Z3R0B4NG

I noticed some weird behavior the last few days... LaunchBox was sometimes starting very slowly, especially while i was rebuilding PS1 and PS2 romsets in CLRMamepro that sit on my unRAID server (meaning lots of LAN traffic and some negligible cpu load) I think i have the slow starting behavior nailed down to LAN traffic. My ROM collection mostly sits on my unRAID server, everything CD based anyway. - TEST CASE 1: unRAID Server is ON, HDDs are spun down. result: LaunchBox takes roughly one MINUTE to open. LAN traffic detected: (red is download, green is upload, yellow is both up+download at the same time). LaunchBox will NOT start unless this LAN traffic has completed. which explains why it took multiple minutes while i was rebuilding PS1/PS2 sets the other day. - TEST CASE 2: unRAID Server shut OFF LaunchBox takes about 15 seconds to start (not bad for >30k imported "games") NO LAN traffic detected. - TEST CASE 3: unRAID Server freshly booted up again, HDDs are spinning LaunchBox needed roughly 2 minutes to launch and i could see some read operations on the HDDs the entire time, not 100% sure those were from LaunchBox or from LaunchBox alone, on a freshly booted system there are always some KB/s reads and writes and it takes a few minutes to settle down i'm not 100% sure if i waited long enough for it to settle down. But note the different shape of the LAN traffic, clearly indicating that it reads off disk. - TEST CASE 4: unRAID Server ON, HDDs spun down The "shape" of the LAN traffic is identical to Test 1 again. The HDDs are supposed to spin up on their own when accessed, that takes maybe 15 to 30 seconds, they did not spin up at all. - TEST CASE 5: HDDs are spinning again now the shape of the traffic is identical to before with spun down drives and NO read or writes to the disks is observed. My assumption is that it simply reads whatever it reads from the Servers RAM now as it should be cached after the first time anyway and that is probably true for previous tests as well. ... CONCLUSION: i will assume that LaunchBox will act the same way for anybody with any type of NAS and that this is not unRAID specific behavior (maybe apart from how it caches data in RAM). Ultimately, LaunchBox can start in 15 seconds for me when the Server is OFF, there is no reason it should not be able to be this fast when the Server is ON. ...maybe the startup routine from LaunchBox can be optimized to avoid this LAN traffic stuff. Or maybe something completely else is happening here, maybe there is a button in the options menu i can press to make it stop doing this LAN traffic so it starts in 15 seconds every time? Either way, i can now stop wondering why it took 5 to 10 minutes to start LaunchBox while i was rebuilding PS1/PS2 rom sets with CLRMamepro on the Server the other day (literally to the point where i had forgotten i clicked on LaunchBox and was already half way through some youtube video when LaunchBox suddenly popped up). Specs (for context) : i7-7700K @ 4.8GHz, 16GB DDR4, 1GBit LAN, Win10 recently updated to 1909, >33k "game icons" in LaunchBox v10.11, unRAID server: i7-3770, 16GB DDR3, 1GBit LAN

I'm fine if there is a readme file how to import it into my existing launchbox. I already did so with eXoDOS 4.0. The thread here said a explanation how to import would come with the next version so i've been waiting for that instead of fiddling around myself. The big iffy point for me with eXoDOS was that i wanted to have the paths for the actual files on my unRAID server ( mounted as drive X: ) and everything else be on my local drives, i ended up needing to do some manual editing with notepad in the LaunchBox\Data\Platforms\MS-DOS.xml ...opening a 30MB xml file takes a while but the find and replace all function is worth gold to change those paths. Everything else was just copy&paste. With C64 dreams personally the sticky point is more that i don't want to touch the Emulator managing window (i already have like 4 different installs of Retroarch for my own stuff, so the C64 Dreams Retroarch install would need to have its own name and path). ---- One little bonus feedback i'd like to give: i'm not a big fan of your choice of border (or bezel or what its called)... the thing on the side with the Aliens stuff ....why Aliens? Why not something C64 themed? And with how thin the border is i can't just use one of the default retro arch borders to replace it because you opted to zoom in further than 4:3 ... which makes sense for C64 i guess but its an odd format for borders (the empty space in that big blue border is just never used by the C64 is it? ... i wonder why i do not remember that from when i was 8? i had a hand-me-down-from-dad-C64 next to my SNES! ) ---- So uhm, i just started using this since 0.18.7 a month or two ago ... i don't have a feel yet what your update release cycle is like, so i'm wondering when or in what intervals should i be looking for updates? I've been checking irregularly every few days/weeks. ...just wondering if i check too many times and if there is some strategy to it ?

I just updated my No-Intro set for the Sega Master System after over a year... apparently Brazil is now super important for this System because half the set was renamed to include the following, obnoxiously long, region tags. (Europe, Brazil) (USA, Europe, Brazil) (USA, Brazil) (Japan, Brazil) (Japan, USA, Brazil) i think those are all variants... results: - LaunchBox gets confused and leaves the region field blank (especially for the tags with 3 regions) - When i select the (USA, Europe, Brazil) with the Make Default button, the region still stays Japan and i need to manually change it to North America - if you tell LaunchBox to combine roms with the same name into one game and prioritize US > EU > GER regions (i'm german, there are germany exclusive games here and there) such roms without the region filled in are of course not taken into consideration and you end up with (Japan) as the primary rom while you have a (USA, Europe, Brazil) rom that you would want to be the default rom. - Beta roms are in the set as well, many of which did not have Brazil added, in those cases the Beta rom has the region filled in while the retail game does not and you end up with the Beta rom as the default option. It would be REALLY convenient if LaunchBox could get ahead of this... if not for me then for the next guy who imports an up to date No-Intro Sega Master System set. ( I know i could make a 1G1R set, not what i want to do, not the point of LB having those options )

OK, that Is pretty cool ! exactly the kind of inspiration i hoped this would spawn. I'd maybe throw a gameplay screenshot on the TV (how did you do that blur!?) and if you want to take it a step further, per system backgrounds that show the console would of course be cool. (i'm still gonna keep going with my idea of course, i decided to just screengrab anything i stumble upon and throw it in my launchbox (and maybe spend a bit more time looking for retro gaming videos on YT), i watch a ton of these retro videos on YT anyway, even the new stuff in my daily subscription box already resulted in more fun screenshots (i expanded to also include just cartridge shots, i got some plugged in to weird clone consoles instead of the original, i take anything as long as it looks cool and is identifiable), once i feel i have enough i maybe upload a pack). ...just gonna leave another dump of pictures here that i grabbed over the weekend (not everything, just the cool ones)

OMG... i just found a total gold mine... youtube videos! Those are 16:9 1080p to begin with, and the youtubers loooove to make great "B-Roll" shots (at least the good ones). source: (by the way, i very much recommend to subscribe to this Gaming Historian Channel) This is all just Screengrabs from this one video and they work perfectly.

found a few that aren't terrible, upped the source pics for you to use and what they look like as loading screen in 16:9

This is a proof of concept for the "Fanart - Background" category in LaunchBox. The Backgrounds are used for Loading Screens and for Backgrounds in Big Box, i disabled them everywhere else. I'm a bit annoyed with the Fanart - Background category in the LaunchBox Database, many of those pictures just aren't good, others are just inappropriate (like having the wrong Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles era, or using the same Mighty Morphin Power Rangers background for ALL the Power Rangers games, even when they are not Mighty Morphin but Zeo or Ninja Storm or whatever for example... or Tomb Raider, why do people upload Wallpapers of Lara Croft from the newest rebooted games to the early games where she looked all edgy with triangle ti.... you get the point, upload the appropriate pictures for the game and not just the first google result). The alternative is to just use the 2D covers as background for loading screens and big box... which is better than nothing, but the boxes often don't come in a 16:9 widescreen format so a lot of the picture will be cut off. I like BOXES... i'm obsessing about those 3D Box pictures practically since i downloaded LaunchBox and it only got worse since. I think this might just be me compensating for the lack of a physical collection and being annoyed that every game i buy these days is digital only, even the rom collection is 100% digital... i'd love to collect the physical games but i simply don't have the extra spare warehouse to go into obsessive hoarding mode. Just for the lols i used videogame boxes as backgrounds with 2 games where i randomly found good quality pictures. (Warplock for the Atari and that Note Color Mechanica Homebrew Sega CD game) ...and i did LIKE it. The last 2 weeks i've been working on my Sega Saturn romset in LaunchBox, little bit here little bit there... today i've spend a few hours and googled my ass off to find good, more or less artistic photographs of Saturn game boxes. I didn't find many that were high quality, there is a ton of average stuff on eBay with bland backgrounds, but the biggest problem are the stupid Smartphones, the Saturn boxes are tall and thin so people tend to make photographs in vertical mode with very little space left on the sides... that is of course utter crap for Widescreen wallpapers, even when the resolution of those things is high enough in plenty of cases, it doesn't make for good wallpapers. The JAP boxes are standard CD jewelcase size, those should be easier (but would still have boring backgrounds for the most part). Collectors sometimes make very artistic photographs of their games, with much more interesting backdrops and decent lighting, but that stuff is hard to find and since the US and EU versions of the Saturn games are still tall, even the wider shots are often only 4:3 which means i end up cutting off the top to make it work for 16:9 and that means i still often don't get the entire box in the frame. To change this concept into a full blown set, i would need a small Army of people with large collections of games (what System doesn't matter), with an artistic finger and a not shit camera, that make photographs targeted at 16:9 widescreen monitors. Maybe my little proof of concept collection here will "inspire" some people? ...the thing is, if i upload these as Fanart - Background, the volunteer moderators tend to not let it through because it is not the usual 2D wallpaper stuff, i already tried and the message was loud and clear, maybe we can at least agree that this stuff looks awesome as backgrounds and loading screens and we need more of this stuff in the LaunchBox Database. I'd suggest a new category for it but i know that ain't happening. here is an imgur album of the attached loading screens: https://imgur.com/a/yD7NKVT

This is the third time i noticed this... i try to delete an alternate name (in this case i added it myself and it was an error, of course i cant cancel my own submissions when i notice i F'd up... ). i imagine the moderators laugh their asses off at my reason why i delete it and they wink it through, next day the thing says ACCEPTED... yet the alternate name i just deleted is still there? This happens every time i try to delete an alternate name. Also changing the main Name if there is a minor spelling error does the same thing, especially one where there are 2 spaces instead of just one, i edit remove one space and submit, it goes through i check back the next day and it did not change. Either this is a bug in the website or i'm doing something wrong?

I've noticed when i create an .m3u playlist then put it and all disc images (cue/bin) in one zip file (on double click in launchbox it extracts it all to the local Temp folder), then LaunchBox does NOT by default start the .m3u file with RetroArch, it often starts one of the .cue files instead and it seems completely random which file is getting started. I had all variants happen so far, cue from CD1 or 2 or the m3u. I can't figure out the logic behind it. I tried making sure the m3u file is alphabetically the first, later the last file in the zip, for one file it seemed to work, the next one didn't care at all. i also made sure it has the neweset date inside the .zip ...no, not that either. I'm wondering if there is ANY logic to this, or do multi disc games seriously force you to have the roms and disk images sitting there uncompressed, wasting space?

OK, i tried again and now it worked :) Not sure what i have done wrong the first time. For science i imported a 2 disc game as euro and france version to see what happens with the .m3u if i check merge games with matching names into one game. see attached picture for result. In RetroArch you of course see these numbered as Disc 1 2 3 4 so you wouldn't know that Disc 2 is Disc 1 of the france version. hmmm...

Currently i got Redump and No-Intro compliant files only, archived as zip rar or 7z on sitting on my unRAID server, LaunchBox extracts those into a local folder and RetroArch takes it from there. For Multidisk games, this does obviously not work. There is no M3U, the different Disks are automatically compressed into their own zip files by Clrmamepro when rebuilding, so the 2nd Disk doesn't even end up in the Temp folder for RetroArch to find. I would have to extract all multidisk games, manually create M3U files, compress both disks+m3u in one zip file and then re-import to LaunchBox, that is a crap ton of fiddly work that i have not bothered with so far... also updating the No-Intro / Redump sets might break that work again because those M3U files are not part of the .dat and it might even complain about 2 images being in one zip... not sure, have not tried yet. SO... LaunchBox 10.10 now automatically creates M3U files. Set a checkmark in the Emulator options and DONE. ...ok, but HOW EXACTLY does it work? Is it foolproof enough already for the setup i explained above to "just work"? I want to know exactly how this functions, how does it determine that a game is multi disk, just by the filename Disk 1 Disk 2? What about C64 games that have Side 1, Side 2 in the name instead (because a Floppy has sides)... or something entirely else? Is it intelligent enough to understand when multiple disks are in different zip archives and extracts all of them AND throws the on the fly created .M3U into the temp folder for RetroArch to see? ...that just sounds to good to be true. Just flick the switch and it magically works? For real? //edit: sad face, flicked the switch, didn't work, Retro Arch does not see Disk 2. extracted both zip archives, added the .cue files to LaunchBox, did not work again... uuuuh... OK, i need documentation or a guide for this. (maybe a wild EtaPrime will appear and make a video on it?)

I looked up how to crop transparent PNG and ended up using Paint 3D for it (because already installed), i left 2 pixels of transparent pixels on each side, that ended up being 361x416 pixels (plus minus one here or there). good enough for me but if the other pics still show up, that'd be nice. But man, this system was a bi**h to setup, i had to fiddle with half of the pictures, all of the .cue+.bin files i had to rebuild one by one so the emulator understands them, and the LBDB didn't have half the names in a format that matched the Redump filenames, i added all of those to the DB... i practically had to touch everything on this one. I'm just glad the system doesn't have like 500 games, 91 was still manageable in a day.

I'm just trying to get Neo Geo CD to work with Retro Arch, found this little guide: https://forums.libretro.com/t/guide-play-neo-geo-cd-games-using-fbneo/17735 got my Bios files in place and they seem to work (not the file sizes you posted though), thanks for posting the command line thingy for LaunchBox, that did the trick. Now i only got one problem, the REDUMP set is .cue and multiple .bin files. There is only one game in the entire set that has only one .bin file and that is Puzzle-Bobble (a.k.a. Bust-a-Move). Puzzle Bobble works fine in both cores, fbneo and neocd all other games just load the bios and show like a CD Player interface thing (some of them even play a music track, but only one like the emulator just uses the last .bin file in the zip ...weird!) So, i guess they are serious about the 1 bin file support, always annoying when the people making the .dats / roms and the people making emulators are not working with the same file architecture in mind. converting them to single .bin files (still need to figure out how to do that) of course kills the ability to keep the Redump set up-to-date with new .dat files in the future unless i keep both sets, effectively doubling the file size of 42GB, it ain't that big of a system but... eh... inconvenient to say the least.

As so often, i've seen 2 different types of 3D Box art for this System and LaunchBox of course scrapes half of each. In the LaunchBox DB there are a few of this other set, those look perfect to me, i just can't find the full set download anywhere, it is not on EmuMovies, not in the LaunchBox or HyperSpin download sections either, i googled, i BINGed nothing... if anybody knows where these come from please do tell, thanks. EmuMovies has this set ( https://emumovies.com/files/file/2611-neo-geo-cd-3d-boxes-pack/ ), but its not very good, there is lots of transparent space around the artwork which makes the Boxes look TINY in LaunchBox. ( it is also missing the JAP language only games, no biggie, just saying it could be more complete ) ( my MS Paint skills do not include editing png pictures with transparent backgrounds, or i'd crop them myself ? )

I've found this tutorial from 2016, it is rather outdated. MESS has been merged with MAME in the meantime. It is 2 years later, did we find a way to play .bin + .cue files by now or is CHD through MESS / MAME still the only option? if not, i also found this: RetroArch... http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Philips_CD-i_emulators indicates that there is a libretro core for MAME which is the only recommended emulator there. but the wiki does not go into detail which MAME core works (there are multiple) or how to set it up, just a yes this exists checkmark. The 3 stand-alone emulators listed there are not recommended, almost 10 years outdated and one is a paid-only beta and has no acceptable (gamepad) input methods (or so the wiki says). Arcadepunks has setup instructions for one of their sets where i noticed this picture This is obviously RetroArch's core options menu, but when i load any of the MAME or the 2 old MESS cores in RA i get no core options at all... but "cdrm" seems to be important. The 2016 tutorial video also has -cdrm as a command line option for MESS but since then LaunchBox has been updated and it doesn't look quite like in the tutorial anymore. I managed to source a bunch of .cue+.bin and also CHD files. I got the cdimono1.zip as well (i've put that in the retroarch/systems/ folder as arcadepunks did ) ...there needs to be some way to get this to work in RetroArch, or at least through MAME. So far i got nothing to work at all and i've been scratching my head for a few hours, so my question is simply: how do i emulate Philips CD-i in 2019?

i did not actually test it yet (this kinda fell off my radar) but for WinRar the batch file should look like this: !_clean_up.bat for %%I in (*.rar) do "C:\Program Files\WinRAR\WinRAR.exe" d -Y -ibck "%%I" *.cue replace *.rar with *.zip if that is your format. make sure the path to winrar is correct. you can delete multiple files with different names by just writing more names at the end, like *.cue *thumbs.db *ComicInfo.xml just place the .bat file in the same folder with the image files, start it and let it do it's thing, when its done it will just close the command prompt again. with 7000 images that will take a LONG time though, so maybe do it in smaller chunks. and of course test the batch file first with a few test files and make sure it works as intended. if one day you want to add the .cue files back into it you just need to download the cue files pack from redump and throw that into the add folder with clrmamepro, point being this is reversible if you ever want to update your dumped files with the latest redump.dat and it can still be scanned to make sure no CRC errors crept in. Or whenever a solution in either the pcsx2 emulator or launchbox shows up for this which is actually compliant with regular redump images, which would be the user friendly thing to do.

Well, it is supposed to merge different region roms, that is literally one of its functionalities, it just relies on the LaunchBox Database and especially when it comes to JAP region names it is very incomplete ...the reason for that is simply that most people using the App are US or EU based, or so i would assume, most of us probably just don't use JAP roms to begin with because most don't speak the language, resulting in comparatively poor support for JAP region titles in the database. With EU roms it is not that bad but there is the occasional odd one out, France and German specific versions are again a bit worse. .dat support would improve all that, but there would still need to be some hands on work with games that have wildly different titles, software doesn't automagically know that "Pocket Monsters" is the same as "Pokémon" (and yes the apostrophe above the é is also something that WILL throw off detection, i went through a lot of pokemon titles and added names for that reason, i'm sure i didn't get all but it should be a bit better as of 3+ months ago ...and i don't even play that stuff!). merged sets...? how would you end up with merged sets anyway? are you using the "GOOD" set? don't do that, use No-Intro. With No-Intro you will not end up with merged sets. This is probably not helpful, but there are Emulators who work with merged sets (bSNES i think gave me a selection screen once?), as long as you use one of those you can select the specific rom in the emulator and don't need LaunchBox to do that for you. Either way, i can imagine some edge cases where such a functionality could be useful.

*facepalm* ...god i'm stupid, i even have a batch file for exactly that purpose ...i was just using it for something completely else so i didn't think of it. I can totally use that, just need to change the filenames and done. OK it's late time for bed ;D

No, then the hashes inside the .dat file won't match the new iso files at all. The easiest would be of course if the emulator would just accept .cue files that point to the .bin ...like it should be. ...oh welp, i guess i'm extracting it all (in manageable chunks), and repack it as .rar without any .cue files. adding the .cue files back in is easy enough with clrmamepro if that should ever be needed. It will just take forever but at least i don't have to go through 2000+ files manually ...and .rar has better compression anyway.

tl;dr I need a way to tell LaunchBox to send the .bin instead of the .cue inside a .zip to the emulator. I am fooling around with PCSX2 and REDUMP .dat compliant images. All through Launchbox of course... everything is in zip format to save space, Launchbox is set to decompress before handing over to the emulator. Some images are .iso format (they work fine) and some are .cue+.bin format, those always give me an error message "CDVD Plugin failed to open ...blah blah blah". I started digging into the problem a bit and apparently PCSX2 doesn't like it when you try to open the .cue file instead of the .bin!!! *facepalm* I deleted the .cue in one file and it started fine with just the .bin inside the .zip. Now the images are compliant with the REDUMP .dat files and it would be a huge PITA to manually go through all files and delete the .cue files (then clrmamepro would bitch about the missing .cue files when scanning or updating the collection), extracting them all so i can point LaunchBox to *.bin and *.iso while importing roms would work but then the compression is gone, not to mention it would take quite some hours (days!) to extract >3TB of stuff... and there is no way to be sure what is .iso and what is .bin format in there, that all sucks...

Didn't somebody say something about Xpadder being used? Maybe try setting the process priority of that to high.

First rule of Tech Support, turn it off and on again, second rule: make sure the cables/connections are plugged in/working as intended. ?

OK, i've seen the videos, i am positive i never had that specific problem. but from looking at it, i see 2 things happening there. first the controller lags / slows down or stops temporarily, second this happens just long enough so a game entry is selected and the next video and media is loaded by BigBox, which then again slows everything down just enough to interrupt the motion some more. The game entries that are being loaded would not be loaded if the motion was smooth to begin with, so that loading part makes the problem worse but is only a side effect, not the cause for the problems, technically you should just scroll through the names list on the side without anything else happening. ...plus it works fine with the keyboard in those videos without changing any settings or whatever, so i think we can 100% exclude a performance problem here (PC or BigBox!), the problem has to be the controller input specifically. So lets start with making sure the Controller itself isn't the cause. Go to your Game Controller Settings and make sure the D-pad signal isn't interrupted or flickering while pressed. What you see here is exactly the input BigBox should be getting from the pad. It would probably be best if you could display that window on a second monitor while having BigBox doing its thing on the other screen so you can observe the input from the pad while the lag in BigBox is happening. I just think a hardware issue would explain why some people have this problem but most don't, it might be a defective D-Pad, it might be a defective Xbox wireless receiver, or just the signal being interrupted by outside sources, it might be a USB bandwidth problem etc. all stuff that can easily happen to more than one person, but would not happen to everyone at the same time. So, please check this on your end and report back. (and it would be good if two or three people would test this, just to be on the safe side).

Can somebody explain or post a video how that controller lag actually LOOKS LIKE? I currently have 14513 game entries in my launchbox (160GB, no roms in the folder, all just scraped media), Windows 10, Xbox App is installed (i need that for Forza, Gears of War... i don't get why people uninstall that thing so often, aren't you happy that you can play the Xbox Exclusives now?). I usually use 8bitdo pads but for testing purposes i used my Xbox 360 wireless pad and no change... works fine as always. (maybe if i knew what exactly to look for?) I'm still using the default theme, with some standard customized settings. Like white text list on the side as game list that just keeps scrolling, no fancy animations with clear logos or whatever. That said i have a solid gaming PC, 16GB RAM, GTX1080, 7700K@5GHz, LaunchBox installed on SSD. To the whole Xbox App theory, maybe it has to do specifically with the "DVR" recording feature, that you should always disable. ( https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6239-DZCB-8600 ... i think the UI changed a bit since that article was written but you get the idea), recording video will obviously cost a lot of performance and especially on slower machines that may be very disruptive. ...but that would most likely not be limited to Big Box, that would probably affect all other games as well, still worth checking if you disabled that nonsense. And i've heard that setting defaults to ON randomly for some people when updating Windows 10 at least it used to when it was new, so it is worth rechecking every now and then, personally i turned mine OFF once and it stayed that way since but YMMV.