faeran

The first 13.0 beta is out now and the thread for it can be found here:

Thanks! Will add it to the list to review.

Hey everyone, LaunchBox 13.0 beta 1 is out with a heavy focus on the new 3D Box Models in Big Box (#4 on the last community poll). They currently work with the images you already have in your collection, along with a new spine image type. In this first beta you will notice: Any view that used the old Cover Flow wheels will now show 3D Box Models in its place. This includes Fullscreen CoverFlow and CoverFlow with Details views in the default theme, and is also backwards compatible with any theme that ever implemented that type of wheel. The selected item in the wheel can be rotated via the flip box mapping, or the new Rotate Model mappings for both keyboard and controllers. Any theme that uses the Game Main Image Transition element will now display the 3D box model of the game where applicable. You can also use the flip box mapping, or the new Rotate Model mappings on them. Future betas will focus on providing UI management options for the 3D Box Models, and expand on their functionality. Full changelog for Beta 1: New Premium Feature: Big Box now supports 3D models for boxes! They are available in most existing themes where boxes are displayed and can be rotated with the right stick on a controller (or bound to something else). We've worked hard to make these 3D boxes work well even with the images that you already have in your collection. New Premium Feature: CoverFlow views in Big Box have been overhauled to be completely 3D, and selected items inside of CoverFlow views can also be rotated New Premium Feature: Big Box theme developers now have full control over how to present 3D boxes in wheels and in CoverFlow, including angles and animations New Premium Feature: Big Box now has a global "maximum speed" setting for wheels Improvement: New image types have been added for Box - Spine (for the spines/sides of boxes) and Box - Full (for DVD-style wraparound scans) Improvement: Big Box's Flip Box feature now rotates the model 90 degrees instead of just showing the back of the box Improvement: Big Box's animation backend has been improved, which should require less processing power and provides more options for 3D box models Improvement: Big Box's performance has been improved when loading game details Fixed: Some bindings in LaunchBox's WorkingViewModel weren't updating correctly in some circumstances (for theme devs) Fixed: Big Box's TopBoxesViewModel and BottomBoxesViewModel bindings weren't always notifying on update in platform views (for theme devs) Beta 2: New Premium Feature: LaunchBox now supports 3D models for boxes as well; they are available in most existing themes in the Game Details panel and can be rotated with a mouse or a controller New Feature: 3D model settings are now available as platform-specific settings under Tools > Manage > Platforms in LaunchBox. Each platform now has a new "3D Model Settings" tab that lets you customize everything from what type of box to use to the sizing and coloring of the boxes. Fixed: The Big Box Theme Manager should once again be accessible (introduced in 13.0 beta 1)

That's more of a Big Box functionality question and not a theme specific question, and I'm pretty sure there is not. You should be able to make a keyboard or controller mapping that would jump you to the different filter types, if you are wanting to go that route.

It's designed to not re-populate games you have deleted.

The bezel option will only show during import on compatible emulators, which right now only consists of RetroArch and MAME. If you are importing games where the Emulator you selected is not one of those two, then the bezel page will not show.

If you are wanting to only import a selection of ROMs, then it's better if you use a non-merged set. Our ROM import wizard will import one game per file. Therefore, it cannot tell that a number of different clones are within that one file or not. A non-merged set provides one file per clone, and all files are self-contained and work independently without the need for extra dependency files. Due to the nature of a merged set, it really should only be used if you use the MAME Arcade Full Set Import wizard.

You can play around with it. I believe you need to leave those options on, or else you are telling LaunchBox to not display Android apps.

This would mean that the core you have chosen to use inside of LaunchBox has not been found inside of RetroArch. Check the arcade's emulator settings and make sure the core selected matches one you downloaded within RetroArch. This can be a little confusing since LaunchBox lists the file names while RetroArch lists core names (which can unfortunately be drastically different names sometimes). There may be other reasons you get presented with a black screen, but this is the most common one.

Check the Options section. You'll find: Parse/Add Android Games on Startup - This will make Android games automatically show up in their own Android section, as long as they are categorized as games by the app author Include Non-Game Android Apps - This will add all Android apps to the Android section, which you can then pare down by deleting the apps you don't want to see.

Unfortunately, that view is hardcoded and there's no way to change this. However, do know that the old view would display images at their native resolution, so if you had a 200x200 image, they would show up really tiny in the center of the screen, and not stretch. Therefore, in general, the images are displayed larger on the screen in this iteration.

Have you added games to your LaunchBox library?

So, a theme can't technically affect this. This sounds more like you have something fishy going on with your data files. I would check in your LaunchBox\Data\Platforms folder and make sure you only see one file per platform. Anything more and you will run into the issue you are describing.

This is actually by design. LaunchBox will always use the game you are trying to import to determine region. If you have a Japanese ROM, it will try and download Japanese artwork. However, if you have a ROM that was released in multiple regions, then it looks at your region priorities to determine which artwork to download. We also have more fallback steps involved in this process to try and maximize the likelihood that a user will get some image over no image, but this is how the process always starts.

Yes, this is essentially how it works, which allowed users to play a certain track while still navigating around LaunchBox, but still allowing an auto-play option for users just wanting to hear music on games they are currently selecting. It's good to know that you are wanting to use LaunchBox as more of a jukebox experience. I know the manual play option was added for your specific usecase, but can see how it's not as desirable for you. We may review it to see if we can shore it up sometime in the future, but no guarantee on when that could be.

Thanks for the report. This is a known issue and we have it on our long list to tackle for a future update. I can only recommend to not use certain transition types with the Screen Transition. We will also be looking at certain performance issues with wheel scrolling as well as other oddities before next official release.

Just curious. Are you saying that only for certain games in your library you physically rotate your screen to play vertical games, and then physically rotate it back when you are not? Or is your screen always vertically oriented?

If you turn off Auto-Play Music (located in View > Media), then next time you hit the play music button it will continue to play.

Yes, which is why I would encourage all theme developers to utilize the available visibility bindings, although realistically, it's the theme developers choice on whether they want to use them.

Yup, that's just theme specific. You could always just grab the BoxesContentView.xaml file from the theme you like, and replace the one within Default Plus.