faeran

It's open for everyone. However, it may be a regional restriction if you are not seeing it?

If you can't wait for the export process, the videos are always rewatchable on our twitch channel immediately after the broadcast: https://www.twitch.tv/launchboxofficial

Each game has always had full metadata pulled in from the LaunchBox Games Database. The default theme can only show so much, so it's limited to show only bits and pieces, depending on the sort order you are using. Custom themes, which you can download under Manage Themes, will use different metadata types as well. If you edit the metadata for a game you will see everything that LaunchBox for Android supports. It's pretty well the full gauntlet that is used in the Windows app.

I can try and clear up some confusion here You are correct in some of what you are seeing. The Box - Full image type has always been used as a fallback option over 3 images, and it has only ever worked for the Box and DVD models. Using 3 images is much preferred over a box full image due to the calculations that need to take place to try and deduce where the front/spine/back parts of the one box full image are, which the system doesn't always get right. The logic to load the 3 images is much more basic since it's just based on the front and spine image sizes to dynamically size the model. This means that Cassettes also do not support a box - full image type, so if you do see a box - full image on a cassettes it means you may have manually added the box full image type to your box front image group (this is not on by default).

For Steam games, I'm guessing you are referring to the Startup Screens ending before the Steam game has time to load up, or that a splash screen or something gets in the way and fools Big Box into thinking that the game has loaded and it closes its Startup Screen. If that's the case, the good news is that currently in beta, and coming very soon to the next release build, game monitoring is completely rewritten, to address this very issue (amongst other things).

With the release of 13.28 Beta 6, we are essentially feature complete, with all the new strings available for translation. Thanks for the help everyone. @Opak@Kondorito@Cauptain@Nyny77@dukeemu@cyanjiang@Just001Kim@MajKSA@gamehacker@alexposad@k_kutsugi@Bardock@Soomin papa@thewhite@Offone

Hi Everyone, Beta 6 is now available with the promised list of polish and bug fixes. We fixed as much as we could (thanks to all of the help you guys provided), and even managed to throw in a new 3D model of a Cassette case for you guys to play with. We’ve also removed FFmpeg playback, as the new media engine has proven to be a better fit for where video playback is heading in LaunchBox. Windows Media Player remains the leanest option through its native Windows integration, while VLC - Media Engine offers broader out-of-the-box compatibility and improved resilience through the new media engine infrastructure. Here are the main areas we’d love feedback on: Priority: 3D Cassette Case model - Select the new Cassette Case for a platform or an individual game, then try the Straight Back, Angled Back, and Clear Straight Back types with Automatic, Portrait, and Landscape positioning. Confirm front, back, and spine artwork line up on the case, spine images, clear logos, and plain-text titles are drawn where expected, and plastic color, cover color, title font, and spine and logo toggles all apply correctly. Priority: Steam integration and missing-library resilience - Test Steam games and Steam-linked additional applications with custom command-line arguments, including Steam libraries on available and disconnected drives. Confirm content launches through Steam with its expected arguments and LaunchBox starts normally when a configured Steam game drive is missing. Priority: Big Box video, transitions, and return from games - Test startup videos, preview videos, VLC and Windows Media Player playback, background transitions, video alignment, and returning from a game. Confirm videos are positioned correctly, transitions play, autoplay does not flash a thumbnail, and audio resumes properly. VLC video preview audio - In LaunchBox and Big Box, move quickly between games whose videos begin with speech or music. Confirm the opening audio is not cut off, fades in smoothly, and audio from the previous selection does not carry over. Priority: Emulator exit and frontend recovery - Launch and exit several emulators and storefront games, including repeated launches. Confirm LaunchBox or Big Box regains focus without freezing, startup settings persist, and startup-video behavior remains clean. Priority: Game List Index and dynamic grids - Test the always-visible Game List Index with large libraries, varied Arrange By fields, dynamically sized grids, mouse wheel input, click-and-drag navigation, and native scrollbar fallback. Image Grid editing and selection - Delete games from the Fast Image Grid, edit games while browsing, refresh metadata, and navigate Big Box text lists. Confirm the intended game is deleted, grids remain stable, selections do not stick, and list highlighting remains correct. LaunchBox Reader, controller metadata, and artwork resilience - Test global LaunchBox Reader settings from both LaunchBox and Big Box; launch with missing or inaccessible game-controller metadata; and download, replace, and clean up duplicate images while browsing. Confirm settings apply consistently, startup succeeds, and artwork cleanup completes without instability. Beta 6 changelog: New Premium Feature: Added a new 3D Cassette Case model for tape-based platforms, with straight back, angled back, and clear case styles, portrait or landscape positioning, custom plastic and cover colors, and J-card spine artwork that falls back to a clear logo or a plain-text title New Feature: Added an option to keep the Game List Index visible at all times, including in dynamically arranged game lists Improvement: Steam games and Steam-linked additional applications now launch through Steam while preserving configured command-line arguments Improvement: Video playback now uses the LaunchBox Media Engine for VLC or Windows Media Player, and the older FFME playback engine has been removed Improvement: VLC now sizes and crops videos correctly for videos that do not use square pixels, such as many console and arcade captures Improvement: Big Box background transitions are now smoother and more reliable, with improved handling when videos and other background content change Improvement: Big Box video playback now keeps audio correctly synchronized when returning from a game Improvement: Big Box video previews no longer briefly flash their thumbnail when VLC autoplay begins Improvement: The Image Grid now keeps the selected game in view when changing Arrange By or switching between ascending and descending Improvement: Dynamically sized grids now calculate and display their Arrange scrollbar correctly Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box startup handling is more reliable, including safer startup settings persistence, better containment of splash-screen failures, and LaunchBox correctly taking focus once the splash screen closes Improvement: Error and crash reporting has been modernized, with separate options for sending automatic error reports and optional performance diagnostics Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box now save additional diagnostic information locally after certain severe crashes, helping the support team investigate problems that previously left no useful report Improvement: PlatformHybrid video centering now matches the other Big Box views Improvement: Added themeable video alignment support for Windows Media Player and VLC, allowing custom themes to control how videos are positioned Improvement: LaunchBox Reader and Media Engine data now live alongside LaunchBox's other system data, and existing beta installs are migrated automatically Fixed: Games can be launched again after exiting a game whose startup screen could not finish normally, which was most commonly seen with MAME Fixed: LaunchBox and Big Box no longer crash when game-controller metadata is missing, inaccessible, or invalid; missing controller metadata is repaired automatically in the background when possible Fixed: LaunchBox no longer crashes during startup when a configured Steam game library drive is unavailable Fixed: Big Box no longer freezes when restoring frontend focus after an emulator exits, and LaunchBox and Big Box no longer stay pinned above other windows afterward Fixed: Emulator and tool folders no longer leak into LaunchBox's own working directory, which could cause managed emulator updates to install into the wrong folder Fixed: The RetroAchievements menu is now available in custom LaunchBox themes Fixed: RetroAchievements profile images now load and refresh reliably and stay cached between sessions Fixed: Fast Image Grid's delete shortcut now deletes the intended item reliably Fixed: Image grids remain stable after games are edited, added, or removed Fixed: Selection no longer becomes stuck after a metadata refresh completes Fixed: Big Box artwork no longer ends up stale or missing when the same image is generated and displayed at the same time Fixed: Duplicate image cleanup is more reliable during concurrent artwork downloads and replacement Fixed: Global LaunchBox Reader options are now handled correctly Fixed: Big Box text-list selection styling now remains correct while navigating Fixed: Big Box Platform Categories and Discovery views now retire preview videos reliably, preventing stale playback and retained video resources Fixed: Duplicate LaunchBox instances no longer initialize the full WPF application unnecessarily Fixed: VLC video preview audio now begins promptly with a short fade instead of cutting off the opening portion of videos Documentation: Corrected the startup-screen API version documentation As always, when reporting issues, please include your hardware specs, Windows version, LaunchBox or Big Box theme, selected video engine, controller setup, any relevant community plugins, and logs or crash details when available. Thanks everyone for continuing to test and report back. This has been an especially large beta cycle, and your reports have helped us track down a number of difficult issues across very different hardware, library, theme, and controller configurations.

Unfortunately, with Arcade, this is sort of by design. The import cannot distinguish between the different types of sets and therefore doesn't know which files to transfer, so many moons ago the choice was to make it an all or nothing export. The artwork and metadata thing sounds like a bug. However, it's been many years since then and it's probably worth re-evaluating a better solution for this, although it would require a total revamp of the entire Arcade system.

Hi Everyone, Beta 5 is now available. This should be the last beta that we expect to contain major changes, and this time those changes are centered on Big Box. We’ve reworked several of its core navigation, transition, and image loading paths to hopefully make browsing feel a bit smoother and more responsive, especially when moving rapidly through wheel, wall, CoverFlow, CoverFlow with Details, hybrid, and Game Discovery Center views. Selected and visible artwork is now prioritized while duplicate loading work is reduced, transitions and video handoffs are cleaner, and 3D FlowModel navigation has a smoother, more natural feel with less redundant animation work. These changes also improve how wall-style views settle and update, while helping the selected metadata and media remain synchronized as you move around. There’s plenty more included as well, including continued improvements to the Fast Grid, more reliable metadata updates and shutdown handling, fixes for Vita3K imports, MAME high-score uploads, and Bezel Project downloads, plus a substantial modernization of plugin management and bundled integrations. For this beta, we’d especially appreciate testing around: Big Box navigation - Rapidly browse wheel, wall, CoverFlow, CoverFlow with Details, and hybrid views; use Filter / Sort, playlist sort orders, Jump To, and Game Details, and confirm navigation remains smooth while the wheel, selected game, artwork, videos, and details stay synchronized and fully load Big Box long-running Attract Mode - Run Attract Mode for an extended period with an image-heavy theme or CoinOP-style wheel, then confirm wheel images continue loading, navigation remains responsive, and Windows does not begin failing to create new windows or UI resources Big Box startup videos, game videos, and background music - Test startup videos with keyboard/controller skipping, slower Big Box startup, Jump To, Search, and Filter / Sort popups, and large background-music folders; confirm startup videos remain visible until Big Box is ready, game videos continue behind navigation popups, music discovery does not stall navigation, and game-launch focus is not taken back after handoff LaunchBox Image Grid and image caching - Change Fast Grid section heights by clicking and dragging, restart LaunchBox, clear selection, inspect badge tooltips, download or replace artwork, and rapidly resize or scroll; confirm layout overrides persist, the empty Game Details background remains correct, downloads resume correctly, and artwork caches update without file-lock errors Metadata update reliability - Refresh the metadata package while performing searches or imports and confirm brief file locks recover automatically, large lookups complete, and the previous metadata remains usable if an update cannot be applied Startup and shutdown - Close LaunchBox and Big Box several times and confirm the shutdown progress window appears, displays useful progress, and both programs close cleanly without hanging Controller input settings - Disable controller input separately in LaunchBox and Big Box, then connect, disconnect, and switch physical or virtual controllers; confirm background detection never silently re-enables controller input PlayStation Vita imports - Import Vita3K games through watched folders, drag-and-drop, and manual import workflows, including a custom platform scraping as PlayStation Vita; confirm embedded titles are used instead of title IDs and that version, region, duplicate detection, and changed param.sfo metadata behave correctly MAME high scores from Big Box - Sign in to the LaunchBox Games Database, launch supported MAME games from Big Box, set or beat a score, and confirm legitimate scores upload and appear on the leaderboards Bezel Project downloads - Download and apply Bezel Project artwork for MAME and RetroArch, including retrying after a cancelled or failed attempt; confirm extraction succeeds without ZIP file-lock errors and temporary downloads are cleaned up LaunchBox window and Options behavior - With VLC - Media Engine video playing, minimize LaunchBox and restore it using the taskbar and Alt+Tab; also open Options with Ctrl+, and repeated rapid input, confirming one activation restores the window and only one Options workflow opens Plugin Manager and bundled integrations - Upgrade an existing Beta 4 installation containing LaunchBox Reader, VLC - Media Engine, official emulator integrations, and third-party plugins; confirm everything remains installed and functional, then test install, update, repair, uninstall, restart handling, compatibility messages, and source-code links Beta 5 changelog: New Feature: Added Ctrl + , as a keyboard shortcut for opening LaunchBox Options, with repeated input prevented from opening overlapping Options workflows Improvement: Fast Grid selection now uses a polished glass highlight with a smoother specular animation Improvement: Big Box view transitions and 3D FlowModel navigation are smoother and more responsive during rapid browsing, with cleaner video handoffs and fewer redundant visual updates Improvement: Big Box wheel, wall, CoverFlow, and Discovery artwork now prioritizes selected and visible items, reducing duplicate loading and making images appear more quickly during rapid navigation Improvement: Big Box background music discovery now runs outside the UI thread so startup and navigation remain responsive while music folders are scanned Improvement: Higher-resolution fullscreen screenshots now scale smoothly to the available display, while lower-resolution screenshots retain crisp pixel-art integer scaling Improvement: Big Box game videos now continue playing while Jump To, Search, and Filter / Sort navigation popups are open Improvement: LaunchBox and Big Box now close more reliably while the shutdown progress window tracks cleanup work Improvement: Plugin management and bundled system integrations have been modernized with safer installation, update, repair, uninstall, migration, compatibility handling, failure isolation, and source-code links for supported plugins Improvement: Windows CRC storage failures now show a clearer message identifying a drive or file-system problem instead of appearing as a generic startup, folder, or plugin error Improvement: Added a themeable BlurredVideoBackground element that safely provides blurred video backdrops for custom Big Box themes across supported video players Fixed: Long-running Big Box Attract Mode sessions no longer leak WPF image-worker resources that could cause wheel images to disappear or prevent Windows from creating new UI resources Fixed: Rapid navigation into Big Box Game Details no longer leaves menus, metadata, images, or videos empty because an outgoing view cancelled the incoming view's load Fixed: Big Box playlist views once again respect each playlist's configured sort order, with a contextual Playlist Sort option and per-playlist Big Box overrides Fixed: Big Box Filter / Sort changes now keep the wheel, selected game, Game Details, and Jump To navigation synchronized Fixed: Big Box startup videos remain visible until the interface is ready after being skipped, and startup cancel input no longer brings Big Box in front of a game after focus has been handed off Fixed: MAME high scores launched from Big Box now use the same parsing and upload path as LaunchBox, including safer factory-score filtering and recovery from transient archive failures Fixed: PlayStation Vita imports now use embedded Vita3K metadata for game titles, versions, and regions instead of displaying title IDs Fixed: Metadata updates now recover more reliably from brief database and ancillary-file sharing conflicts instead of failing the entire updateFixed: Image cache deletion, decoder-affine cache writes, and image-download queue persistence are more reliable during concurrent artwork loading and replacement Fixed: LaunchBox now restores with a single taskbar click or Alt+Tab activation after being minimized while VLC - Media Engine video is playing Fixed: Bezel Project downloads now close temporary ZIP files before extraction, preventing file-lock failures for MAME and RetroArch bezel installation Fixed: Fast Grid section height overrides persist correctly, badge tooltips are restored, and clearing selection retains the intended empty Game Details background Fixed: Disabling controller input now consistently prevents background controller initialization and polling from silently turning it back on Fixed: Steam game discovery no longer shows an error when Steam replaces an application manifest while LaunchBox is scanning it Fixed: Invalid custom carousel scrollbar styles now fall back to the built-in style instead of preventing the carousel from initializing Fixed: Grouped old and custom LaunchBox grids retain stable scroll anchoring during keyboard navigation and programmatic selection while still scrolling upward smoothly Fixed: Powered-off or disconnected DirectInput controllers no longer cause repeated phantom navigation when Use All Controllers is enabled As always, when reporting issues, please include your hardware specs, Windows version, theme, video engine, controller setup, any relevant plugins, and logs/crash details when available. Thanks everyone for continuing to test and report back. With the major changes now in place, the remaining betas will be focused on fixes, stability, and general polish as we work toward the official release.

This still happens, granted you are using Default theme or a theme based on the same Play button logic, and you haven't enabled the option Assume game application paths exist (skip file checks), under Options > Visuals > Game Details. Having that option on stops the checks from happening, so the Play button will always remain a play button, although for people that have their ROMs on a different computer/server (or just a generally slow computer), they will gain performance by not having LaunchBox run that check.

This one is actually by design. The new fast grid prioritizes scrolling, and badges are a huge cause of the performance issues when scrolling, so to prioritize a smoother experience, badges temporarily clear while grabbing the scrollbar and dragging past a specific threshold, then they instantly appear when you stop scrolling. it does not happen when scrolling with a mouse wheel. This will only happen when a theme uses the new fast image grid, which the default theme is currently the only one that utilizes it. Which themes is this happening with? Animations can be triggered in many ways in a custom theme, so it's not as simple as "turn off all animations when returning to Big Box", and it's more "make that theme's animation triggers more robust so it doesn't trigger an animation when returning to Big Box". Basically not all animation triggers in all themes are made equally, and you may notice if you look closely that all animations are not being triggered when exiting a game, only ones that use a specific trigger, or have a particular storyboard/workflow. I may look at shoring up some of that so it's less likely that theme devs can make a mistake there, but it may have unintended side-effects, so I'll tread lightly there and see what I can come up with. This one sounds like a build specific issue more than a global specific issue, in that for the most part this is not happening for users and is more of an edge case. When this does happen to you, provide logs that get generated, LaunchBox logs and windows event logs, and we'll see if there's anything more we can do.

I think what is happening right now is that the reader is setting mappings to the first controller, regardless if you have many controllers. Curious how you would like this to work. Are you wanting to have a specific physical controller be your "reader" controller, or do you want all your controllers to be able to navigate the reader, or are you wanting a specific controller index to navigate the reader (ie: controller 3 is always the reader controller).

This feature is designed to be on for new users and off for users that upgrade. It's one of those features that you either love it or hate it, but I may look at adding it into the new configure layout options as well for the new fast image grid path.

This is a tough one, as it's not actually a thing that's happening using any of our controllers, so we'll try again to fix this blindly. We'll shore up some edge cases and see if that helps for the next beta, What you can test is going into Big Box options, turning off controllers, immediately exiting the Options, and checking BigBoxSettings.xml to see if <EnableGamepad>false</EnableGamepad>. Then close Big Box and see if it's somehow changed to true for you. I checked our fix and while I'm unable to actually break it, although I'm currently leaning towards a possible obfuscation issue (which basically means code = good, but some other process garbles code and breaks things later down the pipeline). We'll put in some extra protections for next beta here. This one is my bad. We fixed it internally and then it looks like it missed the cut off time of beta 4, so the fix will be in beta 5. It's happening due to a safety measure put in for the new startup screen system that allows users to escape out of a situation where the startup screen may wait for a game that never ends up loading due to windows issues. It also only affects certain controllers, but when it does, affects them 100% of the time. Either way, beta 5 will have this fixed. Also not able to reproduce this. Maybe LEDBlinky specific? That's just a guess, but some things that seem global end up being very edge case, and this one may one one of those scenarios. This is one of those VLC quirks that has been around since the beginning of time (well, since VLC was a thing in BB from all the years ago). Be curious if we can figure it out before release. Thanks for the reminder. Unable to reproduce your alt-tab situation, so sounds more of an edge case scenario there. As far as Playlist sort order in Big Box, we haven't yet investigated it yet, but it's slated for beta 5. I assume the sort order set in LB made its way to Big Box before we added the ability to sort games in Big Box. We should have something in place for Beta 5 that should allow respecting the playlist sort order while still allowing the option to change it.