faeran

February 23

Are you trying to have many images for one game that you would then randomly select, or are you trying to solve the issue where a platform may have games that have the same name and you are wanting to differentiate between them?

February 23

2 hours ago, MDGeist said:

I'm having a couple of issues that were not happening until recently with the last couple of updates. Before, I was able to change the background fade amount. Now it stays at 68. When I long press on it nothing happens. Also when I delete the box image, game title screenshot image, game screenshot image, and background images to just show the background video on any of my platforms (including Android), they just reappear when I switch platforms or close my app and open it back up again. Any suggestions on how to fix these issues. Here is where the Fade Amount shows 68.

Regards

For the images re-appearing issue, make sure you have this option turned off: Automatically Download Missing Media When Needed

We'll look into the background fade setting, the horizontal bar looks missing in your screenshot, so we'll make sure that's back for the next beta.

February 23

39 minutes ago, gh0stp1rate said:
After downloading a theme in the app, how do I apply it? Tapping on the 3 dots within the theme's info displays only:
Like
Umimstall
Repair
Get Support

Themes cannot be applied this way. The reason is because themes are a collection of as many view types as the theme dev wants, so the choice the user needs to make is which view are you wanting to apply to each section of LaunchBox.

This means that you need to navigate to a particular section of LaunchBox, click on the 3 dots, and choose Change View. From there, you'll see all available Views for that section, including all default views and custom theme views.

Available sections are:

Platform Categories View (optional)
Primary Filter View
Secondary Filter View (optional)
Game List View

Optional views can be turned on/off in the options menu.

There's also launching views that can be switched under a game view's view options.

February 23

On 2/21/2024 at 2:37 PM, mtib said:

@faeran , Thanks for the Theme, is awesome. I just want to know where is located the clear logo images from "all games", "recently played" and "favorites".

I can't quite remember off the top of my head. It's got to be somewhere inside of the theme folder. Maybe something like LaunchBox\Themes\Vision\Images\Clear Logo

February 23

17 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

Interesting. The first place I went was to the debug log files. I didn't find anything regarding the automatically imported files there.

It's possible this is something queued up for the next beta, which should be out today. Sorry about that.

However, that's probably the most inconvenient place for a user to check. The Date Added filter dropdown is probably the easiest.

19 minutes ago, Tempest said:

I was testing this new beta version while importing some games and I got an error, i.e. not able to get metadata for one of the games, but I chose to continue the importing process - it was about 30 games for the NES. After the import, the achievements were not detected for those games - and they have the correct hash, I tested them before - even after refreshing and scanning for achievements again. The games that were already in the library were not affected by this.

So I decided to test the new feature, removed one single game (without deleting the ROM), and enabled the automated import. The game was detected correctly and imported, but I got a bunch of errors popping up, mostly dll files related to RAhasher.exe - I was able to get one print.

So, I moved these last roms from the games folder to a different directory, removed them from LB, restarted LB, and started the import process again. No errors this time, but after the import the games are not recognized as having achievements again - refreshing and scanning for achievements, or even playing them in RetroArch - which normally results in the game being scanned and updated with the achievement badge promptly - did not work.

Any thoughts?

A quick google search and it looks like you may have something wrong with a C++ dependency file that RAHasher may need. You may want to google that error and see if any of the troubleshooting threads can help you out with that.

February 23

5 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

Please add a logging function. Nothing worse than a program automatically doing something and then not being able to tell you what it did.

Also, if you have logs turned on, all imports will be listed in them.

So, currently there's 4 options on how to find out what games were just imported:

All Games > Arrange By: Date Added
Audit All Games > Sort By: Date Added
From the filter dropdown menu > Date Added
Within your log files

We will also add a 5th option that will be an actionable button on the import notification that will list out games that were added during that import round.

February 23

1 hour ago, dbalcar said:

Is there a way to log all of the imports?

Currently, there are two ways you can find out what was imported. You can go to All Games and Arrange By > Date Added. Or you can Audit all your games and sort by Date Added.

February 22

13 hours ago, MDGeist said:

I just opened up my Launchbox app and it reset itself. Now I have to import everything over again. Is there a way to not have to do that and what would cause my app to reset to the default?

The only reason you would see something like this happen is if the LaunchBox folder that contains all of your data files is not in the location it was expecting.

By default, LaunchBox saves all of its files into the user/root of your device just in a folder called LaunchBox. Everything LaunchBox needs to see your library and all of your settings is saved inside of that folder. Some people move that folder onto an SD Card or something similar.

If you can find where your folder was originally located, it's possible it's still there with your entire library, and all you have to do is go into LaunchBox's options, click on Data Folder, and repoint to that LaunchBox folder.

February 22

24 minutes ago, dbalcar said:

even just closing LB and reopening right after still importing games. Just had about 300 added on a restart with no changes

Can you be more specific about the games being added?

February 22

36 minutes ago, Undertherainbow said:

Yup, switched to default, it was theme issue. And default is soo much snappier and faster. All good, Thanks

Good to hear. Although also bad, since Default Plus is one of my themes. I'll have to review the code at some point.

February 22

3 hours ago, The Papaw said:

Just wanted to let LB team know it is working for me. I do not use the default rom and media paths. What I do find strange is it found games in a few platforms that the normal Tools > Scan > Scan for Added Roms... didn't find??

UPDATE: Kinda made a mess of my PS3 games, added many games files as games, such as files nested within an actual game like BLUS31450 - Adventure Time The Secret Of The Nameless Kingdom\PS3_GAME\USRDIR\npc_marceline.pak. Added as a new game named "npc marceline" I got a couple hundred of them. Still looking at them, but so far, all of them are using the *.pak file extension

I have to turn the feature off, because after deleting them, it just scans them right back in...lol

We just triple checked the PS3 scanning, but was unable to get this to happen on our end across a few PCs. They are always importing correctly. I'm assuming something is different in the way you have them imported. Can you toss me your data files in a PM for us to take a look.

4 minutes ago, dbalcar said:

Well after restoring the backup data before the beta 1 and now with beta 2 it still imports 797 games over 30 platforms even though no files were touched or added.

Can you be more specific about a handful of games and their platforms?

6 hours ago, Undertherainbow said:

Thanks! Crash when changing emulator is fixed with beta2.

However i get very often errors on clear logos

When ever i edit game metadata . clear logo pops error in 99% of the time. I am not sure if that is the Theme problem or LB?

It feels that theme didnt unlock resource properly and it gets locked.

Process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

It only happens on clear logos

I am using Default plus , LB theme

P.S

As suggestion for game checker, maybe it would be prudent to add option to only scan for specific extensions. And ignore everything else?

LB can surely check which extensions already exist in that platform and only check for those?

I'm guessing a theme issue. Can you test that theory by switching to the default theme and see if you still get it as often.

10 hours ago, SqHd said:

Interesting update. I'm enjoying the RAHasher 1.7. It's nice having PSP games show their achievements. Is anyone else having trouble logging into their Epic Games account via the storefront manager? I get a JavaScript error a mile long.

EGS is changing their login stuff again. We've identified what they did this time and we have it fixed internally. It'll be part of the next beta, which should be out today.

12 hours ago, FistyDollars said:

Will we be able to pick and choose which platforms auto-import?

Not for this round, but it's possible we may provide a management window in the future that may provide some advanced functionality like this.

February 21

48 minutes ago, SatorSquare said:

Thank you for your answer. I only asked because some systems like ScummVM, MS-DOS, and PS3 may have their "Roms" stored as subdirectories with other files that the importer will not interpret correctly and try to import anyway like JoeViking245 discovered. I think It would be a helpful feature if we could select which platforms this feature would be active for.

We missed a check with ScummVM, which has been fixed, but it was intended not to work from the start. MS-DOS will not work unless they were imported like ROMs, and PS3 will work the same way as our current ROM Importer.

If anyone finds a platform in their testing that may not be working ideally, we'd love to hear about it.

February 21

On 2/19/2024 at 12:20 AM, hdofu said:

Hey I was wondering if there is a way to make launchbox the default loader like you can with pegasus, daisaijo or reset? if not currently is there a plan to implement the feature?

Not at the moment. We beta'd the idea in the past, and it brought up issues for some users that made the app unusable. We have it on our list to revisit this in the future.

February 21

24 minutes ago, furbs said:

Just giving this a bump.

I've having the same issue where the Export to Android is exporting the entire ROMSet (0.262) whether I use a Merged or Non-Merged set.

Launchbox version 13.11

This is still working as-intended, where exporting a MAME set will always copy the entire folder of ROMs to make sure games work while on the other side. My previous post lists some of the challenges with it.

I'm not sure when this will get reviewed to see if there's a possibility to add in something specific for users that are using non-merged sets.

February 21

Just now, christhed said:

From what I've seen the games that were added are other versions of games I already had imported. Let's say my Games folder contains "Super Mario Bros.zip" and "Super Mario Bros (USA).zip". The first time I imported my roms only one of those were added to Launchbox. Now the auto importer seems import all of those duplicate games.

It would be helpful if you could confirm the following about some entries:

Was the file located within one of your Game Folders? Game Folder meaning the folder that appears under the Folders tab within an Edit Platform window.
Was the file not already imported into your library?

Based on what you are saying it sounds like you have duplicate files within your game folders that you didn't initially import, and now the auto-import is scanning those folders, finding those extra files and importing them, which would be the feature working as intended, but this would be good to confirm from anyone that has had games imported that may at first not know why.

February 21

Beta 2 is out with a few fixes based on your feedback so far.

Changelog:

Fixed: The ROM Auto-import feature will no longer monitor platforms with a "Scrape As" value of ScummVM
Fixed: Changing a game's emulator from the Edit Game window causing a crash
Fixed: Rare dictionary error on LaunchBox startup

February 21

19 hours ago, rexryan said:

is the media download something we can turn off...

For the auto-import feature, not at the moment. In the future, we may introduce a management system where users can better fine-tune certain aspects of this.

5 hours ago, SatorSquare said:

Thank you for clarifying. Follow-up question, how does the importer treat subdirectories in a platform game folder?

I believe it will scan items within one sub-folder, although best practice would be to keep your ROM folders clean.

4 hours ago, dbalcar said:

Every time I start LB it is still finding more and more games to import even though there is no changes. anyone else seeing that? at first it was a few games like 7-10 the last 2 launches it was over 3000. very strange.

3 hours ago, christhed said:

@dbalcar It is happening to me too. I have a pretty big collection so it's hard to tell what exactly is being imported. I had about 4000 new games imported.

After auditing it seems like most of them are duplicates that were not imported before. I'm not sure why they were imported in batches instead of all at once

Are you guys able to filter by all your games and arrange by Date Added. That should give you some clarity as to the files that were added. Some examples would be helpful to determine if the files were within one of your game folders and were not yet imported.

February 21

This does appear to be a potential bug, so we'll add it to our list to take a look. The bug being that if you remove an Image Type from any Image Group, and then you set an Image Group Media Limit during a metadata and media download process, LaunchBox will not download an image for that image type.

However, just note that if you remove an Image Type from any Image Group, it would limit the ability to view that image type inside of LaunchBox and Big Box.

February 21

We will be taking a look at this to see what we can do about it before next release.

We haven't made any changes to the Epic Games login code, so we can only assume Epic is undergoing another change to their system.

February 20

6 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

That's confusing logic.

If setting is OFF = Search the folders anyway, and tell the user if you find something.

I would expect OFF is 100% OFF and no searching occurs until the setting is turned ON.

If I go ahead and turn the setting back off, and then throw a new file in one of the folders, would it alert me again?

It's a first time use prompt that informs existing users that update from a build below 13.12 that if they were to use the feature, some games were found and can be imported automatically.

It will only happen once, and never again once you see the prompt. It will not continue to scan your folders. However, test it out and let us know if it does prompt you again, as it should not.

February 20

6 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

Just updated two installs, option is ON by default.

I was surprised when it said it found new games to import, but didn't give me any indication of what it had found....

This means it's working as intended. You would only see that prompt if the setting was off by default. For existing users we included this prompt to indicate to them that the feature found some games within one of your game folders and it allows you to quickly turn on the feature if you wish. It's a prompt that you would only see once per build.

February 20

The LaunchBox 13.12 beta thread has been opened, and can be followed here:

February 20

Hi Everyone,

The first beta for LaunchBox 13.12 has been released. The big new feature is the introduction of an automatic ROM import system. At its core it's essentially two pieces.

The first piece allows us to scan your game folders for any file changes within. Game folders are set on a platform level, and can be found in your Edit Platform section, under the Folders tab. If we notice any new files on startup within those folders, you'll see us automatically import those ROMs. We also keep an active monitor on those folders while LaunchBox is open, and if we notice any new files, we will start the import process immediately. The process will import the games, download metadata, and import a small subset of media.

The second piece allows you to place ROMs into the LaunchBox\Games folder. While the feature is enabled, you'll find folders for platforms in there. Place ROMs inside of any of those folders, and we will automatically import those ROMs based on the rules of the first piece of this feature. If new platforms are imported via this method that don't already have a default emulator, you will be asked to set one up when you try and launch a game.

For existing users this feature will be off by default. For new users, it will be on. The toggle for this feature will be found under Tools > Options > General > Automated Imports

We've also begun an overhaul of our search in both LaunchBox and Big Box. It will now search by title (and alt title) by default, with the ability to add filter switches into the mix (eg. genre: adventure). The default theme has a small hint popup that shows the available filter switches (the popup is fully themeable so any theme dev can add it to their theme).

These are big changes to core functionality of the app, so any help with beta testing them is much appreciated.

As always, below will list the full changelog for this beta cycle.

Beta 1:

New Feature: LaunchBox can now automatically import ROM files that are placed inside of a platform folder located in LaunchBox\Games. To enable it for existing LaunchBox installations, go to Tools > Options > General > Automated Imports
New Feature: LaunchBox will now actively monitor your platform Game folder (found in the Edit Platform window) and import any new ROM files it finds automatically while the program is open and during startup. To enable it for existing LaunchBox installations, go to Tools > Options > General > Automated Imports
New Feature: LaunchBox and Big Box's search has now been upgraded. It will now search by title (and alternate title) by default, with advanced options to search for other types of metadata.
Improvement: A dynamic list for Games with Achievements has been added to the Games Discovery Center
Improvement: The MAME Arcade Full Set Wizard file requirement has been reduced to accommodate HBMAME full sets
Improvement: Support for PICO-8 game files has been added into our import processes
Improvement: Clear Logos and Icons have been added for the following platforms: PICO-8, Microsoft Series X/S, VTech V.Smile
Improvement: RAHasher has been updated to version 1.7
Improvement: The Scan for Added ROMs tool will now import new versions of games you already have in your library

Beta 2:

Fixed: The ROM Auto-import feature will no longer monitor platforms with a "Scrape As" value of ScummVM
Fixed: Changing a game's emulator from the Edit Game window causing a crash
Fixed: Rare dictionary error on LaunchBox startup

Beta 3:

Improvement: Added logic to improve the ability to import SNES MSU-1 ROMs
Improvement: A limited file extension blacklist was added to the auto-scan process to help with some common file types
Improvement: The auto-scan ROM import notification now includes an action button that directly opens a window displaying the list of imported ROMs. Additionally, imported ROMs are saved within your log files (if enabled).
Fixed: Potential issue with adding new platforms to LaunchBox using the ROM auto-import feature
Fixed: Problem where Image Types weren't downloaded when removed from all Image Groups while the Media Limit option was enabled
Fixed: RAHasher 1.7 has been replaced with its x86 counterpart to remove debug dependencies that the x64 version incorrectly included
Fixed: Javascript error that some users encountered during the Epic Games login process

Beta 4:

Fixed: The auto-import feature unintentionally being used for games that fall under one of the Arcade platforms
Fixed: Epic Games Store login will now work with SSO services like Google

February 20

On 2/9/2024 at 12:34 PM, RetroExecutioner said:

One thing I want to know is how I enable the screen to appear in MAME settings, like on Windows, via the TAB key. Where I can choose cheats and other stuff, I don't want to do it via RA; I prefer old school via MAME directly. Is it possible?

Tbh, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe someone familiar with this core could answer this better.

On 2/9/2024 at 12:34 PM, RetroExecutioner said:

Also, I prefer the Xbox series Bluetooth controller 🎮 Is there a way to configure one time for all systems? Or do I need to do it for each?

RetroArch, and a bunch of emulators will automatically provide some kind of default controller profile that should just work out of the box, but if not, you'd have to go into each emulator you've decided to use and set the controller at least once.

On 2/9/2024 at 12:34 PM, RetroExecutioner said:

Update: I tried more arcade games from different systems, and I noticed that not all are working, for example Capcom system III not working at all, other systems working, but has glitches in the graphics.

I'm not sure. I know some ROMs require CHD files in order to run properly, make sure you have them in the right place. Graphic glitching would be an emulator issue that you may want to bring up to the community for the emulator in question.

February 20

16 hours ago, Rlad said:

@faeran Using a '+' in search gives a server error.

We will look into this and hopefully get it fixed before the next deploy.

On 2/18/2024 at 8:44 AM, k_rollo said:

Is it possible to optionally revert to the old theme?

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.

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