Pacman56

This morning I was looking at the version of 7z located in the "LaunchBox\7-Zip" folder and noticed that 7z.dll and 7z.exe were at version 15.14 which was released 2015-12-31. The latest stable version of 7-zip which was released 2016-10-04 is 16.04. One of the bugs addressed in 16.04 has to do with RAR code which may be of interest to folks compressing some of their roms like iso files in RAR5 format (very fast to expand). Are there any plans to include the latest version of 7-Zip in upcoming release of LB/BB? Thank you

I'm glad to see that this kind of toxic attitude is not welcomed on this forum. Not only was his Dot .NET Framework 4.7 blocked but his ability to post was blocked as well! Thank you guys for not tolerating unfriendly attitudes.

@Pizzaboy140 The "..\" at the beginning of a path means it's a relative path and basically says, move one directory level up. In other words, using your example: "..\SNES\Games\(Insert Game Here).smc", means move up one level from the current directory then down to SNES then Games.

Backing up is always your best friend. Thank you @DOS76

@Pizzaboy140 This can no doubt be done using Notepad++ but you need to make sure that you are going to replace only the desired matches in your xml files. I would probably include "<ApplicationPath>" in the Find what field of notepad++ Here's a theoretical example where my LaunchBox is on drive D: and I want to move my roms from drive R: to S: Edit "D:\LaunchBox\Data\Platforms\Acorn Archimedes.xml" with Notepad++ Press ctrl-h set Find what to: "<ApplicationPath>R:\TOSEC\Acorn\Archimedes\Games\" set Replace with to "<ApplicationPath>S:\TOSEC\Acorn\Archimedes\Games\" Be careful when editing xml files that you are aware of xml encoded characters such as the & character. If you're unfamiliar with xml encoding, I would suggest that you simply re-import your roms (games) using LaunchBox itself. Hope this helps

I'm running the Clean Up Images process now but this will take some time to complete. Before running the clean up images, I backed-up my Entire LB folder, re-started LB and tried to reproduce the problem again to recreate those dups I had deleted myself. For some unknown reason, duplicates are no longer created when updating metadata for that game. I am speechless. lol

@Jason Carr I did a little more testing regarding the duplicate image prevention feature with 7.10-beta-3 and just ran across a situation where a duplicate image comes consistently from the LaunchBox games database rather than EmuMovies. Knowing that you have a lot on your plate, I'm gonna try to provide as much information as possible so that can easily reproduce the problem from your end. This instance of the problem is happening with the "Mattel Intellivision" platform. Here's how you should be able to reproduce the problem: Replace your "Mattel Intellivision.xml" with the one I provided below. Start LaunchBox and select the game "Thunder Castle" from the games list Start the "Download Metadata and Media..." Accept all default but Exclude EmuMovies from the download process, the select "Yes, but do not replace any existing fields or media", then click Finish Each time you repeat step 3-4, a new duplicate "Thunder Castle-0x.png" will be created as seen below. Auditing Media... Duplicate CRC32: [2ed327e6] File: [\\PC-ARCADE\LaunchBox\Images\Mattel Intellivision\Clear Logo\Thunder Castle-01.png] File: [\\PC-ARCADE\LaunchBox\Images\Mattel Intellivision\Clear Logo\Thunder Castle-02.png] File: [\\PC-ARCADE\LaunchBox\Images\Mattel Intellivision\Clear Logo\Thunder Castle-03.png] Mattel Intellivision.xml

I just finished re-testing the "download metadata and media" while isolating if these duplicates come from the LaunchBox games database or Emumovies. Here are the results: LaunchBox Database Only: When running "download metadata and media" and excluding Emumovies from the download process, no duplicate images are downloaded. Emumovies Only: When running "download metadata and media" and excluding the LaunchBox Games database checkboxes from the download process, 1020 images (which already exist on my system) will be re-downloaded. The good news is that the CRC32 method you created on the games database is doing job perfectly but there appear to be a problem with that method on the Emumovies API which is probably out of your control. Here is a screenshot with hash information of one of these 1020 duplicate files.

Good morning @Jason Carr Yesterday I downloaded 7.10-beta-2 and started beta testing the new duplicate image prevention functionality. Prior to start the download metadata and media from within LaunchBox, I made sure that no duplicate images were present in my Images folder. After running the download metadata and media against my "Amstrad CPC" Platform using the second option (Yes, but do not replace any existing fields or media), a considerable amount of duplicate images (2040 images) were created in the "LaunchBox\Images\Amstrad CPC" folder. Here is a text file containing the list of these duplicates with their CRC32. Amstrad CPC (3).txt I will do more in-depth testing for this duplicate images problem with that same platform by re-doing these test while isolating if these duplicates come from the LaunchBox games database or Emumovies or both and post my results.

@DOS76 I believe that is correct but I'm hesitant between the filename of the xml file (in the hash folder) or the name attribute in the softwarelist tag or element in the xml file itself. Both these values appear to be the same for most if not all systems but I'm not entirely sure of that. e.g. Below is the content of .../mame_root_folder/hash/coleco.xml

Yep. That is exactly why you have to use the -cart parameter and point to an actual rom path for it to work. Not exactly. I use use CMPRO to name those roms correctly in addition to create the folder structure you need if you wish to avoid using the media parameter (e.g. -cart). I use LightSpeed because it supports the above perfectly.

@DOS76 Here are a few more screenshots to help.

That is correct @DOS76 Make sure you do your tests from the command prompt first. If it does not work from command prompt, it will certainly won't work from LB. Once you know things are working from command prompt then you proceed to LB config. You can see in my prior post that I was able to launch a game for the coleco using the "mame64.exe coleco 2010" command. This is true for all Software List consoles or devices. If it's not working for you, your coleco roms may not be named correctly or your mame.ini may not point to your software list roms. I personally keep my roms in a "roms" folder and Software Lists in a "roms_SL" folder. Therefore my rompath entry in mame.ini is set to roms;roms_SL You can check that your software lists roms are complete sets using CMPRO using the xml from the mame hash folder as dat files. I suggest you use the CMPRO batch mode to do that. Note that Missing Sets, Missing Roms are all showing that nothing is missing. That also tells me that the rom names are correct. Cheers,

@Crush You could create 2 platforms (one for MAME Arcade and one for the Software List or MESS) but enabling the "Use file name..." option works in both cases. Let's take Colecovision for example. You can start the game "2010" using the following commands "mame64.exe coleco 2010". Knowing this, if you set the LB emulator with "Use file name..." enabled. Set the Associated Platforms tab to pass "coleco" as a parameter for that console, your coleco games will start successfully. see screenshots below. Enabling the "Use file name..." option for MAME Software Lists (MESS) will give you the added benefit to launch games that don't have accompanying roms. The Sega CD console for example which only has CHDs.

Good question @DOS76 I just tested by removing the file extension and I'm happy to say that LaunchBox's code will also launch the game in that scenario. I also just notices that Lightspeed Beta 10 is no longer adding a file extension where as Beta 9 did.

@Antropus Just tested beta 10 as well and I'm also getting the problem where the LaunchBox closing tag is inserted right after the opening tag rather than at the end of the file. I'm also sending you the corrupt Arcade.xml file along with the Lightspeed.ini should you wish to try and reproduce. I understand your frustration in trying to deal with these huge files. That would also drive me nuts ! Arcade.7z Lightspeed.ini

@Crush This feature was recently implemented by Jason and should also be part of the 7.8 official release. I just re-tested with 7.8 official release and it's still working as expected. In order to better help you, let's check the following: Let's focus on MAME Arcade and leave Software Lists (MESS) aside for now. Make sure your MAME Arcade rom sets are complete and that you are using a Split set or non-merged set. I prefer to use a split set myself to save disk space. To check for completeness, start ClrMamePro, and scan your roms folder. I personally prefer to put my CHDs in the same folder as the roms. These way, ClrMamePro will confirm if I have anything missing or not (roms files and CHDs). Note: I used the dat file generated by mame64.exe. If your set is complete, you will see 0 missing sets, 0 missing roms and 0 missing CHDs as illustrated below. Now, I will use breakout to test one of those rom that does not have a rom file. Start a command prompt from your mame base folder and try to start breakout. The game should start without error as it did for me. Couldn't a screenshot of the the game but you can see that MAME did not error out in the screenshot below. Now if I you look at my rom folder below, you will see that I don't have a "breakout" rom file which means that breakout is part of MAME64.exe which is what we want to test here. Now, to test that the new feature Jason has implemented is working, I created an game entry in "Arcade" for breakout as depicted below. If the "skip file check" is working (because we know "breakout.zip" does not exist on the file system), LaunchBox should still launch the game rather than give an error saying "File does not exist or something". So I double-clicked on that game and it launched as I had hoped. This tells me that LB 7.8 feature Jason has implemented is working. LB is now essentially sending the same command I sent using the command line interface which is what we want. I hope this is helping with your question.

@Rincewind Unfortunately, I am using something called "Pacman's Rom Manager" which has been in perpetual beta! I certainly feel reluctant to upload this tool (at least the current version) in the 3rd party section simply because it contains experimental features that would confuse users. If however you are still interested in trying out the "Remove duplicate images" function, send me a PM and I can arrange to give you a copy in addition to provide you with instructions. Getting feedback from you may be just what I need to make it available to everyone!

LOL. I'm not worried about speed. It's still LightSpeed if you compare to someone that would have to do this any other ways. I look forward to the new version! Cheers!

Not enabling the "preliminary" option was the problem. All platforms are now showing. None are missing! Not a big deal, but I got an Out of memory error during the Export process. This may have been cause as a result of not exiting LS after the first export and proceeding to export with the "preliminary" option enabled. Keep in mind, I'm just guessing here. I usually exit LS after an export has completed (which I did not do this time). In any case, you were correct as always! Thank you for your great support.

Here are the screenshots of those tabs. One of the option I did not have selected is "preliminary". I tried sticking to the defaults as much as I could. All options on the right of the Options tab (Match These Folders) are/were indeed unchecked. I will try creating the platforms again with "preliminary" enabled against a clean copy of LaunchBox and report back. Thank you @Antropus

Just tried importing the Software List Platforms using Beta 9 and noticed that 8 platforms were not created even though all platforms were checked within the LS interface under the Platforms tab. This was tested using LB 7.8-beta-13. The missing platforms are: Apple IIGS Atari Jaguar Casio PV-2000 Philips CD-i Sega 32X Sega CD Sharp X68000 Sony Playstation

This morning I was deleting duplicate images after I imported roms for the PS2 and thought about what @Jason Carr mentioned on the live stream yesterday regarding the recent increased in activity the cost associated to users downloading media. This was probably suggested before but just in case, I would like to propose that at some point, the "Import > ROM files" and "Download Metadata and Media..." functions performs some kind of hash comparison (between the local user's image and the remote image) prior to downloading an image the user already has. As you can see in the attached screenshot and Log file, you will notice that the current "Import > ROM files" feature often downloads an image twice and sometimes 3 times. This current behavior leads to the following impacts: Increased disk space consumption on the users's disk Increased upload traffic from the games database server Note: The hash comparison displayed on the screenshot is a simple CRC32 check. I'm not looking for a solution for myself (since I can always clean those duplicates - after import) but I thought this may be something of interest in a future release. Audit Media.txt

Thank you Jason. I'm sure @Antropus will also be happy to hear that.

@DOS76 I reopened LB several times as well and each time made sure that "Update to Beta Release" was checked but still no prompt for download. This was done using LaunchBox 7.8-beta-10