Retrofrogg

I would like to add my voice to this request - seems like a definite necessity to get LB to look right!

It would be great to be able to get rid of the black/coloured boxes around the boxes themselves. Makes it look a bit cluttered, and would be cleaner to have just the boxes themselves with the text underneath. OpenEmu (yes, of course, on the Mac) does this and looks very clean in this regard: https://openemu.org/

I have noticed with the spacing settings, that the spacing required depends on the kind of images being displayed. Is it therefore possible to have different images (e.g. box, 3d box, flyer etc) for different platforms, and to have platform-specific spacing settings? This would be great!

One thing I've noticed is that LB Next doesn't seem to remember the thumbnails. If I scroll right through a platform then it generates all thumbnails and further scrolling in that platform is no problem. If I switch platform and then go back however, it has to generate the thumbnails again. It's pretty quick to generate them, though it's not ideal and I'm wondering if this is expected behaviour?

So if we take the position that any "collection" should not be included as a dedicated platform - what are the thoughts on including it as playlist, and having that playlist appear in the list of platforms somewhere?

No need to apologise, it’s all relevant in its own way. I have gone for MSDOS and Windows (so far), but will be keen to hear what further stratifications are proposed by you guys and the rest of the community. Interesting that someone else has the “super random and arbitrary” inclusion of Big Fish games! Perhaps not so random and arbitrary after all?

Good to hear! Though a startup time of 36 seconds on your powerful machine is still a bit concerning. Hopefully @Jason Carr can help improve things further with future releases.

Glad to hear that LB Next was somewhat better. I understand that it will be a matter of weeks now before Launchbox Next becomes the official platform with the standard LB then being withdrawn.

This is a bit disappointing to hear. Does Jason Carr know about this? What about if you use Launchbox Next, is that any different?

I'm using Criticalzone.

Zombeaver, many thanks for your very well thought out and considered post. This is exactly the kind of feedback that I was hoping for. Your comments re Atari are noted and I plan to adjust things with your advice. Regarding Big Fish games, that made me lol. I'm sure you're right. It is a remnant of my previous build and was not selected by me personally. I will look into this further and probably remove it! Regarding Satellaview, very interesting comments. I had been under the impression that there had been a number of downloadable games via this system that were not released for the standard console. Indeed, Wikipedia says this: Games - Original Satellaview titles as well as software versions of regular NES and SNES games were broadcast every day throughout the lifetime of St.GIGA's support for the Satellaview. If this is correct then it does suggest that there were some titles original to the Satellaview. The comments that you make to support your argument against the Satellaview regarding GOG - I have a GOG platform also! I will have to look into GOG again. If they are just Windows games then what you are saying certainly makes sense and it might be worth making a Windows platform instead. Noted re Nintendo Wii light gun platform - I will remove it and make sure that the games there appear under the standard Wii platform. It might be a quick and handy way to access these games if you had a lightgun though! Noted as well re. emulators, and again I tend to agree. I will probably remove them and have the games under the appropriate platforms instead. I don't know enough about Raine at the moment to comment here but would imagine that any games appearing there could appear under a hardware platform instead. Excellent comments cheers! And Wallmachine - thanks for pointing that out! I will look into it further and change it on the list.

What does the Background Fade setting in the BigBog View menu do? You can set it as a percentage from 0 to 100. I had thought that it might fade out the backgrounds (which is what I wanted it to do), but changing it doesn't seem to do anything.

This Beta looks good. +++ for everything looking more smooth! I take it that the ability to rescale the cover size is still to be added? Also, it seems that you can only show screenshots and fanart images in the game details view. I don't know why there is this limitation - would be much better if it were able to show all image types! Also, why is the box surrounding the cover art black for most entries but dark maroon or dark olive for some?

I'm liking the momentum here eXo, keep it up my man!

Is there any list somewhere of all the platforms covered by these videos?

I've just put up my list in a separate post if that's any help!

I have finally completed the first stage of my spreadsheet of platforms - see attached (368 platform entries). The spreadsheet contains pictures of the platforms too as well as some information about them. My aim is to create and curate an "ultimate" list of platforms to be used in Launchbox. But the term "ultimate" is banded around a lot, so what do we mean here by it? One of the biggest issues that we come across when compiling such a list of platforms is the problem of what to include vs what to leave out. This could be seen as a problem of comprehensiveness vs usability - i.e. having every single system ever made vs being able to use and enjoy the collection as a gamer. There will be different opinions on this and everyone will of course have their own preferences. My aim however is to apply some kind of reason - or inclusion criteria - which would ideally help to create a list that is sensible and that many would agree on. For example, not many would disagree with having the Nintendo Entertainment System on such a list, and not many might argue with leaving out an old unpopular foreign computer which is difficult to emulate and only has 2 games. The question is therefore where do we draw the line? When making the spreadsheet, I first made up a list of all the platforms that one might consider to be included. I did this by using my already large list that I had made up for use with a previous frontend, and then going through a few of the other bigger lists out there and adding any systems I didn't have to mine. These lists included: The Launchbox Games Database Hyperlist (the official Hyperspin list of system statistics) The lists made by some of the sellers of large collections out there (e.g. Hyper Arcade Systems, Home Arcade Systems, Hyperspin Systems, etc) The lists of some of the users here with large collections (e.g. Romfrosk, Colpipes, etc) Wikipedia and other online sources The first thing I then did was to remove all platforms that were not game-related or that I felt did not belong in such a collection. These removed platforms included things like multimedia apps (Kodi, Plex, Netflix etc), fruit machine collections, karaoke, dance games etc. Then came the time-consuming task of paring down the collection. The criteria I used here are not "fixed" or definitive, but rather have some degree of flexibility and depend on a number of factors. The list below shows the factors that I considered when deciding whether to include a system or not; bear in mind that these are not yes/no factors but rather more/less likely: Factors making inclusion of a platform in the list more likely It is a well-known, popular or major platform The platform is primarily game-oriented The platform has some kind of significant historic or cultural value The platform has a good number of games released for it Associated media (box art, manuals, etc) is available for the platform I would be interested in using the platform Factors making inclusion of a platform in the list less likely The platform is effectively a clone of another platform The platform does not have acceptable emulation Games were never a main focus of the platform / the games available are very limited The games are in a non-English language and tend to rely on some understanding of the language The platform is aimed at very young children or is primarily focused on education or edu-tainment The platform is a very old machine with any available games being very limited I can't see myself ever wanting to use the platform Applying these factors then allows us to pare down the list to some extent. The concepts that I think draw things together a lot here are the ideas of quality, value and significance. If it is a quality platform, adds value to the experience or is otherwise of particular significance then it is included. Another issue I came across is the idea of using emulators to play games vs using them to emulate systems. This distinction might seem a bit academic, but look at it this way: a lot of the most popular games were available on a whole range of systems. Do we want that duplication in our collection? Do we want to play Space Invaders on a 1978 machine as well as on hundreds of other platforms that came after it? Are we interested in how the game played on a range of different systems, or do we just want to play the game? This issue is especially pertinent when looking at computer as opposed to console emulation; there is often not 1 version of a computer but instead a whole series of them with various upgrades and improvements made as time went on. The PC-compatibles is a prime example here. I think this question is more difficult to answer, but I think using the principles and factors listed above can help. Another thing that I have tended to avoid in the list is game "collections". Some people have a large number of game collections listed as platforms/entries in their frontend - for example a Mario collection, Zelda collection, etc. I don't think these belong in any list such as this, so I have left most of those out. What I have included, for convenience, as a few "company collections" for the arcade games, as this is pretty much standard practice here and does add some value to it. So now that I have finished (at least with phase 1!), I have ended up with 368 entries in the spreadsheet. A number of them have been scored off after I decided that they were not worth including. The breakdown of the numbers is now as follows: Number of entries for platform in the list Consoles: 80 Computers: 77 Handheld: 29 Arcade: 96 (split into boards) Arcade collections: 15 Non-arcade collections: 6 (e.g. Pop-Cap, Flash Games, etc) Emulators: 5 (e.g. MAME, AAE, Raine, etc) Other: 11 (various platforms that don't quite fit into the above) Scored-off entries: 48 So with the scored-off entries removed, this leaves us with a list of 319 platforms. My next plan is to go through the list and check the state of emulation for each platform, and remove any where emulation is an issue. I don't think that there will be many of these as most of these platforms have been emulated. There might be one or two current-gen platforms to remove. I will then look into the games themselves for each platform and start to import them all into Launchbox, source the media etc. I plan to focus on licensed games rather than hacks or clones. Sorry for the long post. It is an opportunity for me to put my thoughts together and will hopefully be of interest to other "completionists" in this area! Keen to hear of any errors in the spreadsheet or any comments in general! Emulator_System_List_3.pdf

I asked this elsewhere but given the chat, here seems to be a good place to ask - where can you find lists of the number of released games per system? So far I have looked at Wikipedia and Hyperlist as well as a few other sites. Thanks. PS I’m working on a spreadsheet too which includes a little info and a picture for each system. It’s been a few solid days work so far and am probably 75% through it.

Yeah, it's fine in Hyperpause, but it would be nice to have such functionality in LB/BB!

Where is the best place to find lists of the number of games released per system? The Launchbox Database lists games for some systems though does not give a total, and I don't know how accurate it is. Hyperspin's Hyperlist looks pretty good though I don't know how accurate that is either. Any help appreciated!

Maybe a bit late to the party with this request - but it would be great if the widescreen videos could include the original system box as well!

Yes, I see your preferred method. But you won't have many platforms under the "arcade" platform category. But then again, maybe you don't organise via platform category!

I am thinking of splitting up my MAME (arcade) ROMS in LB, and was wondering what other people are doing here. Do you split this set into arcade boards, or just leave it as one big MAME set? Previously I had used a big MAME set as well as a few collections (playlists) like "Capcom Classics, Konami Classics, Irem Classics" etc. I am working on a new setup and have seen a few other builds where the arcade section is split into different arcade boards. I was going to do this also, though the more work I am putting into it, the more arcade boards I am coming across. I now realise that there is a very large number of arcade boards (100+) and am wondering if I should split them at all. I'd rather take an all-or-nothing approach rather than pick out a few arcade boards and leave out others.

But not if you install exoDOS/LB into a different folder and transfer the files over manually, right harry?

Understandable! Which is the XML that must be copied across? That is what confused me last time as there were a whole bunch of XMLs in the exoDOS folder.