greengeek

ETA Prime put out a video a few days ago, $40 PrePaid Android Phone For Emulation - Better than The BittBoy & LDK Game at It got me really excited about the possibility to make a cheap handheld game system. I ended up going out and buying the same phone. I found there are a handful of front ends available for android, but only one seemed to be comparable to an android equivalent of bigbox which was the retrox that ETA reviewed here: Again this looked like a great option, until reading through the notes and finding that the developer of that particular software decided to drop support of lifetime licenses shortly after the video came out. Tons of angry comments in that video along with the devs forums. ETA Prime also mentioned after the changes that he wasn't sure if that product was any longer a viable solution for him with the cost changes. It would be great to have a launchbox / bigbox android version as a better alternative. A lot of users like myself are very happy to pay a larger amount up front for a lifetime license and not have to pay a yearly and an always online connection for it to work. I chose not to use retrox because of that. I am looking at Arc browser as a one time payment commercial option to have a decent front end until something comes along that is better, but it is definitely no Bigbox!

Cool, thanks!

Sorry if this has been asked before. Is there anyway to run reports on which games are missing metadata and media? Like a report on which games in ones collection are missing screenshots, or videos, or clear logos, etc? Thanks!

@Jason Carr Does LaunchBox have any type of logic similar to this?

I would like to organize my media in launchbox. I notice we can do this to a certain degree in the Edit Platforms. Here we can change the folder path. It would be nice if launchbox could allow us to use variables or file and folder masks for the file names and folder names where it saves the information to. Similar to how mediamonkey or launchbox and some other media managers work. For example, I might want to be able to save my videos all in the same folder for my arcade games. Then I could choose in the folder path something like: Arcade\<title> - video<ext> This would put all the videos in the arcade platform in the Arcade folder with the name of the game appended with " - video" followed by the game extension. So if I was browsing my files, i would see something like this in my arcade folder: sf2 - video.mp4 I would then choose to put the box front in the same folder. For that, I could do something like: Arcade\<title> - BoxFront<ext> Once again going into the Arcade form I would see sf2 - BoxFront.png Most of these type of programs have multiple masks, so if we had something like <platform>, <title>, <media>,<ext> etc, one could get really creative on how they save their files allowing for the greatest compatibility with other systems and emulators. For example, I could then do <platform>\<title>\<title> - <media><ext> and I would get a lovely arcade\sf2\sf2 - video.mp4 which would allow me to group all my media by platform then game title and keep it all together. Does launchbox have any type of filtering or masks like this or is this something might be added if it doesnt? NOTE: One of the reasons I am asking, is I am currently designing a media manager that works along with launchbox to help people quickly see which media items they are missing and easily add them into launchbox. Similar to how Media Browser, Elk, and Tiny Media Manager work for movies and tv shows for Kodi. I am trying to stream line the output of the manager so the file/folder structure loads the quickest and is the easiest to handle within itself and within launchbox as well as the meta files. I will post some screenshots soon.

Thanks for the updates. I think I will try it with windows 7. Maybe with any luck @Jason Carr will have migrated over to .net core and we can run it on alternate operating systems before windows 7 goes eol.

Dang, that means one cant use any current LTSB versions of Win10, or even Win 10 enterprise with differed upgrades turned on. Which means increase performance of LB but unfortunately decreased performance of Windows with all the extra junk that gets installed with the feature upgrades. I guess on a related note, how does LB/BB perform on Windows 7 or 8.1 compared to the latest version of 10? Are there any downsides on using 7 or 8.1? I am really wanting to give LB its own hardware and OS and try to minimize anything that is not related to it or entertainment in general.

Yep only way to upgrade a Windows 10 LTSB is to do a full Windows install from media, ie LTSB 2015 to LTSB 2016. They dont allow for traditional upgrades. I am curious though if LB itself has any hard coded requirements for the very latest version of .net, or if that is only hard coded into the installer. Are there libraries it calls in 4.7 that are not in 4.6? Is there a command line argument that lets me bypass the additional requirements check? Would installing it on my main box, and then just copy over the installed folder to the arcade box work?

Can LaunchBox be installed without having all the latest Windows 10 feature upgrades? I am running Windows 10 and it is fully up to date on security updates. It does not have any of the feature updates though. So none of the creators upgrades. Without adding the feature upgrades to get an updated windows version number, I can only install up to .net 4.6.1. When I try to install the latest version of launchbox, it tries to install .net 4.7. Since that version is not compatible with my system, it fails and the only option it gives me is to cancel the installation of launchbox. Can LaunchBox run with .net 4.6.1 or can LaunchBox run using the Windows 10 2015 LTSB version of the OS? Is there a way to by pass the of the 4.7 .net or to at least allow one to continue installation if it fails? I really dont want to have to install this on a version of the OS that installs all the extra 3rd party apps from MS if I don't have to as this is a dedicated machine only for LaunchBox. Thanks.

Ok, thanks. Would be a great feature, specially for using BigBox as a front end for all media. Would really compliment Music Box Alpha to have a quick launch for it as well within BigBox for those that have both products. Currently I have Kodi acting as my front end launcher that has the menu items for BigBox, Music Box Alpha, and Plex (which is way over kill but looks really nice). I would love to be able to remove it and just use the other 3 apps in a similar manner having BigBox be both my game launcher and media programs launcher.

Ran into one question while trying to create the Platform Categories menu. Can one create a top level menu item, say Plex, that can be clicked on and starts up Plex instantly? Or can it only function menu header, where one creates a menu item called Plex, that one then clicks on, that then goes to another screen to click on the program icon Plex to launch the program?

Thank you! That did it. Now I just need to customize and go over the above posted tutorial.

Thank you @Lordmonkus & @neil9000 Is there a trick though or setting to get the extra top level menu? He has a top menu for Arcade, Consoles, and Computers, then he has sub menus for the corresponding Platforms then games. I am using Cityhunter as well with the premium version, but I only get 2 levels of menus instead of 3. All my platforms show up, and under them the corresponding games. I don't have a top menu that groups them into Arcade, Consoles, and Computers. Thanks

How would one go about using Big Box as a front end, similar to how Jason has it in his dev video? Could Plex, kodi, chrome, firefox, etc, be put along side the Consoles, Computers, and Arcade icons he has there? Is there a tutorial or instructions anywhere? Also on a side note, does anyone know which videos and themes he is using in that demo? I really like how it is setup. Thanks!