JaysArcade

Not to sound like a hater (is that what the kids are saying nowadays?), if you are looking for decent pinball support, I would look elsewhere. Can you get pinball to work with Launchbox? Yes. Is it easy? No. Also, the database leaves much to be desired. You'll need to find and load all the media manually and there are no fields to display table authors or special art categories for back glass, DMDs, etc. But that's just my take on it.

I would like to add my voice to the growing chorus of the desire for submenus as well as the ability to launch anything you want from the top level menu in Bigbox. Here is my ticket for that one. I think these features go hand in hand. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/1521/ability-to-launch-a-program-or-game-from

Ahh @Jason Carr! Good to see you back. I was just getting ready to start a "Has development of Launchbox stalled thread". Just kidding LOL. Its summer dude. Gotta have time for family and stuff too.

Cuagrunge, don't listen to those guys. They're just giving you a hard time. I've attached your new license at the following link. Just follow the link to retrieve your new license. Thanks for shopping with us today! https://goo.gl/nsLUq8

Ultrastar Deluxe Video Theme for Frontends View File OK, here is my offering for Ultrastar Deluxe. This is a Karaoke style singing game much like Singstar. Yes I know this is a game and could/should be in the games section, but I use it as a standalone app and run it as a platform from the main menu. Now if we could only run a platform as an app directly from the top level menu in BigBox, I would be happy. Here is a short clip of the video. I also have a version that uses the Ultrastar Deluxe main menu music if you prefer that. That one is not synced to the music however. You can find both versions here - https://mega.nz/#F!L5ZE2K5R!5VeE3wasVjTdbqoGp0mt9w Submitter JaysArcade Submitted 07/09/2017 Category Platform Theme Videos

Question. Does controller companion require Steam to be running? I usually have it on in the background anyhow, just curious.

I just remebered that I created a ticket for database fixes in regards to Pinball related fields back in January. If anyone wants to have their voice added to having the Pinball database being looked at further, please consider voting on this ticket. I think crediting table authors is just as important as crediting theme creators, plugin creators and anybody else that puts their time into this stuff. Database engineers and Frontend creators included. Thanks to @Jason Carr and @Vlansix. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/2287/request-for-additional-fields-for-pinball

OK. So where do I upload my assets for the different versions of Attack on MARS? I have one for Future Pinball, one for Visual Pinball and one for Pinball Arcade. There is also an ultra version in Future Pinball. For the Future Pinball and Visual Pinball versions, where do I submit who the table authors are? How about original tables that duplicates of which are not found in either system? I brought this up before and once was told that those were very valid points and then the next time I brought it up I was told that the systems were all part of pinball and would in the future be scraped as one system. When I'm continually shot down on valid points.... yes. You can take all the issue with my suggestions you want. Why should I feel like I should contribute when my (very valid) issues have not been addressed. The database is awesome, but in my opinion is incomplete in the sense that there are not enough fields available for everything that needs to be in there. No I am a PC not a MAC. LOL

I've had a few negative posts lately. To try to bring Balance to the Force, I thought I would try to start a positive thread for people to talk about their favorite things about Launchbox. Seems like we are all always asking for new features, or for Jason to implement this or that. So without further ado, here are 3 of my favorite features about Launchbox. Most of my favorite things are things I had never seen in other frontends before I switched to Launchbox (I've been around a while). I think its easy to take for granted how amazing some of this stuff is to have available. 1. Videos for the platform/game themes. When I started out with emulating through a front-end there were just images for games. We called them snaps, I think they are still called that in MAME. Shortly after I got involved, video snaps became a thing and then Emumovies came into existance. Hyperspin used a lot of videos in its themes but still its themes were/are rendered as Flash. The whole videos as themes seems so obvious now, but back in the day it was pretty un-heard of. 2. Scraping for artwork. Not sure when this became a thing, not even sure it was a Launchbox idea, but I do like the way it works - with a few exceptions. Generally it is pretty seamless unless it comes to specialized systems such as HBMAME or Pinball. Still, its a tough feature to beat. 3. Easy to use Theming Engine. OK, disclaimer here, I don't use the theming engine at all. But I can judge its ease of use by how many people contribute to it. I have seen lots of other frontends and programs become stagnant and wither on the vine because no one is creating themes or skins for them. Gotta admit, we have some amazing theme and content creators here. Well that's it for now. What are some of your favorite features about Launchbox?

That's a good point, and Launchbox does a great job of doing that. But wouldn't a big improvement be for LB to just scrape stuff properly to begin with? Why dumb down the database when it is so capable of handling a handful of systems that need a little more TLC? My big gripe is Pinball. Why would I ever bother scraping any pinball system from the database for Future Pinball, Visual Pinball, Pinball Arcade or Pinball FX2, (OK, that last is it's own app, but it does have tables that are seperately launchable), when I know that half the data scraped is going to be false or incomplete because everything is in a single Pinball database? Is the answer always going to be for the end user to just get their own properly named art and do it themselves, or are there improvements that could be made elsewhere? Why even have a database? Is the hope for someone to develop a plugin to scrape some other database for this stuff? I just don't understand the push-back on this. This is the main reason I don't contribute anything to the Pinball Database. Its not acceptable to me to work on something I believe to be incomplete. I do have people asking for my pinball assets all the time so I know there is a need for it. In my perfect imaginary frontend world, each system/emulator would be scraped and added separately. A choice would then be given to combine like systems - Arcade - Pinball, etc. It seems like Launchbox tries to do it the other way around and it just doesn't pull it off very well - in my own humble opinion of course.

But I am grateful for Launchbox and for what Jason is doing here. Also happy I can manually change this stuff if I need to, in case anyone cares. Just thought I would clarify since the tone of my speech was , well, a little negative. LOL

I assume this is because Launchbox utilizes this "One Ring to Rule Them All" approach for platforms like Arcade. This is a major shortcoming in my opinion and makes customization a pain for people like you and me that don't want all arcade games under one roof. HBMAME, AAE, etc (to name a few) are systems that need their own database entries. I know a few vocal people here that have Jason's ear want this stuff all automatic and narrowed down into broad categories like Arcade and then split up later if needed with custom playlists. I call this the "kill em all and let God sort em out later approach" I don't care for this approach for the exact reason you state with the HBMAME problem. I understand the concept of not wanting to use emulator names for platforms (MAME, DAPHNE, etc), but sometimes I believe they are necessary when certain systems are different enough to warrant them, especially as far as the database is concerend. Maybe things like this will change in the future and more options will be available to us instead of being forced to do this playlist for anything out of the norm routine. I would love for the database to not be dumbed down so much to force us down this path, but what do I know? Recently I made suggestions about various Pinball table emulators not all being categorized as one system since there are major differences between the emulators and the way they look and play. I was told "We don't want platforms split just because someone else in another community at one point said they should be." Umm, maybe its done that way because they've been doing it a long time and know its the best way to do it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm really just complaining here and have no idea about the conversion tool. That would be cool though.

Thats cool. Just saying it seems like Jason used to base his new features and things he was going to work on based off of Bitbucket. Now it seems like he is doing something else. It wasn't an attack on you Brother Monkus.

Not sure why we've gone from using the bitbucket ticket system for this stuff to creating a new poll every release, but since this seems to be the way Jason is doing things now, here are the few things I would like to see him look at. 1. I'd like to see the startup video timing issues fixed for sure. I can fine tune the timing of the video to work OK, but for a beta release user, the timing is out of whack it seems after installing each release. 2. AHK tab on per game basis. I have set up several games that I've needed to create scripts to run before launching the game that a simple AHK tab would fix. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/1446/autohotkey-on-a-per-game-basis 3. Non repeating clear logo on platforms with only one system. And while I'm on this topic, how about the ability to just have a single game or app on the main wheel without the need to create a platform for it to be in? This is a pretty basic function available in other frontends. I think this is probably beyond the scope of your question though, but maybe not the not repeating clear logo thing. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/1521/ability-to-launch-a-program-or-game-from That's really all I can think of right now.

@Zaazu, your bezels are my favorite. Do you have plans to make more?

The link is in the description for the video on my YouTube page. Please credit me if you share it.

Here you go. And I have a version that says Arcade too if you want something more generic.

Nice. Love the startup video.

Well I ran a search. I wish I could determine my crash issue being caused by the zero byte thing, but I didn't find any 1 byte or less images out of about 160,000 files. Thanks for the heads up on the cool explorer tool though. Very handy.

Baaa! Basic troubleshooting, of course. How in the world I've made a living in the tech industry for the last 15 years is sometimes beyond me. Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely try it.

Thanks guys. Tonight I'll see if I can find any bad images and report back. My system runs OK except when I leave it run in attract for hours and hours. It eventually crashes/freezes, but its usually the Bigbox has stopped working generic Windows message giving me no clue as to what causes the crash. It might take me a while to determine if it runs better after cleaning out any bad images because it happens so infrequently (well usually once a day but you get the idea).

Good to know. I wonder if this is why mine mysteriously crashes about once a day if I leave it running? With about 15000 games there is sure to be a corrupt image here and there. Can I ask how you scanned all folders with images for the zero byte files? Doing it manually, folder by folder seems daunting.