CriticalCid

I've now tested it with Beta 6 and the Origin version gets now properly launched when it's added as Additional App. So that issue seems to fixed! BUT the following issue is still there: When I edit the merged game (doesn't matter if I change something as long as I close it with the OK button) the game loses its Origin badge and the Origin version can't be launched anymore. Once the Origin version has lost its Origin badge it stays broken even when you expand the games into their individual entries.

I only recorded the videos and didn’t create any additional stuff for usage in other FrontEnds besides Big Box. So unfortunately I can’t help you with that. You should better ask this in the HyperSpin forums.

Go into your LaunchBox options and navigate here: Make sure that in each category you have selected the folders in which you have copied your artwork into.

If you download media from within LaunchBox it will always be named after the game title. For your existing HS media you should check this thread: As you can prioritze the region of your parent ROMs in the LaunchBox MAME importer you could probably have different parents inside LaunchBox compared to what you have in your HS database. You should double check if a game which you are missing artwork for really has the same ROM name as your media. Edit: Also check your image priorities in your LaunchBox settings if the folders are activated in which you have copied your HS stuff.

I have an issue with some imported Origin games. I can't start the Origin version anymore when a game from Origin gets merged with another version of the same game (in my case the Steam or GOG versions). Origin opens up but nothing happens. When I edit the merged game (doesn't matter if I change a field as long as I close it with the OK button) the game also loses its Origin badge. Once the Origin version has lost its Origin badge it stays broken even when you expand the games into their individual entries. In this case the only fix right now is to delete the broken Origin entry and re-import it. If the Origin version gets imported as its own entry (or gets expanded before you change something in the Edit window) it launches perfectly fine and editing the game details doesn't seem to do any harm as well. But it breaks again when you merge it. I've tested this with multiple games and they all had the same issues.

The Theme Creator is definitely your best bet. I highly recommend to watch @faeran's theme streams where he shows and explains how he creates Big Box themes. So far he has done 3 streams where he basically ported whole themes from EmulationStation to Big Box within a few hours.

You should check if your background priorities are correct. Open up LaunchBox -> Tools -> Options -> Legacy -> General -> Images -> Background Priorities. Make sure that only "Fanart - Backgrounds" is checked.

I know. I just wasn't sure if it will prioritize them over your region priorities if you also have images in the region folders.

You should take a look at this thread to get a basic undestanding of valid file names within LaunchBox. Besides that you should check the Region Priorities and Image Priorities in the LaunchBox options, you can find them in the Legacy section. LaunchBox always downloads all media the database has for each game and shows them in order of your priorities. If multiple images fit the same criteria than LB will randomly cycle through them everytime you refresh the image cache, all other images which are ranked lower in your priorities will be ignored. For example: - In your LB settings you have set 'North America' at top of your region priorities and 'Box - Front' at the top of your Box Front Images priorites. - As media you have in your 'Box - Front' folder two other folders with images, 'North America' and 'Europe'. In 'North America' you have the normal and greatest hits covers and in 'Europe' the PAL cover. - Additionally you have another cover in your 'Fanart - Box - Front' folder. In this case LB will only consider the two images in the 'Box - Front\North America' folder as covers and randomly decide which one of them both it will use. Unfortunately I'm not sure how LB prioritzes images that are not in any region folders, that's something you'll need to test. Anyway, in case you never want the greatest hits cover to show up you have to manually delete it or move it into another folder. The good news is: You can also use your media from HyperSpin as long as it's in .png or .jpg file format. Just copy your files into the right folders inside LB and you're good to go. What the right folders are is completely up to you based on your image priorites settings. You may also want to deselect the image types on your games imports for which you already have the media for. Or just delete the images inside the folders if you already have imported everything.

Sorry but I don’t have any old versions of this theme anymore. I’m afraid you’re out of luck unless somebody else still has it and is willing to upload it for you. Any particular reasons why you want an old version?

Nope, the file names will be named like they are supposed to in a No-Intro set. All what the parent setting does is to determine the file names of the archives and therefore also the name of the folders in which you are extracting them. But with this method there shouldn't be any reason for you to have to rename them anyway as you have the option in LaunchBox to import the ROMs by folder name and not file name. If you really want to rename them for whatever reason it would be fairly easy to write a batch script which renames all files according to the folder name.

Wow, that’s a really tedious amount of work you’ve been doing there. Here’s an advice to do that significantly faster: You‘ll need clrmamepro to rebuild your ROM set with a parent-clone .dat file, similiar like what you‘re already been doing with your 1G1R set. But instead of choosing 1G1R you‘ll have to build a 'merged‘ set. That will leave you with one archive per game with all versions of every game inside said archives. The rebuilder will also take your region priorities into account to determine the parent (the name of the archive file) just like it does when you build a 1G1R set. For the next step you’ll need to have WinRAR installed. It could possibly be done with 7-Zip as well but I can't tell you the exact menu steps for it right now. When the rebuild is done you’ll just have to select all archives -> right-click -> WinRAR "extract each archive to separate folder". And you basically get your 1G1F structure with almost non manual and time intensive work + all games with different titles across different regions are correctly combined together without you needing to research them by yourself. The only thing that still needs to be dragged into the folders manually are hacks and fan-translations.

You wouldn’t need to do the process 10 times, just add all update packs as Add-Paths and you’re good. As for your question: Yes, you could just copy everything to your MAME folder assuming your old and new set were built with the same merge mode (for example, when both sets are split sets). The cleanest way would be to delete your old sets first but if you just copy the new set over it and replace all old files you shouldn’t get any problems either way. In case the merge modes of your sets differ or if you’re not sure what kind of sets you have I would always delete your old stuff first, just to be safe.

You could check the wahtsnew.txt file of each release here: https://www.mamedev.org/releases/whatsnew_0219.txt Just replace the version number in the URL with the one you want to check. For example 0218.txt instead of 0219.txt. With that said, this could be very tedious and I would rather advice you to just grab the newest set on pleasuredome and keep better track of your version next time. I plan to rework this tutorial soon-ish as I wrote it a long time ago and I now know a lot more about clrmamepro and what it can do. Of course I’ll add new screenshots in the process.

Yes, there's an API for plugins: http://pluginapi.launchbox-app.com/html/4cf923f7-940c-5735-83de-04107a6ae0e6.htm

You're fine. That's just how Unified is supposed to look like

That’s pretty simple as you already have the complete database as .xml file in your LaunchBox directory (Path: LaunchBox\Metadata\Metadata.xml). You have various options to choose from like simply open the metadata.xml file in a text editor or open it in a dedicated XML viewer/editor. Personally I would recommend to import the Data into Excel and use all the great filter and search functions it offers. If you search “import xml into excel” you’ll surely get a ton of good tutorials on how to do this.

Yes, that’s normal. You should also run the Scanner over the rebuilt set once it’s finished. Be aware that rebuilding a complete MAME set can take a few hours.

The result should be exactly the same. I’m not sure if the Merger is faster or not but when you have the Rebuilder already running I would just stay with it and don’t stop it.

The easiest way to convert a full ROMset like that is by using the Merger. You can find it in the menu between the Rebuilder and the Settings. Just choose the merging type you want and let it work. Once it's finished you should also run the Scanner to make sure that everything is fine and tidy.

I’m not sure if anything can be done. At least it would be a pain to figure that one out as the workaround to fix the DPI issues is already implemented. Actually, it behaves the complete opposite as I would expect it as the workaround tends to add more blank space on the right side of the text the higher your DPI settings are. Most likely, some recent BigBox changes broke the workaround as you are the first ones to mention this issue since V2 was released over 2 years ago. I’ll see what I can do once I get your feedback.

That could definitely be the case. Was it always like that or has this changed over time? Can you test it with DPI set to 100%?