Dan Patrick
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Posts posted by Dan Patrick
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I just read the list of changes to this release. I have wanted that automatic rom import for years. Awesome!
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On 11/22/2023 at 12:04 PM, faeran said:
Hi Everyone,
Beta 2 is out with the start of a new feature inside of Big Box called the Game Discovery Center. This feature is still a work in progress, but can be accessed in its current form from the System Menu. The idea of this feature is to be a dynamically changing list of lists that provides users new ways to explore their own library of games. The view is fully themeable, but we recommend that theme developers hold off for now as the XAML code contains a lot of placeholders.
The next beta should contain new types of lists while making the lists more random and dynamic (instead of the static ones we have in place for now).
Here's the complete changelog for beta 2:
- New Feature: Big Box has a new view called Game Discovery Center, which allows you to discover your games in new ways. Access it through the system menu, or optionally make it your startup view
- Improvement: Added a View Additional Documents menu option to Game Details in Big Box
- Improvement: LaunchBox will now scroll the selected item into view when a side panel is hidden/unhidden
- Fixed: Epic Game Store re-authentication time-out period has been increased for slower internet connections
- Fixed: Issues with the Theme-specific Background Music (introduced in beta 1)
Excited to see the game discovery center. Sounds fun!
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Jason that stream was a real success and a pleasure to watch. I've had so much fun with LaunchBox. I loved hearing about all the weird stuff I never knew about. There is nothing else out there like LB with the constant updates and it's own database etc. What an accomplishment. The updates keep getting better and better and we greatly appreciate those many long hours the team puts in. Can't wait to see where it goes from here. Also big Shoutout to @y2guru for the theme creator as it's been one of the main reasons I've gotten way more into contributing.
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Woah! Two positions. So good to hear the company is doing well. Best of luck to those applying and for the team picking new members.
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Hey Jason, I submitted these two that seem stuck in limbo. No rush of course, but you might look into it. Thanks
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If people can pay 75 for BigBox and 60 for emumovies (oof) Then surely they can throw you a few bucks. Or maybe not. That's already a lot. I feel like 10-20 bucks isn't bad but a free trial would be needed to let people try it. Donationware feels smoother on the communities end but you may end up getting less funds overall. But probably more themes will get created. It's a tough one. Either way your work is professional stuff that has a lot of value.
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Wow it's finally here. I just downloaded and tested a simple wheel item template. The performance for those in wall views are way better now! Thanks so much
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Thanks for addressing the wall views Dave. 2.5 is a huge accomplishment! 🥳
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Hey y2guru,
I'm making a theme. It's going well but I have a question. How do I add a simple border around selected images in a wall view as seen in this image? This is my theme currently and the cyan rectangle is just a dummy rectangle behind the wheel. I'm trying to achieve this border while still maintaining a near constant 60fps. I've tried making the border with a wheel item template but my fps in BigBox drops to what seems like 40ps when scrolling. Would it be possible to add a border option in the wheel settings for the selected game? If not, how/where can I add some code to add a simple border without using a wheel template?
If it matters, my rig is a gtx1070, i7-6700k(2016) and 32gb ram and Launchbox is on an SSD
Thanks!
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1 hour ago, y2guru said:
One question I had with that was, how come when I render the images it assigns the images random number names?
Render Custom Images? it saves the file using the internal Launchbox DBID, trust me its not random.
Ok, that's reassuring. I wanted to make sure that those numbers would easily be recognized between different users or machines but clearly that's a non-issue.
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Been using it for a few days now y2guru. It is hugely improved. I actually dropped off of the CTC even before 2.3 because the platform logos became a giant project. Using it now it now is a breeze compared to the old 1.09 I messed with a couple years ago lol.
The wheel item template images that load on the fly really hurt performance even if it's just a single box art image in there. I did some back and forth testing in a wall view and I could easily feel the dropped frames. Rendering out the wheel template images was a good idea to include. One question I had with that was, how come when I render the images it assigns the images random number names? Shouldn't they keep the game name? Also just curious, is there a way to show the fps of the bigbox interface? I know things like msi afterburner can't show the fps of xaml. I'd like to measure the impact if any as I change things in the theme creator.
The ability to edit the wheels live is just a night and day improvement. There're so many little things I can tell that you thought of. Its great! Performance is really good overall. I'm having fun with it and have been looking forward to making a theme with 2.5 for a long time. Thanks again!
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Photoreal Controller Vectors by Pineapple Graphics
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This is a collection of incredible vector drawings graciously donated by Pineapple Graphics (Aka Snowway22)
https://www.instagram.com/pineapple.graphics/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/PineappleGraphicsShp
https://www.reddit.com/user/Snowway22/
These drawings take Snowway 10 to 15 hours each! I found this artist on Reddit accidentally and was instantly blown away by the quality of his work. Having a lot of experience in Adobe Illustrator myself, I was shocked to find that these were vector and not 3D models. His artwork showcases very clever techniques to sell the 3D effects including stunning imitations of various materials. Snowway said, “I ended up really enjoying the process and just kept going. I work as a graphic designer so I can make stuff like this in between ‘real’ work stuff. Everything for my job is rush rush. So, it’s really nice to relax, listen to some music, take my time and get lost in the detail. “
I told Snowway about LaunchBox and how this kind of artwork would be a huge boon for the frontend community. He was willing to contribute and even asked for suggestions on more controllers to draw. I gave him a list and some references to help. He said that he’d get to most of them, but he doesn't want to be rushed. I said take your time!
Snowway later said, “If you could in any way shout out or plug my Instagram however or to whoever… that would be amazing. I, of course, don’t make any money from that but it’s been a fun hobby and the validation is a good motivator.” Guys, show your appreciation to this artist and enjoy his awesome work!
Most of the “favorite” platforms are represented here. Feel free to suggest things here but just know that these drawings take a lot of time. While I’ve made carefully chosen suggestions based on what systems I think are most important and that people actually play, Snowway is the one crafting the art. I will continue to post more as this project grows!
The current list of included platforms is as follows:
Arcade (multiple versions)
Atari 2600 (also paddle controllers)
Atari Lynx
Atari Jaguar
Mattel Intellivision
Microsoft Xbox
Microsoft Xbox 360
Microsoft Xbox One
Microsoft Xbox Series (Also Elite Controller)
NEC TurboGrafx-16 / CD (also Turbo Express)
Nintendo 3DS
Nintendo 64 / DD
Nintendo DS
Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo Famicom
Nintendo Game Boy
Nintendo Game Boy Advance (Original and SP)
Nintendo Game Boy Color (5 colors!)
Nintendo Switch (Many variants)
Nintendo Virtual Boy
Nintendo Wii
Nintendo Wii U
Nintendo GameCube
Nintendo Super Famicom
Panasonic 3DO
SNK Neo Geo AES
SNK Neo Geo CD
SNK Neo Geo MVS
SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color
Sega Dreamcast (US and PAL)
Sega Game Gear
Sega Genesis / 32X / CD (3 & 6 button) (also Sega Nomad)
Sega Master System
Sega Saturn (Original & 3D Controller) (Japan versions also)
Sony PS Vita
Sony PSP
Sony PlayStation (Original, Dual Analog and DualShock)
Sony PlayStation 2
Sony PlayStation 3 (also boomerang prototype)
Sony PlayStation 4
Sony PlayStation 5
Super Nintendo Entertainment System (US and PAL)
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Submitter
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Submitted11/12/2022
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As a Christian myself and recently a father I definitely know where Jason is coming from. These kinds of issues are always a bit of a grey area. I'd say most of it will be common sense as to what to delete. All the erotic visual novels have sexualized characters and stuff even besides the parts with full nudity. I'd say use your best judgement to find the less egregious characters or costumes or whatever. Again, I'd say it'll be a common sense decision. A tv commercial for a waterpark shows people in bikinis but they'd never zoom in on a boob. Obvious statements aside, thanks guys for your hard work on the DB!
LonestarK I agree with your conclusion that the Game Over cover would be considered partial nudity.
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As the title says, VLC loops video with a black screen in between each loop. A short black flicker basically. I want short videos to be able to loop seamlessly. VLC is the newest version in LB as is LB itself. I haven't touched the config. If I open VLC in the LB folder it's stored in (by itself not in BigBox), the same video doesn't show the black screen in between each loop. This is very minor but makes looping short 10 second videos unusable. I was testing this in CriticalZoneV2 - BlueBox with my own video renamed to "default". I tried windows media player in BigBox and it plays it smoothly, but VLC has the short black screen flicker before each loop (the video itself is smooth once it starts though). Is this the case for anyone else?
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I gotcha, I know Steam OS is linux. Agreed that would be awesome and there'd be some repeat customers. Anything's possible, I thought the android port would never happen. Safe to say there is no plan for a Linux build though.
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I don't want to dig up a finished thread here, but I just want to say my unnecessary 2 cents. The steam deck is obviously a hit but it can run windows really well from what I hear, especially now compared to launch.
Here ETA uses LB on windows 10 (before windows 11 even worked) back in march and it runs great. The Steam Deck Is The New King Of Hand-Held Emulation! Amazingly Fast EMU Performance - YouTube
I've seen on several LB Youtube videos where a comment says "Is LB coming to steam deck?". The team knows it's wanted but once they get those few sales from steam deck users then is it worth the time to the small team. It currently would take way longer than it's worth apparently. If there were 100 million steam decks out there then that'd probably be different. Think about how many windows and android users there are. Those 2 platforms have more potential for money. Plus, they don't have to do anything that they don't want to do so enough said, I guess.
I do truly think LB is far and away the best front end. Yes, there's free front ends that still are good programs. For example, I think Pegasus is snappy and looks nice although seemingly hard to set up. Most other desktop front ends look pretty dated to me. But LB has the theme creator which is a game changer and other front ends even use LBs data base to scrape because it's huge. I've been using LB since like 2012 I think, and the speed and customization is so much better since then. What other front end could have that kind of track record? (not sponsored lol)
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Thanks for the themes you've made Juketsu. Pegasus is pretty and snappy I will say. BigBox used to be super slow. These days it's pretty snappy though imo. We're all just having fun playing games and that's what matters here.
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I have noticed that initial hiccup you mentioned in the first loaded view in the past. I'm glad you care about fixing the little things like that. Thanks y2
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Couple things come to mind. Cores in RA just means emulators. For instance, theres an SNES9X core in RA which is the same emulator you mentioned earlier.
1) Can Retroarch produce sound on the TV when used by itself (not with Launchbox)
2) Try a few different cores to see if they all have no sound. Try for instance "Gambette" core for Game Boy and then Try "Quick NES" core for NES and see if those cores give you sound. You download new cores with Online Updater>Core Downloader from the main menu
3) In the Audio menu of RA there's a "mute" option. Obviously make sure that's not turned on.
Launchbox shouldn't be the issue. If there's an issue it's with Retroarch. LB just launches the emulator.
In regards to SNES9X it seems it's last update was 2006 Snes9X.COM: News. I'm sure it works but it's not the best option today for snes. I'd use BSNES (previously called Higan)
If nothing here works there's always YouTube.
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First off iirishguyi, I would still use Retroarch unless you just simply can't stand it. Having the same hot keys (save state, rewind etc) across all those emulators is amazing. It's caused me a lot less headache than figuring out 20 separate programs. Myself and many others use RA on TV's regularly. So it's probably something simple. If you have sound on SNES 9X but don't have sound in RA then I would do a total reinstall of RA with all previous settings removed. Before you worry about BigBox just run the emulator itself and see. Also try different RetroArch Cores. Maybe it's just that core. Also, I'm sure you know this, but many emulators don't allow changing the audio source while the game is running so make sure you don't do that. It's surely something simple. Hopefully you get it
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I've been waiting for built in per game settings for so long! Thanks. So glad PCSX2 is still improving! The new UI for the emulator looks miles better.
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Love to hear that you guys are growing. The future's looking bright for LB!
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On 1/25/2022 at 10:52 AM, Jimmy Gee said:
Isn't the whole point of "portable" that you don't have to make sure "all the dependencies" are installed on the computer?
This bugs me for some time now. I would like to install a LaunchBox based system that is complete and utterly "portable". Meaning it just works on ANY say "Windows 10". Is this even possible?
Short answer is...technically no. That's not really LBs fault though. It's the few emulators that need those of decencies. I imagine one could figure out what emulators could work without needing a single depency and have only those emulators/roms on there. Having 2 little things to run first time to get thousands of games to work isn't too bad though and there's not much else that could be done to improve that.
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v2 Platform Logos Professionally Redrawn + Official Versions, New BigBox Defaults
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This is a giant collection of platform logos drawn digitally by hand. This took well over 500 hours of work over 15 months. While console logos exist all over the internet, this collection aims to bring them to a higher level of polish and accuracy. The default logos in BigBox will now come from this set. It was extremely tedious to ensure a very high level of accuracy across thousands of files.
So Many Versions!
Each included platform has multiple logo variants. Basically, many consoles had different logos for different regions and time periods. There are also smaller variations such as with or without a trademark (tm). There are black and white versions for each of these. With all of these it can add up to over 50 small variations for one platform! This would be impossible to navigate so I’ve split them up into smaller categories. For each format (Normal, Large and SVG) there are Light and Dark folders. For either of those there are: “Color”, “Black & White” and “Just White” (or Just Black respectively). If you wanted to use a minimalistic dark theme, you could use the “Just White” versions for a contemporary look. If you wanted logos for a standard dark theme then you could use “Light - Color”.
Official Versions Included
Besides the many hand drawn logos, I’ve also curated multiple logos that are the OFFICIAL renderings. Meaning, vector art ripped from official sources such as websites and pdf manuals. Finding official source art in the wild is pretty uncommon and required many hours of digging. Most of the source art was not in color so most of these colors are still generated by me. Some of the platforms with official logos include:
SpoilerAndroid modern logo (from Android website)
Apple IOS (apple.com current site and I think 2014 in the Wayback Machine if I remember right)
Atari Jaguar (from an official game box template) (extremely rare to see)
Capcom Logo with official color (various arcade manuals)
Casio Logo (from Casio Website)
Cave Logo (from Cave website)
Eighting Logo ( EIGHTING Co., Ltd. (8ing.co.jp) )
Fujitsu logo (from Fujitsu website)
Microsoft Xbox (one color icon), Game Pass, Series Logos (from Xbox website)
NEC logo (from Nec website)
NES/Famicom (from NES/Famicom Classic website)
Nes, Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom (from Nes, Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom Classic websites)
Nintendo Gameboy (bold version), Gameboy advance, Nintendo Gamecube (one color version), Nintendo DS/DSi, (New) Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii U (from vector manuals)
Nintendo Switch (from Nintendo website)
Nintendo Various eShop logo’s (respective vector manuals for each system)
Phillips Logo (from Philips website)
Playdate ( https://play.date/ )
Sega Dreamcast logo and PAL blue color and blue of Sega logo (from official Sega press disc from 1999)
Sega Logo (from Sega Japanese Website)
Sony PS modern icon (from PlayStation website)
Sony PS1, 2, 3, 4, 5, VR, Vita, PSP (from vector manual)
Sony PlayStation 1 colored symbol (from PS1 vector service manual)
Sony PlayStation 3 Network (Partially official, words official and symbol was official but seemingly compressed so I cleaned it up a bit)
Sony Pocketstation (from vector manual) (Same as Wikipedia)
Texas Instruments Logo (from TI website)
Various SNK and modern Neo Geo Logos (from SNK 40th anniversary Japanese site)
Sadly, some of these wasted a lot of my time because I drew them and later found the official versions.
The Drawing Process:
My process for drawing a logo required many steps. I first did research on each logo. Then I would dig deep for the best references I could find. One rule I had was to never trust any image. I would compare multiple sources and make sure the source I chose was not fan made or some modern re-release that changed the logo. If a better source was found that showed differences from what I drew I would redraw it again (it sucked). I redrew the NEO GEO logo about 5 times before I was finally happy with it. Generally, source art would include box art images, adverts, brochures, and manual scans. Archive.org and Manualslib.com were a huge help for a lot of these scans. I would then use the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator and go to town! Sometimes if my source was really amazing, I could finish the whole logo in an hour and a half or so. Other times it would take much, much longer.
Getting the correct color was always challenging and required intelligent guesswork. For example, with the classic Konami logo, I brought in 20 images. Gathered the color from all of those and found the average color for the red and orange. Then I’d tweak it slightly more, usually to improve saturation.
When it came to fonts, I would always search for it but rarely found exact matches. If the font was found I’d obviously use it, but If not I’d have to hand draw it. However, a couple of the smaller taglines/subtitles do use a very close match. Hand drawing those fonts would do more harm than good. While drawing a logo I took great care to make things as visually pleasing as possible. Every little section of each letter of each logo was considered. Curves were carefully made to be smooth with as few anchor points as possible. Letters align with each other and angled letters all share the same angle. Hand drawing fonts is very tricky.
Many logos were substantially harder than I’d anticipated. The Sega Saturn US logo for instance, drove me insane. It took over 40 hours to draw (not to mention wasted time from failed attempts months earlier). I used Adobe Illustrator to mimic every highlight, tiny color shift, shading and glow. When I was working on this logo, I’d come home from my graphic design day job and then spend 4 hours on it, which would only finish part of one letter. As I worked, I’d have a couple copies of the logo in the same file and a couple times it bottomed out 32GB of ram!
Unique Versions
This collection brings a few unique logos to the table. I’m just going to list a few. I created multiple new arcade and pinball logos, although previous arcade logos are here too. I highly polished the Daphne logo as it needed some love. I drew a detailed version of the TeknoParrot logo which seems to be uncommon in high resolution. I also created Sega system 16 and 32 arcade logos based on the exact font used in the Sega 32X and Sega CD (Copperplate Gothic Std 31AB stretched horizontally to 130%). The Capcom logos have stylized alternate versions based on a gradated version Capcom rarely uses. There are several other unique logos I could list here.
White Outline - Default Versions
Since these logos are replacing the default logos in BigBox, Faeran smartly requested that I create versions with white outlines around the outside. That way logos could be seen against any background color. I only made the outline versions for the options I gave to Faeran. I don’t plan on making outline versions for the rest of the variations. That said, the versions I did make are included here. The outline versions don’t look quite as nice in my opinion but they serve a very functional and important purpose. Solid black logos for some systems, like the PSP, would not be visible in certain themes without a white outline. However, theme creators or those wanting to add logos to a single theme, I would still recommend the non-outline versions for the cleanest look.
Conclusion
I included every platform and version that I wanted to. There are some more obscure ones I could draw but I didn’t see the need to seeing as how I've created 22,000 files as is. If I knew how much work this was going to take I would've never gotten myself into this (lol). I hope that you guys get a lot of enjoyment out of these. I’m glad I made them and it feels really good to finally be able to upload them. I made these originally for LaunchBox but they can be used elsewhere. I will always appreciate credit if you use them. Needless to say, I don’t own the rights to the logos and these are NEVER to be sold in any way.
Thanks
Special thanks to Juketstu and Faeran for their valuable feedback.
Also, huge thanks again to Faeran and the LaunchBox team for using these as the new defaults for BigBox!
If you like what you see here, please also check out my LaunchBox / BigBox logo collection & Pineapple Graphics' Photoreal Controller Vectors:
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Submitter
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Submitted03/20/2022
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Category
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Screenshots PNG vs JPG, some facts need to be checked
in Contributions
Posted · Edited by Dan Patrick
Incredibly late to open a dead thread here...if you use photoshop and are trying to upscale your screenshots to a higher resolution but want to retain the original pixels. You need to export with the setting nearest neighbor (aka integer scaling) and enter a round percentage number of it scaling like 500% etc. The reason to add some increase in resolution in the first place is that Launchbox makes very low resolution images look blurry. That smoothing is useful for low res box art and fan art but not for 160x144 game boy screen shots where you want to retain all the sharp pixels. Also a PSA to anyone who reads this, dont take screenshots at higher internal resolutions in the emulator for 3d games. Preserve how it was intended to look.