ekdikeo

So.. I was reconfiguring this box today.. had to replace the monitor in it.. and in the process, my monitor numbers got all reassigned somehow. SO, I had to go into the configuration, and reset which monitor was which in Big Box. Well, I also have to do the same in MAME. It turns out, that Big Box also has this problem with the main display being on the wider screen, as well. It *also* turns out, that if I launch MAME on that display (which I don't want to do), then when I return to Big Box, it all works correctly. I'm suspecting that some DirectX structures are not being handled correctly, in regards to the display sizes. Perhaps initializing all the display buffers to the same size as the primary display?

Aha. Will do. No I didn't think you were trying to deflect, it seemed fairly obvious that it would be elsewhere.. but for the fact that it works correctly when configured initially, then doesn't if I exit and restart.. at least points in the direction of something in this software, though. I'm a software developer, but I'm just too buried in other things in life right now to put my full attention to solving a visual glitch on an arcade can.

@Jason Carr @SentaiBrad OK! So.. Good news? bad news. the Good News, is that I can fix it. The bad news, is that it only stays fixed for one run. The other bad news (for devs here, not for me), is that it really does appear to be a problem in BigBox rather than a driver problem. So, I installed a fresh copy of LaunchBox and BigBox in a separate directory, and imported all my ROMs to it. When I got into the BigBox configuration, I turned on the Marquee display, and it worked fine, with the secondary display at full 1920x1080 resolution. The marquee window completely covered the display as expected, and it looked great. However, when I restarted the fresh copy of BigBox, the same problem cropped up again -- a cropped window on the Marquee monitor. SO, I went back to my original installation .. went into the BigBox settings, flipped the Marquee from Display 2, to None, to Display 1, and then back to Display 2 ... and it worked. Until I exited the program again. (and where is a good place to mention a feature I'd like to see? namely .. if the mouse cursor is off, then don't show a highlight on what the mouse cursor last had selected... it's obnoxious having two items highlighted, and not being 100% sure which one is actually selected )

... ok, and i've wound my way all the way back to 7.0 beta when i'm pretty sure it worked correctly, and it still didn't work. Could be Intel driver updates have mangled something, or could be something in my configuration? Can I send in some config files somewhere (keep in mind I'm a newb to this, i've been running it for months, but I hardly use it, and when I do, I don't really mess with it, I just configured games and let it do it's thing) to see if I've done something terribly wrong? :-D I guess for the time being, I'll just set the resolution on the top display lower. I might also be replacing the 19" square monitor with something else, because it's control panel is absolutely flipping out on me, random keypresses all over the front panel are triggering, and intentional keypresses are being ignored.. seems this monitor has some heat issues going on. Might explain why it was at a thrift shop for $5. Though it worked fine for the sporadic use over the last 6 months :-S

If I set the upper monitor to 1280x1024 then everything looks correct (except of course the monitor auto-letterboxes it). In a wide-screen mode that is larger than the primary display, it appears that although LaunchBox/BigBox is receiving the clicks from anywhere on the display, the visuals aren't taking up the whole display.

OK, so, I finally got the horrific mess in my arcade room cleaned up and got some access to mess around with it. Screenshot of the Windows screen settings confirms that I have two displays, (1) is 1920x1080 on top, (2) is main display at 1280x1024 on the bottom. (3) is currently disconnected. Computer is a Dell PC with i5-4590 3.0Ghz, Intel HD 4600, 4GB RAM.

It's not black bars, like there's letterboxing. I'll grab a screenshot next time I can get over to that PC, and post it. It's literally just drawing the left 2/3rd or so of the window. The right 1/3rd is Windows Desktop background.

Honestly, it's something that I hardly mess with, I hardly even use it at the moment. I have powered it up pretty regularly to make sure it gets Windows Updates, Defender updates, up to date drivers (oh what a nightmare that is sometimes), but I hardly ever do anything useful with it, or play games on it, just been too busy lately. I noticed it a few weeks ago, figured it was something that came in with a beta update, and hoped it would get fixed. Now I've recently got time to start messing with it, and figured I'd take the time to see if anyone else ran into this, or had any other bright ideas. I don't recall specifically doing anything theme wise, but I may have. There's also a third display attached (usually) to the system, but it's on a nearby wall, so it's not really used much, I have no idea if anything was showing or attempting to be shown on that, perhaps. The weird part about it, is that the black screen area is clearly cut off, only the left 1/2 to 2/3rd of the screen has black background, but the image is clearly sized as if it would be the correct resolution. So it seems that the display window is possibly being sized (horizontally) for the main monitor, but the Marquee image is being shown at the correct resolution for the 2nd display. Could possibly also be that the window is shifted, but then I wouldn't expect the left hand part of the marquee to be visible and the right hand side cut off.

... Most of the animations are pretty laggy on my i5 with Intel graphics (i think Intel 4k, not 100% sure, i'll have to go check the specs on it sometime) .. seems that many of them may be more advanced than they probably need to be to achieve the desired effect. The launcher itself actually runs pretty nicely, though. i5, intel 4k?, 8gig ram, 250gb ssd, win 10 cu

Hi there. I unfortunately can't tell how far back this started, but I'm pretty sure it's been this way for at least a couple of months. I have BigBox configured to display game artwork (normally the marquee image) for a game on the 2nd display of my three monitor setup. Display 1 is a 19" square at 1280x1024. Display 2 is a 20-ish inch widescreen at 1920x1080 i think, and display 3 is a 19" widescreen at 1280x720 i think. As of several updates ago, I noticed that Display 2, which hosts the marquees, has only been display about 1/2 to 2/3rd of the display. Possibly cutting off at the 1280-ish mark. Help? :-D

You could just create a .bat or .cmd file that runs the programs you need, then waits for LaunchBox to end, then kills everything else, and exits.. A little command line utility called "pskill" can assist with forcing things to close without doing it manually.

Awesome. Took me a few minutes to notice the setting for "Marquee Display" over in Big Box -> Settings -> General. Looks like it works, although I'm noticing a lot of issues where the wrong art or no art is showing up in Big Box, wether it be for Marquee or main display/screenshots/box/flyers. Problem being I need to actually have the time to sit down, and make sure that it's a fault of the app versus being a fault of the artwork files being incorrect .. unless other people have seen that, and can confirm?

so, it should take (romname).png ? cool.

Yeah, I actually turned on "Listen to this device" in settings, and discovered that 95 volume in Windows +12db boost sounds pretty clear. Any higher than that on either setting, and it's all just too much noise. I can "Hey Cortana" from anywhere in the room, but I can only "Arcade" within maybe at most a foot of the mic. Sure, I get that Cortana is potentially a lot more advanced, but unless there's another setting somewhere for the main Voice Recognition boost/mic vol settings or sensitivity setting, I'm thinking there's something not right with Launchbox. It's registering a 1 on volume at all times unless I am right in front of it. I know I really want a better microphone than one of these cheap $5 junk bin jobs, but the only other thing that I have right on hand is Guitar Hero/Rock Band mics, which are designed to not only be extremely unidirectional, they're also likely built to only pick up well if you're practically in the mic.. so I figured the desktop would be a better choice since although it's probably also unidirectional, it's at least designed to be used from a foot or two away :-)

Hi all! New LaunchBox user here, playing with some of the options. I just enabled the Voice Recognition, and although it's pretty cool, I'm wondering if someone might be able to offer some advice for some system settings or possible other tweaks -- I'm using an old desktop microphone that I found in a box somewhere (i may try hooking up a much more modern web-cam with a built-in mic, once I find my spare USB hubs, just to see if it makes any difference) .. Despite that the microphone is probably unidirectional utter crap, with the Mic Volume set to 95, and the Mic Boost set to +12, Cortana can hear me clearly and accurately from any position in the room (oddly enough, it can't hear me at all the moment i step out of the room, even though it's open air.. which feels very weird) .. but LaunchBox can't understand me unless I'm standing within a few inches of the microphone. If I back away from the control panel more than a few inches, it starts getting very confused (i turned on Debug mode so I could see what it thinks it's hearing), and after about a foot, the reported incoming volume drops to 1. Any ideas about improving that? I have adjusted the LaunchBox sensitivity all the way up as well. If I turn up the mic boost any further, then neither Cortana nor LaunchBox can understand me, presumably too much background? (also, my family loves it's smart-ass responses, and we wish our Echo had such an attitude) * edit: i just noticed the "Troubleshooting" forum that this would fit better in, but i don't seem to have the ability to self-delete or self-move.. sorry for the error

hmm. say one has one of the immense Marquee packages that are available for MAME users .. how does one go about making that collection work in LaunchBox? I was trying to see if there was a way to configure MAME's native display support to do it (because really, that seems to make far more sense than having a launcher do it) but I'll settle for the launcher doing it, since Mame is notoriously difficult to work with in some respects. /noob here, and finding the number of features that are not at all obvious in LaunchBox to be fascinating.

Speaking of.. I wonder if it would be possible to add an ability to detect when the displays have gone to sleep, and turn off attract mode, or at least it's sound, when that happens? also, a volume for attract mode .. i haven't heard any music from it, but just the click click clicking all the time.. which forced me to shut it off when it continued after the displays went black.