eatkinola

Much appreciated, adding you to the test group.

Great, will add you to the pm. We have 12 testers, though I'm not getting as much feedback as I hoped. Want to make sure it's tuned up before the initial public release.

Thanks, I'll add you and @androtaz08 to the pm with instructions how to test.

Made a bit more progress. Currently supports RetroArch (all the cores I've tested), MAME, Dolphin, Demul, and PCSX2 -- those are all the emus I use and hence tested, but I'm pretty sure it'll support other emus you throw at it. When I release it, I'll include instructions for configuring to work with other emus you might use; it's pretty simple to setup. Refined the fade-in to game a bit more. It currently only works with BigBox, but when Jason adds a feature I requested to the plugin API it should also work with LaunchBox. Hopefully I can release a beta version in a few weeks; can always add more features later once I get more feedback. I hope so! That'd be great. I've received a little feedback from W10 users but could certainly use more.

I'm not sure @Jason Carr would want to integrate this into BB, but I can talk it over with him if he wants.

No, it doesn't support that level of detail, you would need to use the retroarch menus for those things.

E.g., when implementing the ISystemEventsPlugin.OnEventRaised method and handling SystemEventTypes.GameStarting: ...is there a way to get the currently running game? I currently do this: PluginHelper.StateManager.GetAllSelectedGames()[0], and while it works fine when the plugin is used in BigBox it does not work reliably within LaunchBox. It'd be great if there was a method in PluginHelper to get the currently running game as an IGame. @Jason Carr: Pardon me if this was already mentioned in the past and I overlooked it on the forums.

The bezels are a very simple overlay of PNG images with areas of transparency; there is no special positioning involved. I recommend using the overlay (and filter etc) mechanisms built into MAME and RA, and consider the WootLauncher overlays as a way to provide overlays for emulators that don't support them (e.g., Dolphin).

That's good to know, and I should be able to add savestate support to the pause menu for MAME. Yeah, I'm just doing this on my own. The tricky part is capturing the emulator window, but once that's done I can exert enough control over it to do these things. The plugin interacts with emulators using AHK, so the interface is limited to things for which the emulators has hotkey support.

WootLauncher is also working for MAME now -- supports fade screens, bezels, and pause menu. Can probably get save states working, but apparently many of the machines mame emulates don't support saves anyway.

Fade-out screen implemented, and I posted a new version (0.6a) to the pm thread for testers. @Nicodemus: I couldn't add you to that pm since it's full, so I sent you a separate pm with this version of the plugin for testing.

It doesn't expand, but when highlighting the load or save button you can use left/right to cycle through state slots. On my todo list is showing a screenshot of the selected state, perhaps also with a date and time stamp; would probably show that to the right of the save and load buttons.

That's not implemented, but shouldn't be a problem. Good idea.

Sounds great, that'd be a big help. Next time I have an update, I'll add you to the testing thread which has instructions how to setup and test. I use Windows 7, so having more testing on W10 would be helpful. Hopefully I'll have an update this weekend; working on the fadeout back to Bigbox.

Pause screen styles are now configurable, e.g., can change font, colors, background behavior, etc. Next I'll focus on the fade-out screen when exiting a game; think I have a way to do that.

No problem, hope it helps. I know I'll use it. Currently I'm focused on emulators, and it will only work for those which at a minimum have hotkeys for pause and resume. If an emulator has hotkeys that support save/load states, this plugin can probably support that, too. I've shown it works for Dolphin and a bunch of RetroArch cores (which are what I use). If someone wants to test with other emulators, that would be great.

Yes, the pause menu takes a screenshot of the emulator window and displays it towards the right of the screen, with a vignette overlay applied. That's just how I decided to throw it together for now. I might make it customizable and I'm sure someone can think of a better design than that. +1 dat

More progress today -- now supports gamepad controls, including a simple way to activate the pause screen while using a gamepad to play a game. No more crappy photos today, as the interface currently looks the same as above. Maybe one of these days I'll setup video capture so I can post a video of it working.

Making progress. Here are some crappy photos of my computer screen (I don't have the ability to record videos, and the plugin does not support screen captures with Alt-PrintScreen). The pause menu works well for RetroArch (various cores) and Dolphin. It includes support for save states (when supported by a RA core) and a built-in manual viewer. Here is me about to launch a game in dolphin: Here's what is looks like when WootLauncher applies a bezel over dolphin: Here's the pause menu when playing zelda using a retroarch core:

Minimal-AO is mine, too, just the precursor to minimal X. Glad AO is working out for you.

Thanks for providing more info. I'll have to troubleshoot a bit, as I've not seen that error on my system. I'm actually in the middle of updating my themes to support the new nesting feature of LB, so we can see if that fixes the problem. In the meantime, if you delete MinimalX from your themes folder, you can start BB and use another theme.

Thanks. Is the error exactly the same as for Vitamina1984, or does it look different? I imagine the same error would occur if you tried the Nostalgia, FluxCRT, or Refaktor themes? Does it occur only on certain views or with certain categories or platforms?

Thanks for the bug report. What version of LB are you running?

Thanks -- I really appreciate you steering me in the right direction.

Thanks, Jason -- no more error! I have a follow up question ... do all platforms (and potentially playlists if treated like platforms) still have a platform category? I know platform.Category will now just return an empty string, but would navigating up the nested structure always lead to a category?