Fursphere

I've been overhauling my cabinets lately, and re-evaluating how I've got the front ends setup to 'present' things. Let me see if I can convey my thought process on this one in a way that makes sense. lol I've got two 2-player stand up cabinets that can be physically linked (hardware) to create a big 4 player cabinet (with mirrored screens basically). I made the decision quite some time back that the stand up arcades would only have arcade games on them. Console systems are all on another PC hooked up in my living room. Looking at "Platforms" you get kind of a strange combination of things. Some are single system (Sega Model 2) and some are multi-system (MAME / TeknoParrot). But they're all Arcade games right? So how do you unify everything so the 'platform' doesn't matter? Playlists of course. You know this already. Building a custom 4-player game list that's auto-populated. Sometimes "max players" is what you look at. Sometimes its "Play mode". If I add "Field: Max Players" and "Field: Play Mode" in the same auto-populate list, its a hard AND. You can only do "OR" with multiple values under the same "Field" right?. So there is effectively no way to evaluate both fields? (Unless there is some way to do this that I'm not aware of). That's the one use case I was toying with last weekend when I made this point. I think I had another, but can't recall at the moment. What I really want is a T-SQL query based search.... heh But I know that's not going to happen.

Are there any plans to better support TeknoParrot within Launchbox? Things that are currently lacking in regards to TekonoParrot in LB, in no particular order: -TK game naming is well known and standardized, yet LB database doesn't have a clue what the games names are. (Anything I can do to help here?) (examples: contra.xml = Contra Evolution ; similar to how MAME does stuff) -TK uses XML files for launching, yet LB doesn't recognize them as 'games' in regard to importing a folder full of them (no files found) -Auto-Import doesn't see XML files. If you set your TK rom folder to /userprofiles/ - you could potentially have LB auto-add games as you get them working in TK everytime you start LB -TK isn't in the list of 'known' emulators. Would be nice for it automatically add the special command-line stuff to get games launching correctly. (--profile=%romfile%.xml then have all the 'remove' options checked) I have no idea how hard it would be to implement these things, but it feels like it shouldn't be that big of an ask?

If you select an /emulator/ or /rom/ folder that is on the same drive letter as Launchbox, I think it'll automatically choose relative pathing. I wish it wouldn't.

You know. I had this same problem. I just went in and hard set all the path names to fix it without even thinking about it. Relative path names are pretty dumb in my opinion. Never put an application in a state where its 'assuming' it knows what you're trying to do. Always be explicit.

If you look at that Steam survey, 0.15% is still using Windows 7. Assuming Steam has 100,000,000 users (pretty sure its actually more than that, but we'll use 100m for this example) that's 150,000 installs still using Win7. I'd be really surprised if Launchbox had 150,000 users.

They said that with Win98. Windows2k. Windows XP. Windows 7. Windows 8. Yet, here we are.

2.29% of the overall gamer user base is linux users, per Steam. You can see it here: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam Then they've got 6 unique flavors of Linux that have enough users to show up. Who knows how many didn't even make the list because the user base is so small. Launchbox users is a small fraction of overall Steam users, and I'm willing to bet the "linux vs windows" ratios are about the same. Its a solid catch-22 problem. Dev's aren't making stuff for Linux because there isn't a big enough user base to justify the effort. User's aren't moving to linux because dev's aren't making enough stuff for it. Then add in the linux community itself is fragmented all to hell, because every time someone gets pissed off at a distro, instead of working to fix that feature, they hard fork it and start their own. "Everyone else is wrong, and I'm right" type of thinking. Look at how many distros are out there: https://distrowatch.com/ If Steam ever releases SteamOS for PCs, there might be hope. But I'm not sure how many 'gamers' want to essentially turn their PCs into single purpose devices (consoles!) and not do all the other PC stuff that requires Windows.

Currently investigating a problem with "Clean Up Media". If I try to use the tool in the current beta - 13.19-Beta-2, LB freezes up / crashes every time. Going to roll back to 13.18 and try again. Update: Rolled back to 13.18 and 'clean up media' works fine. Going to upgrade back to 13.19-Beta-2 and see if it breaks again. Update #2: Confirmed. 'Clean up media' is broken in 13.19-Beta-2

Are there any plans to overhaul the playlist Auto-Populate logic to include proper 'and' 'or' support? So i can do an "or" between two fields for example? (instead of only being able to do 'or' logic between multiple criteria in the same field)

Fair enough. I'll keep watching for the next beta release.

"skip this beta version" maybe? (only apply to beta versions) I get that it auto-downloads updates when you have the setting enabled. But if it ASKS ME "do you want to install this update" and I say "NO" (because I read the forums and know this particular update is jacked), the "NO" button shouldn't just install it anyway. If that's the behavior, why even ask? Just auto-download, exit the app, and install. Don't even give the user a warning.

Why is it when I say "No, don't apply this update" in BigBox, it does anyway as soon as I exit? Shouldn't "No" mean "Skip this version, and don't ask again until the next version" ? I mean, its straight up non-consensual at this point.

Are new default theme files going to be included with the next update?

I did this: And that fixed an error when loading the theme (Unified Refried) But when I try and access the system menu, I get a black screen (as mentioned in the notes) AND a huge ugly .net error: This is on a Windows 11 install.

Not sure how much work it would be, but one path could be to update the LB installer / updater to ask the question: Include Pre-made playlists? Yes/No (default yes) if 'yes' Display pre-made players in BigBox by default? yes/no (default no) if 'no', check "hide in bigbox" checkbox on each playlist by default And then maybe if the original ones have been modified, rename them or move them to backups?

There doesn't appear to be a way to 'un-hide' them from BB in the LB GUI, or any indication that they're hidden at all. (unless I missed something???) Maybe that's the 'ask' here. Update the LB GUI to indicate what's going on. I mean, there is a setting for "Hide in BigBox" that could be used to accomplish this (checked by default in this case).

I'd accept this, but they do show up just fine in the 'Platform Categories" view by default. (Platform Categories is a whole different subject...)

I think I have this figured out, but I don't understand why. I've been trying to get one of the included playlists to display in the BB "playlists" view. "Arcade SNK Neo Geo MVS" (one that comes with the default Launchbox install) No matter what I did, it would never show in BB. I originally assumed it had something to do with the parent catagory relationship - but no matter what I changed nothing worked. Finally I decided to go XML hacking, and found this to be the solution: If that's set to 'true', it'll never show in BigBox. Setting it to 'false' solves the issue. Is there a specific reason for this?

Ya.. I remember that hell when I had a T300RS wheel.

You can use the D-Pad and A/B buttons on the wheel for BB navigation instead of the analog controls. (Unless you've got a button-less wheel)

For MAME, I have a full import platform, then a "All killer No Filler" playlist that I normally use. I've been thinking about using the AKNF approach to all the platforms, and then just showing playlists primarily. If you want the full platforms, they're there, but the playlists are the primary source that filter out all the noise. Like the 1000+ Nintendo Wii titles with it being like 95% shovel-ware.... lol

Oh, I'm totally a data horder too. I just don't import them all in to LB, as I want LB to be somewhat usable. lol

Got it. thanks. This helps. But still has a gap as I don't know what the themes are pulling.

Where can I find this tool? I was just looking around in Launchbox and its not listed in any of the pull down menus.