usuallee76

Thanks for the tips. When I get a chance I'll try changing the EmuMovies password. Especially in light of the same exact thing happening on my other Shield, a Pro. So it may be a EM authentication issue, not a Shield thing or a LB thing. Albeit, the pw works in a browser. But it's worth a try. If it doesn't work, I'll activate the logs and see if that can yield some relevant info. Cheers

Hi all, was setting up LB on Android, (full version) - mostly so far so good - games imported - the couple games I've tried so far launch, Retro Achievement integration all good - however EmuMovies is an issue, currently. When I input my creds, the password only shows ***** - 5 digits - even though the password is longer. Testing the Emumovies credentials, nothing happens until LB finally crashes. When I test the creds with no creds, or just the username, it politely says it can't log in - expected behavior. User name with password, though, crashes LB. Back to the Shield's app page. Admittedly I did put the wrong creds initially (still no reason to crash), but then double checked and it still crashes with the correct creds. The EM account is current/paid. Anyone else run into this or know how to fix? I've got the 2019 'tube" Shield, Android 9.02. I rebooted the Shield, same result. Thank in advance EDIT: I tried to access a log file to provide it here, but there doesn't seem to be one. There is a folder called Logs, which is empty as far as I can tell.

I just want to say as a brief counterpoint to some of the recent posts here, as someone who has played with a variety of similar-ish media projects like Plex, Emby, Roon, etc. - the Launchbox devs are UNBELIEVABLY responsive to the community by comparison. If you want to experience what true "sweeping under the rug" feels like, I recommend Plex. I bought their lifetime pass 3-4 years ago now, due to their promise of a working DVR for over-the-air TV. Still waiting for it to actually be fully functional all these years later. Myself and many others have repeatedly requested assistance which is typically ignored or paid lip service to at best. Roon ripped out many features that people used with absolutely no warning, and only restored them after howls of protest from paying customers. So Launchbox's responsiveness to the community, open-mindedness, and total lack of the arrogant "we know best" attitude displayed by some of these other outfits is very refreshing to me. Not to mention the insanely fast development. I'm sure any performance issues not related to a user's hardware or the read speed of their storage media will be ironed out in due time. LB in its Android development infancy is already "top dawg" as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure where these supposedly better Android front ends are, I thought I'd tried them all. Anyway, I realize this is off topic - sorry. Feel free to remove if desired. Keep up the good work, cheers!

Hi, I hope this is relevant, just wanted to suggest that if there are problems with sets and different regions, etc. I've been using the Hearto 1G1R collections to begin setting up my Shields, and have had good results so far: ((REMOVED LINK TO ROMS)) These sets prioritize the USA region, then World > Europe > Japan, etc. In other words, it will only provide a Japanese rom if there are no USA, World, or European releases of the game. It has basically done the work for you that Vader suggests. Also, to those adding entire sets of thousands of games and experiencing scrolling issues, as Jason says these Shields and other Android devices have a fraction of the CPU and GPU processing power of a gaming PC. Thus, it might be better, with less headaches, to take a more curated approach to setups with low powered hardware. I think curated is better anyway, having added every single game for every platform on other setups. Too many games, too much junk I'll never play. For the Shield setups I've been adding, depending on the system, anywhere from just a dozen or two key games to around 175 for the SNES, so far. Basing it on games I like/have heard of, plus those mentioned in various top 100, top 50, or hidden gems-type lists available online from Racketboy, Retro Sanctuary, Ranker, AtariAge forum, and elsewhere. I get a well rounded collection of legit games. For cartridge-based consoles I've set up a folder for each system with an archive of all games in it, and a folder called Added to LB where the imported games are. I just read the lists and drag/drop games from the master to the Added to LB folder. That way, I can have just the "hits" plus select hidden gems for each platform, eliminating a lot of garbage, keeping the total number of games manageable, but can easily sprinkle in some new games for each platform from the master archive later on if desired. Not saying everyone has to do it this way, just a suggestion. But curation is where it's at, for consoles anyway. For Arcade I understand it's harder to do that as you need non-merged and also the abbreviated file names make it hard to know what a game actually is. I've never been able to find a list of Final Burn roms with the real game name. If anyone know of one please let me know. Anyway, cheers! And thanks to Jason and staff for all the hard work in rapidly developing LB for Android.

Thanks for the info!

Hi, just want to say, I've been playing around setting up both my Shields and it's pretty seamless in its integration with Retroarch. It's very user friendly and I like the detailed yet concise explanations for things in the UI. It's already the best front end for Android! At least that I've encountered. Didn't hesitate to get a premium license. Anyway, was just wondering, is there a publicly available roadmap as far as the general trends for future development? I did some web searching to no avail. I suppose I'm curious specifically about gameplay vids/emumovies integration. And additional views/themes/skins. I realize these things take time. No rush! Thank you, keep up the good work. Cheers!

Thank you Retro808. Yeah I can submit a request, was just sort of wondering if anyone else thought it was a good idea first. Cheers

Hi just thought I'd bump this to see if anyone knows how to do this, or would be interested, to where we could request it. Again, I just want favorited games in Big Box to appear at the front of the list, but also to remain in their alphabetized positions (so there'd be two entries of favorites games within the platform). Anyone?

Awesome!! What great news. Thanks for all you do. This is especially great news since I still can't get a replacement GPU for my living room gaming PC at anything like a reasonable price...but I do have a 2019 Shield Pro. I set up Retroarch with the best front end I could find, I forget the name... it's just not LB so I never used it.... Thanks for resuming Android development. Can't wait to re-launch LB in my living room with the Shield! Cheers

One last question if you all don't mind - I don't actually need the "software list" MAME romset versions, right? Unless I intend to use MAME to emulate consoles that MESS used to do like sega genesis, PS1, etc. - which I don't. Are there any non-arcade systems where there's no good option other than MAME? I haven't really come across any. Colecovision?

Thank you! This is useful. I don't see a way to actually access these lists from the MAME site. However, replacing the version portion of the address above with what other version you want to see (i.e. replace 0228 with 0225, etc) seems to work. It's still hard to sift through and sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of new games added that you actually might want to play, but it's very useful and better info than I had.

Thank you. I also posed a similar question on reddit/MAME and someone said MAME ran faster and someone else indicated there are some graphical enhancement filters. Very valid reasons for upgrading even if there few if any killer "unicorn" games that have been added at this stage which is what I've been mainly fixated on in terms of bothering to update, until now.

Yahtzee!! This looks like just the thing. I'll have a little fun playing with this over the weekend. I knew of CLRMAMEPro but I thought that with my MAME set so far out of date that the only real option was to start from scratch and DL a new set. Thanks! As you say it will be more than 700MB but a whole new MAME set with CMDs would be more like 700 *GB*. So I can probably save a lot of data.

Hello all, I have MAME v 0.182 I set up about 4 years ago. I'm looking for compelling reasons to upgrade, if any. If I'm honest, I don't really care about computer chess, or handheld games from the 80's, or obscure curios and the like. But if there were legit new arcade games that have been newly dumped or made to work/work better in the past 4 years, that may be tempting. Especially if those games are shoot 'em ups, racing games, or platformers. But anything of note, really. I'd also like to get into Pinball emulation eventually if there has been any advances there. It's surprisingly hard to find a straightforward list of newly emulated MAME games, etc. There used to be youtube vids every month, From I think SimplyRussian? But those ended years ago. Can anyone point me in the direction of such info, or simply shout out some key arcade titles that have been rendered playable in the past 4 years? Reason I'm asking now is my lovely ISP will be imposing a lovely new "feature" called a data cap in March. Since a new MAME set is obviously a hefty download, I'd want to DL a set before then, if there enough compelling reasons to do so. Thanks for any information! Cheers

Hi thanks for the reply. Yes, there is that option in the Bigbox options under Views I believe, "show favorites at the beginning" or thereabouts. If toggled off, the games appear in their normal alphabetical position. But then you lose the list of favorites at the front. I'd like to have both. Since they're my favorite games, I wouldn't mind the redundancy, and in fact would welcome it. Cheers

Hello all, happy 2021! I have a question/request that I couldn't find discussed anywhere else just now. Right now it seems that when you favorite a game, it is taken out of its normal alphabetical spot in the platform listing. That behavior is not particularly convenient, when you are looking for a specific game by name, and can't find it. You are expected to remember that you've favorited a game and look for it there, which for me is a 50/50 proposition at best. As all of us know, the favorited games appear at the beginning of the alphabet before the letter A. I confess, sometimes I get tripped up where I know a game should be here and it isn't and I'm thinking WTF, did I like erase it or something? Then I finally remember to check favorites. I realize you can just perform a search but "typing" with a controller can be laborious, and generally I just prefer to go in and find a specific game alphabetically. I'm just wondering if there is a feature somewhere, or perhaps I can request it, where your favorited games appear at the front per usual - but also stay in their normal spot alphabetically? Any thoughts/comments from the group? Thanks

I think the stumbling block might be portable apps. LB is portable of course but emulators for the most part have to be installed. I may be wrong, or not totally right, about that. If your chosen emulator lists a portable version on their site, then Bob's yer uncle. Though, I feel like it would be just asking for driver issues, file path issues, etc. Maybe I'm being a pessimist. But it's probably just as easy, with potentially fewer hassles, to simply install, say Retroarch, on every PC. You could certainly stick some games on a portable drive for a portable game solution, maybe have a folder with BIOS files on that drive also. Maybe even another folder with the emulator installers ready to install on a new PC at a moment's notice. But I just don't know about the emulators themselves being portable. What I do is, my main living room gaming PC has big hard drives and that has my comprehensive collection. Of course I have stuff backed up on external drives too. For my laptop and and upstairs PC, I have a little more of a lean 'n mean curated situation, just the favorites plus maybe a select few "new to me" titles which look interesting for each platform.

Anyone else drooling at the possibilities of these new AMD Zen 3 chips dropping Nov. 5? I may need a hardware refresh if some of these benchmarks can be believed. Supposedly the "Ryzen Gap" will be a thing of the past. My gaming PC that I built 4 years ago with an i5 6600k gently OC'd to 4.25 Ghz, Zotac 1060 6 GB, 16 GB RAM is still very capable today, but has never been quite enough to run RCPS3 satisfactorily. And Wii games in Dolphin, and even certain Gamecube games like F Zero GX and one of the Star Wars games can stutter occasionally, and show signs of strain. Definitely interested in seeing some reporters and youtubers get their hands on the 5600x and test it out for general gaming and of course, emulation. AMD has some new graphics cards coming out as well. Here's an article with some interesting tidbits, take it with a grain of salt. But I guess we'll know a lot more soon enough. https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-3-ryzen-5-5600x-the-fastest-single-threaded-cpu-in-passmark/

I'd suggest just setting up the process before bed and let it do its thing overnight

At the time, I was under the impression the issue was a Windows thing as opposed to a Plex thing but I could be wrong about that. Good to know there's a workaround now with Kodi. Though, with Kodi, I tried and tried, but the UI just doesn't make intuitive sense to me. Things are never located where it seems like they should be. And, like different functions in different places sometimes have the same name, etc. It's definitely not as well thought out and intuitive as Launchbox and Big Box. If Jason ever wanted to tackle a server/client media solution, as a Plex competitor...Plex now seems more preoccupied with their lame ad supported public domain movie channels. Emby isn't that great. So there's definitely an opening for a skilled and intrepid person or team to fill the void. Jason could probably bang out something almost as good as Plex or Emby within a couple of days. I would crowdfund the shit out of that. Anyway, for as much as I resented having to get the Shield at the time, I now love it. It can passthrough pretty much any audio or video format known. Great UI, reliable, backlit remote. Basically endgame as far as a Plex client player. You can even game on it, though of course no more LB app. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks guys for clarifying my offhand and potentially misleading comment. HDR has always worked fine in Windows as far the the GUI, etc. I was referring specifically to playing HDR video files via Plex on a Windows 10 PC. That never worked right. The picture would look odd. It'd often have a weird blue tint. Something about HDR files, the color gamut or whatever, was not handled correctly. As I recall, when I researched the issue, this was a known problem and a lot of people were grousing about Microsoft's unwillingness or inability to address the issue. But that's been a year or more, now. Sounds like some strides have been made especially with Kodi, as mentioned. At the time, I didn't want to mess with a stand alone player, 3rd party renderers, etc. Just wanted HDR movies to work, in Plex, on my PC. No joy. I could use the Plex app on my LG TV, video is totally fine there, but unfortunately then Atmos and True HD lossless audio can't be passed to the receiver because my TV lacks eARC. So my media PC then has to transcode the audio on the fly, which results in not only much poorer audio quality, but frequent stuttering as well. So finally it seemed I had no choice other than to bite the bullet and get an Nvidia Shield, which passes through HDR, Dolby Vision as well as Dolby True HD and Atmos perfectly. Haven't looked back since. The Shield is much, much better suited to the task. It's an excellent device. Now, happily, my gaming PC is solely a gaming PC. Anyway, yes totally off topic. But I find random forum threads all the time which provide helpful info or at least a clue for whatever super specific or obscure issue I'm trying to find a solution for. So hopefully this could be useful for someone. Cheers

Congrats on building your first gaming PC. I did that myself as a non-young person, 4 years ago now. It was a bit of a turning point for me, in a modest sort of way. I was going to build an HTPC, was all excited about it. Then sort of randomly discovered Launchbox. And all of a sudden my HTPC build plan had to morph into a gaming PC build! Which was just as well really, since Windows 10 still can't deal with HDR correctly, making it useless for 4k movies. Anyway. Just know that if someone gives you a hard time, they've likely had the time to get that good at a game by being unemployed and living in their parent's basement. Sometimes stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, lol. Online gaming is overrated, I think, anyway. Most games, unless they're the mmorpg variety, have a one player campaign/story/career mode, which, call me antisocial, but that's what I prefer to play.

No, I've only played it recently. It plays great. Just delivers the goods as a space shooter. If it comes across as generic, it's largely due to hindsight of the many shmups that came after it, I think. Anyway it's not really about that game per se, it was only an example to try and start a conversation, if anyone else had that "huh" kind of moment when they saw a community rating that didn't seem to line up with their opinion of the game. But, this topic seems to have largely landed with a thud. Anyhoo...

Anyone? Any thoughts, comments, whatsoever? This is perhaps the least chatty discussion forum I've ever been a part of ?

Thanks for sharing. You'd have to drag the file into the LB videos folder manually, and the file sizes might get silly depending on the codec and its config, if it's full screen resolution. Nice alternative, though the OBS integration with LB works so well and seems to take up very little resources, so I don't know how much incentive there is to do anything else tbh.