LaunchBox Beta Testing

[kmoney]

Jazzphone said

kmoney2315 said

Jason Carr said No problem @shinra358, thanks for clarifying. :) @kmoney2315, that's odd. In the video it looks like window focus isn't properly returning to Big Box after the game exits. The start menu is showing up over top of Big Box which isn't typical and should be avoidable if focus is properly returned. It probably does have something to do with Rocket Launcher; I'm gonna have to get a good setup of RL going in order to address that. Are you using the latest version of RL now with the LaunchBox plugin?

I am using the new plugin for Rocketlauncher and I did notice that the start menu popped up over BB. The start menu doesnt pop up every time but it did happen in this video but the video doesnt start back automatically either way. I have been using Rocketlauncher for years and with the new Launchbox plugin it makes it even easier for new users to use RL with LB. Watching your livestream and seeing your videos start back automatically I noticed one thing with your setup is when you press the button to enter the game the video paused immediately and the game started. My setup when I press the button to enter the game my video continued on for a second and actually did a full transition to a screenshot and then the game started. So maybe its something like Rocketlaucher takes a second or so more time to start to enter a game and then when you exit a game it takes a second or so more time to regain back focus of the frontend.

Do you have issues with auditing your games with the new RL plugin in RocketLauncher? It seems to be sticking to the first system I audit for all systems.

Yes I am seeing that as well with the game audits. Hopefully the RL guys are taking a look at it. Are you having any issues that I mentioned above when using RL with BigBox with the game videos not starting back automatically when exiting a game?

[Jazzphone]

kmoney2315 said

Jason Carr said No problem @shinra358, thanks for clarifying. :) @kmoney2315, that's odd. In the video it looks like window focus isn't properly returning to Big Box after the game exits. The start menu is showing up over top of Big Box which isn't typical and should be avoidable if focus is properly returned. It probably does have something to do with Rocket Launcher; I'm gonna have to get a good setup of RL going in order to address that. Are you using the latest version of RL now with the LaunchBox plugin?

I am using the new plugin for Rocketlauncher and I did notice that the start menu popped up over BB. The start menu doesnt pop up every time but it did happen in this video but the video doesnt start back automatically either way. I have been using Rocketlauncher for years and with the new Launchbox plugin it makes it even easier for new users to use RL with LB. Watching your livestream and seeing your videos start back automatically I noticed one thing with your setup is when you press the button to enter the game the video paused immediately and the game started. My setup when I press the button to enter the game my video continued on for a second and actually did a full transition to a screenshot and then the game started. So maybe its something like Rocketlaucher takes a second or so more time to start to enter a game and then when you exit a game it takes a second or so more time to regain back focus of the frontend.

Also, for me using RocketLauncher if you enable the Loading Game Message under General in Big Box and you start a game, the video will start back up upon exit of emulator. Not sure why this work, but the behavior of the video stopping and restarting right before the RocketLauncher fade kicks in doesn't happen when you have the Loading Game message checked.

[Jazzphone]

I am using WMP as my video backend also.

[kmoney]

@Jason I just downloaded a fresh copy of Launchbox for some test and here are my findings with the video issue: In the test copy I am not even using Rocketlauncher and just using Retroarch as an emulator and my game videos still did not start back automatically when exiting a game until I did one thing. I enabled the option in BB to Display the "Loading Game" message and then the videos started back automatically when exiting a game. But even with this option enabled while using Rocketlauncher the videos do not start back. I am wondering on your setup if you disable that option for the "Loading Game" message will your videos start back automatically after exiting a game? @Jazzphone Thanks for confiming this with the Loading Game message option checked, strange that even with this option checked in my setup with rocketlauncher my vids still do not start back. But either way its some kind of focus issue.

[martinconroy]

Jason, Minor thing, but does the About VLC box reflect the fact that you changed the engine you are using? From memory it still refers to the old one but I could be wrong!

[knewlife]

I don't know if it was already mentioned but for those with problems with Rocketlauncher + BigBox I did this and works fine (I don't use Game Videos, just screenshots): Update RL to the last version. In RocketlauncherUI create a new Front end in RLUI settings: Name Launchbox, path Your bigbox.exe path (no launchbox.exe), Plugins Launchbox In RocketlauncherUI, Main Settings: Set Hidefrontend an SUspend frontend options to True. Restorefront end False. In Launchbox, all your emulator CMD lines for RL have to look like this: -f "..\..\LaunchBox\BigBox.exe" -p "LaunchBox" -s "American Laser Games" -r Rocektlauncher takes a long time to load (compared when using with Hyperspin) because of the many checks needed to find all LB media. During this time BigBox will operate normally (until the RL fade screen appears) because I suppose BigBox expects that the launched application take the focus and return it to Bigbox just once tha game/app as been closed. RL don't do this right away... hope there is some mode to make BIgBox "Know" when ROcketlauncher is running and act acordingly.

[knewlife]

One thing that will help fixing the rocket launcher focus issues is giving bigbox an option similar to launchbox that completely hide\minimize big box until the launched process is closed (rocketlaubcher.exe)

[kmoney]

knewlife said I don't know if it was already mentioned but for those with problems with Rocketlauncher + BigBox I did this and works fine (I don't use Game Videos, just screenshots): Update RL to the last version. In RocketlauncherUI create a new Front end in RLUI settings: Name Launchbox, path Your bigbox.exe path (no launchbox.exe), Plugins Launchbox In RocketlauncherUI, Main Settings: Set Hidefrontend an SUspend frontend options to True. Restorefront end False. In Launchbox, all your emulator CMD lines for RL have to look like this: -f "..\..\LaunchBox\BigBox.exe" -p "LaunchBox" -s "American Laser Games" -r Rocektlauncher takes a long time to load (compared when using with Hyperspin) because of the many checks needed to find all LB media. During this time BigBox will operate normally (until the RL fade screen appears) because I suppose BigBox expects that the launched application take the focus and return it to Bigbox just once tha game/app as been closed. RL don't do this right away... hope there is some mode to make BIgBox "Know" when ROcketlauncher is running and act acordingly.

Yes I have all those same settings but those are not working for game videos starting back automatically. You are definitely correct on rocketlauncher takes longer to load because the plugin is looking for the Launchbox media and then you combine that with loading shaders from retroarch and rocketlauncher bezels it takes a couple of seconds longer for rocketlauncher to come into focus. Its not a lot longer to load we are just talking about maybe 2 seconds more. Launching games through LaunchBox with Rocketlauncher, everything works as expected,just having some focus issues with BigBox. I think the way Jason has BigBox setup is to have BigBox perform a screen refresh when you exit a game to get the video to start back up. As you could tell in my video I think BigBox did a screen refresh before rocketlauncher even got started because RL takes a couple more seconds to load. He said today on the live stream he would be taking a look at this.

[Jason Carr]

Hi guys, unfortunately I think we're going to have to wait until after the 6.3 release to tackle these Rocket Launcher issues. I'm hoping to put out 6.3 before the end of the week and still have a number of other bugs to resolve. That said, I do want to tackle this stuff. The issue is that Big Box waits for the EXE that it's running to close, and then expects that the game is closed when that EXE returns. It looks like Rocket Launcher doesn't work that way; I'm not really sure yet how I'll solve that but we'll figure it out one way or another.

[ALIE]

Jason Carr said Hi guys, unfortunately I think we're going to have to wait until after the 6.3 release to tackle these Rocket Launcher issues. I'm hoping to put out 6.3 before the end of the week and still have a number of other bugs to resolve. That said, I do want to tackle this stuff. The issue is that Big Box waits for the EXE that it's running to close, and then expects that the game is closed when that EXE returns. It looks like Rocket Launcher doesn't work that way; I'm not really sure yet how I'll solve that but we'll figure it out one way or another.

No rush :) i have no doubt you will fix the issues :)

[Jason Carr]

A new beta is out; still have more bugs to fix but this gets us farther. There have also been some important changes/additions: - Video backgrounds are now supported for the games views. Rather than add new views, I enabled them for all the existing views. You can turn them on under Options > Game Images > Use Background Videos. - I removed the new Platforms Wheel with Video Backgrounds view. Instead, I've added an option similar to the games views above. You can now turn on video backgrounds under Options > Filters Images > Use Background Videos. This should now work for all the platforms views sans for the boring text list view. Thanks all.

[Jazzphone]

Jason Carr said A new beta is out; still have more bugs to fix but this gets us farther. There have also been some important changes/additions: - Video backgrounds are now supported for the games views. Rather than add new views, I enabled them for all the existing views. You can turn them on under Options > Game Images > Use Background Videos. - I removed the new Platforms Wheel with Video Backgrounds view. Instead, I've added an option similar to the games views above. You can now turn on video backgrounds under Options > Filters Images > Use Background Videos. This should now work for all the platforms views sans for the boring text list view. Thanks all.

Hi Jason, Love the fact that you added the ability to just add background videos across the board. I did notice on the Details for the Platform wheel, there doesn't appear to be away to control the transition of it. It seems to be set to Fade and nothing else. Maybe this option just hasn't been implemented yet?

[knewlife]

Jason Carr said A new beta is out; still have more bugs to fix but this gets us farther. There have also been some important changes/additions: - Video backgrounds are now supported for the games views. Rather than add new views, I enabled them for all the existing views. You can turn them on under Options > Game Images > Use Background Videos. - I removed the new Platforms Wheel with Video Backgrounds view. Instead, I've added an option similar to the games views above. You can now turn on video backgrounds under Options > Filters Images > Use Background Videos. This should now work for all the platforms views sans for the boring text list view. Thanks all.

Actually RocketLauncher.exe keeps running, or waiting in background all the time the game / emulator is runnig... when the target closes, RocketLauncher does the same. And yes take your time to fix all the bugs... The RL-guys like me will be waiting :D

[Jazzphone]

Jazzphone said

Jason Carr said A new beta is out; still have more bugs to fix but this gets us farther. There have also been some important changes/additions: - Video backgrounds are now supported for the games views. Rather than add new views, I enabled them for all the existing views. You can turn them on under Options > Game Images > Use Background Videos. - I removed the new Platforms Wheel with Video Backgrounds view. Instead, I've added an option similar to the games views above. You can now turn on video backgrounds under Options > Filters Images > Use Background Videos. This should now work for all the platforms views sans for the boring text list view. Thanks all.

Hi Jason, Love the fact that you added the ability to just add background videos across the board. I did notice on the Details for the Platform wheel, there doesn't appear to be away to control the transition of it. It seems to be set to Fade and nothing else. Maybe this option just hasn't been implemented yet?

Nevermind. Found It!

[kmoney]

Jason Carr said Hi guys, unfortunately I think we're going to have to wait until after the 6.3 release to tackle these Rocket Launcher issues. I'm hoping to put out 6.3 before the end of the week and still have a number of other bugs to resolve. That said, I do want to tackle this stuff. The issue is that Big Box waits for the EXE that it's running to close, and then expects that the game is closed when that EXE returns. It looks like Rocket Launcher doesn't work that way; I'm not really sure yet how I'll solve that but we'll figure it out one way or another.

I understand...we can wait a little longer on the RL issues,we def need to get all this bugs ironed out first for the 6.3 release.

[knewlife]

knewlife said One thing that will help fixing the rocket launcher focus issues is giving bigbox an option similar to launchbox that completely hide\minimize big box until the launched process is closed (rocketlaubcher.exe)

After some more testing with the settings I present before I found that set Suspend frontend to True causes RocketLauncher to frezee in some cases. It works fine whit Suspend frontend to False, the problem with this seeting is with the bezel feature, BigBox covers the backgrounds of the bezels and that looks odd.

[LogicalEgo]

Scrape as feature is a god send for all my wonky Japanese systems. Thanks so much for this. I can finally start building a decent Famicom and Super Famicom wheel and further expand my NEC wheels.

[SentaiBrad]

keltoigael said Scrape as feature is a god send for all my wonky Japanese systems. Thanks so much for this. I can finally start building a decent Famicom and Super Famicom wheel and further expand my NEC wheels.

That's the exact reason why we did it, now users can compartmentalize all the systems they want to! xD

[kmoney]

@Jason I have a bit of good news with my videos not starting back automatically after exiting a game with rocketlauncher. After Jazzphone was stating that his RL and BB setup his videos would start back up as long the loading game message was enabled in options. However on my setup my videos would still not start back with that option enabled. The problem was something in my Rocketlauncher must have been corrupt even though everything seemed normal. I downloaded a fresh copy of RL and set everything back up exactly how I had it in my previous setup with the same settings and now my videos start back up automatically using RL. I still have to make sure the loading game message option is checked in order for the videos to start back automatically but that is fine for now until you get a chance to fix the bug of having to have that option enabled in order to get the videos to start back automatically. So it turns out it really had nothing to do with RL other than something was corrupt in my RL folder. That was definitely a head scratcher especially when everything else seemed normal even with other frontends.

[Jazzphone]

kmoney2315 said @Jason I have a bit of good news with my videos not starting back automatically after exiting a game with rocketlauncher. After Jazzphone was stating that his RL and BB setup his videos would start back up as long the loading game message was enabled in options. However on my setup my videos would still not start back with that option enabled. The problem was something in my Rocketlauncher must have been corrupt even though everything seemed normal. I downloaded a fresh copy of RL and set everything back up exactly how I had it in my previous setup with the same settings and now my videos start back up automatically using RL. I still have to make sure the loading game message option is checked in order for the videos to start back automatically but that is fine for now until you get a chance to fix the bug of having to have that option enabled in order to get the videos to start back automatically. So it turns out it really had nothing to do with RL other than something was corrupt in my RL folder. That was definitely a head scratcher especially when everything else seemed normal even with other frontends.

Glad to hear you got this working!