LaunchBox Beta Testing

[bd00]

Actually yeah, I remember you mentioning that before. Yeah, you are probably better off just starting your own fork and if you do it well your database will probably grow much faster than TGDB anyway. Also 6MB for the whole DB is crazy! You could definitely package that with LB or at least add an option to download it. Will you be using the same size restrictions and file types as TGDB, for the images? I am not fully clear on how you manage images (boxart thumbs) at present, but maybe you could start creating thumbnails now, if you catch my drift. You had a few problems with cached images previously which is not completely resolved yet (the idle cpu usage), maybe it would help? Finally, I am bringing up a local scraper again, but it could help immensely with bulk updates to your DB.

[nmc]

I saw a frontend with a scrapper for google images, something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNrzN4dnYKo It could be an alternative to when gamesdb is down. For notes wikipedia is more than enough.

[Jason Carr]

Alright, despite the fact that I've had the flu all day (or maybe because of it), I've had a pretty productive day. There's a new beta out that includes the local metadata database: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox-nightlies Any related testing would be much appreciated, both searching in Add/Edit and importing from Steam and ROM files. For images, it currently still attempts to pull them down from TheGamesDB for local entries. However, I'm in the middle of downloading the entire set of images from TheGamesDB; it's currently at something like 33%. Once I have all the images, I could possibly stick them up on Amazon S3 or similar, hopefully for cheap, so that even if TGDB is completely down everything would work great. Then of course up next would be branching out to our own server side database down the road, though I am worried about moderation for that, and it's on the back burner for now. nmc, that does look pretty nice, have to say. They must be using some neat trickery to make that work so well, but it's a great idea. It wouldn't work well for imports of course (too much manual selection), but I could see that being really handy for manual additions. I've added it to my list.

[Innomen]

--------------------------- LaunchBox --------------------------- An error occurred while trying to launch the game: This version of %1 is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need a x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher --------------------------- OK --------------------------- I went to add eob2, it was found in the local database (awesome!), and I pointed the application path to it's start exe, and this is the error I got when trying to launch it. Edit: Forgot to tell it it was a dos game. (Maybe it could ask?) Checking the uhh dosbox box, now it runs Workflow: Install beta, add game, search, add from local, application path, launch, error.

[Bigby]

After trying out the latest beta, I noticed that the metadata retrieved for the release year is showing as 0001. This is after importing a new collection of roms for the Atari Lynx. Only the local metadata search was selected, all other options were deselected. I'll try some more imports, and see what it does.

[Bigby]

Imported Sega Genesis roms, and the years are displaying correctly. Edit: After filtering for Genesis and selecting year as 1, it appears that 22 out of 968 roms has this year as 0001. For Atari Lynx this is 57 out of 85, which display year as 0001. Edit2: Having glanced at the Metadata.xml, and searching for some of the games that have 0001, it looks like they do not have an actual year present in the database. Looking on thegamesdb.net those games do not have a year either, so that explains that.

[Jason Carr]

Innomen said --------------------------- LaunchBox --------------------------- An error occurred while trying to launch the game: This version of %1 is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need a x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher --------------------------- OK --------------------------- I went to add eob2, it was found in the local database (awesome!), and I pointed the application path to it's start exe, and this is the error I got when trying to launch it. Edit: Forgot to tell it it was a dos game. (Maybe it could ask?) Checking the uhh dosbox box, now it runs Workflow: Install beta, add game, search, add from local, application path, launch, error.

Hi Innomen, I'll add an item to my to do list to tell a user to check the box if it detects a DOS game.

[Jason Carr]

Bigby said Imported Sega Genesis roms, and the years are displaying correctly. Edit: After filtering for Genesis and selecting year as 1, it appears that 22 out of 968 roms has this year as 0001. For Atari Lynx this is 57 out of 85, which display year as 0001. Edit2: Having glanced at the Metadata.xml, and searching for some of the games that have 0001, it looks like they do not have an actual year present in the database. Looking on thegamesdb.net those games do not have a year either, so that explains that.

Good find, Bigby. Games that don't have a release date on TGDB shouldn't have that box checked on the game; I'll look into it.

[Bigby]

sincro said I did some testing with the new game details display: I think it would be better to display the details for the selected item, because even if for example I use the XBOX pad I can not see the popup. For me it is not a problem if the window hides other things, to avoid it you should have a fixed panel or, as I said in another post, mimic display in iTunes which is quite complex. I would add the outputting of the other available images as clear logo or full screenshot. I always like more launchbox!

Is this a mock-up? Are there plans to have LaunchBox display screenshots in this way? Videos would be nice too, if possible. I just wanted to say thank you Jason for making LaunchBox, I have been looking for a front-end for some time (tried a few different ones over the years), and LaunchBox has a lot of promise.

[Jason Carr]

Bigby said Is this a mock-up? Are there plans to have LaunchBox display screenshots in this way? Videos would be nice too, if possible. I just wanted to say thank you Jason for making LaunchBox, I have been looking for a front-end for some time (tried a few different ones over the years), and LaunchBox has a lot of promise.

Yeah, that's a mockup. I do have that feature on my list to implement, yes.

[Jason Carr]

I have another beta uploaded: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox-nightlies This should fix the release date issue from above. Here's the changelog thus far: - New Feature: Added a local metadata database to allow searching for metadata even if not connected to the Internet or TheGamesDB.net is down - Improvement: Improved game matching on the Steam import process - Improvement: Changed the scrollbar hover highlight to be more prominent - Improvement: The main scrollbar now resizes properly at various DPI settings - Improvement: Reduced flickering throughout the app - Fixed: When using the custom window borders, the window would get slightly bigger with every restore - Fixed: Menus were missing borders when using the default Windows theme - Fixed: Cursor was not changing properly on split containers

[spycat]

This latest nightly is looking really good with the local metadata and images import features. However, when importing from the local metadata database, the data for the Notes Box is not imported if a user has already put some text in it. This can give the impression that the local database has no Note Box data for that game. For example if I have already made an entry like This is Part 2 of the XYX Trilogy, or This is a Windows mod of the original MS-DOS Quake game. I imagine this is to prevent a duplication of the Notes Box game notes from the local metadata database if it's used a 2nd time for a particular game. This is not a big issue as Note Box user entries can be just cut and pasted to a notepad file for re-pasting once the game overview metadata has been installed.

[Jason Carr]

Hi scree, this was more because the Notes field didn't used to automatically populate via search and I didn't want anyone's manual entries to be overwritten. I can probably add an option for this. I'll add it to my list.

[Neon32]

some of the thing i found out were > the info box which opens up when we hover over the game doesnt disappears even if we click in the background. > the zoom increasing tab at the bottom of LB starts flickering if you change the size of the filter section on right side of LB. so it would be cool if these problem are solved .

[Jason Carr]

Thanks conehead, I'll look into those.

[Bigby]

I've noticed that games that start with a number or have a number in their name, are sorted at the end of a collection or the letter group. For example, my PlayStation collection has the games 1Xtreme, 2Xtreme and 3D Lemmings at the end of the collection. The game F1 2014 (PS3 collection) was at the end of the letter F group of games. However, I used the "Sort Title" on the other tab of the edit window, to put them in order. As I am using the latest beta version I was just wondering, is it supposed to be like this?

[Jason Carr]

Hi Bigby; yes, that is the current default sort order, though I understand that in some situations it's not ideal. I believe it sorts that way because I wanted something like "Game: Subtitle" to come before "Game 2: Subtitle". It's hard to make everything order well by default. I have plans to allow for much more control in the sorting algorithms in the premium version, eventually. I added it to my list.

[Jason Carr]

Btw guys, anyone having trouble with LaunchBox Forums emails going into their spam folder? I noticed that mine were recently and I'm not sure why they are now but weren't before. Anyways, development on the premium version is going well; I have the new saved custom filters mostly completed and I've started on the theming customizations. I'll be handing out license keys to everyone who's donated for access to the premium beta shortly.

[Jason Carr]

[Wolfereign]

It just keep looking better and better! The purple looks great and the custom filters will be nice for playing through game series like Zelda or Megaman. Is there any chance of the LaunchBox.exe to support Command line switches such as -f to launch LaunchBox in full screen mode.