eatkinola

Thanks again to all the beta testers who provided feedback: @ALIE, @androtaz08, @bundangdon, @Klopjero, @Kondorito, @Lordmonkus, @MadK9, @misterlamide, @neil9000, @Nicodemus, @Porl Hendy, @Retro808, @Zombeaver. It wouldn't have turned out half as nice without good feedback. Consider this thread closed. Please use the new thread for further comments:

REPORTING ISSUES: Please include relevant screenshots and log files in your post. I recommend using hidden content ("spoiler") sections when posting logs and screenshots to prevent the message from appearing crazy long. E.g.: Screenshots Log (plain text and/or with attached text file) The better the info you provide, the better my troubleshooting will be.

WootLauncher View File WootLauncher provides game load/exit screens, bezels/overlays and a pause menu with built-in PDF viewer for manuals, as well as support for emulator savestates and images of control mappings. I looked into using RL but didn't feel like going through the trouble of setting it up, so I instead ironically went through loads of trouble creating this plugin. It's not meant to do everything RL does (caveat: I've never used RL), but maybe it does enough and you'll find it useful. It's designed to be easy to setup but also quite customizable. It will not support all emulators but should support "enough"; tested with RetroArch, MAME, Dolphin, Demul, and PCSX2 which I think are the more common ones used (anyway what I use). It should work with other emulators, too. In addition to the built-in look-and-feel, WL can be integrated with Bigbox themes for a seamless experience; here it is integrated with FluxCRT: WootLauncher-v1.3.mp4 The PDF bundled with the download describes how to quickly setup and also how to customize ... so I'll not repeat that here. You can also download the PDF guide separately. Please use the support thread if you have any questions or spot bugs. When reporting issues, supply the log file and any relevant screenshots to help troubleshoot. It's worth mentioning this is not compatible with the new built-in game startup screens for LB/BB, and it likely never will be as it uses a different window management strategy. Absolute requirements for using WootLauncher are: 1. LaunchBox / BigBox version >= 9.2 2. Disable built-in LB/BB startup and pause screens (see PDF) 3. Do not try to use both RL and WootLauncher; it will not go well 4. Configure your emulators to run in windowed mode NOTE: If criteria 1 and 2 are not met, the plugin will simply disable itself. ADDITIONAL PLUGINS: This DLL (Ao.Bigbox.Dropins.dll) contains additional plugins besides WootLauncher, but they are inactivated by default. You can activate these other plugins by editing the DLL's config file (Ao.Bigbox.Dropins.dll.config). See the Ao.Bigbox Customs download page for additional details about these other plugins. Submitter eatkinola Submitted 12/22/2018 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins

UPDATED v1.0 - releasing for public use today; will close out this thread fixed: moved xaml files to a more central location, directory Layouts fixed: made inactive buttons a bit lighter in pause menu, better font fixed: disable WootLauncher plugin if LB/BB version is insufficient added: ScreenshotLooper (load/exit screens) can prioritize fanart added: bundled some fonts for load/exit screens pause menu, etc... added: more usage details in the PDF guide

For Europe, you might want to consider the EU flag, specially since the UK is Brexiting. P.s. sorry to sidetrack on this thread -- should've prolly posted to the download page.

Mexico is there too. Here's a fictional North America flag I've used, and it'd fit nicely into a round button format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America - the continent says wikipedia and all the geography lessons I had as a kid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America - a region of North America (some people say includes Mexico others say not) Very nice work as always, @RetroHumanoid

UPDATED v0.9.3 - For beta testers. Made quite a few changes, hopefully I didn't break anything. The plugin now requires LB 9.2-beta3+, as it uses Jason's plugin API additions. It works with LB now. The game loading screen and bezels now work even if there is no configuration file, but the pause menu and game exiting screen still require configs, e.g., the game exiting screen is only queued if quitting the emulator from the pause menu. Here are some the of the additions. I keep pushing back the release date because I keep thinking of things to add. Hopefully I'm nearing the "end". added: support for LaunchBox, though WootLauncher now requires LB 9.2-b3+ added: time played to exiting screen, does not account for pause menu added: support for load screen and bezels when no configuration is found added: decorator for manual/controls panel to provide navigation support added: error overlay messages, e.g., pause menu enabled but unavailable added: pause menu access to view control mapping (images provided by user) added: sample control mapping images (dualshock for some RA cores, PCSX2) added: screenshot slideshow to game loading/exiting screens

You might want to disable WootLauncher for now. In the Ao.Bigbox.Dropins.dll.config file, look for WootLauncher.Active and set it to False. Hopefully you won't see this error with the upcoming releases of this library, but please let me know if you do.

Made some more progress -- have a few more issues to work out before I post an update for the testers. Among the additions is support for displaying controller mappings via the pause menu, to remind which button does what for a system. I also tightened up the load/exit screens a bit, and added support for LB (though requires the most recent beta of LB) as well as emulators for which there is no WL configuration. I'll explain all that and more about how to use it in the release. Here's some pics of the integrated PDF manual viewer and a controller mapping.

The anti-spam logic for the BB Play Game command in beta-4 works great. Thanks.

That'd be great. I'm working on an update and will send it to you this weekend for testing.

Thanks for letting me know. Were you running WootLauncher on purpose, or did you download Ao.Bigbox.Dropins for the other two plugins it contains? Does it only occur in certain situations, e.g., only with Dolphin and (some?) PC games? This plugin is pretty beta so I appreciate the report. If you can provide more info that'd be great; I'll try to get it fixed.

Try Refaktor. I designed it to work with both 16:9 and 4:3, but you'll need to make a few quick changes which are outlined in the PDF file in the download. I don't have 4:3 so was not able to fully test on 4:3, but it should work. Please let me know if you need help with it. PS. I'll update it pretty soon with a clear logo wheel view.

These changes are awesome! Thanks so much for updating the plugin API.

Yep, the new API features fix most of these issues very nicely. You can still spam the play game menu item, but I just ignore extra invocations in my plugin so it's no big deal from my perspective. Thanks so much for implementing these features.

Hey @Jason Carr. Is this (getting the currently running game) something you might incorporate in the plugin API when working on the game loading screens? I suppose this is complicated by the fact multiple games can be launched by Alt-tabbing back to BB then hitting play game again, so there is no guarantee of a single running game. From the game details screen, you can actually hit enter rapidly in succession and get the game to load multiple times. Ah, the things we do when testing. Surely someone would've done that in the real world, anyway. On a related note, an ISystemEventPlugin's method gets invoked with a GameStarting event type even when the game load fails, e.g., "the specified rom is not found". I can make a workaround for this but my workaround is a bit klugey and I'm sure does not capture all cases; the logic you use is certainly more comprehensive. Would it be possible to only fire a GameStarting event if it first passes muster in your BB code? P.s. Thanks for working on the load screens by the way; will be nice to have that a core feature of BB. I'll hopefully post my windowed version for download later this week, once I work out a few more wrinkles. I learned a bit more about C#, p/invoke, and low-level input stuff when working on it; was kinda fun.

Thanks @andyco47 for reporting this error and helping test a solution. We worked it out, but in case anyone else has this problem ... it's very likely due to a glitch in the windows performance monitors on your setup. This info in this link should address it: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17980178/cannot-load-counter-name-data-because-an-invalid-index-exception

Sorry you're having trouble. You don't need to edit that XML file; in fact editing those lines won't really do anything for this theme. MinimalX forces the use of WMP by default since the plugin it uses is a bit buggy with VLC and WMP works fine. It uses WMP regardless of what you specify in BigBox (you can override this behavior and force the use of VLC in one of the theme's config file; that info is in the PDF file bundled with the theme). I'm not sure offhand why your videos are not displaying. Are all videos not displaying, or just videos of a certain file format? What version of LB and the MinimalX theme are you using?

For the games you want to display this icon, add a custom field in LB for that game called "AoController". The value of the custom field should be one of the values from the file Ao.Bigbox.Themer.vX_X.dll.config in the theme's plugins folder (this is the plugins configuration file). For example, put field Name = "AoController" and Value "GameCube" (or you could input "Nintendo GameCube", "Nintendo GC", or "GC") in the game's Custom Fields tab of the edit dialog (this will map to the banner icon png for NINTENDO_GAMECUBE which is bundled in the themer dll). You can do bulk edits for games so you don't have to open up this dialog for each and every game. <!-- META: GAME CONTROLLERS (CUSTOM FIELD: AoController) --> <add key="Game-Controller.GENERIC_ARCADE_STICK" value="Arcade_Stick" /> <add key="Game-Controller.GENERIC_KEYBOARD_MOUSE" value="Keyboard_Mouse,Keyboard" /> <add key="Game-Controller.GENERIC_LIGHT_GUN" value="Light_Gun,Lightgun" /> <add key="Game-Controller.LOGITECH_F310" value="Logitech_F310,F310" /> <add key="Game-Controller.LOGITECH_F710" value="Logitech_F710,F710" /> <add key="Game-Controller.MICROSOFT_XBOX_ONE" value="Microsoft_Xbox_One,Xbox_One" /> <add key="Game-Controller.NINTENDO_64" value="Nintendo_64" /> <add key="Game-Controller.NINTENDO_GAMECUBE" value="Nintendo_GameCube,Nintendo_GC,GameCube,GC" /> <add key="Game-Controller.NINTENDO_GAMECUBE_WB" value="Nintendo_WaveBird,WaveBird" /> <add key="Game-Controller.NINTNDO_WIIMOTE" value="Nintendo_WiiMote,WiiMote" /> <add key="Game-Controller.SONY_DUALSHOCK_3" value="Sony_DualShock_3,Sony_DS3,DualShock_3,DS3" /> <add key="Game-Controller.SONY_DUALSHOCK_4" value="Sony_DualShock_4,Sony_DS4,DualShock_4,DS4" />

Great, hope this helps.

+1 dat

Updated for testers; hopefully addressed the main remaining issues ... we'll see. Works very smooth for me using MAME, RA, DEMUL, Dolphin, PCSX2. * fixed: block PDF navigation while worker thread loading PDF * fixed: additional performance improvements for PDF viewer * fixed: smoother load/exit screens, and tweakable per emulator * fixed: smoother fading when using game/plat-composed images * fixed: was not regaining focus on game exiting and return to BB * added: legend overlay to GameManualViewer (another plugin) * added: logger will now indicate whether LB/BB being used

Thanks -- never seen this error, will work on a fix. Workaround in meantime would be to comment out this line in SystemView.xaml: <!-- <aov:EnvironmentInfoVM UpdateInterval="0:0:3" /> --> Appreciate the screenshot! @andyco47

Yeah that looks more like a windows incompatibility, as its microsoft.windows.themes.ClassicBorderDecorator. are you using a non default shell or theme in Windows? Found a fix for this bug. Thanks @andyco47 and @neil9000.

Certainly, I'd be happy to discuss anytime. I've tried taking a robust approach and to minimize setup time but grant it might not work with all emulators. I have a few issues left to resolve, but it's overall working well with RA, MAME, Dolphin, Demul, and PCSX2. My approach does require using windowed modes for emulators. I'd not really thought about input lag but have not noticed any problems there. If anyone notes issues, at least for RetroArch there seem to be some nice built-in input lag solutions.