ItchyRobot

Any of you Visual Pinball X people having issues with screen focus with the latest Launchbox build? When I launch VPX with Launchbox or BigBox, the table comes up but I have to grab my mouse and click in the screen to make VPX gain focus. And sometimes my DMD is behind the table. And sometimes my taskbar is still visible. If I launch VPX stand-alone, it works fine.... table screen is active to put credits in table and the DMD is on top of table screen. And I was just thinking I had a killer build going ... feels like my entire build is falling apart lately, shit breaking for no reason. Random crashes. God damn this hobby!

no, all directly into pc case

I do have Windows Security running, but I set an exclusion for my Launchbox folder. Is that not good enough? It didn't seem to be a problem for the past year. See attached image...

Well that sucks. After getting all these BigBox crashes started a few weeks back, I made sure I was up to date... went to all the manufacturers websites and downloaded latest drivers, even for my motherboard's bios. Using a Nvidia 1060 with latest game ready drivers too. The only other thing I can think of is that my PC is plugged into an outlet that also has a minifridge attached. When it fires up and shuts down, I can sometimes hear an audible usb attach/detach sound. I have yet to see that timing correlate with the BigBox crash though. I will try to unplug the mini fridge for a while to see if that may be causing it. I never had these crashes for a year of building out my Launchbox/BigBox collection. It only started around 10.4 or so.

Well, that was not it. I just finished setting up the new AllNightLong theme, walked a way from my machine for a bit, and came back to the desktop... with no mouse cursor (invisible) like before. Again had to stumble through windows power menu without cursor to restart machine. Attached is the log file for this crash. Debug 2020-05-21 11-02-28 AM.log

@Jason Carr Well, I could have sworn I had it set to VLC. I just checked and it said Windows. Should I download the full version of VLC, or is the default Launchbox/Bigbox version that comes installed with LB/BB good enough?

VLC

I was having pause issues with Colorful theme, and you recommended trying another theme because of that known plugin issue. I switched to Unified Refried and that seems to have eliminated the pause screen issue, but brought up this crash issue. I like both themes and would love to use both, but can not in their current conditions. Do you have a theme you recommend to try? ... I just messed around in Default for about 15 minutes without issue.

I am not aware of running any plugins. Is there a way for me to check? I am using the Unified Refried theme, which I see has a Plugin folder with files in it.

I am still getting hard/quick crashes to the desktop randomly - latest build. I am left without being able to see my cursor, as if BigBox is still running. But task manager says nothings running. Pain in the ass when it happens; pretty much have to fumble through menus without being able to see the cursor, and restart to get cursor back. Attached log. Debug 2020-05-20 07-58-47 PM.log

How do I do that without reverting to a prior state? I am adding roms all the time, so dont want to revert to a previous state if posssible

Thanks for the tip! How long ago did your crash happen? Mine only started crashing about a week ago.

Unified Refried I switched over from Colorful to try to trouble shoot the BB-Pause bug I was having with the Colorful theme (as you asked me to do in a previous post). Then after successfully using the pause theme for a while, the quick crash to desktop happened - after using Unified Refried for a while. That reminded me, this quick crash to desktop has happen about 4 times the last week. That's when I reported it. I have never had it happen until about 3 betas ago.

Sorry to add another issue; but, I have been having BigBox quickly crash out to my desktop, only to leave me with no cursor. Task manager says nothing is open, still no cursor, like when in BigBox. I have to do a hard restart of the PC to get my cursor back. If I remember, this started about 2 betas ago. On the latest beta Attached is the Debug log... Debug 2020-05-04 09-01-48 PM.log

I was just trying to record a short video showing how I use the Pause Theme to show my custom control layout for each game. After pausing a game, then returning to the games text list; when I was scrolling through the games, BigBox hard quit to the desktop in a split second. See the first attached Debug log for that. I then reopened BigBox, opened a game, and was unable to use the Pause Theme screen to quit the game. I instead had to use Escape. I was able to activate the Pause screen, but not quit the game. See the second Debug log for that. Not in this case, but many other ones, the pause them is unable to even open after having issues - I think I remember reading Jason say this is a Theme issues - in this case, the Colorful theme. The entire Big Box Pause Theme seems very flaky to me, in need for some thorough investigation from the devs. It is such a great feature, but very unstable and aggravating to use sometimes in BigBox, due to its inconsistency. Theme: Colorful Pause Theme: Game Controls Debug 2020-05-04 03-42-21 PM.log Debug 2020-05-04 03-49-38 PM.log

Here is an example. It is how I have it set up for a handful of fighting games and games with convoluted controls that are hard to remember ... using a pause theme to show controls and the Manuals folder to house my moves list. 'Colorful' BigBox theme 'Game Controls' pause theme

The only time I have lockup issues is due to attract mode in BigBox. I will leave it doing it thing, only to come back and find my machine locked up an hour later. This requires me to cont/alt/del to get to my task manager to clumsily try to quit out of BigBox without being able to see my mouse. Even stranger, last night it locked up but was showing my desktop, and when I cont/alt/del to go to task manager, I saw no programs running. But my mouse was still invisible like BigBox was still running. That one required a hard restart.

@Jason Carr I just had it happen to me again, after a long while of if working fine. I have attached the Debug report to this post. I was actually testing another bug I sometimes get when in some MAME games, while pausing. Sometimes, especially in Mortal Kombat II, coming out of the BigBox pause screen, I get about a 5 second sound stutter, then it goes back to normal. Almost as if it remebers the last sound it heard as I activated pause, and repeats it for a while once unpaused. I think it is only in the M.Kombat arcade boards in MAME, but I have not tested it enough to know if it is related to other games too. Debug 2020-04-30 09-57-38 AM.log

rofl... you almost got burned at the stake ?

Good ideas. I was thinking the same thing. Especially the last tip about variants (aka 'addition app'). I remember when first setting up MAME, I had a couple games that required specific controller remapping, compared to the default.cfg. Once set up using MAME, I then went into launchbox and started the same game, only to find the new controls were not the same as when in MAME. That was because the game was defaulting to a different rom (but same game). This all can be very confusing for new users. Especially those that are used to console games only having one rom per game. MAME is a weird, but wonderful beast ? Tip, when in MAMEs default browser GUI, when you highlight a game (one that you have set the controls for), you should also be able to see what rom it is referencing. Write that down, then when you go into Launchbox, edit the same game to see what rom file it is referencing. This should be the same rom.

It's been a few days since I was keeping up with this thread... I see there are many posts about deleting my *.hi files out of the "hi" MAME folder. And also some posts saying to delete files out of the NVRAM folder. Should I do both? I know some games require some finagling to them working correctly, such as Track and Field. So I am a bit hesitant to start deleting NVRAM files. Are there any games that I should avoid deleting the NVRAM? It's been so long since I got all the MAME roms working correctly, I am unsure if deleting the NVRAM will cause issues or require me to do some research to get the games running as intended again. For some reason I am remembering Track and Field giving me issues back in the day and I had to some stuff to get it to log hi scores locally. I assume there may be other roms that I messed with to get running too, but can not remember.

Good choice

seems to be running good on my end. I couldn't get a high score to save my life, but it didn't mess any of my controls up or mess with my bezel layout... which i was hesitant since so much data is inside those files.

How to download beta?

It really is great. It reminds me of the old arcade days; especially now that I am getting used to some of the user names around here. A little competition makes all games more fun.