Fursphere

HyperSpin is built on Flash, and is basically dead. So I don't think its a fair comparison to make.

icons look cool. nice job folks.

What I was hoping to do it somehow build an API / listener to allow external inputs to launch games in BB/LB. In my specific use case, BB install 1 on cab A could send a signal to BB install 2 on Cab B to launch a game. What I've got working right now is AHK key scripts, so you launch a game on Cab A in retroarch and it triggers Cab B to launch RetroArch in netpplay mode, basically starting up a 4 player game between two 2-player cabinets. It works, but its a little janky. And the LEDBLinky commands don't get send from BB on Cab B (I can do it via command line) and the game Maquee doesn't load on the marquee montior, because BB isn't launching the game. Totally superficial, but something I've been thinking about.

Thank you! I will start there.

Where can I get information about building / coding a plugin for LB/BB? Is there documentation somewhere? thanks in advance!

From what little research I've done, its a new format that's better for WEB because its smaller / faster. It produces lower quality images - which makes sense. Its for WEB, not for local content.

@Slybo I recommend learning to use something like CLRMAMEPRO or another ROM management utility. ROMS have known naming conventions (MAME, No-Intro, Redump, etc). And its mostly automatic once you get the appropriate DAT files loaded into the management utility (Dat-o-matic is your friend). (Re)Naming your ROMs to a known naming convention is a better approach than trying to get everything else to follow a custom naming convention. Just my $0.02 Good luck!

Personally, I'd like the perception of randomness at the cost of true randomness. Meaning, I'd like the attract mode to show me more of what I haven't seen. And I completely understand without a database backing up what has been shown, this would be tricky, if not impossible. And it would cost additional cpu cycles (time). I doubt it worth the effort in the bigger picture. I think the "not going backwards" and/or "not starting from the beginning" would go a long way though. On super small lists - like under 20 or something - you could have an option to just increment by 1 or 2 places instead of a random spin that often ends up on the same entry. (meaning the random 'roll' will pick the number 1 or 2 to move the wheel forward that many places) Anyway, thanks! Fun to think about.

Nevermind. I figured it out. Options - Views - Games List view was set to the text only value.

I've got two install of BigBox on my cabinet that i just realized are not showing the 'clear logo' wheel images on games on all platforms. I just installed a fresh copy of BigBox and they're showing just fine on the new install - but on the older installs its just text. I switched to the "old default" theme and the images did display correctly - but switching to the "new default" and they're missing again. Tried resetting the theme to defaults and nothing. any ideas? this is on the latest version 12.16 thanks

I didn't consider looking for a plugin. Thank you! I'll give it a try.

On BigBox, I usually have mine set to the Platforms view. So every selection goes to a sub-menu, that includes the game list for that platform. I think I have a playlist or two displayed in the platform view as well. Is it possible to have a 'top level' item on the platform view to directly launch a program? (for example - FightCade or a Jukebox app) No sub menu, just directly into an application (or 'emulator'). I know HyperSpin can do this. But I've never seen a way to do this in LB/BB. thanks,

I'd like an API to be able to remotely tell LB/BB to launch a game. (dual cabinet multiplayer netplay action). I have it working via AHK scripts, but an API to get LB/BB to launch it would be so much cleaner, and would allow it to fire up the game marquee and ledblinky support via LB/BB.

I'll try it again to confirm, but I'm pretty certain its a hard crash - not a "stopped responding" scenario. There were a couple of other crash scenarios while working with playlists too, but I'm not sure how to replicate them on demand yet.

That worked! Thank you so much.

Launchbox Crash in 12.15-5 Steps to reproduce 1 In LB go to Playlists 2 Create a new Playlist 3 Enter a name 4 go to auto-populate tab 5 click auto populate checkbox 6 select 'title' 'contains' 7 enter a search parameter (anything seems to work). DO NOT HIT ENTER 8 click on 'games' tab this will cause LB to crash 100% of the time for me If you hit enter in step 7 before clicking the 'games' tab, it works as expected.

How do you manually add games to a playlist. I can create a new, blank playlist, but it only seems to have an option for auto-generation fields. I don't see how to add games to it manually. Am I missing something? thanks

False alarm. Its working fine. I screwed it up on my end. All good now.

On Beta 4 - LEDBlinky doesn't appear to be lighting up the 'front end controls' from the platform list. If you select a game on the 'quick select' menu, it lights up the controls, or if you enter a platform the games all seem to work. But at the 'default' platform list, it doesn't light up the "front end controls' anymore.

In BigBox - when you exit a game, it returns to the 'game info' screen. This seems to prevent BB from going back into Attract Mode - it'll just sit on the 'game info' screen forever. I often walk up to one of my cabinets, select a game - play for a bit, then exit the game and walk away. I don't hit exit twice to get back to the platform game list, or three times to get back to the platform list. And this leaves it 'stuck' in that specific game info screen. Is this a bug, or by design? I realize I can turn off / disable the 'game info' screen to eliminate this behavior, but I do use the 'game info' screen from time to time. thanks,

Ya, I know you can do it with symbolic links. To build upon the idea, if there was an option to choose your cache folder / drive, there could also be a size limit. For those with smaller SSDs. Say at 50GB or 100GB start trimming off the oldest files or something. I'm guessing this probably isn't a problem for most users though, so might not be worth the effort.

I see. So lots of variables go into that. Would it be possible to make the image cache location a user option? For example, let me put LB/BB on my spindle drives, and then the cache folders on my SSD as a comprise?

Sorry to bump an old thread, but this seems to be relevant. If LB/BB is just going to cache images, there doesn't seem to be any benefit to downloading higher quality images. So a couple of questions. - What is the resizing target for images? Is it a static target size, or a percentage, or something else? - Which LB/BB image categories are cached? - Would it be possible to check the source image and do an analysis before caching? "if source is = target, don't cache" or something. I could see this being a mess too. - And finally, maybe just a mass processing button. "refactor images for performance" This is along the lines of if LB/BB isn't going to use HQ images, there doesn't seem to be a point in downloading and storing them in the HQ format. Just process them down to what LB/BB will consume and be done with it. That's my thoughts on the subject at least. thanks!

Screen flopping (or flipping really) is a function built into arcade games, where MAME emulates that function for cocktail cabinets. There were never any cocktail cabinet consoles.. it was all on a single TV screen. So it was never meant to work that way. The games (code) doesn't have a signal / trigger to tell the emulator its time to flip the screen for Player 2. Now, if RetroArch (or other) has a way to rotate the screen, you could assign a keystroke to that and then use a shifted function to manually flip the screen when its appropriate for P2 (or P3/P4 for those crazy big modern four player cocktail cabinets). Or mount a discrete button. You could probably get an autohotkey script to trigger Windows to flip the screen too. Or the NVidia control panel functions maybe?

I highly recommend learning how to audit your rom sets to match well known naming conventions. No-Intro (ROMs) and ReDump (Discs) are what most (if not all?) artwork is aligned too. CLRMAMEPRO + Dat-o-matic is a great way to quickly rename your set(s). RomCenter is another good one. Trying to align artwork to your unique rom set names is like shoveling sand against the tide.