Fursphere

I'm rebuilding my Daytona Twin driving cabinet, and started with fresh installs of launchbox. Using the 13.25 Beta 3 EXE installer - once completed, there were XML config files missing and wouldn't allow launchbox to start. I had to use the 13.24 installer then allow it to upgrade back to 13.25 Beta 3.

On one of my two cabinets running the latest beta... when I let them idle with the screensaver (big box screensaver) running, I eventually get this when I close bigbox...

People have been hailing the death of Windows and the beginning of Linux's rise to the top since the early 1990s. (Remember slackware and their "f**k you, figure it out yourself" welcome message?) Yet.. here we are. Value is pouring R&D money in Linux... for Steam. With Steam being the front end and operating system (more or less). The Steam Box may die and early death due to the RAM prices skyrocketing due to the AI data-center slop rush currently happening right now. We'll see. But the Steam Box (Steam Console?) is going to be more akin to Apple Mac than Linux. Its going to be a fit-for-purpose OS on fit-for-purpose hardware. Most people aren't going to buy a Steam Box to NOT use Steam big picture. That's the whole point. They'd just buy a regular computer instead... and SteamOS is only putting in drivers for the hardware they're selling. Anyway, long story short. Yes, it would be great to have a mainstream alternative to Windows. But Linux ain't there yet, and probably never will be since the solution to every major problem is "these guys are doing it wrong, I'll make my own fork and do it right!" (insert Bender quote here) - and now we've got thousands of forks.

Teknoparrot support in launchbox has been getting much better (thank you!), but the auto-import feature still doesn't seem to work. The 'roms' for Teknoparrot are XML files to the 'emulator', and auto-populated in the /teknoparrot/userprofiles/ folder. Add a game to TK, it makes a new XML file for that game. Launchbox should be able to see those XML files and treat them as a newly discovered game and auto add it to the platform. Before I open a bug (or feature request, although I think I've opened one before for this) - is this a limitation by design? Is there some technical reason that LB ignores XML files for this platform? thanks, as always

Everytime this thread gets a reply, the Linux port of Launchbox gets pushed back another year.

I couldn't find the feature request for this one, but it looks like its still not implemented as of current version 13.24. Any plans to work on this one? Or is the screensaver feature basically the only option here still? Thanks!

HBMAME Roms =/= MAME Roms MAME cores in RetroArch are looking for MAME Roms, not HBMAME roms. They're not compatible. And why are you using RetroArch for MAME / HBMAME?

I'm going to assume you don't support Windows 10 (Pro, 22H2) anymore, but in Beta 3 I'm seeing BigBox close (crash) after about 30 minutes of attract mode running, and i see this in the application logs: Beta is running fine on my Windows 11 (Home / 25H2) machine. I'm getting ready to reload this machine with Windows 11, so this isn't an issue for me. Just an FYI. Thanks.

I had no idea you could just drag files into the LB window to start the import process. Neat!

Why would you want to drag the XML files out of Teknoparrot's /userprofile/ directly and into launchbox's? Can't you just point launchbox at the /userprofile/ folder directly, so when you add a new game (using Teknoparrot's UI) LB will autoscan and pick it up?

I couldn't grab a screenshot fast enough. There were two running. First one finish and actually launched BigBox. Second one errored out.

So, this is been happening more and more with upgrades. When you click "yes" to upgrade in BigBox - it launches the installer TWICE. And one collides with the other. I usually have to cancel both, and then run the installer manually to get it to fix itself.

Manually reinstalling 12.23 Official fixed the auto-install issue.

The 12.23 "official release" upgrade broke my Launchbox / Bigbox install. It launched two copies of the installer automatically, and I suspect one messed up the other. Going to try and reinstall in a minute. But currently, trying to launch BigBox or Launchbox does absolutely nothing. It won't even attempt to start.

That was me. I'll test it out in a bit.

That's the one. Thank you!

Any updates on the MAME importer being broken?

How fast is your network between system running LB/BB and network share? If its Wifi, I would expect it to be very slow. I would even expect it to be slow on a 1gb ethernet link.

13.23 - BETA 2 trying to update my MAME set to the new version. Import wizard - "select rom location" - NEXT button is not usable. Unable to move past this screen.

Thats awesome. But I feel I should have to ask that question on the forums directly to the Dev team... the application should tell me? Hell, I've probably asked the question before and forgotten. lol

I'm using the default theme / default view. (semi-required when playing with Beta releases... lol) I only had a few minutes to play with it, but I mostly saw just clear logos (large). Some had a background image (fan art category maybe? I have no idea), but most didn't. Didn't see a single video play. This is probably my biggest gripe about BigBox after all these years of using it. I am still 100% clueless about what media categories its pulling from without firing up a theme editor and digging around. Can you put that in the GUI? (This theme uses the following media categories...... and have it read the actual theme configuration to pull those values out). Oh here's an idea - show the media categories (dynamically based on currently selected theme / view), and then have an option to flag those in BB "Download this media category next time Launchbox is run" (For current platform or all platforms) And even though my cab is 100% keyboard setup (IPac encoder), it was showing "Press (Gamepad) Button" - which... is sub optimal at best. I wish it would use button labels instead (Press Select - the function, not the button or key currently assigned to Select - for example). Also, the after some time in BigBox screensaver move, the Windows screen saver kicked in. As far as I can recall, BigBox has never allowed the Windows screensaver to activate while in BB attract mode. But BB screensaver mode appears to allow Windows screensaver mode to activate. (I just turned off WIndows screensaver to solve that). Probably an edge case, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

Screensaver feedback - Just turned it on for fun. Doesn't seem to use the marquee screen. That's a bummer. And I'm not sure what images 'categories' its pulling from, but it seems I'm missing a lot of them.

@faeran That is one difference between my two cabinets. Cab #1 forces "Launch With..." (two options for MAME, one regular, one lightgun focused), while Cab #2 Is just "Launch" (no pop up). I honestly can't remember why I have a Lightgun specific version of MAME - probably something left over from when I was using SInden guns w/ custom bezel requirements.

Upgraded cabinet #2 to Beta 4 - Games launch just fine on that one in BigBox. So I re-updated cabinet #1 to Beta 4 - Same problem. Nothing launches in BigBox. Which is ultra weird since the two cabinets / two launchbox installs are more-or-less clones. I ended up rolling them both back to 13.21 release (and my twin driving rig builds). Going to take a break from betas for awhile I think.

Yes. Default theme. When playing with beta builds, you really don't want to run anything but the default theme. One less thing to troubleshoot.