faeran

We will look into this and hopefully get it fixed before the next deploy. Unfortunately, this would not be possible at this time. The theme would need to be reworked to fit into the new backend, and then we'd have to create a theme system that would allow users to switch between multiple themes. Then, moving forward, we'd have to remember to support any new features in all themes we end up creating. It's not out of the question, but at this time I think we are mostly themed out and ready to start adding new DB features Thanks everyone. We've read all the constructive criticisms about the database up until this point, and we will be making an update that will address as many of them as we can, which should get deployed either this week or next.

Simplest way is to use the game statistics syncing feature, which will sync your favorites (along with a few other pieces of data) across to any of your builds. You can find it under Tools > Cloud > Enable Game Statistics Syncing You will need a LaunchBox Games Database account in order to use this feature.

LaunchBox for Android is similar, but not quite the same, as the Desktop app. The difference is that the emulator choosing process comes after the import. When you are in any game view, click on the top-right menu and select Emulator Settings, and you'll see some emulator choices. For most systems, we do have a recommended emulator that is automatically chosen for you. If you try and play any game without first going into the Emulator Settings section, it will bring you to the Emulator Settings to set one up first. With the latest update, if you were to try and play a game that has an available RetroArch core, we will ask if you would like us to download RetroArch for you. If you agree, then we will take care of downloading and setting up RetroArch. We will also handle downloading the cores for you as well. Inside of the Emulator Settings menu, you can choose which core you'd like us to download and use in RetroArch for any given platform. For any other emulator (or version of RetroArch), you'll want to make sure you have it installed, and that you do any setup process inside of the emulator first, before choosing it in LaunchBox.

We will take a look into this emulator and see what can be done, before next release.

Thanks for letting us know. We were able to recreate it and it should be fixed for the next beta.

This post should help theme developers create a custom theme for the Game Discovery Center. I assume you already have some knowledge about how Big Box themes work. The Documentation.pdf file inside of your LaunchBox\Themes folder is a better place to gain knowledge on basic Big Box theming and bindings. I'll try and keep this updated if this view gains more themable features. Let me know if you have any questions. What is the Game Discovery Center From a themers perspective, the Game Discovery Center is a list embedded in another list. You have a list of games inside of a list of lists. It consists of just one xaml file where all code is located within. The file is called DiscoveryPageView.xaml How to start coding this view in your Custom Theme Assuming that you've run Big Box at least once with version 13.10 or higher, you can simply find the following file and copy it into your own custom theme's Views folder: LaunchBox\Themes\Default\Views\DiscoveryPageView.xaml To start editing the view, open your custom theme's project file, or open the DiscoveryPageView.xaml directly. The View File This section will break down the major parts of this file, so you can get an idea of what things are. The Parent List (The List of Lists) This will show up in the code as: <flow:DiscoveryPageList ...> Place this code where you want all the lists to appear on the screen. Here's a list of some properties you should know about: VisibleRows (int) - This controls how many rows should be visible at any given time. The lower the number the better performance, but go too low and you could get rows appearing from out of nowhere. You'll need to find a balance based on what your view looks like. SelectedItemPosition - This controls where the selected row will appear in the space you provide. This can force the selected list to always appear in one spot on the screen. The values are: Bottom, Center, None, Top SelectedItemOffset (int) - This will offset the list on the y-axis, starting at the top of the space provided, to give you more granular control over where the selected list appears. The following sections are used inside of the DiscoveryPageList: flow:DiscoverypageList.Style (optional) A basic Style section. In the default theme, it's used to change the SelectedItemOffset and SelectedItemPosition values for specific lists. flow:DiscoveryPageList.ItemTemplate This will contain what each list will look like. A DataTemplate will hold the layout of what each list will look like. Inside of a DataTemplate, you can add a FlowControl list or a ListView list (or both). These lists will contain the list of games (You can see examples of both inside of the default DiscoveryPageView.xml file). A FlowControl is a regular wheel type of list and is heavily documented inside of the Documentation.pdf file. A ListView is a type of list that is used in Text List Views, as well as the thumbnail lists on some platform views that display favorited and recently played games. flow:DiscoveryPageList.ContentLists This will contain the type of lists you want to see in your view. They will display in the order that you list them. The default theme contains a number of them that you can use. There are two distinct types of lists you can use: Hardcoded: We've hardcoded a number of lists that can be used inside your view Auto-Populated Lists: Lists based on our auto-populate playlist ruleset A list of all hardcoded binding options: An example of a hardcoded list of recently played games: Under the UserControl.Resources section of the view, add the following line to declare your list: <win:BindingProxy x:Key="RecentlyPlayed" Data="{Binding RecentlyPlayedList}" /> Then under the ContentLists section, place your list: <controls:SingleItemCollection Item="{Binding Source={StaticResource RecentlyPlayed}, Path=Data}" /> An example of a custom built list that shows recently added games: <controls:SingleItemCollection> <controls:SingleItemCollection.Item> <flow:GameContentList Title="Recently Added" Sort="DateAdded" MaximumItems="25" MinimumItems="5"> <flow:GameContentList.Criteria> <flow:GameContentListCriteria Field="DateAdded" Comparison="RecentDays" Value="360" /> </flow:GameContentList.Criteria> </flow:GameContentList> </controls:SingleItemCollection.Item> </controls:SingleItemCollection> flow:GameContentList This list type will populate games based on the choices you make within. Here are notable properties and what they do: Title - Gives your list a title which you could use in triggers and also use to display on the view somewhere Sort - Will sort the list based on possible values: DateAdded, DateModified, Developer, Favorite, GameCompleted, Genre, Installed, LastPlayed, LaunchBoxId, MameHighScore, MaxPlayers, Platform, PlayCount, PlayMode, PlayTime, Portable, Publisher, Rating, Region, ReleaseDate, ReleaseDateYear, ReleaseType, Series, Source, StarRating, Status, Title, Version, Random SortAscending (bool) - Tells which direction the games will be sorted. Default value is True MaximumItems - The maximum amount of items that will be generated in this list MinimumItems - The minimum amount of items that the list requires before it will be displayed flow:GameContentList.Criteria In this section, you can list all possible rules you want your list to adhere to. The rulesets are equal to what we have available under the auto-populate section when creating a playlist. It's highly recommended to build out an auto-populate playlist first so you can check if the games that get added to it meet what you want to accomplish. Then you can use that playlist to determine the values that need to be entered into the list. The following are the 3 available fields and their potential values (Remember that not all Field values work with all Comparison values) Field Comparison: Value - This is the value that you would input into the auto-populate playlist value field Dynamic Lists The system is designed to display an unlimited amount of dynamic lists which will start appearing after your lists in the XAML end. To the user this will be seamless, as a theme developer this is something you should be aware of when building your view. There's a lot of different types of lists that this can consist of, and each time the view loads, it will generate a completely random set of dynamic lists. Here's a breakdown of some types of lists that may appear in this section: Best - displays a random group of games that is above a specific user or community star rating Explore - displays a random group of games Worst - displays a random group of games that is below a specific user or community star rating The above may also be combined with other pieces of metadata, for example: Best of [year] Explore [platform] Worst of [genre] Best [genre] games of [year] F.A.Q. I want some game lists to look different than other lists, how do I do this? How do I display an image or text outside of a template? How do I display a video outside of a template? How do I change the title of a hardcoded or dynamic list?

If you were using the "RetroArch" entry as the emulator, what is happening is that when you launch a game, it checks what core you are using, downloads the newest version from their buildbot server, and loads it into RetroArch, then loads the game using the new version of the core. This could potentially cause a mismatch if you are using an old version of RetroArch. What device are you using, and which version of RetroArch do you have installed?

How did you import the ROM files? If you have the full MAME 0.253 set, your best bet is to use the core: mamearcade_libretro_android.so In the video you were using a game specific override to adjust your emulator settings, which would only affect that one game you were configuring. To change the emulator/core for all arcade games, while on the game list, click on the menu in the top-right, and go into Emulator Settings. Make sure your emulator is just RetroArch, the core is mamearcade_libretro_android.so, and Extract ROM Archives is turned off (this should all be the case by default). Then try to play a game.

This will depend on the version of LaunchBox. You can try to install the x64 version from the below link, under the header: .NET Desktop Runtime 3.1.32 https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/3.1

The good news is that we do this already. You'll want to look for the LaunchBox News and Updates playlist. There's also a LaunchBox Tutorials playlist for the tutorials. You'll find them both on the channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@UnbrokenSoftwareLLC

The only immediate assistance I can provide is the knowledge that this is a user specific issue and not an issue inside of Big Box itself. Are you using the default theme or a custom one? One thing you can try and do is remove the following file: LaunchBox\Data\BigBoxSettings.xml Do this while LaunchBox or Big Box is not running, and place the file somewhere safe outside of the LaunchBox folder. Then see if you are still seeing the same freeze.

As I kind of eluded to earlier in this thread, some type of scoped storage solution for emulators that have not added specific frontend support is still on our list to tackle. It's not much further down the list anymore, so while I can't make any promises at the moment, it's definitely something high in our thoughts.

The new update has taken the emulator profile that's just called "RetroArch' and adds download/install/update capabilities to the program and the cores, and makes sure the core is available to use when launching a game. If you don't want to use this functionality, there are multiple other RetroArch flavors available under the Emulator Settings that you can switch to if you would like to manually keep things a certain way.

The Android app doesn't actually support 3D Box image type. It only supports a Box - Front image type. You could manually change each game to use a 3D Image using the Edit Media option, but if you have a lot of games, that may not be a good solution.

The good news is that if you crash, we'll get that report automatically, as of beta 2. I'm fairly certain that the Export to Android option is part of the free version, so you should be good to go and try it out

You would edit the view file within the custom theme you are trying to use. Which view file would depend on which view you are wanting to edit. Depending on the theme, it may change exactly how you edit it, as at some point the wheel went through an overhaul, so there's a legacy way and a new way to do it. This is documented in the file: LaunchBox\Themes\Documentation.pdf

Great to hear. They would most likely need to go into their respective platforms if you are importing them in the app. You may be able to get away with more if you first set everything up inside of the desktop app, and then export to Android. In the future, we may tackle some form of playlist ability that would allow you to tag those games into their own playlists, but I'm not sure when we will end up getting to that.

Beta 4 is out now. This one fixes up the update bug, as well as smooths out a few issues with our new integrated RetroArch download and install process. For people that are either on Beta 2 or Beta 3, you will find that your update will freeze on the prompt that starts the LaunchBox update. If this happens to you, use a files app to navigate to your LaunchBox\Updates folder and install the latest apk file you find in there (which at the moment is beta 4), and you should be good to go. At this point, we are treating Beta 4 as the release candidate and are hoping to officially release this next week. Changelog: Fixed issue where the app would freeze during the update process (introduced in beta 2) Pressing No when asked if you would like to install RetroArch will no longer try and launch the game Fixed a crash caused by video playback that may happen to some users when returning to LaunchBox after the RetroArch install process Thanks to everyone who has helped testing this cycle.

Maybe you can tell me the specific device you are using, and what that game list is. Yes, this looks to be a bug, thanks for finding it. We'll put it on the short list. Noted, we have that on the short list.

I remember a while back I was troubleshooting this very issue. I was trying to remember exactly what came out of it, and while I don't fully remember, it was something to do with changes to MAME file names over time. The way EmuMovies works is by file name, so as MAME changes file names, it no longer matches up to what EmuMovies video files have, and LaunchBox is unable to make that connection with them, as LaunchBox reads the MAME.xml file that comes with the version of MAME you are using, and since MAME dropped the old file name, and uses the new one, EmuMovies needs to recognize that things have changed and make changes to their media/video files to match these changes. More than likely they'll probably need to just make a copy of the media/videos that had their file names changed, so they can accommodate all the different MAME file name variants. This is why some users may get media/videos to download, while other users may not, it all depends on the version of MAME that you are importing, and sometimes it could be based on the filter settings that you choose during import (potentially).

Interesting, I use Firefox on Android and don't see happening in either card or list view. What version of Android and what version of Firefox are you using? Are you using any Firefox addons?

Yeah, definitely not the intent of the update. Are you able to provide a walkthrough of exactly what you did?

Hi Everyone, We just deployed an update to the LaunchBox Games Database website that's been brewing behind the scenes for quite some time. This is the first of many updates to the Games Database that we want to get to in the future. The main change that you will instantly notice is a brand new theme that has been applied site-wide. It showcases a more modern design, while providing us the flexibility in the foundation to make future additions to the UI easier. We've also made a number of smaller changes across the database, including: New genres have been added: Pinball, Compilation A new release type has been added: Early Access The following platforms have been added: PICO-8, VTech V.Smile, Microsoft Xbox Series X/S Removing duplicates from the platform list and the clean up a few other platform related issues In the short-term we'll be hard at work converting over the Collections page to the new theme, which should be the last piece of the retheme puzzle. We will also be looking into cleaning up bugs, and polishing up the site where we can. Moving forward, we have a lot of long-term and short-term plans with the LaunchBox Games Database website that we can't wait to share. In the meantime, enjoy the update, and expect more things to come in the future.

During the import of your Arcade system, you'll want to uncheck the option "This is a Full MAME Set". After that, you'll be able to import your smaller subset of ROMs.

I did a quick check in the theme file and here's some answers: 2 - Pretty sure that the video I use already falls back to screenshots/backgrounds if there's no video. So if you don't want to see the screenshot, simply remove that code from the theme. Pretty sure it's the <coverFlow:FlowImage x:Name="Screenshot1".... that you want to remove 3 - Centering is a bit more involved, as you would need to remove a number of pieces from the theme, and it also depends on what exactly you are wanting to center it to. You'll need to remove the video code from the Canvas and StackPanel that it's in, and just keep it in the Grid. You also may need to remove the Height property on the video. Doing all of that will then center the video inside of the Grid's space, whatever that space is.