Beatlemaniac19

Update: So I got around this issue by hitting the recommended option of downloading the latest version of MAME and then doing the same import process. I've bypassed the error message, but ran into another issue: As you can see, it's trying to parse MAME to find the full set, but I've received the blue loading icon death loop, and it states that it's (Not Responding) and I left it for an hour to see if anything would change by then with no luck. Anyone know a workaround for this? Can I just use an XML file or something like that that has all the MAME games and use that for the import process?

Nice! Thanks for the explanation @neil9000! What about the games that don't work such as the discrete logic games or the Laserdisc games? Is there a way to bulk import those games so I have all the arcade games available? I see there's a tickbox to uncheck that allows you to import games that don't work in MAME, so I assume this is the box I need to uncheck? Edit: I'm also running into this error when pointing it to the Arcade games folder in my Launchbox setup (the Arcade folder is empty fyi) It won't let me import a MAME 240 set because of this:

So before I explain my post, just want to say that I'm a huge fan of the MiSTer project and prefer to use FPGA or hardware emulation as opposed to software emulation. As such, I still love LaunchBox and, since I have a lifetime license, I decided to repurpose my LaunchBox setup as more of a gaming museum and media database as opposed to a front end for gaming. It works great with my current setup! Anyways, the long and short of it is that since I use MiSTer, I don't want to use MAME, nor do I want to get the latest version of MAME to simply import a bunch of arcade games. My question is, is there a way to add all the Arcade games from the Launchbox Games DB directly from the website to my Launchbox instance w/out having to download a huge MAME collection from the internet? I want to just have all the artwork and create playlists for the arcade games since there are no playlists in MiSTer. Is something like this possible in LaunchBox or is my only option to download a giant MAME file and import the games directly from that list?

Thanks Neil! That works very well! Thanks to both of you! Problem solved

Thanks for replying C-Beats. The problem is that it becomes incredibly unwieldy when you get to libraries of more than 300 games. The search feature is nice and I use it often, but it'd be great to be able to easily navigate big libraries. Would Jason be open to adding this feature to LB?

As someone who prefers to use LB over BB even though I have a Big Box lifetime subscription, was wondering if it was possible to use the A-Z navigation to you find in Big Box, but with LB. I'm currently using RinceWind's LB theme. Here's what I'm looking at: As you can see, my preferred view is the Box Art. My biggest current console is GBA as there are 700+ games. What I'd like is to have a vertical navigation ribbon that's #-Z to the left of the 007: Everything or Nothing Box that extends down under the letter Z, and clicking said letter will allow you to jump to the appropriate letter. This would function just like it does it Big Box. Hope that makes sense. Is this feature supported in LB?

Thanks @Lordmonkus I saw you posted in another thread about the differences between PC emulation and MiSTer. What is your preferred method of emulation. Didn't you say it's like a quantity (PC emulators) vs quality (MiSTer) argument? Is playing on MiSTer as good as original hardware in your opinion?

Thanks for the response. Is it possible to get LB to run on a Mister one day or is that a complete pipe dream?

I've been a LB user for about five years now and love everything about LB/BB and don't think there's a better front-end out there. However, last night I watched Simply Austin's latest video regarding the different options for retro gaming in 2020 and beyond: He mentioned FPGA which upon further research is amazing. Hardware emulation vs software emulation is something I never really considered although I was aware of Everdrives and whatnot. The long and short of it is that I'm fascinated by the king of FPGA machines which is the MiSTer FPGA. I don't know how familiar most of you guys are with it, but here are some links to get you started if you're new like me: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki https://github.com/MiSTer-devel https://misterfpga.org/ https://misterfpga.co.uk/ I love RetroArch, but don't like MAME as I feel it's a clunky mess and updating games is a pain. MiSTer sort of fixes this problem. I'm also at a crossroad of considering buying a GPD WInMax versus a MiSTer, but don't know what to go with yet. What I'm getting at is, is it possible to load games or cores with MiSTER through LB, and if it's not possible now, is it something that could be implemented in the future? I don't want to give up the time I've put into LB or the ability to easily read manuals or look at box art, etc. I've seen threads of people talking about this issue of lacking a robust front-end on MiSTer forums, but no mention of this capability on the LB forum. Below are some links to those forum posts for those intersted? https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=117&t=38109 My idea of a workaround if you can't natively use MiSTer on a PC is to connect the MiSTer device via USB to my PC and change the location of ROMs to the MiSTer SD card that's connected. The problem is that LB doesn't seem to have MiSTer as an emulator option. Would creating a MiSTer emulator and following the steps I've stated solve this problem? Would it work with a second monitor? Sorry for the long post and all the questions, but it's a unique setup and a difficult implementation to figure out. Any help on this topic would be much appreciated.

There seems to be an odd new glitch that doesn't allow multi-disc games to open. It seems to only be problematic on CD based games that are in the CUE or CHD file formats. For example, multi-version roms as additional apps seem to be opening fine, but all of my disc-based games are in CHD so for example Night Trap won't open because it's a multi-disc game. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? This problem has only occurred with the latest version of LaunchBox. For the time being, I'm just going to delete the other discs as additional applications, because that's the only way the games will load now. It's not an ideal workaround, but I wanted to report this issue in case anyone else is experiencing it. Btw, I'm using RetroArch for all of my games so it's possible it's a RA issue, but very doubtful, because this issue has only popped up with the latest version of LB like I mentioned. Btw the issue that occurs is that the RA application either won't launch or it'll launch and just be a blank black screen. Edit: I figured out a workaround for the issue. If I don't put a disc number for the additional applications then everything works perfectly and I can just name the additional applications different versions and the multiple versions badge will appear so it works out fine that way. However, the issue with this is that the multi-disc badge won't appear if I do it this way. For this issue to be solved it seems that either A) the disc number issue should be fixed or B) the multi-disc badge should just be a tick-box that you can select on any game. This issue isn't that big of a deal or the end of the world. I just wanted to bring it to your attention and see if anyone is experiencing this issue. Thanks and stay safe

Hey geys. Just wanted to point out a potential alphanumerical sorting issue that's only specific to only LaunchBox, not BigBox. Here are the images I've captured because pictures speak 1,000 words: As you can see, when looking through the filters, the word "The" is still in the T section meaning that alphanumerical sorting isn't functioning for the filters view in LaunchBox. In this example, the issue occurs within the Series and Developer filter. The same issue is shown when selecting the Audit tool. The platform is the Sega Genesis in this example. I'm requesting if you guys could please fix the alphanumerical sorting issues for all filters and the audit views. Thanks guys!

@Retro808 Lol thanks for the reply anyways.

Hey all, love switching between themes in Big Box, but I don't know how to disable a few views that I don't particularly care for. Does anyone know a way to do this? I use CritizalZoneV2 - BlueBox and tried to remove the views I didn't like from the views folder, but it just made those views look weird. Is there a setting to disable which views I don't like or is there a more technical way to do it?

It seems to be a problem with CriticalZone in particular. It didn't work with any of those theme variations. I haven't downloaded any other themes so I can't tell you honestly.

Hey @Jason Carr. It's been a while since I've reached out. First of all, wanted to say that LB/BB has become in my eyes almost a complete product. There's nothing anything else I could ask for. Hats off to you. You've done a spectacular job in the last couple of years. There's only one small bug that's not that important, but I thought I'd share it with you nonetheless. When using the filters to find games using Genres, Developers, Publishers, Play Modes, Versions etc. and using one of the three Horizontal Wheel game views, if you select a game list under one of the filters, the initial selection isn't correct. I took a screenshot to display an example: I apologize for the blurriness, but as you can seem the game 007: James Bond for the Sega SG-1000 is being highlighted, but James Bond Jr. for the NES is being displayed. All I have to do is move the cursor to fix the problem though. As you can see, it's a small issue just related to the Horizontal Wheel game views when viewing them through the filters. I just wanted to bring this to your attention as it's probably a relatively simple bug fix (easy for a non-programmer to say haha) that's an easy oversight.

Jason. I can confirm that the pause screen works in fullscreen mode on my Windows 10 PC. It's simply an issue with the Windows 7 operating system it seems. Problem solved. Thanks for your help. Just note that the pause screen has problems on Windows 7 PCs in RetroArch.

Yeah I have that setting checked. I have a Windows 10 PC that I can try to transfer my LB setup over to and I'll test it there, but I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you think it's something worthy of investigating on Windows 7 PCs in particular.

@Jason Carr Hey Jason. It's been a while since I said hello. Loving the new additions to LB/BB. You are truly a wizard Just wanted to report a bug I'm encountering on using the pause screen within RA. For some reason the pause screen isn't working when I go into full-screen mode within RA, but it works perfectly fine outside of full-screen mode. I've re-downloaded the latest version of RA just to make sure that it wasn't a problem with my config files, but the pause screen works completely when the game isn't in full-screen mode for both LB and BB, but full-screen mode somehow overrides the pause screen config, even though all of my settings are correct and I've enabled the check box 'Forceful Pause Screen Activation' within my RA emulator configuration within LB. I've tried everything and have watched ETA Prime's tutorial on the new pause screen feature in his tutorial on your YT channel and followed his instructions exactly. Just for your knowledge, I'm using a Windows 7 64-bit PC, in case that makes any difference. I made a thread about this earlier in case you want more details https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/50731-having-trouble-with-pause-screen/

Yes sir. I have it enabled. Do you know of any other settings in the video folder that could be affecting my config?

@neil9000 I figured out the problem. There seems to be an error when entering full-screen mode where RetroArch overrides the LB pause screen. Here's some pictures to show you... 1) Launching a game out of full-screen mode to windowed mode: 2) Toggling the pause screen successfully in windowed mode: 3) Changing windowed mode to full-screen mode 4) Attempting the pause screen but it's not working and RA is overriding the controls. As mentioned before, I've disabled all keyboard inputs in RA so it seems to just be a bug I'm encountering when entering full-screen mode and not that RA's keyboard controls are overriding my LB configuration. I've tried adjusting all of the other settings in RA and LB, but it seems that the problem is simply full-screen mode in RA. Do you know a workaround Neil or do you think this is a bug that should be reported to Jason to hopefully patch out by next release? Btw don't know if you're an American or not, but happy Independence Day!

Yeah man I went through with those settings and couldn't get it to work. Maybe it's because I'm on an old Windows 7 PC lol. I can't figure it out. Oh well

If you mean the loading game screen with the cartridge and the game over screen then yes, they do work.

No sir. That's the issue Neil.

Using Tab + Alt does work, but it brings up the same pause menu in my first post. Do you think using a script would solve this issue as a failsafe?

I've enabled it on the controller as the Select (hold button) + Start to enable the game pause. I had it configured to the keyboard for testing purposes and set it to the spacebar. Both work, but with the results on the image shown above,