Retrofrogg

Hi Romfrosk, glad to hear that you are still around! I finally managed to download all (I think) of your flash games via FTP. When I imported them all into Launchbox it (only!) showed around 120,000 games. So if there are more, I'm not sure why Launchbox isn't showing them. Maybe there are duplicates and LB has omitted or combined them. Still a lot of games anyway - and too many in a single platform for Launchbox to manage, at least on my machine. It might be better once nested folders allow some separation of them. I'm having a look at the BlueMaxima flash games project too, as mentioned by another user here. Worth a look if you're interested!

Just a small thing regarding the MAME importer - it would be great if there were some way for Launchbox to display this "history" and "info" that comes with the MAME games!

Actually @Jason Carr I spoke too soon - it seems to be still doing it! Just edited a MAME game to add a 3D box, and on clicking OK and returning to the (already cached) platform, my CPU load for Launchbox goes up to 85% with the fan becoming audible. It remains up there for around 2 minutes before the CPU load for Launchbox drops down to around 1% (with Launchbox still idle). Task manager shows the GPU at about 4% total. Memory is at 25%. Also, just not it is re-caching (the green progress bar is showing) my MAME/Arcade platform; I'm not sure why, as it has been cached already. As mentioned above, I would be surprised if it was due to my hardware or collection size - as this problem wasn't happening until recently. All I had done recently was remove all my MAME roms and then run the new MAME importer on a new (0.200) MAME set. I don't believe that I had made any other particular changes - other than keeping pace with the latest betas of course! Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this problem makes the browsing & editing experience somewhat poor. I've not really any ideas myself what is happening. I do notice that when scrolling through the MAME games after the cache, some take 1-3 seconds to appear (some of the thumbnails I mean). I wonder if this suggests that things have not been cached properly?

Hi @Jason Carr - thanks so much for your reply. Thankfully, the problem has disappeared with the latest beta! So I'm left wondering what was going on, but happy that using Launchbox is again smooth. Will keep an eye on things to make sure it doesn't recur. My collection isn't huge at the moment by the standards here - 17,682 games. And my hardware specs are OK I think - i7-6700, 16gig RAM, SSD for all the Launchbox stuff.

Odd problem I've just noticed today. Using the latest beta. After the image caching is done for a platform, things seem to be OK - I can scroll through the games and CPU activity (i7-6700) remains between 10 and 60%, depending on scrolling speed. I'm wondering if this is also too high as there is a slight delay before some thumbnails appear, but this is not the main problem I am describing here. If I edit a game, and then return to browsing, I get a prolonged CPU spike at around 80-90%, as if it is caching all the images again. When I browse at this point, game thumbnails are slow to load. There is no green progress bar appearing again however. Once the CPU goes back to normal, I can browse OK again. This is most noticeable for platforms with large numbers of games - e.g. Arcade/MAME with 3658. After editing a game the CPU stays up at around 85% for a few minutes - maybe roughly the amount of time it took to cache the images in the first place. Also happens if I open another Launchbox window, like the options Window - on returning to platform browing, the above problem recurs! Any help appreciated!

Regarding the "bug" I had identified in the previous release - regarding the double click on single clicking problem - I feel like a bit of an idiot as I've now noticed it in other apps too. Both in Windows and OSX. So I'm wondering if it's something to do with my mouse or KVM switch. Will experiment further. At least others also reported this bug so it wasn't just me

Great to see the ongoing progress here, thanks so much Jason I will probably download the latest MAME set tonight, remove my current MAME set from LB and then add the new set using the new importer. Do I just "delete" all the MAME games via Launchbox - does it then keep the roms themselves and the associated metadata? Looking forward to seeing what the community can do in terms of themes for Launchbox Next! I wonder how customisable the interface can be - can we completely rearrange the screen parts, or even remove some, or add others? For example, have a theme that displays front and rear box images at the same time. Also really looking forward to nested folders and, as a few above have mentioned, the ability to set the image display settings (spacing, etc) per platform! Keep up the great work!

Ha that’s a creative one. Will be funny if the logo ends up as the main one for the flash games :)

Hehe maybe. But doesnt that apply to all ROMs

Funny logo - but what is the relevance of vultures to flash games? Signifying that they are a dying breed, soon to be devoured by the annals of time? If you need the flash games, I would get in touch with Romfrosk. Otherwise I may be able to help you out.

I have the Win3xO collection, but not loaded it into Launchbox yet. Waiting for eXo to release his updated pack and then I'll give it a go. Worth a look if you're interested in Windows games.

I'm still getting that single click to launch bug at times. I just ran a MAME game in LB, exited MAME by pressing ESC which brought me back to Launchbox. I then single clicked on an adjacent game, and it launched.

Sounds great. With so many of us working on a similar thing, it’s a shame we can’t somehow combine all our efforts to save us each doing it all individually - and we’d end up with a stupendous collection no doubt!

Many thanks, that looks awesome Starbuck! I wonder how that will be implemented with nested folders, and whether BigBox will have nested systems also.

Lol...letting your imagination run away with you there bro :) ps send me your details and I’ll give you a login to the FTP ?

Join the club lol My spreadsheet is linked on a separate thread - may be of some use to you. Currently sitting at 368 systems/platforms, but I don't know if I am going to add them all.

Thanks DOS76 - I am aware of this feature though have not looked at it in a long time. I will check it as soon as I can and report back! I didn't think that it would be relevant, seeing that I was manually saving core overrides.

How do you organise these sub categories Starbuck? Do you list them as separate platforms? This is something that I am keen to do once the nested folder feature appears in Launchbox!

Just updated to Beta 19. Like Monkus I have only added a fraction of my collection to Launchbox so far, though I also noticed a good performance improvement when scrolling through games! Also, on brief testing this morning, the single-click-run-game bug did not manifest - also great! Hopefully that is it gone now. Will test further later today also. One strange thing that is happening is that Retroarch doesn't seem to be remembering my video settings at times - I haven't worked out exactly what triggers this however. It remembers them if I save core overrides, quit Retroarch and then load another game. I thought it was to do with restarting Launchbox, though on testing that yesterday Retroarch did remember the settings when I did that. This morning when I opened up Launchbox (PC had not been restarted), Retroarch again reverted back to old video settings. I suspect that this is not to do with Launchbox, though just thought I'd mention it in case.

Thanks for the advice regarding the sleep command - I will try it. Also, in relation to the large games lists, I too would be keen to help ensure that Launchbox can handle big lists, as I am planning to try and import a 300,000+ flash games library into it!

Just happens in Launchbox and not noticed this anywhere else. The mouse is fine Good thought though. The other thing that is still happening is that when I double click on a game to load in Launchbox, Launchbox quickly jumps to the next game before the (correct) one is loaded.

Single clicking on a game after a window on another screen is still causing the game to launch for me Jason (beta 18). It also happens when I exit Retroarch (on the same monitor) and then single click on another game - it loads up again!

I have this problem intermittently too. For what it’s worth, I use a 4K screen so would be keen that it all works in 4K!

Maybe go out to arcades and take some pics ourselves

Honestly I think it might be more hassle than it’s worth! Taking forever to download over FTP, and will probably break Launchbox when I try and import those numbers. Most are probably crappy one-off games anyway. But if you’re a completionist like me then maybe you want it lol! Happy to help once I have it, or you could approach Romfrosk for help too.