FlightRisk

First, is there an indicator yet (like the multiple sheet of paper icon or curled page corner) to indicate when games are grouped together so you know it isn't just one game? Is there any performance hit to be aware of with this version for older machines, especially the badges?

When will the next poll be? And I assume it will have a live chat to join as in the past? It will be interesting to see what might be added in 2020!

It took me quite a while to get 11.1 working. It kept hanging on the install screen for Framework 4.8. One time, it gave an error that it couldn't close some launchbox screens, but it took several minutes for that screen to come up. After terminating processes, rebooting, etc. It finally worked on the 4th or 5th try.

Ok, thanks for the education. Guess we'll see what happens.

Please help me understand anyone wanting a focus on Android. Certainly not for phones, correct? I imagine you could run games 90s and before on a phone and maybe if you are bored, that tiny screen is something you could use in a doctor's waiting room. And if you had an Android tablet, with an unusual amount of power, maybe you could emulate more games. But I too am disappointed that Windows is taking a back seat. It would be interesting to see how many people have cabinets/bartops, PCs (where even a 10 year old one is more powerful than a phone), vs. Android devices. Maybe I am wrong and need to be educated as to benefits I am missing.

Unfortunately, I am removing you from my Christmas Card list

@Jason Carr Good web meeting today. I think there was some confusion on a poll item. There are two separate issues: 1. A list of "like" games on the individual game screens for matching games on other platforms. So if you click on space invaders in BB or LB you could see a list of other versions you could play instead like Atari, XBox, etc. 2. An icon on each game box in LB (perhaps a multi document image) to show that you right clicked and grouped games together. So if you grouped all the arcade versions of "Metal Slug" together, you wouldn't think you had just one game, you would know you could expand that back out or right click and play Metal Slug X instead of Metal Slug 2. Or maybe a better example is if you have the Japanese version and US version of the same game, you would group them and have a visual indicator to show this is a group.

Hit cntrl-alt-escape to run task manager and see if apps are remaining open. How many browser instances are there, etc. See if it CPU, memory or disk causing a spike

Make sure retroarch is set to use fullscreen mode. Also make sure it is set for each emulator. See here: Pause screen not working in RetroArxh

Well first, Those are not MAME roms. MAME roms are for arcade machines. Those are NES roms (Nintendo Entertainment System) you can rename the platform or just start over. In settings select "allow deleting roms when deleting games" then go into your platform and hit cntrl-a. Then del. When it asks, check the box to delete the roms too. But you may just want to leave the NES roms, import them in the NES platform and then use the MAME importer to import your MAME roms from your MAME roms download.

Use Alt-TAB to see what windows are active. Will that work with BigBox? I am convinced the window switching gets confused and that we can find a pattern. If I use cntrl-alt-esc and terminate the emulator I regain control. Sometimes the game is still playing. You can hear it then see it in the preview window.

Tutorial and FAQ for making videos to submit to EmuMovies They lean towards the free options as much as possible (like virtualdub for video editing). I've used a bunch of video editing tools over the years. The older (still available for download) version of windows movie maker is actually really good. There is also the current version that should work. If you want a full video editor on the level with Adobe Premier, I recommend Cyberlink Powerdirector. But again, for free options, check the link. There is a tutorial for how to use Virtualdub. Not sure if Virtualdub has animation capabilities, but if you are looking to have graphics that slide in from the side or zoom or whatever, many of the video editing suites like Powerdirector allow you to add motion. Quick demo and tutorial on animating a graphic in PowerDirector

RE: Displaying game controls in platforms other than arcade. On my system at least, very few platforms have controls in the images folder. So you emumoves experts can see if they are out there and can be automatically craped. So both methods I mentioned should work. The first is to copy the default them files to another folder, say "showcontrols" and select that in LB/BB. Change default.xaml to include the important bits from arcade.xaml, or just delete default.xaml and copy arcade.xaml and rename it to default.xaml. Not sure at this point if you have to have all your graphics named properly and dumped into your arcade images section or their own. They either need to be in images/arcade/arcade - controls information or in images/<platform name/arcade - controls information. The other way is to put graphics in the arcade - controls information for each platform and then in your pause them folder have a <platform name>.xaml for each platform. Then just copy the arcade.xaml file for each platform and rename it to your platform name (sega - 32.xaml, atari 2600.xaml, etc.) The section in the xaml that looks for the controls images looks like this: <Image Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="2" Source="{Binding SelectedGame.ArcadeControlsInformationImagePath}" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Center" RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="HighQuality" Margin="100"> <Image.Effect> <DropShadowEffect BlurRadius="10" Direction="-90" RenderingBias="Quality" ShadowDepth="1" /> </Image.Effect> </Image>

Yes.2 ways to do it. Typing on my phone so can help more later. But you can cut and paste the default pause theme folder and modify it so all the platforms use the arcade.xml renamed as default.xml for your theme, or copy arcade.xml and paste it as many times as you have platforms and name them to match. Then you need the controller graphics in the right folder in each platforms image folder for every game. There may be a tweak needed in the .xml files. I have to think about what the easiest way is and if there are controller graphics for every platform. If not, then you would have to find them and manually copy them to the correctly named folders

I'll agree with the other guys that RL still a good option for some and is not very difficult to use once you spend any time with it. It just has a lot of options. And its bezels and pause screens just work. I think it gets a bad rap in part because it has an ugly user interface and because there are a several menus and lots of screens. That said, I would think a majority of people could get everything they want now with LB/BB. It just depends on how much time you want to spend tweaking things to have the perfect Arcade. I made a document that is basically how to install and setup everything so that if I don't touch it in 6 months, I can figure out exactly how to add or change anything. I also log everything I do by date. So I can see when I updated, changed, edited an XML, etc. When I started the Wiki, it was how to configure HyperSpin and RL. Then I tried GameEx and LaunchBox/BigBox. I haven't looked back. I still use RL with LB/BB, but after I move all my bezels to RetroArch and MAME (I have some of them still there, just put them in RL too as I moved over to that), I'll probably delete RL That brings up another point, it was nice having bezels in one place with one simple system. RA's bezels are pretty easy, and MAME's can be, but since it allows layers, having all those files (bezel, background, etc. all separate and then a layer file to explain how to display them all) is more work. A am debating pretty much for that reason and controller config to just do everything in RA like I do on my Raspberry Pi setup. Right now I use RA for almost everything except for MAME. I like that I can easily launch games though from whatever emulator I want if I have them set up. So I can run from MAME64 or run RA with a MAME core with almost no effort.

@Jason Carr Is the API here up to date? Unbroken LaunchBox/BigBox Plugin API Documentation Do you have to do the documentation yourself? I looked for Box3DorNormalImagepath (added Aug 2018) and and ArcadeControlsInformationImagePath and they aren't there. P.S. If you want help keeping those pages updated, let me know.

Just go into your ..\LaunchBox\PauseScreens folder, select the "default" folder. Hit cntrl-c then cntrl-v and rename the copy to your own theme name. Then go into that new folder and open Notepad++ and compare the 2 files. You should be able to see exactly how it works if you don't want to get into visual studio to edit or create your own themes. Maybe Jason can post the original one here too. You can just tweak the XML and get it to look more like what you want or use different images. I'm looking forward to all the themes that will be coming out for startup and pause screens!

Technically, is what happened that you added an Arcade.xml to sit in the "pause themes\default" folder next to the Default.xml? So if it is the Arcade platform you substitute "Box3DOrNormalImagePath" for the default "FrontImagePath" and "ArcadeControlsInformationImagePath" for the "CartFrontImagePath". What is the difference between "FrontImage" and "Box3DOrNormal"? Guess I don't understand what "normal" stands for since that isn't an image type in the images\<platform> folders. And this is a GREAT solution for now. I can imagine some pretty cool, scrolling menu themes that give you access to all the different media types like seeing the marquee, advertisements, commercials on video, etc.

So why didn't you just say so!? (said in my best Lou Costello voice) This is what has been happening in my Arcade roms with MAME too! Remember, if I click on an Arcade MAME game OR NES (only tests so far) which runs MAME/RetroArch respectively, through Rocket Launcher I don't see the "load", "save" or "reset" menu options in my pause screen If I right click on an Arcade or NES game and select "launch with" and select MAME/Retroarch - NestopiaLibretro, I see all the menus If I use the LB menu for "tools -> manage emulators -> and click on MAME or RetroArch, then go to the game pause screen tab, then look at the "reset", "save" and "load" subtabs, I see scripts in there! Viola, I learned something. But if I "manage emulators" for RocketLauncher, I don't see any scripts. So, has this been my issue the whole time. And I could put scripts in there, but they would only work for RL at its level as if it were an emulator. So if I put RA scripts in there, it will work, but only if RA is the only emulator RL uses. If I call MAME or another emulator from RL the scripts won't match. I guess that there is probably not a solution for that, eh? (other than use the emulator keys for that directly)

Which is more complicated and involved, doing it with exclusive fullscreen mode or is the RocketLauncher way still more complicated? Wondering now that you are in it, if you still think this is the right way to go. No questioning you, just wondering what it looks like to you at this point.

Are all "backgrounds" across all of LB the same? My startup backgrounds weren't working, so I turned them on and they work, but now when I highlight a game on my main screen, it takes that background and obliterates my plain background that I want. Can I still use ONE unchanging background for LB, but still have backgrounds that change for startup and pause screens?

RE: missing pause menus Ok, I went into my NES roms which use Retroarch. So same setup. When I launch the game by double clicking, which uses RL to launch using RA, the pause screen is missing the load, save, reset! If I right click on the game, select "launch with", "Retroarch -> NestopiaLibretro", I get all the menus.

I shut them off globally in the options menu

I posted my exact steps in the post before this one. I am using my "Arcade" menu running Arcade roms.( 005, 10 Yard Fight, 1941 counter attack). I am seeing the menu for "manual" now. What goes a way are the menus other than "exit game", "resume game" and " view manual". The "reset game", "save state" and "load state" are missing. Maybe by design? Just reporting it to learn why.

This is regarding my "macro" question. Basically, I am just trying to hit one button in order to do a LB menu sequence instead of having to do the same thing over and over manually when testing. For example, If I click on a game, the default right now is set to RL to launch. To test with MAME, I have to right click on the game, scroll to "launch with", then scroll to MAME, then press ENTER. It would be nice to highlight the game and then duplicate those keystrokes with one key or button press. Alternately, can LB be set to ask every time as an option? IOW, when I double click on it, can it give me a popup with the available emulators and I choose the one I want. That would at least eliminate having to deal with moving my hands between the keyboard and mouse or using the mouse but having to right click and use menus.