faeran

Unfortunately, the startup background is not themeable. It's possible in the future we could allow it to be themeable, although if one were to use a theme that has broken code, you'd essentially stop yourself from opening the app. So, there's some risk there that would have to be mitigated. Unfortunately both the original sized image, and the thumb images are used throughout LaunchBox for Android. The thumb is used inside of lists and other places where performance is key. The normal sized images are used in places where quality is preferred and where it doesn't impact performance of the app. If you were to remove either of those folders you'd probably end up with blank spots throughout the app in places you didn't realize. We have talked internally about changing this up to be more device specific, while moving sizing off to our server and having the user download an optimized size based on their device. When that happens, it's possible we could move to a situation where images would not have to be cached for performance reasons. We are probably a ways off from that reality though.

Do you have a Windows N version of Windows? Either way, see what happens if you follow this link to install the Media Feature Pack: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/media-feature-pack-for-windows-n-8622b390-4ce6-43c9-9b42-549e5328e407

If it doesn't show again, it means that it believes that you were able to install k-lite during the first time. WMP (Legacy) is baked into Windows (even the latest versions of Windows 11), but there are some computers where it comes disabled. The installer simply runs the command to enable it. It's always possible that Windows thinks you have it enabled, but at some point WMP was corrupted in some way. That would explain why videos would show up black when you attempt to play them in LaunchBox. To check this, open your start menu and type in "Windows features" and hit enter. In the window that opens, look for Media Features > Windows Media Player. If it's disabled, check it and hit OK. If it's enabled, disable it, hit OK, then after it does its thing, open the window again and enable it. You may want to restart your computer after you do all of this. That should rule out WMP as being the thing causing your issue.

Thanks. Not an issue with the app, but it does look like our scheduled task to build new copies of the local metadata file turned itself off last week. Seems like this game was added after that happened so it never made its way to user's computers. This should be fixed now and you should be able to run a Tools > Downloads > Force Update Games Database Metadata... , then it should appear in your search.

Are you able to try the update again, when you get to the k-lite install screen, click on this invisible button to open the log file location, then try and install k-lite. If it fails again, open the log file and paste it here. It's not about the controller itself, but it's about your controller mappings, so as long as you have a mapping for "Select", then it will appear in Big Box. Having keyboard mappings sounds like a good idea in general, so I wouldn't rule that out for a future update. That theme will need to be updated to utilize these new bindings.

The way it works has nothing to do to whether a user uses a specific piece of hardware, but has to do with what your settings are under your controller mappings section of Big Box. For example, looks like you have Button 1 mapped to Select, and you have the Xbox controller input graphics pack (which is the default) selected, and Button 1 on an Xbox controller is the A button, so it shows you the A button image from the pack. Let's say you are using an arcade cabinet, and your arcade cabinet buttons are named, you can create your own pack that look like your buttons, then when you select it in LaunchBox/Big Box, they would automatically show you the correct buttons in the default theme there, which dynamically change based on your Big Box controller mappings.

It's specific to if you run LaunchBox from a network drive. It was a number of different issues, but the main one that the user could control had to do if you are on Computer A, running LaunchBox from Computer/NAS B. If you were to try and import games from a mapped network drive that's mapped on Computer A, the file path was showing in a way that wouldn't work. We believe this was due to a security change in .NET 9 to how it handles UNC paths. This specific issue wouldn't have been a problem if you don't map network drives and instead just use the straight UNC path.

It's the images on the bottom right side of the default theme. They will now adhere to whatever pack a user chooses. It goes hand-in-hand with the media pack feature that was introduced in beta 1. Under Tools > Manage > LaunchBox Themes & Media, there's some different packs in there that you can download and apply to Big Box themes that utilize the dynamic controller graphics code. Once the packs are downloaded, you could also set which pack you want to use inside of Big Box under Options > Images > Controller Input Image Type

Beta 2 is out with the following changes: New Feature: The Big Box Default theme now dynamically displays Controller Input graphics based on the currently selected media pack Improvement: MAME Gambling games are now marked as Casino games allowing you to easily filter them out during imports Improvement: Star Rating functionality has been updated so that each star rating grouping uses the raw value instead of massaged values. For example 3.8 star games now appear in the 3 star grouping instead of 4 star as they did previously Improvement: The Star Rating Arrange By functionality now sorts games by star rating within each grouping Improvement: Enhanced installer/updater to install K-Lite Codec Pack Basic, streamline runtime and DirectX checks, and enable Windows Media Player only when needed Fixed: Several improvements regarding file paths when launching from or pointing to a network location Fixed: Several stability improvements for Big Box to stop the application from freezing after running for extended periods Fixed: Bezels for vertical MAME games being applied with a horizontal layout file The main things to make sure, for people willing to test, is that Big Box is running fine after the update for you, video playback is working, and navigating around Big Box poses no issues. For users that like to have Attract Mode going for days at a time, this would be a good time to make sure beta 2 is running well for you guys. For users that were in a position where you were running LaunchBox directly off of a network drive location, we'll love to hear feedback from you as well as to how this version handles for you. We've spent some time on any remaining "out of memory" issues that some users have seen, but have been unable to reproduce this on any of our machines after our initial fix. We'll keep working on it when we can but without actually being able to see it happen makes it hard to try and find a fix for it. If this is happening to your, turn on logging under Tools > Options > General > Debugging, then when it happens look under the folder LaunchBox\Logs, and either post them here, or send me a PM if you are uncomfortable with posting them here.

Would love to hear what is causing you to take the action to scrub WMP from your computer. But right now the plan is to use WPF's default media element which utilizes WMP behind the scenes, as through extensive testing we've realized it's the most stable option at the moment. K-lite will be an optional pack that we highly recommend if a user finds themselves in a situation where certain videos are not playing back properly due to unsupported codecs. The new installer will provide a choice to users to install k-lite codec pack, which we highly recommend to do so users don't have to think about whether they'll have a video playback problem in the future.

hmm, not that we've heard of. Send me a PM and we can investigate together.

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Beta 4 is out now with the following changes: Scoped Storage framework support has been integrated into all custom emulators and several known emulators, including DraStic, Redream, DroidArcadia. This enables enhanced folder and file permission settings, addressing requirements for certain emulators The following platforms have been added: BBC Microcomputer System, Emerson Arcadia 2001, Atari Jaguar CD, Epoch Super Vassette Vision, Fujitsu FM Towns Marty, Interton VC 4000, Mega Duck, Nokia N-Gage, Oric Atmos, Philips Videopac+, PICO-8, ScummVM, Sega Pico, Sony Playstation Vita, Nintendo 64DD, Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox The following Emulators have been added: Azahar, Citron, DroidArcadia,Infinity P8 Player The following Cores have been added to RetroArch: Dirk Simple Fixed the following Emulators: DuckStation, DraStic Touchscreen controls are now fully functional on the "Browse for New Games Database Image" page There was some major rework done to facilitate the scoped storage change, but the benefits there will be felt in this update and future updates. Scoped storage support will help us launch into emulators that don't specifically have frontend support built into them, but are targeting Android 11+ OS. The way we've implemented this is that Scoped Storage is not required for any emulator that has frontend support (like DraStic and Redream). For the ones that don't, or for the ones that may benefit from it, you may get a one-time prompt during a game launch to provide access to your game folder. Once set, you shouldn't have to set it again. You can also optionally set it under Emulator Settings for all custom emulators, and for a select few emulators. The main thing to test here is to make sure you can still launch your games for all your platforms. We want to make sure we didn't accidentally do something we shouldn't have. Thanks for helping with these betas!

I don't currently know of a systemic issue with this in the beta, and usually when a user finds themselves in a situation where the app won't open, a restart usually solves it for good. If anyone else is running into this in the beta, let us know before we finish this cycle. The next beta will be going out shortly. We don't really have any code that would specifically address an issue like this, but would be curious to know if there's any difference. We have one more beta after this one before the official release that will address issues we are seeing in our crash report system. It's possible that one will catch whatever you are running into here.

See if this works for you: Drop the dirk simple core into your LaunchBox\Emulators\RetroArch\Cores Then in LaunchBox, enter into the Emulator Settings menu for the platform/game you are wanting to adjust, and choose the Default Core option, at the bottom you'll see an option to "Add Downloaded Core..." You should find the Dirk Simple core in the list, which you can choose. We'll add this core as an option for the next beta as it looks like it finally made its way into the official build bot.

Wait for next beta (which should be out next week), and you'll need to let us know if it helps for you.

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All hand coded, so no CTC files unfortunately, but if you are looking to do something specific in the code, PM me and I can help you.

This will actually be working in the next update. The issues with this emulator are stated in a few places around this forum, so I won't go too much into detail here. The gist is that it doesn't have to do with whether an emulator is working, but whether a frontend has the ability to send a file path to it that the emulator can read (which is harder said than done on Android). There are two solutions to this, one that an emulator dev can implement, the other that we can implement (via scoped storage). The emulator dev solution is more user friendly, while scoped storage is less user friendly. In saying that, we are in the process of implementing scored storage, as well as going through a giant list of emulators, including Duckstation, and making sure they can launch via one of the two ways. This will be a culmination of a few months of blurry eyed work here, so yeah, we are looking into this 😉

Thanks, we'll look into what we can do about this. I believe it's simply a database change we'll need to make, but something might surprise me. Sounds like we may need a dedicated thread for this type of this in the future.

Thanks. We've managed to recreate the screenshot issue and it will be fixed in the second beta. Would love to hear if Big Box is still freezing in this beta. The goal is to weed out different issues that people have lumped into one issue, and then move forward in beta 2. Potentially the same issue. The issue is the different levels of sleep that Windows machines can go into. Do you know how long your computer was asleep for before you woke it up and ran into this issue. Do you also know what settings you have for which type of sleep your computer goes into. Also, are you running this on a laptop or desktop? Thanks. Was able to recreate this issue and we'll have it fixed in beta 2. A limitation to those sets. If a set doesn't have a logo created for it, it will default back to the default set. Hey, if someone wants to create versions of those categories, I can add them to the sets! We'll look into if this is possible for WMP to support. I really hope so. Not seeing this on any of our test builds. Which option are you changing, or does it matter? If you restart your computer, is it still happening? Is anyone else seeing this happen or not seeing this happen in their builds? Just for a quick update to the Big Box freezing issue. Beta 1 did remove the option to switch to VLC. The goal was to see if this would actually solve the freezing issue for users. So far, from our reports here and other places it seems like it may have removed the freezing for the majority of users that were facing that issue, which does confirm our suspicion. Step 2 is what we are going to do about WMP playing nicer in the situations you guys are bringing up here. We already are in the process of working towards this goal, and beta 2 will have some of those solutions in there for you guys to test. At this point, we burned about 2 weeks on looking at VLC and trying to figure out what the issue may be with it. It's not an issue with what we are doing with VLC, and it's not an issue with VLC itself. Our findings show that the issue seems to be lying in the third party dependency that we use, which wraps up VLC into something usable in WPF applications. The wrapper hasn't been updated in forever, and we'd be beholden to the author to either provide an update to it, or we'd need to start from scratch and find another solution that can wrap VLC up into something usable in a WPF application. We haven't given up, but the time it would take (and risks involved) would be very significant, especially for what we have investigated so far, and if we are looking to build something up from scratch, then it might be a good time to dig deeper and find a more robust solution than we've ever had.

This reads that you have a broken plugin. Possibly the Archive Cache Manager. Remove it from your plugins folder and let us know if that solves it for you.

It's always included there, you just didn't notice before 😉