LaunchBox Beta Testing

[bd00]

Jason Carr said 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.

Here. Also, it looks like your doing some great work Jason, keep it up. I will find time to do some testing soon, i promise.

[Jason Carr]

Wolfereign said 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.

Thanks Wolfereign. Command line switches are actually pretty easy to add in; I do have a few in there already (though they're undocumented). I'll see if I can't get -f in there soon.

[bd00]

Jason Carr said Thanks Wolfereign. Command line switches are actually pretty easy to add in; I do have a few in there already (though they're undocumented). I'll see if I can't get -f in there soon.

Ooohhh, please share.

[Jason Carr]

I just sent out licenses to everyone who's donated in the past (there was 11 people). If you've donated any amount but have not received a license, please check your spam folder. I'll be putting out the beta of LaunchBox 4.0 (with the premium features) within the next day two, so you can test those shiny new licenses.

[Jason Carr]

bd000 said Ooohhh, please share.

Well, they're mostly untested but you can try these: /sort [sort type] /play [game title] I added these during HTSpeak development for integration with HTSpeak, but I haven't been back to it in a million years. You can take a look at that on the YouTube channel if you're curious what it is. Also, I did add the /f for fullscreen; that will be in 4.0.

[Jason Carr]

Alright! The 4.0 beta is here! http://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox-nightlies I hope to put out the official release in a week or so. Please test anything you can, especially those of you who've donated and are able to test the premium features. Thanks guys!

[Wolfereign]

So far so good, I haven't had the new nightly crash on me yet! However during testing I did notice an issue with launchbox consuming too much CPU resources. To elaborate when launchbox is sitting idle (minimized or not the active windows) and after launching a game (aka program is in the background) it consumes between 14% - 20% cpu load. That's a lot of cpu time for a program that should be in an idle state when its not being interacted with. This is mostly an issue when running stuff like steam games or dolphin.

[Jason Carr]

Good find Wolfereign; I actually noticed that yesterday and fixed it too (the CPU usage). It was endlessly generating images unnecessarily (whoops). Glad to hear everything else is working great for you; I do think we have a stable release here. Unless anyone else chimes in, I plan to move the release date forward a bit. I have pretty much everything ready, so I'm looking to release tomorrow night.

[Jason Carr]

I went ahead and released yesterday (if anyone didn't notice). Looks like there are a few bugs to fix that have been reported already, mostly with configuration. There is already a new beta posted that gets around some localization issues: http://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox-nightlies

[Palada]

I notice 2 new strings in left sidebar with platform filter, (Exists) showing all game in library, and (None), showing... well, none. Is there a way to remove this two new itens? Everything else seems to be running fine (except my license, but I already send a report aout that).

[Jason Carr]

Hi jh0nny, the (Exists) and (None) filters do have a purpose (they were added by request). (Exists) shows all items that have a value for the selected property (such as developer, publisher, etc.), while (None) shows all items that do not have a value for the selected property. However, I can see an option to disable them. I'll add that to my to do list.

[Palada]

Thanks Jason, i understand that they do have some use, but for me it kinda makes my sidebar "ugly" with that two word between parenthesis. Maybe we could edit the sidebar, marking with checkboxes the strings we want to show, and also edit their names so even if in game properties the platform is named as "Super Nintendo" for example, in the sidebar we can name it "SNES" or something. Also another idea: i add music to each of my games and i think its one of the best "hidden" features, to make this process easier, i suggest that the program create a folder called "music" or something for each added game, and automagically pick the songs inside this folder and assign then to the game, maybe creating a playlist if there's more than one song inside it. Then in game details panel the playlist can be shown and we select the song we want to hear, if nothing is selected it plays from top to bottom (only if autoplay music is selected of course).

[Jason Carr]

Hi jh0nny, I do have plans to add extended music support for the premium version (full soundtracks, etc.). And scrapers for the music and manuals, etc. are planned as well. I see where you're going with editing the sidebar, but at some point it does get too complicated, and I've always wanted to focus on simplicity and ease of use. That said, I do still plan on adding an option to hide the (Exists) and (None) items.

[Neon32]

Reporting an error : Version : LB4.1. OS:Win7x32 I had added a new game and clicked the "search for metadata" button, and it was searching the wikipedia for a long time , it thought it was stuck so pressed "Escape" key . and got this . i was able to reproduce this in the same way as described above. Error code :

Spoiler

System.ObjectDisposedException: Cannot access a disposed object. Object name: 'ComboBox'. at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateHandle() at System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox.CreateHandle() at System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox.set_DroppedDown(Boolean value) at LaunchBox.Forms.AddEditForm.backgroundWorker_RunWorkerCompleted(Object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.OnRunWorkerCompleted(RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.AsyncOperationCompleted(Object arg)

[Jason Carr]

Thanks, Conehead; I'll take a look at that error. In the mean time, I just released 4.2-beta-1: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox-nightlies As always, any testing is much appreciated. Here is the changelog: - New Premium Feature: Game counts can now be added to the sidebar from the Options dialog (with the option to align right if desired) - New Feature: "All", "(None)", and "(Exists)" side bar items can now be hidden, shown, or renamed in the Options dialog; "(None)" and "(Exists)" are now hidden by default - New Feature: New Manage Emulators option is available under the Tools menu - New Feature: LaunchBox now automatically knows proper configurations for select emulators and can automatically suggest emulators and settings for various platforms - Improvement: Emulators now support multiple platforms with different command-line parameters for each platform - Improvement: Emulator command-line parameters can now be set per emulator, per platform, or per game - Improvement: The search box can now be accessed using Ctrl+F; the shortcut for fullscreen is now F11 - Improvement: The search box no longer flickers - Improvement: Empty folders are now added in export packages - Fixed: Touch screen swiping now works with the new themes - Fixed: Side bar scrollbar wasn't showing up or hiding in some cases when adding or removing games - Fixed: Side bar was in some cases not showing items until scrolling after changing filter types

[Jason Carr]

Alright, beta 2 is out: https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox-nightlies Fixed a bunch of things, added support for problem child emulators like Project64 1.6 and nullDC, added more automatic emulator settings, tweaked the interface, etc. I'm hoping no news is good news?

[Duckeenie]

My initial thoughts on beta 2: "Import from ROM files" should probably say Import ROM files. Replace the term Delete in the GUI with Remove, it makes people much less nervous (not exclusive to beta 2). Now for the biggie! No way to use an emulator for more than one set of ROMs. which basically completely locks out us RetroArch users. Not sure if it works the same way in 4.0 because I've only set up one system currently.

[Jason Carr]

Duckeenie, can you explain what you mean by "no way to use an emulator for more than one set of ROMs"? Emulators support multiple platforms and can apply to any ROMs you want. I don't understand what you mean.

[Duckeenie]

Jason Carr said Duckeenie, can you explain what you mean by "no way to use an emulator for more than one set of ROMs"? Emulators support multiple platforms and can apply to any ROMs you want. I don't understand what you mean.

Yeah, as an example I tried to set up two systems MegaDrive and Master System. I setup MegaDrive first and everything worked as expected. When I tried to add Master System LB complained that RetroArch was already in use and I must choose another emulator. Actually while I was typing I just realized one can probably differentiate between the two by changing the "Emulator Name" field.

[Jason Carr]

Ah, yes, that's because it expects you to add two different platforms to the *same* emulator instead of two completely different emulators. You can specify different command line parameters for different platforms, even when using the same emulator.