faeran

13.28 Beta thread has opened:

Hi everyone, Welcome to the LaunchBox 13.28 beta thread. This release will include a number of larger under the hood changes across both LaunchBox and Big Box. Lots of exciting changes will go in this cycle. We'll be touching core areas of the application, so all the help we can get is much appreciated. Here's what we could use help testing. Beta 1 3D Double Jewel Case model - Try the new 3D Double Jewel Case with games that have front, back, and spine artwork, including titles with dual-spine media, and confirm the model displays correctly from multiple angles. LaunchBox List View performance - In the default theme, browse a large library using LaunchBox's List View with badges enabled, then confirm scrolling, selection, sorting, column changes, and general navigation feel stable, responsive, and persistent. Startup and shutdown experience - Restart and close LaunchBox and Big Box a few times and confirm the revamped startup window and new shutdown progress window display cleanly, show useful status messages, and complete without hanging. Startup and Shutdown Applications - Configure apps to launch or close when LaunchBox starts/exits, when Big Box starts/exits, and when switching between LaunchBox and Big Box, then confirm the right apps run or close at the right time. If an app hangs during shutdown, confirm the shutdown progress window shows the stuck step and the force-close option behaves correctly. Searchable Options pages - Search for several settings by name and related terms in Options, then confirm the correct pages and settings are easy to find and the search stays responsive. Default Image Group and image group overrides - Change the new Default Image Group under Viewing options, then set custom image groups for platforms, playlists, and platform categories. Confirm the correct image types appear throughout the interface, and that "Use Default" clears only the selected override without changing the global default. Metadata search while editing games - Edit games with common or ambiguous titles, run metadata searches, and confirm best matches appear first while other possible matches continue loading correctly. Multiple install instance detection - Run separate LaunchBox or Big Box installs from different root folders and confirm they can operate independently without incorrectly blocking each other. Legacy Big Box theme resource loading - Switch to older Big Box themes such as CriticalZone, Unified, or other legacy themes and confirm their images, styling, views, and navigation load correctly. Full Changelog Beta 1: New Premium Feature: Added a new 3D Double Jewel Case model, including automatic spine handling and dual-spine options New Feature: Added configurable Shutdown Applications, so apps can be closed automatically when LaunchBox or Big Box exits or when switching between them New Feature: Added a new shutdown progress window that shows what LaunchBox or Big Box is doing while closing, with a force-close option if shutdown hangs New Feature: Added play session history tracking, with an option under Data settings to enable or disable it New Feature: Added searchable Options pages, making it easier to find settings by name or related terms New Feature: Added a Default Image Group setting under Viewing options, so users can choose the default image type used across the interface Improvement: Reworked the LaunchBox list view for much better performance in the default theme, especially with large libraries, badges, custom columns, and fast scrolling. The new list view is fully themeable, and custom theme developers can update their themes to support it Improvement: Revamped the startup window with a newer WPF-based design and clearer startup status messages Improvement: Improved metadata search when editing a game by showing best matches first, then other possible matches as they load Improvement: Improved image group handling for platforms, playlists, and platform categories, including a new "Use Default" option to quickly clear a custom image group and return to the global default Improvement: Improved LaunchBox and Big Box instance detection so separate installs or root folders can run independently without blocking each other Improvement: Improved Options page performance and search responsiveness Improvement: Improved ROM import parsing and welcome wizard import handoff behavior Improvement: Improved startup/shutdown app handling and switching between LaunchBox and Big Box Improvement: Updated the Windows build to use newer native launchers and the .NET 10 runtime/tooling stack Fixed: Resolved metadata database replacement/update file lock issues that could block metadata downloads or updates Fixed: Resolved Big Box theme resource loading issues for themes loaded from their original installed location Fixed: Corrected platform alternate-name matching in the local metadata database Fixed: Resolved image group overrides incorrectly changing the global default image group Fixed: Corrected playlist image group overrides so playlists with duplicate display names use the correct unique playlist entry Thanks to everyone who helps test and provide feedback. We appreciate all the bug reports, confirmations, and suggestions that help us improve each release.

Thanks, the links are updated on the GamesDB. Based on the article you provided and our SteamID system, I updated Final Fantasy VII to the newer version for now. Just note the LaunchBox app plays no role in the GamesDB metadata changes. They kind of live in parallel beside each other.

Send me a PM with the published theme files and I'll take a look at what may be going on there.

If you would like to troubleshoot this, send me a PM. Just be ready for a lot of questions, so we can try and deduce what might be going on on your machines. Are you using a specific custom theme or have specific plugins installed? My hunch after you said this is maybe it's due to a custom plugin of some kind. Does the same thing happen when you switch to the default theme? Thanks for the info. I did some investigation on that app and it looks like they made the decision to place their video in another bucket than the normal one mostly all games/apps use called "trailers - other trailers". We'll make sure to including that bucket as well.

Thanks to all you guys we released Beta 5 with all the issues we were able to reproduce. Some we just took a stab at since we were unable to recreate them (like processes being stuck), so if you were having issues, take a look at the changelog to see if there was an attempt on solving your issue and test it out and report back. At this point we've scheduled the release for next week, so let's hope we make it! Here's the changelog for beta 5: Improved: System Tray options have been clarified with a new Enable System Tray setting, and tray-related close and minimize behavior now only applies when the system tray is enabled Improved: Local metadata refreshes are more reliable across imports and metadata downloads, with better reuse of active refreshes, more accurate progress reporting, improved package validation with database hash verification progress and more reliable retry handling Improved: LaunchBox restart handling is more reliable for theme installs, plugin updates, options changes, and data restores Fixed: Like and unlike support now works correctly for Themes and Media Packs in the Media Manager, making it easier to give feedback on community-created downloads directly from LaunchBox Fixed: Automatic ROM imports now better respect disabled auto-import settings and more reliably avoid creating duplicate games or duplicate additional apps when scanning for new ROMs Fixed: Several System Tray shutdown and cleanup issues have been resolved, improving quit, minimize, restore, and restart behavior when tray options are enabled Fixed: Several Big Box stability issues related to controller navigation and background image updates have been resolved, reducing the chance of crashes or freezes while navigating with a controller or loading images Fixed: FFmpeg/FFME video playback now loops more reliably without freezing or crashing at the end of playback Fixed: Metadata downloads now handle cases where no games can be resolved, preventing unnecessary failures and helping preserve queued media download work

Just to set expectations. When Steam overhauled their videos system and broke our Steam trailer download support, they basically made all of their video files not accessible. There's literally no videos on their servers for anyone to download anymore. Instead, they replaced it with live streaming versions of them. So, instead of files that can be downloaded, they are video and audio streams. This means the only solution we really had at that point was to capture the video and audio streams and use a program to mux them together and create a file to save to disk. Doing all of that cannot be realistically as fast as simply downloading a file, like we were able to do before, but it does work. All of it can be tested in beta right now, so let us know how you like it.

Beta 2 has been cooking for a while, but it's finally out for everyone to test. We mostly focused on Steam support, including importing and syncing your Steam library, with Steam artwork, trailers, and a bunch of import customization options. We also added a bunch of new platforms, emulators, and a bunch of fixes. Thanks everyone for the help with testing this as we get closer to release. Here's the full changelog: Added Steam game importing for the new Windows platform. This lets you bring your Steam library into LaunchBox for Android and launch supported games through compatible Android Windows launchers Added Steam media support. Steam games can now use Steam artwork and trailers, including box fronts, clear logos, backgrounds, and videos, giving imported Steam games better media coverage out of the box Added Steam library update support. LaunchBox can now compare your Windows/Steam platform against your Steam library to add newly owned games and optionally remove games you no longer own Added options to customize Steam imports. You can choose whether to import only games, include family-shared games, search the LaunchBox Games Database, prioritize Steam metadata, prioritize Steam media, or allow duplicate imports Added platforms: Windows, Arduboy, Sega Model 3, Uzebox, WASM-4, and Microsoft Xbox Added emulators: GameHub Lite, GameNative, Pizza Boy SC Pro, Azahar (Vanilla), Linkboy, Lynx.Emu, PICO-8: Android, PICO-8: Picpic, Aethersx2 (Turnip), SkyEmu, MelonDualDS, YabaSanshiro Pro, Vita3k (ikhoeyZX), Super3, X1 Box, aPS3e, and eka2l1 Added RetroArch core mappings for Arduboy, Uzebox, and WASM-4. These platforms should now be easier to import and launch when using RetroArch Improved streaming video support. LaunchBox now handles more streaming video formats, including HLS streams, which helps Steam trailers and other online videos play more reliably Fixed Local and Cloud filters so games appear in the correct place. Games with local files now show under Local, while Cloud only shows games that exist only on a configured network/cloud location Fixed a possible crash when returning to LaunchBox. This could happen if notification or data services were not available yet when the app resumed Fixed possible image resize conflicts during media downloads. This could prevent media from failing or becoming inconsistent when multiple images were being processed at the same time Fixed scoped-storage handling for additional applications. Launching alternate versions or additional apps should now use the correct file path or URI Fixed scoped-storage lookup to use the selected application path. This helps when launching an additional app or alternate version instead of the main game file Fixed the built-in Vita3k Android emulator launch command

That's an old issue with the native WPF grid view system, which in essence is just a bad system overall. The next release will completely replace it with an entirely custom one, which should give us a lot more control over everything with the list view.

We will be tackling a larger overhaul next release, which hopefully that will help some for users. When I see this happen, it's usually caused by some kind of bad file permissions issue that can usually be fixed with a restart. I'd love to get rid of themes that utilize those old and outdated (and really unneeded) files, but time is the limiting factor there. The shutdown process is highly dependent on how much a user does during their session, but in essence there's a lot of files that go back and forth, and things can get stuck there sometimes that are almost always some kind of read/write issue. Basically, it's not a beta issue, it's more of a "LaunchBox needs to do these things and the computer is saying no silently and LaunchBox just keeps waiting for it to be done". The release after this one will better expose all the things LaunchBox does during a shutdown sequence, and provide ways out of a stuck process.

Thanks. Looks like it's due to using a controller. Fixed internally. Looks like this snuck through. While the option is off, it still runs a quick check on certain things, so we made it not run those checks now while the option is off. Based on what's being read here is that the video file it was playing was slightly corrupt, in a way where the file is out of sync with its own start/end time. Basically it's reporting its time incorrectly and Big Box ends up using the incorrect time to make a decision and it locks Big Box. I tried with a few files, even attempted to corrupt one of my files but was unable to recreate this scenario. It was enough to attempt a fix, but I cannot test the fix. If either of you have a file where it's always doing this, send that, along with your data folder that represents all the settings you have when the issue happens, to me in a PM. I was unable to get this to happen, but I attempted a fix for the automatic ROM import combine ROMs situation, so we can hope that helps, and you can help test when it's out. Based on what's happening during that step, that usually means there's some kind of "LaunchBox can't manipulate a file" issue due to all the normal reasons you can think of, like - another process is holding it hostage, or file permissions, or AV/security software.. etc. I made some changes to the process to try and simplify it as much as possible, but if the OS is telling LaunchBox that it doesn't have access to the file, it may not be enough. Sometimes Windows can get into a bad state and a restart of your computer could clear things like that.

Beta 4 is out with the following fixes: New Feature: Added Save Management maintenance tools to repair missing save metadata or clear and rebuild save metadata from emulator and vaulted saves Improvement: PCSX2 save matching now supports CHD disc images Improvement: Dolphin Wii save discovery and restore now support both disc saves and channel saves Improvement: 3D models now handle cached and fallback artwork more reliably Fixed: GOG media downloads now work reliably for icons, posters, and screenshots Fixed: Fullscreen image viewing no longer overlaps the taskbar and scales images correctly across image types, DPI, and monitors Fixed: Imports and media downloads now respect media limits more accurately, including no-limit automated imports Fixed: Game details videos no longer steal focus from the game grid Fixed: FFME video cleanup is more stable and less likely to hang or crash Fixed: Welcome wizard selections are saved more reliably when finishing setup Fixed: The bundled Xbox - White controller input pack no longer incorrectly reports that an update is available Fixed: The Manage Storefronts window no longer errors when using the Close button Fixed: Save Management now removes deleted save metadata immediately and more reliably, preventing stale saved-game and save-state badges from remaining after saves are deleted We are coming up to the end of the cycle and we are overall fairly happy with where we've landed. Thanks everyone for helping with this release cycle. We've got more to come with a bunch of overhauled systems for the next release, and it should be a much larger one than this one. We spent quite a lot of time this cycle setting up new internal workflows to try and speed things while reducing risk at the same time, so hopefully the results will show off quickly with larger scoping changes coming out in faster succession than we were doing over the last few years. This should be specifically addressed in Beta 4.

Thanks, let us know. I haven't been able to reproduce this. Usually when this is reported it's due to something on the user's computer conflicting with the wizard. The wizards are somewhat i/o heavy, so other things happening on the computer can trip it up sometimes.

Thanks, do you also have LaunchBox debug logs when this crash happened. Also, in that second report, there's that long link at the bottom of it which should lead you to the WER report. If you can attach that here as well, that would be super helpful.

For us to do research on your exact crash, we would need any Event Viewer application logs of the crash, which usually come in twos, along with any WER reports that come with the application log.

Thanks for the report. Yeah, noticed this yesterday and is fixed internally. Will be part of Beta 4. I did make some changes to this, but I'm unable to reproduce what you are seeing, so I'm not sure if I need to fix something or if there's just some configuration in your build that you need to change up. Which method are you using to import your games/download media?

I'm not entirely seeing what you are, as each of my test runs downloaded images just fine. I'll make a few changes though and see if that help you out. This is being caused by the new video controls. They are pulling focus when a video starts playing. I have a fix internally that should help with that situation. Took me 4 different monitors to be able to recreate this one, but I fixed it up internally and slightly changed how that whole pixel perfect system works, as well as put in a better fix for the taskbar showing in LB full screen image view.

Which methods are you using to import your games when you see this happening?

Beta 3 is out with the following changes: New Feature: Big Box now includes a new "Show Playlist Actions" option for the game menu, giving you control over whether playlist actions appear in the game options menu New Feature: Local metadata package refreshes now use SHA-256 verification with retry handling and clearer staged progress, replacing the previous longer validation flow with a faster and more reliable process Improvement: Follow-up improvements for LaunchBox's in-app video playback controls (feature from beta 2) improve startup, resume behavior, fullscreen handoff, monitor targeting, and playback stability Improvement: Follow-up improvements for fullscreen image viewing (feature from beta 2) improve monitor targeting, fullscreen restore behavior, and general reliability Improvement: Follow-up improvements for the Welcome Wizard and other metadata refresh workflows (feature from beta 2) improve local metadata package refresh progress reporting, retry handling, and overall reliability Improvement: Follow-up improvements for Dolphin integration (feature introduced before beta 2 and expanded in beta 2) improve disc ID normalization and scan filtering for compatible additional apps and media types Improvement: Follow-up improvements for media previews and related media-heavy views (feature from beta 2) improve missing-media refresh behavior, local image preview support, and cleanup reliability Fixed: Follow-up fixes for Save Management (feature from beta 2) improve save deletion ownership, persisted save metadata cleanup, and batch metadata persistence Fixed: Follow-up fixes for LaunchBox and Big Box video playback behavior (feature from beta 2) resolve additional fullscreen restore, focus, and preview playback edge cases Fixed: Follow-up fixes for RetroAchievements filtering and navigation (feature from beta 2) resolve an issue where moving upward from the pause-screen filter could behave incorrectly Fixed: Follow-up fixes for Big Box details and theme behavior (feature from beta 2) address responsive layout issues in affected views and correct theme name display We are getting close to the end of the cycle. The remaining work will be centered on the remaining 5-10 fixes still left on our plate and all the hard work you guys are putting into helping uncover any other fixes that need addressing before release. Thanks everyone for the help with the beta so far

Based on what I'm seeing in the images posted, things are looking fine, as they all show that the installed version is the latest plugin file. The way it works is that the app itself comes with newer versions of the plugins than what the server has, so in the screenshots it shows having version 1.1 installed but the server only currently has 1.0 available. It basically means at some point before the beta is done we will need to update the plugins on the server. The logic most likely says something like "if versions don't match, assume it means there's an update", which is causing the update button to be clickable, but if you attempt to update we will most likely overwrite to the newer version during app startup. So, definitely some UX to improve there in the future to help with some confusion.

If you can, check your event viewer. There may be one or two full crash reports, also including a Wer report txt file that you can send that could help narrow down what exactly is going on with your specific computer.

The original error is essentially saying that something on the computer, whether it be Microsoft Defender or another security software has blocked that dll file, which is a requirement to run LaunchBox. The way out of that is to identify which software on your computer is blocking dll files inside of the LaunchBox folder and get it to stop doing that. Once you do that, if you are unable to recover the dll files that the software quarantined or deleted, you'll have to then re-install LaunchBox from the setup file. Run the setup file, making sure you install it in the exact location as your current install (making sure it doesn't add an extra "LaunchBox" folder to the install path), and getting to the end of the installer. Once done, LaunchBox should open up, and if you had a library of games, you would see them once again.

1. Good suggestion - I'll add that to beta 3 2. I do have a plan to address this, but the reason it's doing this is because we utilize our own chromium browser to load up those pages, and for some reason that chromium browser doesn't have a more modern way of handling that page unless you use a mouse (which does work, but who is using a mouse in Big Box?). So the fix is really a much larger change away from Chromium across the app, and filling in the holes it leaves with a better approach. I already started working on that, but that won't make it in until the release after this one.

Thanks. These are fixed internally and should be part of Beta 3. If you'd like, send me your theme and I'll take a look for ya. Thanks guys, What's actually happening here in LaunchBox is that the video control UI is pulling focus from the image grid, which explains things like, keyboard navigation stops working, jumping to game by typing, and anything requiring the image grid to stay focused, stop working in certain situations. I've fixed this internally and it'll make it into beta 3. As far as the 3-DIMENSIONS issue, this one is a bit of a mystery. I ran some quick tests but am not seeing what you are seeing. You may want to delete the theme and redownload and see if that helps. I'm also thinking maybe there's some Options or theme specific options that could be getting in the way there, but that's more of a high level thought than anything else. This one I'm also not seeing, in that I checked a number of those platforms but their Achievements show fine. All I can do is talk about the troubleshooting basics. Make sure you are logged in and provided the API, go into Tools > Options > Integrations > RetroAchievements and you should get a green check mark to confirm that your API key is good. Make sure you've run the achievement scan on the games under Tools > Achievements. Then make sure you are using the Default theme, or a theme that does show the achievements within the Game Details pane. Make sure the Achievement badge is enabled. Things like that. At this point, I've got about 12-ish things ready to go for beta 3, with another handful I still need to tackle over the next few days. But if all things go well, we should have another beta by the end of the week or beginning of next.