The Papaw

Posted copy here for others to play with: The Game Zone.ahk

Here is want I wound up with (still tweaking). I had no idea you could do so much as easily as you can with AHK. Definitely will be using much more in the future. Thanks again Joe for the support The Menu: Showing a confirmation prompt:

I've got it all working pretty good now, doing artwork and layout. Will post screenshot when I get it done. Thanks for all the tips. I had done got on a roll before trying the program , will look at it later..

I'm making progress (one of the few youtube videos that is actually not affiliate crap yet.. ) and got one clickable, also found an old program to make AHK GUI's called SmartGUI. I might see what is does. Here's a copy of of it if you're interested in playing with it. smartgui.zip

I got some png's working in it, now I am trying to figure out how to make them clickable, something to do with a "A g-label such as gMySubroutine may be listed in the control's options. This would cause the MySubroutine label to be launched automatically whenever the user clicks the picture.". -quoted from autohotkey.com Just getting things going, and I will probably find different images and maybe change layout, maybe 2 x 2 square instead of single line, maybe get rid of the buttons once I figure out how to make the images clickable???? Here is what I got so far:

I've gotten busy and just getting back to playing with this. Been tinkering with AHK a bit this morning. Looking for a way to add an image to each menu now if you can, never tried before

Yes Sir, that is exactly what I am gonna be trying to do. I don't see a reason to use the /f switch as it LB appears to be closing well (at least with v12.12, I know these things may change with updates sometimes) Something I am not sure about is when LB/BB is opened, then closed, then re-opened again, it tends to run a bit slower if the PC isn't re-booted for some reason. Like maybe memory isn't cleared 100% from the previous run or something. Could be a windows thing, I really don't know. I think I can pull it off with bat or AHK I was wondering if something in Visual Studio or even something else might work and look better if you create it with a cool icon and make it an exe or something? Rather than having 5-10 script files. But never done anything with VS before. I assume you would use some type of invoke in it??

Thanks @neil9000 Here is what I am up too. My master Launchbox rig is getting pretty large and most themes are really dragging now on the slower PC's around the house. I am thinking about making multiple instances of LB on them, say one for just Arcade, another for the older platforms and maybe another for the more modern platforms, then creating a batch file or maybe some type of Windows app in virtual studio or something to run first, allowing the user to pick the one they want, then when they exit it, take them back to the app or bat file to change to a different one. Even thought about just creating one instance of LB to run first with only the different instances of LB and let it run the batch files to kill and re-open the different instance????

I created a batch file to kill LB, just curious if this is a safe way to do it or will I end up with corrupted files over time. This is what I am using: @echo off taskkill /im LaunchBox.exe It appears to be working okay with the few tests I've done, including saving the backups. If there is a safer way, please do share.

The saving process that occurs after LaunchBox or Big Box closes should be significantly faster is a nice addition. Very helpful when doing maintenance in LB and theming as much as you open and close LB/BB. The PictureViewer was visually updated with added context regarding what type of image you are looking at is a nice touch as well. Nice improvements

Some great ideas, but you have to submit them to bitbucket or they are never considered.

The bezel project is an interesting idea, but as others have shared, I think more information should be provided. Is it going to utilize a single platform bezel for each platform and use that in all the games in that platform or download and use the individual theme bezel for each game. Will you be able to choose between the two? @Jason Carr said it would only be RA and Mame which is understandable, as that is what the Bezel Project is geared towards. I think more info should be provided for other things on the ballet as well. Like #4, Cool feature, but BETTER support for NAS stored media really needs to be worked on now! Nothing works other than deleting media. Will that be fixed / improved?

I think LB should support 7z as well as zip, IMO. It should also support 7z format on uploads to the forums, like packs and themes! It would save bunches of storage space on the servers for sure.

Something is happening, not sure for how long or if it is fixed, but things are much better this morning, keep your toes crossed!

This was posted 04-16 by Circo: "We are implementing new API calls and search functionality for LaunchBox. Currently API calls are built and sample code for the LaunchBox team is being prepared. In a nutshell this is going to move server side search processes to the client side allowing for much faster searches especially in complete library scrapes. Our developer is currently working with Jason over at LaunchBox and we should get this update out soon. Apologies for the current overloaded server situation. Once we get these changes implemented thing should get back to better than normal." I sure hope something comes along soon, as that was 4 days ago concerning a issue that has been going on for weeks now. I know everyone wants things working well and devs are trying to come up with something

Thank you @C-Beats, that is what I was looking for. I wasn't asking cuz of the current Emu issue, but more on how make sure Emu is scraping best I can. I always try to use no-intro roms, but some just can't be helped. Sounds like I might need to be changing some names and titles.

Okay, let me ask another way. Lets pretend I don't have an EmuMovies account. I got all my roms imported into Launchbox. A rom file is named "Disney's Wreck-It Ralph", LB didn't find it, so I edit the name to "Wreck-It Ralph" in the name field and LB scrapes and finds it using that name, I download media for it, LB adds the Launchbox DB ID#, I accepted it that way, then I edit it again and change the name back to "Disney's Wreck-It Ralph" (which renames the media to match name change.). Down the road, I decide to purchase a sub for EmuMovies and run the Tools>Download>Update Metadata and Media for Selected Games tool. When LB connects via the api for Emu, what is going to use for it's search criteria? Name of the rom, name of the game (keep in mind I changed it to include the word Disney's), LaunchBox DB ID#. This is what I am asking?