FlightRisk

Not sure this was an "improvement". Seems we could have kept it and just allowed a setup option for "show auto-generated playlists on "add to playlist" menu. Can anyone share their thoughts as to why it is a good idea or bad to bring it back? What's the downside to converting an auto-generated playlist to a regular one? Or one you initially generated the list, would it be too rare to need it to work automatically if you aren't adding a lot of roms on a continuing basis to a platform?

Yes, for me too. GameEX is certainly a nice front end, but LB/BB so much and so clean and 2 interfaces depending on how you want to do it. The only feature I am waiting for that GE has that LB doesn't now that we are getting pause screens, is the display on the game info screen that lists all the other versions of that game you have on your machine on all the other platforms. Obviously, it has a database somewhere that knows the filenames for all the other versions of "space invaders" there are out there and if it finds them in your folder structure, it creates a list of links so you can just click and play one of those instead. Jason has mentioned that he would consider it for the future.

Tried to automatically install beta 6 from launching beta 5 and get this dialog: "Setup was not able to automatically close all applications..." I tried it a few times by aborting and restarting LB. Task manager did show LB running, so terminated it. I was afraid to hit "ignore". I left the setup process running and then pressed "retry". Never had it not be able to terminate LB before.

Funny, while I was taking all that time to type, Neil posted about "dinput"

Well, not to get into an RA debate since I know it is personal preference, what I found was that it actually reduced complexity for me. Once you learn one UI, I think it is harder to switch, yet they operate very similarly. But for RA, there is one user interface for everything instead of having to have multiple emulators with completely different looks. You can go to the classic interface, which for some is easier than the fancy graphical interface. Then it looks more like MAME. When you use a front end to access the games with RA and the right core for the emulation, you really only popup the settings portion of the interface to change game settings from within a game. You don't use the load game menu and the launcher. The benefits to me are significant, one place and system for bezels and shaders, one place to universally configure controls across platforms, one user interface for all emulators, it is mostly plug and play. That said, I use RA pretty much exclusively on my Pi setups, but use MAME and RA right now on the Arcade machine with MAME and not an RA MAME core running Coleco I wanted to be more fluent in the MAME UI, which is why I keep playing around with both. But I could have just picked one or the other, and if it were MAME, learned the other emulators I need. I think for the F500, you just set the switch to "dinput" and make sure the retroarch.cfg file is set for that and that the Mayflash cfg file is also set for dinput. But sounds like you have it working the way you want without RA.

I wanted to create an auto-generated playlist for vector games. Is there a field for whatever this would be called ("screen"? "monitor"? "graphics type"?) so that I could filter by that?

I do feel lucky. I was using HS and tried GameEx (which I really liked), but in comparing front ends, I got more and more into LB/BB. It just seemed to be so well supported, such good software, and constant updates. There really are only a couple of features left where LB will have everything I loved about all the other front ends. Probably the only feature after pause screens that I liked (and Jason agreed to look into) is the one in GameEx where if you are on a game information screen, you can see all the other versions of that game that you have. So if you are looking at the arcade version of Donkey Kong, it will list links to the atari, colecovision, intellevision, etc. versions and you can play one of those instead. Not much different than playlists, but it is linked to the game you are on which is the difference. Anyway, this has been a fun hobby. Playing with LB and BB gives me something to do in my spare time.

I think it is like the addiction of having to constantly check your text messages. There is the sound from the forums announcing a new post and the message box stating there is a new update to download. I can't sleep thinking about pause screens now

Yes, doing it in realtime is the way to go. You can scroll through each option and use the keyboard to move each bar left and right and see the result. The settings aren't saved, however, so you have to write them down and then manually enter them into the vector settings file.

I was kind of thinking the same thing, but hoping it wasn't true. You are right about the exclusive full screen mode. RL runs them in a windowed mode and puts settings in the AHK files for each emulator, I think, to do this as well as fades. More complicated than Jason wants to take on for LB. Oh well, "loading" and then "unloading" on the shutdown screen, if that will work, should suffice.

Ok, had a typo, the code works. I changed it a little. But I need a way to delay the start of the sound. Here is what I did 1. copy the entire default startup theme folder into another folder called "Sounder" (can't modify the default theme) 2, Put my mp3 files in the folder with "default.xaml" 3. Edited "default.xml" by putting this in the code near the bottom after the last </grid> element: <MediaElement Name="loadingsound" Source="pack://siteoforigin:,,,/StartupThemes/Sounder/LoadingStart.mp3" LoadedBehavior="Play"/> I hope to find a way to know then loading is finished to say "loading complete" as well.

Would this work? Is my path correct for Launchbox relative paths? I am on "C:\Arcade\Launchbox..." I created a subfolder under startupthemes called sounds. Where do I put it and do I need any other code? I have an mp3, but could convert it to anything. <MediaElement Name="loadingsound" Source="pack://siteoforigin:,,,/StartupThemes/Sounds/loadingsound.mp3" LoadedBehavior="Play"/> Well an update. I can't use "sounds" or any folder under "StartupThemes" or it things it is a theme folder and displays it in the "options" settings. So I moved it to the "default" startup theme folder, but that won't work either because the default is re-written by Launchbox, so you can't modify the default startup theme. I moved it to my own them and it doesn't work.

This should be added to the poll. Has anyone added it to the bitbucket?

How can you play a sound file on the new startup screens?

Hi Andy. What are your mappings for the buttons on the bezel face, the blue buttons next to the 1p and 2p buttons, the 2 white buttons under the 1p button and the 2 white buttons under the 1p button?

LordMonkus, I get now you have been deleting things. Thanks for the clarification. Neil9000, as of a a month or two ago, bezels weren't ruled out, just unlikely or a very low priority because of the using exclusive full screen mode and Jason thinking it should be an emulator feature, which I don't necessarily agree with, but I do get the complexity concerns. But I think I made things unclear, I am just wondering where instruction cards fit in, especially ones that can slide in while you are playing a game. I wasn't sure if it suffers the same fate as bezels because it would require windowed mode, or if that feature is on a list somewhere and if so would it be its own feature or part of something else. I know it is separate from pause screens in RL. I use pause for manuals, images and mostly controller layout help. I often wondered if that would be better in an instruction card popup. What do you think?

Two things. Even though it is finished now, should startup/shutdown screens be added to the list with a strike through? And second, are instruction cards something that would fit with pause screens, or is it more related to bezels? I wonder if pause is an issue like bezels are in that they would need full screen exclusive mode. I know Rocket Launcher needs emulators that use "bezel normal" mode and instructions can be loaded even with the game playing, not in the pause screens. Though of course, you could put anything you want in a pause screen, even instructions, manuals, etc. I still like the idea of putting instructions on my bezels or hitting a key and having them fly in from the side.

I also put this in the bitbucket list from May of last year. Thanks to all who vote for it. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/4160/graphical-indicator-on-box-art-for-games

Anyone? Is there an XML tag that goes in the screens or is it configurable some other way?

Any news from 'Pipes about a release? It's been about 4 months, so I imagine he made a lot of progress.

I went through all my MAME roms and made a list of all the ones I wanted to delete. Then I deleted them on alphabetic order. I keep finding rom names in my list that are no longer showing in LB. I looked up the rom name online for those missing and looked in my roms folder and they are indeed gone. Am I going nuts or is there some link between roms that would delete more than one? I am using a non-merged set, so I don't see how deleting one can delete another. One example is "stratavox". It is gone and I didn't delete it. Another is "indoor soccer"

Enable separate view for each platform in your settings and map a key or button to the switch views function. Now just switch the view when you go into each platform for the one you want. So for SNES choose a view without the spin. It will remember your setting.

I searched for this and imagine since these are fully themed it must be possible, but can the startup screens say "loading", then "loading complete" and then on shutdown, "goodbye"? How do you configure this?

Funny that I was going to copy a link to some code for this to you and then in my searching found a thread where you mentioned you are already using it! (WpfAnimatedGif on Github). Seems to be the only way to handle transparency and GIFs with funky frame durations. Have you seen he has updated the code and renamed the project? See here https://github.com/XamlAnimatedGif/XamlAnimatedGif He genericised it to work in non WPF XAML and it now uses a lot less memory due to more efficient frame loading. Are you using this newer code? Haven't tried it yet, but guessing this should work in the XAML: <Image Stretch="None" gif:ImageBehavior.AnimatedSource="/Images/animation.gif" /> or give it parameters. There are several available in the library: <Image gif:ImageBehavior.RepeatBehavior="3x"gif:ImageBehavior.AnimatedSource="Images/animated.gif" /> and I found this from Jason on how to do it in BigBox, so it may be simple to adapt this to Startup themes. Do I need to use the "UserControl" tag in the Startup theme XAML?

Do the themes support animated GIFs or a loop of images? RocketLauncher startup and shutdown screens can have per rom graphics, so pac-man may have a chomping guy in the lower left, or metal slug may have the guy running. I believe RL does it by specifying a series of however many image files you want to create the animation from, but an animated GIF would work too.