faeran

July 24, 2025

I did run a few tests here, but found that I was able to log into EGS just fine using both the Manage Storefronts window and the manual EGS process.

@dsnyd22 which version of LaunchBox are you using?

July 23, 2025

On 7/22/2025 at 10:49 AM, launchretrogirl2562 said:

performance : can you also look at the performance of the games DB. It sometimes takes a long time to browse the moderation section to check all pending changes. (the list with my own pending changes)
It also takes equally long to open up individual games. (i do this often to check artwork and logo's to see if they are added already or to check if similar games for other platforms have (or need) similar clear logo's.

We just finished our migration to the new server, so this might help with your performance issues. However, it's interesting to note that at this point in time performance in how you are describing it here is different for everyone and could be caused by many factors that are outside of our control.

On 7/22/2025 at 10:49 AM, launchretrogirl2562 said:

Moderation page : Also, on the moderation page...when you want to reject a game....the ENTER key is submit. That is strange. Now already two times I've given a user half of the response I wanted to give because after the first sentence giving enter it already submitted my response😁

I can understand the frustration of your fingers wanting to do something that ends up causing another action to happen. You could understand how this can be opinionated as you remove the functionality to help one person and another person that has been relying on that to happen is now not happy. I'm afraid this may be something you may need to build into your skill set.

On 7/22/2025 at 10:49 AM, launchretrogirl2562 said:

I have pending changes it says. But when I browse through all my pages of items I submitted, they all have the status 'accepted.

I believe this is caused by how that number gets generated. We have the concept of an overall change, and then there's individual changes that then can be broken down into individual change records (for example, changing an alternate name could treat the title and the region it's applied to as 2 separate changes in that count). Again, I wouldn't worry too much about that number. When we have some time, we could look into it and when we do people may find that their numbers, in general drop down significantly to what they thought they had.

btw, search results should be better now.

July 23, 2025

Hey everyone!

We just wrapped up a major migration of the LaunchBox Games Database to a brand new server, and it wasn't just a lift and shift. We moved from a Windows based system to a modern Linux environment, which meant reworking some big foundational pieces behind the scenes.

This included:

Migrating and restructuring our databases
Replacing and reconfiguring web services
Upgrading to the latest version of .NET
And a bunch of boring backend plumbing

Why does this matter?
We are now in a much better place for long term stability, performance, and scalability. This new setup is leaner, faster, and way more futureproof, which means we can continue building great stuff on top of it without worrying about technical debt from 2015 breathing down our necks.

That said, any time you do a migration like this, there is always a chance something slips through the cracks. So if you notice anything odd, broken pages, weird behavior, let us know right here in this thread. We will be keeping an eye out and jumping on anything that needs cleanup.

Thanks for bearing with us through the transition! This is a big step forward for the future of the GamesDB and LaunchBox as a whole.

July 23, 2025

For people willing to test and theme creators wanting extra study material. Unified Redux has been updated to version 1.91 which can be downloaded/updated from the manage themes section if you are on beta 1+.

The theme now includes a screensaver view that is essentially a copy/paste of a game's view. For theme devs this shows how everything in a normal game's view can be utilized on a screensaver.

July 22, 2025

3 hours ago, arcademode said:

I believe I do, in fact. I didn't realize that could make a difference.

Well it would make sense. If you have an option on that says you need to hold down the back button in order to navigate to the system menu, then you turn on the screensaver while you are on the system menu and you navigate to a game, then pressing back would bring you back to the system menu, which you have set that it requires you to hold the back button to navigate there. So you hold the back button down, and it should bring you back to the system menu. Same with Game Discovery Center, pressing back from the Game Discover Center brings you back to the System menu, and you have a setting on where you need to hold back to navigate to the system menu.

July 22, 2025

7 minutes ago, arcademode said:

Cool, that worked thanks

Idk if my installation is borked, but when I open the game details from the screensaver I can't go back using the BACK button. I'm just stuck there. Same thing happens if I open the Discovery Center actually. My only workaround was to map a button to "return to the platform view", which gets me out of there. I can use that same "return to platform" button while in the stuck screensaver game details screen to get out, but again the BACK button itself seems to do nothing. Just me?

That does sound like your configuration may be a bit borked.

Do you have the option under General > Require Holding Back to Navigate to System Menu turned on?

July 22, 2025

Thanks for the report.

Hopefully you've noticed since then that this was fixed. It was due to a change made to our image restriction system and was fixed once we got to know about it.

July 22, 2025

22 hours ago, launchretrogirl2562 said:

@MysterNybble
Hi,

I noticed a discrepancy while using the games DB.

I was checking if a game had a clear logo.
The game is called ==> Jumpin' Jimmy <==

And it has a games DB page

https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/details/107324-jumpin-jimmy

When I however search for ==> Jumpin <===

...the game isn't being found. Only 7 results which u can see below

If I add the apostrophe '...then it is being found (jumpin')

That is not intuitive, cause I was expecting to find the game when I searched for ==> Jumpin <==

And when I didn't I was almost about to create a new game.

Is this a bug???

Thanks for the report. I did some digging and it does look like what we have up on PROD is not what we have on our test server. The test server seems to be more complete with its search results.

We are about to undertake a migration of this server, so we'll make sure to include the more complete results when the migration is complete.

July 21, 2025

15 minutes ago, arcademode said:

Duh - I was on 13.22. Updated to Beta and there it is. Super cool!

Is there a way to change the Press "A" to a different icon that matches my arcade control input? Like a png somewhere?

Yes. This documentation should be able to help you out:

https://feedback.launchbox.gg/help/articles/0459065-launchbox-media-pack-feature-version-1321

https://feedback.launchbox.gg/help/articles/1120470-creating-controller-input-media-packs-for-big-box

July 21, 2025

On 7/19/2025 at 9:57 PM, laserbeak43 said:

I've got a samples folder in my FBNeo ROMset. Where do I put it in launchbox?

LaunchBox doesn't do anything special here. If you are using the FBNeo core in RetroArch, then you'll want to find your RetroArch folder, then I'm pretty sure you'd drop them into \\RetroArch\system\fbneo\samples

July 21, 2025

3 hours ago, Kyle Forde said:

I have an Nvidia Shield Pro (so high spec for an Android) and constantly have crashing when importing (merged) Mame 0.229 folder. Tried 2 usb storage options to make sure it isn’t a drive issue.

I have installed this fine on a Windows device using an internal storage drive.

Both are fully licensed.

some assistance would be great thank you

Sorry to hear. While I don't have a Shield Pro to test this with right now, there's a few things you can keep in mind. Don't import a merged set. That set specifically is the one that will not work properly on a device like Android. The reason is because Android requires that a file is present to be sent to the emulator, and with merged sets that's not the case. You'll want a non-merged for the least problematic.

Also, something to keep in mind is that the Nvidia Shield TV Pro, while it used to be a really nice high end Android TV option hasn't been updated in a very long time and it's running on technology that's around 6 years old at this point, and even when that last refresh came out in 2019, I remember being disappointed that they decided to only refresh the old chipset that was in it (from 2015) instead of doing a complete upgrade. All this to say that there's a huge hole in the Android TV market that's just waiting for a company to take advantage of.

July 21, 2025

9 hours ago, Fursphere said:

Screensaver feedback -

Just turned it on for fun. Doesn't seem to use the marquee screen. That's a bummer. And I'm not sure what images 'categories' its pulling from, but it seems I'm missing a lot of them.

This will depending on the theme/view you've chosen to use, but the default ones will use the most basic of images: A background or screenshot, a clear logo. Some use a box image, some use a video.

July 18, 2025

1 hour ago, arcademode said:

Just downloaded to give that screensaver feature a try but didn't see it in the menu anywhere. Does it only work on the default skin or something like that?

Should be as simple as: Options > Screensaver

It's below Attract Mode.

July 18, 2025

2 hours ago, Variann said:

Remember to fix the bug that does not allow use of the geolith and cps3 emulators please! Thank you

Thanks. Yes, this should actually already be tackled internally, so we haven't forgotten. There's also a giant laundry list of other things on our list as well for next beta.

1 hour ago, Omifi said:

I tested the sync changes for about an hour and i found some issues:

If you have playtime on a game on pc and import to android with network share that game wont get the statistics from PC and when you launch it on android all the playtime will get reset to zero, then it will start to sync from there

If a game has playtime on PC and you import to android normally not using network share the game will have its playcount synced correctly but shows zero playtime. If you then play the game on PC and sync again it will now show the correct playtime on android

Playcount seems to jump up in increments of 2 between syncs randomly. I couldnt pinpoint what exactly causes this but its very frequent

I have made a bug report earlier about sync issues and ill continue to update there aswell while i test

Thanks for the update. Surprising that you are still seeing a jump up by 2 for play count, as that's exactly what we tackled and saw it solved internally. We'd need more detailed info about the game in question that you are seeing this on. Whether it's a game on a network, or whether it has additional apps, things like that.

We also internally know about 2 issues that could be skewing your results. Both are on the docket to fix before beta 2:

We know that games on a network may not show correct play time
We know that our play time binding doesn't always visually update with the correct play time, even though the stat behind has. This itself could actually make it super hard to do accurate testing, as you can't really trust what you are seeing with that binding.

Beta 2 should make it much easier to test this stuff with just having the binding update correctly, so stay tuned.

July 17, 2025

18 hours ago, launchretrogirl2562 said:

These changes behind the screens, could that be in relation with an issue I have about moderating?

We ran some tests on the mod approval system and it does seem to be working just fine. We also checked your account and it does look like your account is a moderator. It's possible you are running into some browser caching issue. Are you able to try signing in in private mode, or try to log in using a different browser and see if that helps your situation out.

July 17, 2025

LaunchBox for Android 1.19 beta thread is now open:

July 17, 2025

Hi Everyone,

1.19 Beta 1 is out with a bunch of fixes and a new addition: Playlist support!

Thanks to all who help test these beta versions. Don't forget to include the following information in your feedback to help us out with tracking down with any issues you may face with these betas:

Your device specs
The version of Android and API version
Description of the issue
Can it be reliably reproduced on your end?
Reproduction steps

You can opt into the beta within LaunchBox for Android by going into Option and turning on the Update to Beta Releases option. If a beta release is available, you will get prompted each time the app opens up.

Full Changelog: https://www.launchbox-app.com/android-about/change-log

Beta 1:

You can now create and manage playlists entirely on Android. Open any game’s menu and tap Add to Playlist to create a new playlist or add to an existing one. Once created, a new Playlists section will appear in your library
A new Show Playlist Filters option on the Options page lets you show or hide playlist filters under your filter sections
Browsing Filter and Game pages just got faster thanks to major behind-the-scenes optimizations
The Settings pages have been refactored for quicker loading and smoother transitions
The alphanumeric index has been fully rebuilt using a custom control that dramatically improves load times for any view using it and gives theme developers more flexibility
Fixed syncing issues with PlayCount and PlayTime, making your game stats sync properly with the LaunchBox Games Database and stay consistent across Android and Windows builds
Default text list views (FilterBasicTextList, FilterTextListWithDetails, GameBasicTextList, GameTextListWithDetails, GameTextListWithTwoColumnDetails) have been converted to utilize CollectionView, improving performance and enabling support for the new AlphaNumeric control

Known Issues with Beta 1:

You are unable to edit the metadata of a playlist right now
You cannot change the view of the list of playlists

Here's some more Context with our changes to help you with testing:

You can now create and manage manual playlists directly on Android. Open any game menu and tap Add to Playlist. You can create a new playlist or add the game to one you have already made. Once you create a playlist, it will appear in your filter section alongside All Games, Favorites, and other filters.
- Note: Playlist filters are hidden by default. To see them, go to Options then Navigation then enable Show Playlist Filters.
- You can also assign media to playlists like banners, box art, and clear logos. No media is included by default.
Navigation throughout the app is now faster and smoother.
- The alphanumeric index has been fully rebuilt. It now loads quicker and offers more flexibility for theme developers.
- Default text list views now use CollectionView, which improves performance and allows support for the new index.
- Important: Some of these changes require updated themes. Go to Manage Themes and update all themes you are using. Because of the large amount of code restructuring, this update could introduce new bugs. We fixed everything we could find, but your help testing during the beta is greatly appreciated. If you see any strange behavior or navigation issues, please let us know. Updating your themes is also necessary to take advantage of the new index.
Syncing issues with play count and play time have been fixed on the Android side. These stats should now sync correctly between Android, Windows, and the LaunchBox Games Database. If you have had problems here in the past, please test and report back with your results.

Beta 2:

You can now easily import and launch games installed in Vita3k. Just use the Import Games tool, choose Sony PlayStation Vita, and point to Vita3k's emulated storage space
Improved the new alphanumeric index to better respect whether favorites are listed first or not
Fixed an issue where RetroArch core selections were not saving if the core was unknown to us. Core selection should now save correctly in all cases
Play time tracking now resumes properly after returning from an emulator session
Fixed an issue where clearing play count did not remove play count from additional applications
Fixed issues with renaming playlists, saving metadata, and changing themes for the playlist section

July 16, 2025

Hey all,

Just wanted to fill you guys in on some of the changes that have been made to the LaunchBox Games Database behind the scenes.

Game Deletion Workflow Overhaul

We’ve completely revamped how games are deleted to prevent long term issues with user's LaunchBox libraries and future GamesDB Integrations:

Users can now submit one of 3 reason types when requesting a game deletion.
If marking a game as a duplicate, a link to the duplicate is now required.
All deletion requests will go through both our standard moderation and a new Tier 2 moderation process, which has the final say.
If a duplicate is approved for deletion, a new system will now link the deleted game to its replacement, so metadata and media can still be accessed by users who had it in their libraries.

This change is especially important as we begin to integrate services more deeply with the Games Database. We want to avoid situations where deleted entries break integrations or game links for users.

Bug Fixes

Some sneaky little bugs have been squashed:

Fixed an issue where ESRB ratings, Wikipedia links, and Video links weren’t sticking after moderation approval. These should now save reliably.
Resolved a problem where some users saw part of their Changes Status pages mysteriously vanish. They’re back where they belong and you can now rejoice!
Search results got a tune-up:
- Multi-page results are now back.
- Relevance has been improved across both the main search bar and the mini search on game pages.
For users running into API limit issues (you legends), we’ve put in place a few improvements to help reduce those headaches. Most folks wouldn't have hit this limitation, but hopefully with the changes we made it should happen much less often, if not at all.

Image Upload Restrictions Refreshed

Some upload restrictions have returned from the dead to ensure media quality stays top-notch. Here’s a quick refresher:

PNG with transparency required for:
- Clear Logo, Box - 3D, Cart - Front, Cart - Back, Cart - 3D, and Disc
Icon images: must be no larger than 256x256
Square images: must be a 1:1 ratio
Poster images: must be 2:3 ratio, with a minimum width of 600px
All other media types can be JPG or PNG

July 15, 2025

Link to the 13.23 Beta Thread:

July 15, 2025

Hey All,

We are back with another beta round! Thanks to everyone helping us test the latest beta builds. Your feedback is super valuable, so please include the following info when reporting any issues:

📝 When submitting feedback, include:

Your Windows version
A clear description of the issue
Whether the issue can be consistently reproduced
The steps to reproduce it

🎮 How to Join the Beta

To opt into the beta:

In LaunchBox, go to Tools > Options > General > Updates
Enable Update to Beta Releases

When a beta is available, you will be prompted at startup or can check manually via Menu > Help > Check for Updates

🔌 A Quick Note on Plugins

Some beta builds include early versions of official plugins that are not yet live in the Plugin Manager. Because of this:

You may see update prompts for plugins that are actually newer in the beta

Please avoid updating plugins while using a beta if you are planning to provide feedback. This helps us get accurate data and avoids breaking improvements

🎞️ VLC is now considered legacy

If you are reporting any issue in either LaunchBox or Big Box, you must first ensure your video engine is set to Windows Media Player.

For Big Box: Go to Options > Video and set the Video Playback Engine to Windows Media Player
For LaunchBox: Go to Tools > Options > General > Video Playback and do the same

Note that these settings are separate. Changing the setting in one does not affect the other. Always re-evaluate the issue after changing this setting before submitting a report.

Beta 1:

New Premium Feature: Added a new Screensavers feature to Big Box, letting users discover games with fully themeable views and interact directly with the games shown
Improvement: Platform detail views in both LaunchBox and Big Box now display numerical counts for games that are beaten, completed, or mastered, based on Game Progress Tracking stats
Fixed: RetroAchievements were not loading in Game Details when using a List View, resulting in no achievement data being shown
Fixed: Removed the outdated Change Badge Images option from the Badge menu in LaunchBox, which no longer applied after the media manager overhaul in version 13.21
Fixed: Legacy Big Box themes using Old Default theme code had a stray completed graphic that would always show, regardless of user data
Fixed: Selecting a game too quickly in Big Box could prevent LEDBlinky from displaying the correct lighting behavior
Fixed: A specific crash related to the MAME High Score system is now caught with error handling, and logging has been added to help identify the root cause

The screensaver feature is a bit of a work in progress, but the core principles are there. The view itself is designed to be an alternative to Attract Mode. It cycles through games, giving you another avenue to discover games in your library. There's an action button that allows you to quickly navigate to the Game Details page of the game you are looking at. The default theme currently comes with 3 completed views, and 1 placeholder. By release, all 4 views should be filled in for the default theme. Each theme will have the ability to have up to 4 distinct screensaver views, and theme devs have the full breadth of game bindings at their disposal when building out these views. More detailed theming info for theme devs will be coming soon.

Beta 2:

New Feature: LaunchBox now opens with a brand new Welcome Wizard that helps users quickly set up their games, preferences, and media so they can jump straight into the fun
New Feature: A new automation rule for Game Progress Tracking now allows games to be marked as paused if they have not been played in a user-defined number of days
New Feature: A new Media Settings section under Tools > Options > Media > Automatic Imports lets users customize which media files are downloaded during automated imports
Improvement: When arranging by Game Progress, sorting now follows your user-defined order for progress values and headers
Improvement: Platform icons have been visually refreshed for Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Game Boy Advance, and PICO-8 to better represent each system
Improvement: Screensaver 4 for the Default view is now complete and available for testing
Improvement: The “Attract Mode Master Volume” option in Big Box is now called “Idle Master Volume” and now controls both Screensaver and Attract Mode audio.
Improvement: Marquee screens and LEDBlinky integration should now function properly with Screensavers
Fixes: Games hidden by the user will no longer appear in the Game Discovery Center
Fixes: The Beat em Up clear logo now displays correctly under all conditions
Fixes: Resetting play time and play count now also resets these values for all additional apps attached to a game
Fixes: Hybrid views now provide proper audio feedback when navigating with a controller or keyboard
Fixes: Some custom LaunchBox themes were silently failing to poll the selected game, which could prevent item highlighting from working correctly
Fixes: In some custom LaunchBox themes, multiple carousel controls in the Game Details panel were not always updating as expected

Beta 3:

New Premium Feature: LaunchBox and Big Box now include a brand new FFMPEG-based video playback option, delivering more reliable performance, with the old VLC engine now phased out

July 11, 2025

I believe their server was restarted and things look like they are back up again on their side.

July 4, 2025

5 hours ago, drtechnolust said:

The new Aetherial theme still is non responsive when I select it as a main theme. I'm not sure if anyone else is experiencing this behavior. I have reinstalled it multiple times and just recently updated to the stable build with the same result.

Sounds like you may be using the deprecated VLC video playback engine in Big Box instead of WMP. You can change that in Big Box options, or if you can't make it in there, change it in your LaunchBox\Data\BigBoxSettings.xml file. It should be:

<VideoPlaybackEngine>Windows Media Player</VideoPlaybackEngine>

June 26, 2025

Beta 6 is out with the following:

Improvement: Game Progress value is now included in the Cloud Game Statistic Syncing service (Tools > Cloud > Enable Game Statistic Syncing)
Improvement: A new Game Progress button has been added to the default LaunchBox theme for quickly changing a game's progress manually
Improvement: Auto-import now supports non-emulated platforms (such as Windows)
Improvement: Pause screen's Achievement window now displays the new RetroAchievement types
Improvement: Game Progress changes made during gameplay are now better reflected when returning to Big Box
Fixed: Automated Progress is now correctly triggered by more import methods, including startup and manual import scans
Fixed: Disabling automatic game progress now correctly takes effect in all scenarios
Fixed: Xbox storefront logout now properly respects your choice to log out
Fixed: Big Box's Hybrid View 3 alphanumeric index now scrolls in the correct direction
Fixed: Big Box now better respects your selected badge pack

June 26, 2025

On 6/20/2025 at 11:59 PM, TheHuffsta said:

I have been using 1.16 on my Galaxy Tab S8+ for a year or so with no issues. I haven't played it in a while and went to launch it last week and it will no longer launch any of my ROMs. Retroarch will launch them no problem but LaunchBox won't. The only thing that has changed is the tablet updated to Android 15. Ive emailed support but havent heard back...

Sorry to hear. It should work just fine. If you would like to troubleshoot this, we can do it here.

What you'll want to do is follow the path of 1 ROM file through LaunchBox to make sure everything seems good. You'd be answering the following questions:

Does the game in LaunchBox point to a ROM that exists
The game exists in a platform, what Emulator is set up for that platform to launch and what core (there are multiple versions of RetroArch, so you'll want to make sure you are pointing to the one that you have installed on your device.

That's basically it. In order to do this, first you'll pick a ROM file, find out where it exists on your drive, then in LaunchBox, edit that game's metadata and make sure it's pointing to that same file. Then open up the platform's Emulator settings and make sure it's pointing to the correct Emulator. You can use the validate button to make sure it exists. Since it's RetroArch, you'll also want to make sure that the core you are telling RetroArch to use is actually downloaded inside of RetroArch, or alternatively, you can switch to a core that you know for sure is in use.

If you need extra help, take screenshots along the way, and post them here.

June 20, 2025

19 hours ago, zenanomaly said:

Hate to exclusively be the RetroAchievements guy, but in the latest beta on my end it nothing at all is hashing. Doubled-checked successful login (even logged out and back in with no issue). Achievements still load inside the emulator for applicable games, but LB's hasher just isn't catching anything.

Don't know if it's a related hasher issue, but noticed in the last full scan for the previous beta, the total number of games in the generated RA playlist was significantly lower than prior scans (by at least 300). Newly added RA sets haven't been catching for a while (going back a week or two?). Going down that same playlist now and after sampling multiple games on every platform, nothing is pulling up achievements. Afraid a new scan will just wipe out the list entirely.

Last RAweb update was a week ago, and there were no platform name changes.

I ran a few tests internally but I'm not seeing any issues with Achievements. Might be worth opening up a separate troubleshooting thread to see if anyone else in the community is seeing what you are seeing.

4 minutes ago, bbweiners said:

Hi All,

The following binding no longer works using the new PlatformHybrid view -

<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Platform.Name}" Foreground="White" />

Is there something else that can be used for displaying the playlist name?

Also, the new PlatformHybrid view is awesome!!!

Try Filter.Name instead of Platform.Name.

There are many differences with the hybrid view. I'll try and whip up an article before release over on our WIP documents, but for now there's the 4 views available you can look through for help (try the Aetherial theme for more hints).

If you haven't seen the new strategy guide area, you can find it here: https://feedback.launchbox.gg/help . It has a dump of the Big Box documentation file, and I'll be continuing to update it with future additions.

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Game Deletion Workflow Overhaul

Bug Fixes

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