Kriven Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Earlier it was sluggish when I got to a custom platform. I updated to the latest beta, and it has dramatically improved the performance speed. There's still some significant delay when loading custom platform gamelists and scrolling past them in the Platforms menu, but nowhere near the amount of hang that I experienced earlier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maddoc1007 Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Jason Carr said @Maddoc1007, does the file play in Windows Media Player? The Windows engine is used to play the videos, so if it has issues on your machine, or is missing codecs, that's the likely problem. Hi @Jason you were right and hit the nail on the head straight away wasnt a problem with codecs as have no problem playing any video no matter what format it was that i had de-activated windows media player as i do no use it. I re-activated windows media player, videos now showing in BigBox and playing flawlessly new beta is really quick schrolling playing vieos going to games etc cannot find any problems thus far. Seems windows media player is a must to view and play videos in BigBox. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 Maddoc1007 said Jason Carr said @Maddoc1007, does the file play in Windows Media Player? The Windows engine is used to play the videos, so if it has issues on your machine, or is missing codecs, that's the likely problem. Hi @Jason you were right and hit the nail on the head straight away wasnt a problem with codecs as have no problem playing any video no matter what format it was that i had de-activated windows media player as i do no use it. I re-activated windows media player, videos now showing in BigBox and playing flawlessly new beta is really quick schrolling playing vieos going to games etc cannot find any problems thus far. Seems windows media player is a must to view and play videos in BigBox. Ah, I didn't even think of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maddoc1007 Posted July 10, 2015 Share Posted July 10, 2015 No problem @SentaiBrad thanks for your help on this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamdvd Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 Big box. If the video is connected to the game, it is automatically enabled by default when you select the game. If the music from the game as well connected, the advantage remains with the video file. It is necessary to make the process manageable settings Big box. For example - an opportunity to play music or video. Or, play music and video without sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamdvd Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 Big boxing. If you add (Other) video, music, manual, references are not attached. If you copy the files in the directory (My Documents - Launch box) and put all the folders, then it works. After that amazing! start working links from other directories! Perhaps implement the functional capacity (copy directory (My Documents - Launch Box) files from other sources of storage (location) files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 @Maddoc1007, glad it's all fixed. @jamdvd I have plans for an option to prioritize music or videos. I just fixed the issues with videos, music, and manuals as well. Thanks for the feedback. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 Okay all, I just put out a new beta; been working on this one pretty heavily for a few days. This new build automatically reorganizes your images into the new image folder structure. I've also overhauled the "Clean Up Images" feature. This was all a major challenge because the images are so engrained into the app, but I think it was well worth it. I've tested it to hell and back already, but of course I need everyone's help testing as well; you never know. I think we're finally nearing 5.0, almost. I still want to improve performance more on the Big Box platforms screen, and get those platform details better in place, and fill out the options a bit more as well. At this point, I really need to know about any left over errors or hangs. I don't want to put out the official until I'm certain that they're all gone. Thanks again guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jamdvd Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 Thank you for that, our dreams come true! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CliveBarker Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 Jason Carr said Okay all, I just put out a new beta; been working on this one pretty heavily for a few days. This new build automatically reorganizes your images into the new image folder structure. I've also overhauled the "Clean Up Images" feature. This was all a major challenge because the images are so engrained into the app, but I think it was well worth it. I've tested it to hell and back already, but of course I need everyone's help testing as well; you never know. I think we're finally nearing 5.0, almost. I still want to improve performance more on the Big Box platforms screen, and get those platform details better in place, and fill out the options a bit more as well. At this point, I really need to know about any left over errors or hangs. I don't want to put out the official until I'm certain that they're all gone. Thanks again guys. Hi Jason. I am here to report that the scrolling speed through my games, in both, LaunchBox and Bigbox is slower compared to the previous version, it kinda freezes for less than a second when scrolling from one game to another one I am watching my CPU usage when selecting a game, it jumps from 1% when idle to 44% when selecting a game, then it drops to 1%, these performance spikes only occur when selecting a game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spycat Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 Hi Jason. First off, the update to beta 16 worked flawlessly. All images migrated ok. BigBox mode is working fine for me. No hanging, freezing or delays found. Everything runs like clockwork. So on to a few requests/suggestions for BigBox mode. These may be too late for the imminent official version 5 release, but might be considered down the line. There are some Additional Apps that could be described as background apps, in that they are intended to work with the game. For example apps that run a game profile or mount a disc before the game starts, and close the profiler or unmount after the game is quit. An option (tick box) would be nice to hide an Additional App from showing up in the LaunchBox right-click and BigBox mode game menus if it is not intended for running outside of it's main (game) app. The Notes information shown in BigBox mode could do with a scroll-bar to allow big entries to be viewed. Also the ability of the LaunchBox games details/right sidebar Notes section to show screenshots and fanart images might be extended to the Notes display in BigBox mode. And now to the nit picking. The order in which the Additional Apps are listed in BigBox mode is based on the order in which the apps were created. LaunchBox desktop mode lists them alphabetically - nicer. The Released On data is in Month Date Year format. An option to show it in European Date Month Year format would be nice. And here is a screen capture to help with what I'm talking about regarding the Additional Apps listing and Notes cutoff in BigBox mode. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Game Lounger Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 Hi Jason, Been lurking these forums for over a month and been playing around with LB for that time too. I think its a great piece of software and am so grateful for u making it. I was very excited when I heard about BigBox and you have made so much progress in such a short period of time. Its amazing. It is exactly what I was looking for. Anyway I don't usually make accounts or post on forums, but since you're getting ready to launch I feel I need to say something about a couple of issues that either I am not seeing an option for or have not been addressed previously. You see I'm planning on using BigBox as the primary interface for multiple gaming PCs. As such my goal is to eliminate the need for a keyboard and mouse entirely. I'm going as far as replacing explorer as the Windows shell with BigBox. As of today with the release of your latest beta I feel it is very close to what i'm trying to achieve. However, there a couple of the options when going inside the game details that I feel should either (A) be eliminated or (B) give us the option to turn them off. These are the "Open Folder", "Open Images Folder", and "Open EMULATORNAME" .... These commands cause the need for a keyboard and mouse and take away from a pure couch experience since they launch an explorer window and cannot be closed with a controller. I'm sure theyll be times when I will need to use the KB and Mouse when theres a problem or something but it would be nice to avoid it as much as possible. I'm planning on using your software on six Alienware Alphas. I'll actually be installing later today. I've been trying to decide whether to even use the default Alienware UI / KODI. I guess it would be nice to have an addon that launches BigBox or I can use Advanced Launcher to launch it but I think I'm gonna go ahead and make it the shell instead. For my purposes going straight into it at boot up would make it more console like and use less RAM. Thanks you so much again. You've saved me so much time by making this software. I will continue to support this project and wish you the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kriven Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 Sounds like the easiest solution would be to set up a controller-to-key program (like JoyToKey) which can close windows with a controller input. The difficult solution would be for Jason to build a file browser into Big Box. Edit: I'm testing the new build right now, and I love the cleaner image hierarchy... but do you think you could improve the image-import functionality of LaunchBox? Right now you can only add one image at a time (unless you properly rename all the images and import them to the folder manually). Could you make it possible to import multiple fanarts at once (and also maybe add the option to move and rename files instead of copying them?) Oh, here's something which could be a problem: when you change the Platform for a game (for instance, from "PC" to "Steam") the images are not automatically moved/copied to the proper new locations. Big Box is also still incredibly slow with custom platforms (though they at least work). It takes about two whole seconds to browse over the "Mobile" portion of my library (this is currently the only custom position in my library). I don't know if this is because of the game images not moving when I reassigned my mobile games or if it's because I don't have any platform images or metadata to go with "Mobile". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 Game Lounger said Anyway I don't usually make accounts or post on forums, but since you're getting ready to launch I feel I need to say something about a couple of issues that either I am not seeing an option for or have not been addressed previously. You see I'm planning on using BigBox as the primary interface for multiple gaming PCs. As such my goal is to eliminate the need for a keyboard and mouse entirely. I'm going as far as replacing explorer as the Windows shell with BigBox. As of today with the release of your latest beta I feel it is very close to what i'm trying to achieve. However, there a couple of the options when going inside the game details that I feel should either (A) be eliminated or (B) give us the option to turn them off. These are the "Open Folder", "Open Images Folder", and "Open EMULATORNAME" .... Personally, I use the open folder etc options almost everytime I open LB. Since I am a video creator and use it every time I produce my show RNG, getting to the images folder easily is really really handy, and opening just the emulator without a game was added at request because if you want to edit settings of an emulator, some wont let you get to all of the settings or any of the settings if a game is loaded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garbanzo Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 Thanks for cleaning up the images folder, it makes it much easier to batch-resize cover images to the same aspect ratio for a consistent look inside the app :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 CliveBarker said Hi Jason. I am here to report that the scrolling speed through my games, in both, LaunchBox and Bigbox is slower compared to the previous version, it kinda freezes for less than a second when scrolling from one game to another one I am watching my CPU usage when selecting a game, it jumps from 1% when idle to 44% when selecting a game, then it drops to 1%, these performance spikes only occur when selecting a game. Hi Clive, unfortunately the logic is slightly more complicated with the new image parsing system, so it makes sense that performance could be affected. However, I didn't see any performance hits myself, but it might be more prevalent on slower systems. I'll see if there are any optimizations I can make to improve the performance before release. Thanks for hitting me up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 scree said Hi Jason. First off, the update to beta 16 worked flawlessly. All images migrated ok. BigBox mode is working fine for me. No hanging, freezing or delays found. Everything runs like clockwork. So on to a few requests/suggestions for BigBox mode. These may be too late for the imminent official version 5 release, but might be considered down the line. There are some Additional Apps that could be described as background apps, in that they are intended to work with the game. For example apps that run a game profile or mount a disc before the game starts, and close the profiler or unmount after the game is quit. An option (tick box) would be nice to hide an Additional App from showing up in the LaunchBox right-click and BigBox mode game menus if it is not intended for running outside of it's main (game) app. The Notes information shown in BigBox mode could do with a scroll-bar to allow big entries to be viewed. Also the ability of the LaunchBox games details/right sidebar Notes section to show screenshots and fanart images might be extended to the Notes display in BigBox mode. And now to the nit picking. The order in which the Additional Apps are listed in BigBox mode is based on the order in which the apps were created. LaunchBox desktop mode lists them alphabetically - nicer. The Released On data is in Month Date Year format. An option to show it in European Date Month Year format would be nice. And here is a screen capture to help with what I'm talking about regarding the Additional Apps listing and Notes cutoff in BigBox mode. Great to hear, thanks @scree. Those are also great ideas; some of which really should go into the release, particularly the two from your last paragraph. I'll get those in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 Game Lounger said Hi Jason, Been lurking these forums for over a month and been playing around with LB for that time too. I think its a great piece of software and am so grateful for u making it. I was very excited when I heard about BigBox and you have made so much progress in such a short period of time. Its amazing. It is exactly what I was looking for. Anyway I don't usually make accounts or post on forums, but since you're getting ready to launch I feel I need to say something about a couple of issues that either I am not seeing an option for or have not been addressed previously. You see I'm planning on using BigBox as the primary interface for multiple gaming PCs. As such my goal is to eliminate the need for a keyboard and mouse entirely. I'm going as far as replacing explorer as the Windows shell with BigBox. As of today with the release of your latest beta I feel it is very close to what i'm trying to achieve. However, there a couple of the options when going inside the game details that I feel should either (A) be eliminated or (B) give us the option to turn them off. These are the "Open Folder", "Open Images Folder", and "Open EMULATORNAME" .... These commands cause the need for a keyboard and mouse and take away from a pure couch experience since they launch an explorer window and cannot be closed with a controller. I'm sure theyll be times when I will need to use the KB and Mouse when theres a problem or something but it would be nice to avoid it as much as possible. I'm planning on using your software on six Alienware Alphas. I'll actually be installing later today. I've been trying to decide whether to even use the default Alienware UI / KODI. I guess it would be nice to have an addon that launches BigBox or I can use Advanced Launcher to launch it but I think I'm gonna go ahead and make it the shell instead. For my purposes going straight into it at boot up would make it more console like and use less RAM. Thanks you so much again. You've saved me so much time by making this software. I will continue to support this project and wish you the best. Hi @GameLounger, that's awesome. Would love to see a video or pictures or something after you get the project up and running. I actually do plan on adding options for showing and hiding most everything, so I'll be sure to add options for those three things as well before release. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 Nathan DiYorio said Sounds like the easiest solution would be to set up a controller-to-key program (like JoyToKey) which can close windows with a controller input. The difficult solution would be for Jason to build a file browser into Big Box. Edit: I'm testing the new build right now, and I love the cleaner image hierarchy... but do you think you could improve the image-import functionality of LaunchBox? Right now you can only add one image at a time (unless you properly rename all the images and import them to the folder manually). Could you make it possible to import multiple fanarts at once (and also maybe add the option to move and rename files instead of copying them?) Oh, here's something which could be a problem: when you change the Platform for a game (for instance, from "PC" to "Steam") the images are not automatically moved/copied to the proper new locations. Big Box is also still incredibly slow with custom platforms (though they at least work). It takes about two whole seconds to browse over the "Mobile" portion of my library (this is currently the only custom position in my library). I don't know if this is because of the game images not moving when I reassigned my mobile games or if it's because I don't have any platform images or metadata to go with "Mobile". Yeah, Nathan's right, you can close windows with a controller using LaunchBox's built-in AutoHotkey solution as well. So in the off case that you accidentally pop up a window, you can close it with the controller. Adding multiple images makes sense; I'll add that to my list. Per the images moving/copying when changing the platform, they *should* be moved/copied over. I tested that specifically and it was working for me, so I guess if you can, do some more testing and let me know what you find. Specific examples would be best. Per custom platforms, I'll revisit this. It baffled me when I last looked at it, but obviously that's a problem that needs fixed. Can anyone else confirm that they're seeing the same thing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 garbanzo said Thanks for cleaning up the images folder, it makes it much easier to batch-resize cover images to the same aspect ratio for a consistent look inside the app :) Glad to hear it @garbanzo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts