PanteraZombie

Very cool plugin! One thing I would like to see though is when exporting as html... is if it also exported the clear logos to it's own containing folder with the html generated file with them pointing to relative paths. That way it could be portable and I could send it to someone or use it on a different pc other than only where my LaunchBox build resides.

Thank you for these explanations... these give me a better idea on how to go about updating next time.

Really appreciate the explanation! That all makes sense. I was just curious to see how people are keeping their MAME sets in LaunchBox up-to-date without losing custom changes made... wasn't sure if there was an easier route than how I did it. I have put a request feature in for a MAME update wizard, something similar to the import wizard. It would be great if LaunchBox knows what current version of MAME you have, and you can tell it what version you're updating to... while going through a set of prompts telling what you want to do with the previous metadata/media etc. The reason I asked if I should switch over to non-merged sets, due to them being all stand-alone self-contained roms, is if I could just download the update rom sets and add-to/overwrite my original full set and just keep updating using the update rom sets going forward. What I was wondering is if doing that, I could just use the "Scan for added arcade roms" tool... and afterwards "Scan for removed arcade roms". That way it would maintain my current games with all of their configs and media, but only scan in new metadata/media for the new additions. What reason did you decide to use the split rom set? Am I right in thinking the non-merged set would be easier for updating... or would split be better? I've never went the route to grab the update rom sets yet, so I'm not even sure which sets those would update.

Is there currently a recommended method to update your MAME collection within LaunchBox that will save your custom configs and media etc? And is there a certain recommended MAME set (merged/non-merged/split) that makes future updates easier? I have been using merged sets... but would I be correct in saying that using non-merged would make it easier for updates so I could just overwrite or add updated rom sets? With my last MAME update, I just completely removed (backed up) MAME and used LaunchBox's MAME importer for a fresh install... but was pretty tedious to copy back over any custom configs and media, and I lost my favorites...

I also tried the auto import for Playstation Vita, and it didn't add the 2 games I had ready to go... I did add the Vita3K emulator and enable auto rom imports beforehand. What did happen instead, was over 400+ new "games" were added because the auto import feature was enabled. None of them were actual games, they were primarily game files from platforms like Openbor and MUGEN... so I had to revert back to a previous backup of LaunchBox. Next I tried a clean install of LaunchBox, and it did add the 2 Vita games that way. I guess a temporary work-around would be to just have a spare LaunchBox build for this reason, and manually move the xml data files to my main build. But until the auto rom import can be enabled on a per-platform basis, I can't use this feature yet. For PS3, I just used the feature in RPCS3 to create shortcuts of the games in the emulator library, as stand-alone shortcuts in LaunchBox.

This is something that could come with the more "online social" stuff mentioned on the poll. The "friends" part of the limited group would need to be implemented before you can make it only show those friends. I personally want to see how I stack up against the community on different games, not just a few friends. That being said, I would like to see like an icon next to a name or a highlight over the name that I would be friends with on the MAME High Score boards. An extra tab only showing friends would also work well.

There's definitely some interesting things on the poll this year, just wanted to add some input and a question or two... Screensaver for BigBox: At first thought I didn't really care for this idea, but this would actually be a nice option to use in place of Attract Mode. I would probably more prefer BigBox to stay on a highlighted game so I'm not somewhere completely different if I leave for a little while. As far as what it will show, I would like it to either loop the selected video preview of that particular game... or the option to cycle through all videos associated with that game (snap, theme, trailer, recording). Not really interested in an image slide show, but that option would be nice to have too. Online social/syncing features: I've been wanting more of this for a while, the MAME High Score feature was a great start to this. I'm not real sure what all is being considered for the "more online" capabilities, or what's even realistic... but I would imagine some sort of real time friends list using our current LaunchBox names/accounts that can access MAME High Scores (of course), direct or group messaging, and online play/invite system (possibly integrating a 3rd party like FightCade) etc. This might even be something that should be built as "LaunchBox Online" app that can be used on a phone or tablet in conjunction while playing on your preferred device. It would be less messy and more convenient to use both at the same time. Not to mention you can get push notifications. 3D Box Models in BigBox: This could also be interesting to include 3D renders of arcade cabinets! Whether it's a 3D arcade cabinet or console game box, selecting to view full screen and having the ability to make it rotate would be really cool! Integration of the Bezel Project: Let's say you download all bezel media and it applies to all systems applicable... would it be possible to disable and re-enable bezels, or furthermore... disable only select systems?

This is was my first thought on how to do it... just wasn't sure if there was a more simple process. SF2 has what looks like 30 or 40 clones, I was just nervous they would all expand into the rest of my collection where I would lose track of them all to combine back. I'll probably just take a screen shot of them all first or something and find them that way. Thanks Neil.

I know I COULD do that... but I did mention an easy way in my question. Your way would require basically a complete overhaul of my MAME setup just for 1 game.

Is there currently a way to expand a primary "Default" MAME game into one of its individual clones? For instance, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition has several clones as additional apps. If I wanted to take out one of the Rainbow bootleg versions as a stand-alone game... is there an easy way to do that right now? I know you can expand into all of its clones, but this particular game has a bunch and would be a bit messy. Thanks!

Is there currently a way to add a program to the main platform category wheel as executable, rather than having to click into a sub wheel? This is primarily for things like Kodi or Fightcade... Thanks!

The Retroarch integration feature sounds awesome, that can really help streamline the platform setup processes as it advances in future updates. I do have a question about how that would work... would it come pre-installed natively in the LaunchBox folder structure, or will we have the ability to point it to a current folder, or a choice between the two? I have a second Retroarch installation specifically for HD texture mods. Also, a thing I would like to see with the Retroarch integration... would be a correct "bios present" field, next to a "core present (download/update [all])" field. These would be great to have in there.

Thanks for the reply Jason, will do!

Has there been a recent change in the platform logo image identifier in xaml? It's been a little while now that I've noticed my platform logos no longer showing in the top left corner of my startup theme. I customized the GridBlocked startup theme if that matters... Edit: So I've noticed that the platform logo DOES appear on the startup screen while in BigBox.... but it doesn't show while in LaunchBox. Any idea how or why that might be happening? It's not a huge deal... at least it's working in BigBox, but I can't figure out why that would be... for some reason I'm thinking I could be missing something simple. I tested a few different platforms while in BigBox, and tried those same platforms while in LaunchBox... it's strange.

I hear ya, I bought the lifetime license and plan to use it for that long. But adding assets like these and customizing and fine tuning my LaunchBox build is always fun and will probably never end lol.

Yeah, I wasn't sure about replicating this view necessarily... just using the cabinet art. I may mess around this weekend with the Unified Redux theme's XAML view file for the wheel and see if I can have it point to the matching game cabinets.

So I have not yet set up OBS for recording snaps/recordings in LaunchBox... but I just discovered a quick and simple alternative way to screen capture that's actually built into Windows 10. Pressing "Windows Key+ALT+R" records any active window, it has worked with every program and browser I've tried... even Amazon Prime videos ? lol. Press it again to stop and it saves to your User>Videos>Captures folder at your screen resolution with sound. It worked perfectly with a Nintendo game in Retroarch. Can't believe I haven't heard about this until now, just thought this might be able to help a few people that might not want to use OBS for some reason.

It would be pretty awesome to have these views in a BigBox theme. I was actually thinking more along the lines of grabbing those custom made arcade cabinet overlays for specific arcade games to replace the generic arcade cabinet we have in some of the BigBox arcade views. I believe there's roughly about 400 arcade game specific cabinets in the Diamonds build that would look awesome in the BigBox Unified themes, or any others where a cabinet is showing the game snap video. And for the games that don't have them, revert back to the current default generic cabinet.

I came to the forums for this specific reason to post a new topic on this... But more specifically, the new CoinOPS DIAMONDS build that just recently released. It focuses on arcade games, but it looks awesome! I'm going to download it and grab the artwork... the team created high quality full arcade cabinet artwork for a ton of arcade games. I would imagine it shouldn't be too tough to integrate them into a current BigBox theme, or use it as a template to recreate the CoinOPS DIAMONDS build.

Just wanted to report in that I'm using the latest official release tonight... and so far, so good. One difference I've noticed is that BigBox is opening immediately after the startup video now. I have a large library and several playlists, and would take about 10 seconds to load after the startup video finishes. Not that it was a terribly long time, but this is a very welcomed improvement!

Is there currently a way to add an additional app as a favorite? If not, what's a good work around? What I'm wanting is to favorite an alternative version of a MAME game... it's a Street Fighter 2 hacked rom version and can be a pain to remember how to find normally since there are several different Street Fighter 2 games, each with their own set of several different versions. Thanks.

I was just curious if there's a good solution out there to better handle Windows/PC games in LaunchBox... Meaning, is there 3rd party software that can launch Windows game executables that would have better control over how a game is handled? I have just noticed that many games doesn't play well with Pause screens, ahk exit scripts and how some handle full screen when it takes over half of another screen on multi display setups and moves desktop icons around. Does the RocketLauncher PCLauncher module do this, or any other software?