Jason Carr Posted June 23, 2014 Author Share Posted June 23, 2014 Oh, one more thing. With the new pictures viewers, do you think we still need pictures on the games details (or on a separate sidebar, or whatever else)? Or does the pictures viewer cover it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bd00 Posted June 23, 2014 Share Posted June 23, 2014 A good update The fullsize picture viewer is a great addition especially for fanart and rear box art (you should add a screensaver that scrolls through random fanarts) and the ability to scroll through all images is a significant improvement. It seems to work as expected, I encountered no problems whatsoever. The option to always view fullscreen was a good idea and it works well. I really like it. The only improvement I can think of is a lightbox type image viewer when not viewing full screen, only because it would be prettier and would match the theme of game info panel, but i am not complaining, you just asked for thoughts. Also, personally, I don't think the images in the game info panel are necessary anymore, but if you want me to be picky, remove clear-logo's and banner's from the image viewer and add them to the game info panel instead. Maybe just one at the top with option to prefer either clear-logos or banners. If the first option is not available then use the second option instead. Am I making sense? The favorites icon was implemented beautifully and it works fine. I did some brief testing with the pre-game application launcher and it seems to work well for me, though you may have to let this one into the wild to get a true perspective. It could be difficult to gauge all the applications this may be used for by other users and how much they will expect this feature to do. The mouse cursor is indeed hidden now. The game descriptions download as expected for me. I see no waiting cursor after updating a game. Unsure how to test the auto update until a new version is available. All-in-all, great update, nice new features and no bugs found yet. Excellent work Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmc Posted June 23, 2014 Share Posted June 23, 2014 Yes i agree with bd00, the banner and clear logo should be a must have in the game details pane, in my perspective they could be placed in the right side ( this time i´m not dreaming ) with screenshots. Placed in top the clear logo,in middle the screenshots and at the bottom the banner. Left side for the details, the right for images. I know it will enlarge the pane but i don´t think it´s a bad thing. All good, keep it up. The picture viewer works fine with the mouse and the controller, for me it´s a wrap up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 23, 2014 Author Share Posted June 23, 2014 Great news guys, thanks. Sounds like I'll be putting out the release tonight. You've both convinced me that I should put the banner and/or the clear logo on the game details; I'll look to do that for the next release. bd, screen saver is a great idea. Added to the list of fun things. I agree about lightbox, but probably won't bother with that in all honesty. Thanks to you both for keepin' on testing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bd00 Posted June 23, 2014 Share Posted June 23, 2014 Lightbox; I wouldn't if I were you. What you have now is more than adequate and you would be better investing your time elsewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bd00 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Almost forgot to mention, but the auto update worked as expected for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 25, 2014 Author Share Posted June 25, 2014 Great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bd00 Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 Quick question. Additional Applications. Is it possible to set an application for a whole platform, or can you only do it on a per game basis? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RZenith Posted June 28, 2014 Share Posted June 28, 2014 I don't know if this is the right place to post this but when a game is favorited with the new button the changes are applied only at restart. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bd00 Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 Regarding the additional applications mentioned in my last post, I am kicking myself that I only noticed this now when I started to add multiple games and multiple platforms and I wish I tested this properly back in the beta stages. After playing around with the xml, I am fairly confident it can not be done. For anyone else who this may be problem, I work around it by creating batch files that load Xpadder configs, then load the emulator and pointing launchbox to those bat files rather than the emulator. This is not perfect and will cause problems where different games which require a different config (e.g. I have completely different controls set for Goldeneye on the N64 than I do for Super Mario 64) but it works fine for emulators that have simpler controls. (Note: This also means moving the command-line options for the emulator to the batch file.) I also add another line to the batch file that runs after the main application (emulator) which kills the xpadder process (closes xpadder). Here is an example: :: Ensures the game picked in LaunchBox is still passed to the emulator set var=%1% :: Runs a "Turn On Controller" prompt and waits for exit. (personal preference, for my son) start /wait "" "X:\Controller Settings\Xpadder\Controller_Prompt.exe" :: Loads Xpadder and config file start "" "X:\Controller Settings\Xpadder\xpadder.exe" Atari_7800-EMU7800-Default-X360 :: Loads emulator, settings and game. (Don't forget to add your command-line options here) start /wait "" "X:\Emulators B\EMU7800-v1.7 (Atari 7800)\EMU7800.Win.exe" %1% :: the /wait will wait for the emulator to exit before continuing ::After the emu is closed, Xpadder is terminated. taskkill /F /IM Xpadder.exe Or another with command-line options for emulator: set var=%1% start /wait "" "X:\Controller Settings\Xpadder\Controller_Prompt.exe" start "" "X:\Controller Settings\Xpadder\xpadder.exe" fusion_player1 fusion_player2 start /wait "" "X:\Emulators\Fusion\Fusion.exe" -gen -auto -fullscreen %1% taskkill /F /IM Xpadder.exe If you don't want the batch file to wait until the emulator is closed, you can create a separate batch file with the taskill command for xpadder and set it to run after the emulator is closed in the LaunchBox settings. However, you will have to add it manually for every game (back to first problem). Hope this helps someone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmc Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 RZenith said I don't know if this is the right place to post this but when a game is favorited with the new button the changes are applied only at restart. That´s odd, do you have administrator permissions in your computer? It´s working well for me. Set launchbox to run with admin privileges. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 30, 2014 Author Share Posted June 30, 2014 Hey guys. I'll start with bd. Currently, no, there's no way to set an additional application for an entire platform. That's a good point about the emulators though. Obviously it would be ideal if you could set it up for a whole platform. Good job on the batch files though. I'll add an item to my list to come up with some sort of a solution for this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 30, 2014 Author Share Posted June 30, 2014 I think RZenith is probably referring to the fact that the games view doesn't refresh itself when setting a favorite. For example, if you're sorted by Favorite in your games view, the game won't automatically move in the list. This was by design though; I thought that would too confusing. So, as it currently is, you just have to change your filters to refresh it if you want. Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bd00 Posted June 30, 2014 Share Posted June 30, 2014 A refresh button that appears next to the favorite button? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 30, 2014 Author Share Posted June 30, 2014 Hi bd, I agree, a refresh button would be good. Probably best not to add it on the game details though, as that implies just refreshing that game, I guess. I'm thinking I'll probably just add a refresh option to the right-click menu (and the Games menu). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bd00 Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 Hi Jason, yeah you're right, it think it would confuse too. I didn't really think about it, just shotting ideas out there for you to toy with EDIT . Also, you may have already done or are doing so, but it might be worth considering adding some bulk editing features for various aspects of game information that remain uniform across a platform or genre, etc. Following off a post by SentaiBrad here, I have also faced similar issues on a few occasions, where a bulk edit feature would have been a godsend. Most recently with the whole additional applications thing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vinicius256 Posted July 2, 2014 Share Posted July 2, 2014 Hey there, I'm loving LaunchBox, how can I enter the beta? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 2, 2014 Author Share Posted July 2, 2014 bd, yeah, that is certainly a current priority. I'm thinking just a simple one-field at a time thing. Select the games to update, select the field, select the value. Simple and effective (and probably relatively easy to implement). Vinicius, welcome to the forums. I'm currently looking for more help beta testing, so you're in. You can now download the beta releases from this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 2, 2014 Author Share Posted July 2, 2014 Hey everyone; I need some *serious* testing on this. I've spent 4-5 days developing a wizard that makes it as easy as possible to install DOS games from a CD, folder, CD image, etc. I've even implemented a way to rip CDs to .bin/.cue files to make them run without the CD. Obviously this is a tough undertaking. I've wracked my brain to make it as easy as possible, but I'm sure there are things I haven't thought of, and I'm sure there will be issues with certain games. The new wizard is available under Tools | Install DOS Game. Here's what I really need help with: - Please run through the wizard, pay attention to/read everything, and let me know if anything is confusing (if you have any questions about how to answer any of the steps). I want to make the wizard as easy to use as possible. - Please pull out any DOS games you have (especially if you have the original game media or CD images of the original game media) and run them through the process to test it. I'd like to test the wizard with as many games as possible. The more games we test, the more stable we can make it. - Please try and test every aspect (every page, select every option, etc.) of the wizard as best you can. Try and make it crash. Put it through hell. It's tough to maintain state with such a complicated wizard so I want to make sure I didn't miss any problems that might come from going back and changing options, etc. As always, thank you all for all your help. The new 3.2-beta-1 version is attached. Also attached is a zip file that contains CDRDAO; this is an open source application that I've integrated that provides the CD ripping functionality. I'll include it in the new setup, but for this beta test you'll need to manually extract it to your LaunchBox folder. The folder structure should be LaunchBox\CDRDAO\cdrdao.exe. Happy testing! Whatever details you can give me as to what you tested, what works, and what doesn't is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted July 3, 2014 Author Share Posted July 3, 2014 Alright, here's beta 2. Remember that you'll still need the CDRDAO.zip file referenced above in the previous post. I'm still looking for some help testing the MS-DOS installation wizard. I worked on the game images not updating issues, and I'm hoping that the issues are fixed. It is hard to replicate though, so I really need help testing that to confirm that the issue is truly fixed. Also new with this beta is the requested "launch a random game" option under the tools menu, and I revamped the About dialog to allow more room for third party credits. Do test as much as you can and let me know how it goes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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