usuallee76

Awesome job! Baja: Edge of Control HD is a HIGHLY underrated game, in my opinion.

Hi all! I kind of dip in and out of retro gaming - right now I'm definitely all in! I finally integrated/configured newer features like the pause screens and retro achievements - LB keeps getting better and better. But it still lacks one thing that I think would be so great: a list of related/similar games to appear within a game's "page" so to speak. For example, if you have Blazing Lazers up on Big Box, perhaps down towards the bottom there could be a section called "Related Games" wherein you'd have Super Star Soldier, Raiden, Image Fight, etc. listed with maybe some Genesis/SNES shoot em ups, a few arcade shooters from the era perhaps, etc. Maybe other highly rated TG-16 games of other genres. Maybe other games from the same year. There are many possibilities. You could even have multiple rows of game listings with different criteria. It'd be so great! You have many fields of metadata already in LB, to scrape from. That's literally the one feature I've been dying for all along. Plex has the very same feature, for movies. It's awesome. I've tried to beat the drum for this in the past. Crickets. Even created a Bit Bucket ticket about a year ago: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/4863/similar-related-recommended-games I feel like this would be a popular feature request if I could somehow communicate effectively what I mean. Perhaps this is the time! It doesn't even seem like (from a non-programmer point of view, admittedly) it'd be very hard to implement. All of the info needed to create such lists is already in LB. Please consider voting on the Bitbucket ticket, responding with agreement here, or heck, tell me I'm crazy! But I think it'd be awesome, and to me it's verging on being a glaring omission now, given how incredibly feature-rich LB is at this point, thanks to Jason's tireless efforts. Cheers, everyone!

Hi all, I was just wondering if anyone had seen a community rating for a game and been surprised at it being so high, or so low. What made me think of it is I saw the community rating of 3.4 for Image Fight (arcade version) And I pulled a Captain Renault, I was shocked, shocked I say! Because that game is super dope! I freaking love that game. Possibly more even than that other iconic Irem shooter, if I'm honest. And Image Fight seems to be acknowledged as a classic shoot 'em up. So it was a bit of a head scratcher, when you have some truly crap games rated higher than 3.4. Anyone else had that type of reaction to a game's community rating?

I'm not aware of any such comprehensive list. You may have to do it on a game by game basis, research what platforms a given game has appeared on and which is considered to be the best version, etc. That's how I've been doing it. Personally, I'm not opposed to having select games on multiple platforms, as I want the platform's better games to be represented, even if they were released on other platforms in possibly superior versions. Good luck in your endeavor.

Appreciate all the hard work you do, Jason! I'm kinda glad the focus returns to Windows, tbh. Personally, I've never been able to get a truly satisfactory retro gaming experience on my phone. Bought one of those controllers that grip the phone but experienced horrible input lag no matter what I did. I got a RG-350, last spring, it's great. It's all the handheld gaming I need, for now. Very primitive "front end" on that thing, though. Maybe "LB Lite", for such devices? ? I know it's a long shot, to say the least. But a Plex-like server/client model for such devices is definitely enticing, to be able to sync games from your main LB library. I'm thinking of building an arcade cab and was thinking about what using an Nvidia Shield for that would look like. Given the state of affairs, I'll probably just look to build a mini-atx Windows build or possibly repurpose a laptop. Anyway, I've gotten back into retro gaming in a big way, after favoring other interests with my limited free time the past year or two. Been implementing/tweaking newer features like the pause screens, retro achievements integration, MAME high scores...it is amazing the progress that has been made on Launchbox! Now if I can just drum up some support for my personal pet feature, "related games" i.e. if you have R-type open in BB, there will be a related games section that has links to Image Fight, maybe other ports of R-type, other late 80's shmups like my hidden gem favorite, Omega Fighter, etc. Even if it's more or less a random list, it'd give ideas as to what to play. Metadata's already there to pull from, to generate a list. I've tried to to get people interested before without success...but anyway. I digress. Nice continued work on this great, great application. Is there a LB Patreon or something? I bought a forever license nearly five years ago, starting to feel like a freeloader. Maybe I'll just purchase another license for my cab build. Never thought back then that I'd have so much fun, or that new features would be added to LB/BB at such a furious pace! Anyway, thanks again for making a thing that provides so much enjoyment and is so feature-rich while being straightforward to use and stable. Cheers!

I concur with what others such as Zombeaver and Lord Monkus have said. I used to struggle with Retroarch, I always had controllers going rogue or other issues. Possibly user error. But now it's really good and I've been switching over more systems to RA. The biggest benefits to me are not having to mess with controller setups for each individual emulator; reducing of lag through the run-ahead feature; ability to integrate bezels/overlays; and it integrates pretty well with LB also. For an example of the benefits of RA for a given system, Atari 2600 with standalone Stella had so much input lag it wasn't enjoyable to play. With Retroarch, I've just recently finally gotten this legendary system to pretty much perfection with no lag, no issues with the games at all & and a sweet Atari bezel. I don't have paddles yet, but I'd love to get Circus Atari working at some point since I played that as a kid. Also, I recently managed to get the X68000 going perfectly in RA, something I'd tried in the past with stand alone emulators without much luck (shout out to Zombeaver I believe it was, for the .bat file solution for multi-disc games) For later systems, obviously the likes of Dolphin and PCSX2 are either not as good or nonexistent in RA. I use standalone MAME, as I recall it uses an older version of MAME and the romset version must match the MAME version. For those new to emulation, definitely try Retroarch first other than the aforementioned exceptions, as stated by others above. And then venture into the standalone ems if necessary. We're really lucky, emulation keeps getting better and better. Thanks to all those doing this work!

Just wanted to extend a hearty THANK YOU! Just discovered this tool and it's bloody brilliant

Would you be willing to elaborate? I had what sounds like a similar issue (see "Weird issue - double mapped button in BB" in this forum)

Thanks for your interest but I'm not sure where you got Steam from based on what I said above. Not trying to be a jerk or an ingrate, maybe you know something I don't (this is quite probable, in fact) & I appreciate the input. But while I do have Steam, it's been a month or two since I've fired it up, and the controller was working fine in BB as of Saturday. Also, I don't use the same controller setup for Steam. Did get everything working, albeit I don't know precisely how. The button was still acting like it was mapped as both Select and Back in BB. I even remapped Select to another button and the issue migrated to that button, it was still doing select, then back on one button press. Was kinda pulling my hair out, so I rolled LB back to the 10.7 stable version as well as started deleting every remotely relevant thing I could find in Device Manager so it could reinstall. Should've been a little more systematic so I'd know what the cause was. But while I enjoy tinkering and troubleshooting to a point, I lost patience with spending a second evening on this when all I wanted to do was play a little Ratchet & Klank. So I just started rapidly doing whatever I could think of. It worked. Not totally sure LB is to blame though, as suddenly my controller couldn't be mapped correctly in PCSX2 either. Might have been a weird Windows issue. Got that fixed as well though finally. But now suddenly PCSX2 can't load saved games at all, even though the files are still there in the memcard folder, so I still have that to try and deal with ? It's been a cascading series of failures, when everything was working absolutely perfectly on Saturday. Has anybody else experienced that where everything seems great then all of a sudden it's issue after issue seemingly out of thin air? It's been quite frustrating. But I keep telling myself "troubleshooting is part of the fun", "be grateful for what you have", etc. Cheers & thanks for the input

Hey guys, hoping there might be some suggestions for a strange issue in BB I encountered last night. All of a sudden, the A button (or X button, as I'm using a PS 4 controller with Input mapper) is acting like it's double mapped. Meaning, it was mapped with A as back and the B is select, Nintendo-style. But then I tried to remap the button to be A as select and B as back (Xbox style). While I did this, the A button was briefly mapped as both select and back, in BB. I of course changed this. But it seems to have retained both the back AND select functions. I.e., it will go into let's say PS2 games, but then back right out. It's acting like it's doing Select, then immediately doing the Back on one button press. The settings look like everything is fine. I checked the LB settings config file, and everything looks fine there too. I tried remapping numerous times in various ways. That one button just won't cooperate. Button works as it's supposed to, in game. I tried my 8Bitdo N30 controller (sans input mapper) and it does not have this issue. At that point I gave up and went to bed. Would appreciate any suggestions. I think when I get home I'll delete the controller in Windows, then plug it back in and hopefully it will reinstall, and try to incorporate Input Mapper. Anything else I should try? Thanks in advance!

Never mind. Naturally, I figured it out 5 seconds after posting this. IF anyone else gets tripped up and stumbles onto this post looking for a solution: simply click the blank entry at the bottom of the list to add it manually.

Hey guys, I just got some Sharp X68000 games working in Retroarch. Really cool. I wasn't expecting that part to be easier than incorporating the setup into Launchbox. When editing the Retroarch emulator, I can't add the X68000 as an associated platform, because that platform simply isn't listed. Am I missing something here? What preliminary step must I do so the platform will show up to be able to be associated with Retroarch? There are other platforms listed that I've never touched, like the Zx Spectrum, so I'm not sure why the X68000 is omitted. Also, I added Retroarch individually to a X68000 game as the emulator. That seems to work, but when you do "launch with...", Retroarch doesn't appear as an option even though I just added it. Thanks in advance

Yeah so let's say you have BB open and you are in, let's say, Donpachi. Somewhere on there, like towards the bottom like the Plex example above, It could say "More from Cave" and then list DoDonPachi, Espgaluda, Deathsmiles, etc. Perhaps there could also be "More Shoot 'em Ups" and list some random shooters, or maybe some of the highest rated by community rating. Maybe there could also be a "Other Games From 1996" section. So it could just use the metadata that already exists to generate lists. Wouldn't that be so very cool? Honestly, even if it was just a completely randomly generated list of games, it at least gives you some games to look at and consider playing. Maybe there could be a random sampling of unplayed games. "Most played by you in 2018". "Most played by the community in 2018", "most played last month", "Take a second look" - games you rated poorly after only a single play. Et Cetera. The possibilities are truly endless! Again, I'm a bit surprised at the minimal interest. Seems like (to me anyway) it would be a super awesome feature, and possibly not even that hard for a true wizard like Jason to hash out given that data that already exists in LB would be more than sufficient to generate these types of lists.

Just as an example, Plex has a similar feature, and it's great:

Kinda surprised at the lack of any response at all. No one would want a list of similar/related games for the game they're in, as described above? Really?? Does this already exist somewhere and I just missed it?

Hey guys, thought I'd post this in an attempt to drum up a bit of support for a feature I just requested. Below is what I wrote in the bitbucket proposal. I think it's a pretty dope idea. Please vote if you agree! In Big Box, wouldn't it be great if there was a section called Related Games (or Similar Games, or Recommended Games, etc.)? Plex has this for movies, and it is excellent. For example, if you have F-Zero GX up, The could be a section Related Games that might list XG3, Wipeout for the PS2, F-Zero for the Snes and N64, Redout for PC, other 'Cube racing exclusives like Mario Kart Double Dash & Wave Race: Blue Storm, maybe a Need for Speed game, etc. Or if you have Ikaruga up, it could list Chaos Field, Battle Garegga, and other shmups. If it's a game that is in a playlist you've made, such as favorites, there could be another row of games called "More from Favorites". Even if it was more or less a randomly selected bunch of games, it gives you something to look at and some ideas of what to play next. This would be so great! It is similar to what is proposed in tickets #2713 and #3178 but those are old and seem dead. Thanks!

Terrific, thank you so much. Great advice about backing up the data folder. I plan to heed it. Thanks again sir!

Awesome thank you Neil. So if I understand correctly, use the wizard to point at the new set, use the options to only download missing media/metadata as opposed to downloading it all. Then I can delete the old set?

Hi guys, I've got mame 0.182 working perfectly. Finally thinking of upgrading. However, I'm not sure the best approach to avoid unforeseen chaos and I'd like to retain play counts, ratings, etc. I would just download the complete 0.204 set instead of using clrmamepro, at this point. Would it be as simple as removing the existing 0.182 folders, then placing the new folders in the same location, and then running the mame importer to keep the existing games and just add in the new ones? And of course, installing the new version of mame & editing the emulator in LB accordingly? Thanks! Just looking for input as far as the most painless and seemless way to implement a brand new Mame set. If this topic has been covered, my apologies, I looked but didn't see this exact question.

Hi all, I've been enjoying launchbox and Big Box for quite some time, and I pretty much know how to use it. But - I'm trying to get Retroarch1.7.3 to launch from LB, and it just won't do anything at all. RA works totally fine on its own. First of all, is there a way to specify the core of your choice? If so I sure as heck can't find it. All I have is a drop down list and the SNES core for example, that's listed isn't even available from the online updater in RA...if there's a way to change it, I can't find it aaaanywhere. Not in manage emulators. Not in Manage platforms. Not editing an individual game. I tried also to use the command line parematers, i.e. -L "cores\snes9x_libretro.dll" ...but nothing. Even when I have the rightcore from the LB drop down list installed in RA, still nothing happens when trying to launch a game. I had thought of doing something drastic like uninstalling LB and/or LB or even deleting the whole platform in LB and starting over,but I'd rather not obviously. I'd like to switch over to RA from the discrete emulators I've been using, to simplify things as well as take advantage of the new latency feature and maybe retro achievements. But I am well and truly, comprehensively STUMPED here guys. I say that and it's probably something totally obvious that I've overlooked. Any clue whatsoever would be hugely appreciated, thanks!

Dude, good ideas, thanks! Yeah I have 87 PC games so it's not too many, and at least some already have some or most of the media. That Firefox youtube downloader works well! And there are some online video editing/trimming apps but the one I used took a 4 minute video of 55 MB and turned it into a 30 second video of 73 MB! I already have Handbrake so that works as well and you can compress the file size to where you're comfortable, I got a 30 second clip of Blazing Star down to under 10 MB and it looked fine, I'll play around with it more to get the file size smaller. It'll be worth it to do some manual work, it's not that bad really. And yeah I've done the image search thing as well. Thanks for the suggestions!

That's really weird and must be frustrating. My first thought was it must be a potato PC but from your specs obviously that's not the case and it's very specific to LB only you said. And not a controller issue, it happens on keyboard as well and these input devices both work fine otherwise I'm assuming. I dunno...your question got my gears turning but I can't think of anything. Well I can think of things but they are kind of stupid shots in the dark, like changing LB to another hard drive and trying it? Does restarting the PC do anything? This happens literally every single time? Maybe it's lagging due to trying to cache images, maybe adjust the caching settings? Input device drivers need to be updated (or rolled back)? I know I use wireless keyboard, mouse and controller and sometimes the range is an issue, it'll be sporadic if you're more than a few feet away and miss button/key presses. One last thing, sometimes input devices can interfere with each other, maybe unplug unused input devices? For example, one time I was pulling my hair out until I realized my usb Wiimote sensor was messing up my xbox 360 controller and other input devices, so I have to keep it unplugged when not playing Wii games. Again, shots in the dark here. Good luck.That would be annoying. If I think of anything else I'll come back.

Hello all, happy 2018! In the new year I've resolved to improve my PC game situation in LB, as it's quite a mess. I have games with duplicate entries, missing metadata, very few have gameplay vids, and I realize it will probably come down to a lot of manual labor. If I do spruce up certain games manually, I'll be looking to upload some of that to the games DB as it is very spotty for PC games currently. Anyway, just generally looking for some tips, if anyone has suggestions on making the best presentation for modern PC games, in particular. In Big Box, my PC section leaves a lot to be desired. One specific thing is the fact that very few PC games have gameplay vids. Obviously Emumovies concentrates on older games as the name implies so it's very hit and miss, are there any alternate sources for scraping gameplay vids, like from Steam for example? (realizing that may not be permitted). Did some research online but didn't find too much. How do you guys get the best metadata and gameplay vids, and overall presentation, within LB/BB for modern PC games in your setup?

Awesome! Version 8.0, exciting stuff! Thanks for all your hard work. When will we have another poll for the most requested new features? My picks are never the most popular, but they are a lot of fun anyway, to see what others in the community are interested in the most, and actually sometimes it's a case of not knowing I wanted that until I saw it :-)

Thanks for working on that. I haven't tried it out yet as I'll have to switch all my emulators, haven't been using RA in LB.