tribe fan
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Posts posted by tribe fan
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11 minutes ago, Pixelpiper said:
There are a number of projects with support, including Kodi.
https://docs.libretro.com/development/frontends/
I think availability or lack thereof comes down primarily to one thing: The enormous amount of work.
If you're thinking of an Open Source project, then you have existing ones to compete with for manpower. If you're going it alone, it's a lot less work to write patches for existing projects than to start your own. And if you're going it alone, you're also not likely to be able to handle a commercial project at the scale needed - unless you have deep pockets to hire help. But then, see above regarding competition from free projects.
That all makes sense. I’m probably misunderstanding/underestimating how much of the heavy lifting retroarch is managing in conjunction with the cores. I’ve checked out Ludo frontend (which is similar to what I’m describing), but it’s very visually minimalistic. Would be cool to see that project evolve into something more closely resembling Big Box. Could another nonstarter for this kind of project be the potential for negative attention from the big game developers? They can’t argue against developers writing software that emulates their old hardware, but I could see where they’d take issue with software that emulates their hardware AND borrows their art assets. Maybe keeping the frontend software separate from the emulation software is how all of this has managed to stay out of legal crosshairs?
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1 hour ago, Pixelpiper said:
No, that's not it. Libretro is a cross-platform API (in their own words), with Retroarch as the reference Front End (it shows what can be done). RA is not the end-goal of Libretro, it's a concurrent project that makes use of Libretro but anyone can implement the API and use cores into their own front ends without Retroarch. That's entirely the concept of the project.
Commercial products can't use the Retroarch front end because its license is GPL v3. But licensing for the Libretro API is MIT, which absolutely allows commercial use.
Plex should not be using Retroarch at all, even if they're not providing it - It's not against the terms of the GPLv3, but definitely goes against the spirit in that its use (by the customer) is supporting someone else's paid/commercial venture. But they can (and should) use Libretro cores and API.
That really begs the question as to why it’s not implemented by more frontend projects. There’s a libretro core for virtually every retro console imaginable now. I don’t know anything about the coding aspects, but it would seem to greatly enhance the functionality of the frontend. Launchbox is incredible at what it does now, but I’d think implementing libretro cores directly would allow for more seamless game launching and the potential for other features native to the frontend (save states and input control to name two). I imagine it being an emulator GUI on steroids while simplifying a lot of retroarch’s more complex features (input lag, filters, etc.).
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21 hours ago, Pixelpiper said:
It's not only legal, it's not even remotely against the terms of the GPLv3 license (IMO, Libretro team can suck it). It IS however kludgy as hell to have to use Retroarch itself to do the core downloading - but I suppose it's easier than telling people to go to github to pull cores manually. The RA front end exists as en example, others are supposed to make their own front ends, which is what Plex are doing, even if their current offering isn't full featured yet.
I don’t think it’s a huge deal having to manually download the cores. There’s even third party software like stellar updater that can automatically pull all the core updates from the repository for you. My bigger issue is with the way Plex is using libretro if it is in fact against their wishes. If I’m understanding correctly, they don’t want libretro cores used outside the RetroArch ecosystem?
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2 hours ago, neil9000 said:
Steam, Geforce Now, Parsec and Moonlight are all free options for in home streaming.
Has anyone tried streaming Big Box using any of these methods? If so, how was your experience?
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Interesting... Thanks for chiming in Jason. That’s really interesting to know.
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So Launchbox could still maintain the software as a paid service, but require users to download the cores externally? I don’t see that as a dealbreaker as long as the frontend itself was able to seamlessly manage the cores. The extra functionality like save state and controller management from within the front end makes it an intriguing option over what it is now: basically an emulator Swiss Army knife. I can imagine Launchbox being a simplified version of Retroarch with way more dumbed down menu options and all the eye candy we enjoy now.
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It looks like Plex is now a player in the gaming front end race:
I’ve been using Plex for a while and always thought it’d be a great platform for running retro games. Did not see this ever happening though. It definitely doesn’t have the eye candy of HyperSpin or Big Box, but the fact it uses libretro cores to launch adds a lot of extra functionality from within the frontend (I’ve never understood why other frontends don’t use libretro cores to bypass the whole extra layer of an ahk powered launcher). The ability to stream games is an intriguing feature too.
Why doesn’t Launchbox rely on libretro cores for game launching? It could still allow for the ability to add external emus, but use libretro cores by default.
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The official Touchmote forum is completely dead, so I thought I'd ask this here. Is there a preferred Wiimote version to use with Touchmote? Is there a model or serial number I should be looking for? I've got two newer models with motion plus included, and I'm having issues keeping them connected when using Touchmote.
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That was the issue. Thanks a lot!
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Hello,
Is there a quicker way to import games when you already have media in the designated folders? I've imported all my media from a separate build. I am attempting to import the games and have unchecked all media to download in Launchbox. The import process is going really slow for me though.
Edit: I should mention, too, I haven't added all the media from the other PC. This is a simpler build with fewer platforms and less eye candy.
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I was able to find Retrohumanoid's weebly, but I can't seem to figure out where to locate his cinematic video themes. He has lots of other good artwork there though. Do you need to donate?
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Does anyone know where I can find RetroHumanoid's cinematic themes aside from the regular LB platform theme video download section? They don't all seem to be there. I've checked all over the place and can't find them. Thanks.
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Really excited about this! I own a GPD WIN and am currently using modern mini which works pretty well, but a dedicated theme that aims to squeeze as much performance as possible out of that atom processor would be awesome.
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1 hour ago, Retro808 said:
Did you refresh the image cache? Typically when you replace images you have to go into options in BigBox and refresh the image cache.
Yep that fixed it. Thanks a lot!
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Hello. I am using Big Box with my GPD WIN and am looking to improve performance. I am trying to replace background images with a plain black background when inside a platform's menu. Is there an easy way to accomplish this? Thanks.
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Hi all. I'm using the ModernMini theme and am trying to switch to the ReignStumble console icons. I thought it was as simple as placing the icons in the ..Themes\ModernMini\Images\Platforms\Banner directory, but that isn't working. Thanks in advance.
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Awesome! Thanks!
Is there a way to designate a button to a controller in Big Box to open a genre list?
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Is there a way to break up game lists by genre? I have a large collection of NES rom hacks that I'd like to keep separate from the main platform database and only accessible when opening the hacks genre database. Is this possible?
Thanks.
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Hello,
Is it a bad idea to use a network drive to store my video files? Does it slow Big Box down? Would I be better off installing everything to the network drive and booting Big Box from there?
Thanks.
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I figured out what the problem was. I unchecked the option to download metadata from wikipedia. That seems to have fixed it. Thanks a lot for the help!
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It still won't add it. So weird. I'm dragging it into my NES collection, and it always says 0 of 0 games added.
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LaunchBox hates A Boy and His Blob. You heard it here first. :-P
My entire dumped collection is importing except for this one game. I've tried naming it a million different ways. Is it possibly missing from the database?
Thanks!
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It's still crashing on me.
I'm wondering if something is wrong with my particular setup. I might have to start over.
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Hello,
I just set up several systems in LaunchBox. When I start up BigBox, I am able to navigate through a few systems for a few seconds before the app crashes. It doesn't seem to be related to anyone one system in particular. Also, can someone point out where I can find the error log? Is there also a way to download older versions of BigBox? I've seen on the forums that this has been a good temporary workaround.
Thanks a lot.
Plex Arcade
in News and Updates
Posted
I’ve been messing around with Moonlight a bit and have been really impressed. How do you handle controller inputs on the guest device with Big Box and each emulator? Do you have bind them again using the guest device’s controller? If that’s the case wouldn’t you need separate Launchbox builds to support each guest device’s controller?