforms themselves seem to be fixed for me now but unfortunately, the platform categories not. They are still in non-alphabetical order when “Show All” is checked. When I un-check it everything is fine. All is checked: All is un-checked;

Great suggestions! I agree with everything.

Sure thing. I just thought that it may be a great feature and it would have definitely helped me if I were new to all this. So I thought I suggest it to you. But of course is your tool already powerful enough to make me accomplish everything I want, so personally I’m fine either way

Awesome @viking! Ididn’t know that you have uploaded your raw gameplay footage. It’s really appreciated @Charco sure thing. I'm just not sure if I can get it done over the weekend but I will try to do it as soon as I can.

Oh I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t clear enough. I didn’t mean a general manufacturer platform or the Gaelco boards that MAME supports. I only meant the two games (three with the clone) that Demul labels as Gaelco. These games don’t work in MAME and can only be emulated through Demul. That’s why I suggested to give them their own platform as you currently have to manually add them through the “atvtrack.cpp” source driver to get them imported in to LaunchBox at all. And it seems that you have misunderstood my Demul suggestion as well. I meant that Lightspeed should just select the Demul platforms (Naomi 1+2, Atomiswave, Hikaru, Gaelco) and deselect all other platforms. BUT your idea is actually even better. Especially considering the upcoming playlists feature in LaunchBox it’s a very good idea. With the playlist feature you won’t need to split up the MAME set into different platforms anymore. You can keep all games in the same platform and create playlists instead which can either automatically filter games out on specific criteria (basically what you already do with Lightspeed for populating the custom platforms) or create lists with a static selection of games. You can even include the playlists to the platforms list, so not much would change on the surface but behind the scenes it would be much more cleaner. The playlist feature is currently only available in the latest LaunchBox beta versions but Jason said that he plans to release the stable version next week. So my idea for Lightspeed would be this: The user can choose if he wants to import the custom platforms as real platforms or as playlists. If he chooses the first option, nothing changes and Lightspeed will do the same thing as it currently does. But if the user chooses to use Playlists instead, Lightspeed will import all games into single platforms based on their emulator. So if you would import all arcade games you will end up with these 4 platforms: Demul MAME Sega Model 2 Sega Model 3 In addition to these platforms will Lightspeed create the playlists that the user has chosen. For example would be “Capcom CPS-1” just be playlist which filters out all games with the “cps1.cpp” source, etc. Coming back to Demul. It’s quite simple. Demul emulates the following arcade platforms: - Cave 1000 - Gaelco - Sega Hikaru - Sega Naomi/Naomi 2 - Sammy Atomiswave As far as I can see it overlaps in 3 cases with MAME. - All Cave 1000 games (I would prefer to keep them as a MAME platform and just ignore these games for Demul) - 1 Naomi game (Doki Doki Idol Star Seeker) - 1 Atomiswave game (Sushibar) Personally, I would prefer to keep all the Naomi and Atomiswave games under a single emulator and exclude them from the MAME filter. Nonetheless, here’s the listxml of the current Demul 0.7a build: demulroms.txt

The documentation.pdf and Default theme folder will be created when you start BigBox for the first time.

I’ve documented the caching bug as well a while ago: But good idea that it might be related to the platform sorting bug.

Like always, all my reported issues are gone now. Thanks! But no post without another bug report or feature request Not sure if this is a new one or if I just haven’t saw it until now. If you import Arcade and SoftList games then you get all ports of arcade games for the SoftList platforms added as clones to the actual Arcade game entries. I don’t know if that’s on purpose because it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but you end up with this: It’s impossible to determine which entry belongs to which platform without checking the folder paths in the Additional Apps tab. And of course an option to disable that Lightspeed adds the SoftLists ports as clones would be great as well. I also had an idea that would probably make the life a little easier for people who don’t know that much about arcade platforms. You could add buttons for MAME and Demul in the platforms tab that will automatically check/uncheck all platforms which are supported by these emulators when you click on them. Buttons for “Model 2 Emulator” and “Supermodel” would also be possible but I don’t know if they would be needed at all as they cover only 1 platform each. Maybe you could also add “Gaelco” as one of the default platforms. I know that it features only 2 games but it only works through Demul and because of that is currently the only way to add these through the platform from driver option. Most people won’t necessarily know that these games even exist and even if they do they would have to do a little research to find out that the correct platform driver is called "atvtrack.cpp" if they want to import them in to LaunchBox. And of course you would also cover all arcade platforms that Demul supports because Gaelco is the only one missing right now.

I’m sorry that I have to bother you with another feature request but as you already parse the LaunchBox Games Database, would it be possible to add the database ID for each game as well? With the new playlist feature for LaunchBox on the horizon, it would be pretty important to have this info because the playlists are using the ID’s to populate themselves with the right games.

Ah yes, I meant the description. I know that they can be very long that’s why I suggested that they only should get used if there’s really nothing else besides the ROM file name for populating the Additional Apps name. So today I tried to import the Demul games and it seems that Lightspeed can’t properly filter out all games. I checked all filter options (except Mess SoftLists) in the both Filter tabs and only checked the Demul platforms (Sammy Atomiswave, Hikaru, Naomi 1+2) in the Platforms tab. Lightspeed filters out 245 games but when I manually add all games with the Hikaru and Naomi source driver’s I end up with 286 games. I only noticed that something was wrong because Lightspeed only imported just 1 game for the Hikaru platform at my first try.

It seems that the DateTime crash is back again. I just imported all the SoftwareLists platforms with beta7 and got this: Here's the Data folder: Data.zip

I can confirm that the sorting issue only appears for me when I have the "All” item activated in the side bar. Also turning “Show Counts” off/on only helps to fix this issue for platforms but not for platform categories.

I can confirm that all the issues that I have reported are gone now. Thank you! I also like the idea with the name of the ROM file for the additional apps; it really helps. But I would still wish that Lightspeed could add the actual game name of the clone when there is no other information available for populating the name. Some ROM names like “typhoon” are (almost) identical to the actual game name so for these games that isn’t a problem but ROM names like “sbsgomo” (Space Battle Ship Gomorrah) are a little more problematic to identify. Another small issue I've found: Some Namco games (Burning Force, Dragon Spirit, Kyuukai Douchuuki, Rompers and Splatter House) have a closing parenthesis at the end of their name.

Yes, 0183_Beta6b and LaunchBox 7.7. I also tested it on a completely different machine with 0183_Beat6b and LB 7.8 Beta-9. Same result Regarding the clone names. Maybe Lightspeed should compare the names of the parent and the clones (without the parenthesis) and if a clone has a different name than the parent Lightspeed should add the name of the clone in front of the version/region. If parent and clone have the same name it would probably be the best to don’t add a name to keep it more clean.