Kriven Posted July 6, 2015 Share Posted July 6, 2015 Also, I'll admit that this is my first time playing with the music feature, so I've got that on the mind at the moment (as well as the new videos feature). Playing with Big Box at all tonight, so just been thinking a lot about ways to use it. A "Next Screenshot" button from the Game Menu list would be neat. Maybe also "Next Fanart" for the backgrounds, to allow users to seamlessly view multiple images for a game without leaving Big Box. Maybe the music could stop playing when an additional app is selected? Sorry if I'm cluttering the thread with this since I know it doesn't particularly pertain (at least, this post doesn't) to the current Beta build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 6, 2015 Author Share Posted July 6, 2015 No, no, keep it coming. Those are great ideas, and they're easy to implement too. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted July 6, 2015 Share Posted July 6, 2015 Ran into an issue with videos. Since you can't use " : " in a file name, that method won't work for connecting a video file with its respective game's title. The only way to do link the two is by using the game's actual file name, which can be problematic for a number of games which simply use "Launch.exe" as their filename... yet for some reason when I try to manually link the video and game by going into Edit - Other - Video, LaunchBox doesn't want to save the video directory. Quick Edit: Also, for the sake of keeping the visuals consistent, do you think we could use the "Rating Pending" icon for any game which doesn't have an ESRB rating? Edit Again: Actually, I found an ESRB image generator and made this: Could that be used for all items which have an empty Rating field? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 7, 2015 Author Share Posted July 7, 2015 Awesome @Kriven. I just put out another new beta; I added that image and a few others I made for Portable, Favorite, and Game Completed. Per Not Rated, I did add that image, but it only shows up for "Not Rated", "NR", or "NR - Not Rated" values. I didn't want to make it show up for blank values, because then you can't tell whether something is "Not Rated" on purpose (really hasn't been rated), or just hasn't been specified in LaunchBox. Still, you can easily batch edit to change them all to Not Rated to show the icon. Per the videos, I've changed it to be much more lenient in the title matching, so that punctuation is pretty much ignored, and it doesn't matter if it's different. I think I've solved the issue with editing the video path as well; let me know if you see any more issues with that. Solve some other issues with the videos as well, like stopping the videos on playing a game, not overlapping music and video, etc. There's plenty more options to add yet for that stuff but for the moment I just focused on making the defaults work properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted July 7, 2015 Share Posted July 7, 2015 Downloaded the latest beta, clicked to open Big Box... so far been sitting here for three minutes without any action. Nothing but the spinning wheel next to my cursor. Six minutes: had to ctrl+alt+del and end the LaunchBox process. Trying again. Big Box loaded this time in about a minute, though it didn't automatically become the active window. Music still plays simultaneously with the video when you load into a specific game's menu. Also, I found out that for whatever reason the previous install completely erased my controller settings for BBM, so I had to reset all that stuff to get the controller working again. Question: When you click "View Images" in Launch Box (specifically in BBM) and you get that fullscreen display of the image... is that LaunchBox itself displaying the images? If so, is it possible to, in the future, implement a similar viewer for various documents (PDF, CBZ, and CBR specifically) when they are loaded as additional apps or as manuals? It would be nicer than to load an outside application for handling that sort of thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 8, 2015 Author Share Posted July 8, 2015 ...weird. How long does it usually take to BB for you? Mine usually loads in a second or two. There are still some stability issues that I'm trying to resolve, so I guess that explains the lockup. Per the music playing simultaneously, is that happening for anyone else (it's another thing I can't reproduce...working fine on my end)? Yes, the controller settings were reset with a previous beta because we switched from using the LaunchBox controller settings to using special Big Box controller settings (new settings in addition to the LB settings). Yes, the image viewer is part of Big Box itself. Images are easy to display, but PDFs and other types of documents generally aren't as easy. But yes, agreed, that would be good to have, I've wanted that myself. I'll add it to the list and see it would take. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 BBM usually only takes about ten seconds to load up. It also ended up seriously dragging my system last night... I had to restart to watch YouTube. I'll try again tonight at some point and let you know how it goes. I know PDF files have a complex structure, but CBZ and CBR are just compressed image files... I imagine they would be easier to work with. Maybe bump support for them and recommend using those formats for manuals until PDF can be implemented? Edit: All that slowdown seems to have cleared up. I guess maybe restarting the computer helped (maybe it's best to recommend computer restarts after downloading an update?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
esareias Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Hey I just wanted to start off by saying I love this program! It is so satisfying to see a visual representation of all my games like this :) I just wanted to say that I updated to the latest beta, and it very well could be myself or my computer, but I've been noticing that nothing I do will end up saving. I've tried changing font size, and adding video (though that could very well be me not putting in the right formatting with folders and such). Keep up the fantastic work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CliveBarker Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Hi, so far Big Box mode works faster for me than previous versions, also I am kinda lost and I know this can be silly, but, what are you and Kriven talking about when saying "videos"? I am trying to help with the testing to see if I have the same issue as kriven but I can't find any videos feature in LaunchBox, I even checked the changelog to see if there's any but I didn't find anything, I am lost... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
troelsdk Posted July 8, 2015 Share Posted July 8, 2015 Do you plan to scrape from emumovies using their api? Great program by the way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 I updated to the mysterious beta version that went out last night without a word... My Big Box has been having very frequent lock-ups since then. CliveBarker said Hi, so far Big Box mode works faster for me than previous versions, also I am kinda lost and I know this can be silly, but, what are you and Kriven talking about when saying "videos"? I am trying to help with the testing to see if I have the same issue as kriven but I can't find any videos feature in LaunchBox, I even checked the changelog to see if there's any but I didn't find anything, I am lost... The latest beta build includes the option to associate a video file with your games. You can find this option by going to a game in the LaunchBox Manager view (not its official name...) and right clicking any game. Click "Edit" and select the "Other" tab. You will see options for Game Manual, Game Music, Game Video, and Sort Title. Associated videos will play automatically when browsing games in Big Box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 9, 2015 Author Share Posted July 9, 2015 Sorry, forgot to update last night. I think I've found the lockup bug as well. I'll have a new version out tonight. Sorry for the trouble. @troelsdk I'm actually trying to contact the right people at EmuMovies to make this happen. I hit them up on the forums a couple days ago. Let me know if you have any better way of getting a hold of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maddoc1007 Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 Hi @Jason latest beta cause frequent lockups in BigBox when you scroll down your emulators go over to games last played click on a game instead of launching a video associated with that game all i get is a black screen pressing esc shows the name of game as if BigBox is looking for it but it finds nothing. Pressing esc again rings you back to the games played updated when you try and move across to list of emulators o left hand side BigBox totally freezes only pressing ctrl alt del numerous times will get you out of this freeze or power button press to reboot computer. Also clicking on any recently played game in amy emulator list that has no video associated with it will cause a freeze up. Tried what @Kriven suggested above "The latest beta build includes the option to associate a video file with your games. You can find this option by going to a game in the LaunchBox Manager view (not its official name...) and right clicking any game. Click "Edit" and select the "Other" tab. You will see options for Game Manual, Game Music, Game Video, and Sort Title. Associated videos will play automatically when browsing games in Big Box" but that doesnt work either no video plays although it plays fine outside of LaunchBox BigBox in mp4 format. Also tried with putting video in new video folder that is now in LaunchBox still no go, also not all video folders for all emulators are populating on 11 out of the 28 i have have populated into that video folder. Also tried putting the video into the roms folder (i have all games in each emulator in each emulators folder) ie dolphin emulator folder inside dolphin called gameCube Roms etc). Also tried the Platform option in LaunchBox and pointed t where my roms are and my videos still cannot get video to work. I only have one video it for gamecube game James Bond 007 Everything or Nothing, even named video exactly the same as game still no video plays, dont know what im doing wrong think you need to do a video tutorial for this LOL, well that all the information hope it helps you sort thhings out. apart from that freezing which is associated to clicking on a recently played game Bigbox if you dont touch that recently played game list across bottom of BigBox works fine and fast even with different controllers have a generic usb one called uxp bought from china years ago and it works in every emulator perfectly as well as LaunchBox, BigBox also bought one of the usb converters the cheap blue ones and ps2 controllers work of the bat with it without having to install any drivers they are seen in win7 x64 as dual usb gamepads ant the d pad works amazing even wth both ps2 controllers plugged into blue usb adapter of one usb port. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maddoc1007 Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 @Jason hi another problem has cropped in LaunchBox itself. Went back and put the video into the New Video folder the one for Gamecube, then went into LaunchBox Right clicked on Game James Bond Everything or Nothing went to other, video and pointed to where the video is then pressed ok. Now Game boxart for that game disappeared for that game see screenshot Right clicked on game again went to edit it shows the Boxart in the edit but the video field has now de-populated itself see screenshot Pressed ok Boxart is still missing from LaunchBox, the Artwork is still in the images folder i checked it is showing perfectly in BigBox i checked, but for some strange reason it will not show in LaunchBox its invisible will try and deleted the images through edit again and re-add them and see will that fix the problem? Right just now tried that same result as first screenshot invisible in Launchbox only thing is to delete game and re-install and see if that will fix probleb be back in mo. Sorry for delaying there, deleted the game then went to clean images couldnt clean the images got this message see screenshot Went into Task Manager went to processes tab to check what processes were running, it was BigBox it is not closing itself down even though i had exited out of it nearly an hour ago see screenshot Closed down the process went back into LaunchBox re-installed the Game added the Images and okayed it, hey presto images are back game is working. Id safetly say Jason that something is wrong with BigBox when it is not exiting and closing down process BigBox as you can see from supplied screenshot and maybe this is having the adverse effect on freezing as maybe there is a vica versa going on when using BigBox maybe LaunchBox process is not closing down but no way to check as when you close bigBox LaunchBox closes as well. Lucky the Image problem happened or wouldnt have caught that BigBox process wasnt closing. Hopefully the information supplied will put you on the right track to fixing the minor niggling problems and maybe its related to video not working properly, knowing that you as always will sort out the problems in time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 9, 2015 Author Share Posted July 9, 2015 Okay, just put out a new beta that should hopefully fix all the lockup issues. Martin, I'm willing to bet that those issues probably all had to do with the lockup issues in the previous version. Let me know if you are still seeing any of those issues. Also included in this beta is a bunch more options in the game details to play/stop the video, play it fullscreen, etc. Finally, I've made manuals and music use the same auto-populating mechanism as the videos (just put it in the right folder with the right file name and it will automatically show up in LaunchBox). See Manage Platforms for all the new folder settings. Furthermore, images placed in the new image folders should show up now as well, though I am not moving any existing images for the moment. This piece is a harder problem to solve so I have more work to do on it to complete it. One challenge is what to do if there are two games with the same name, on the same platform (Tomb Raider 2013 vs. 199x comes to mind). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 It's now locking up every single time I try to load a platform's game library. Edit: I've narrowed down the problem to occurring only when I scroll over a platform which isn't already recognized by LaunchBox (such as "Mobile Devices", "Windows XP", or "Personal Computer (PC)"). Also, pertaining to nomenclature where multiple games with the same title are concerned, maybe you could insert another piece of metadata? For instance, the folders could literally be: Tomb Raider (199X) Tomb Raider (2013) You could also go with: Tomb Raider (A) Tomb Raider (B) for games which share both title and release date or lack any significant data beyond title. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 9, 2015 Author Share Posted July 9, 2015 Okay, hmm. Maybe an invalid image or video or something is blowing it up. Can you send me your LaunchBox.xml file for testing? Send it to jasondavidcarr at gmail dot com. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 Kriven said Edit: I've narrowed down the problem to occurring only when I scroll over a platform which isn't already recognized by LaunchBox (such as "Mobile Devices", "Windows XP", or "Personal Computer (PC)"). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 As far as the same name game, this is commonly solved with Video as Tomb Raider and Tomb Raider 2013. The first being the original. That is how I would solve that. Figuring out whats what will require looking at publish dates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted July 9, 2015 Share Posted July 9, 2015 I've sent you the .xml file. Edit: So on the hunch I had earlier, I went and changed all of my custom platforms to just "PC" and Big Box isn't locking up anymore... Going to miss my excruciating organization. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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