LaunchBox Beta Testing

[Soundtrackgeek]

On the subject of games with 2 or more discs, the accepted way of launching the other discs seems to be via Additional Apps. I don't know how this can be done for a compressed game.

I would also like to have an answer for this. To handle this I suppose we should put all CDs inside one 7z file and then both will decompress into a folder where it can be used when switching between CDs. Compressing each CD wouldn't be any good since emulators might not support running from a 7z file.

[SentaiBrad]

It's a workaround for users who don't want multiple entries, it's not official it just works. Jason will figure out a way to handle everything everyone has questions for.

[Jason Carr]

@fromm, yeah, please put in a feature request for that. I can see that being a good thing to add but it probably won't make it into 5.9. @Mute64, the popup should go away 5 seconds after starting the game. Did you wait out the 5 seconds; is it really locked up? I might able to change this to close out the popup when the window loses focus instead. @Bedwyr, I'm confused. Is the beta still locking up for you when you go to Options? Or is it just reverting that fixed the issues? If the beta is locking up then I'll need to get it fixed. @Soundtrackgeek, I think the answer probably depends on the emulator. Some emulators will support m3u playlists, while others will require you to close and re-launch the emulator with a different disc. Some of them are still pretty messy and don't have good solutions. For emulators that support m3u playlists, it makes sense to put all of the discs in a single archive with the playlist, and then LaunchBox will find the m3u playlist. For emulators that don't support this, I think for now the discs would have to be in separate zips. I do plan to add a dialog to choose which disc or ROM to run from the zip eventually, but I'm not sure if that will make it into 5.9 yet. Thanks guys! Please help me out with more information on the outstanding issues so I can get them fixed. Is anyone having further issues launching the ROMs now that I've hopefully fixed those previous issues?

[Jason Carr]

Just put out a new beta to address some of the issues with the game loading popup. I finally saw it happen once where the interface didn't refresh after returning from a game. Let me know what issues remain. :)

[Jason Carr]

Also in this beta is a new option in Big Box for frame rate, which should help with performance on low-end systems. It also may allow you to enable animations on these systems.

[Mute64]

Jason Carr said Just put out a new beta to address some of the issues with the game loading popup. I finally saw it happen once where the interface didn't refresh after returning from a game. Let me know what issues remain. :)

Awesome ill pop on now m ill see how it goes

[Bedwyr]

Jason Carr said @Bedwyr, I'm confused. Is the beta still locking up for you when you go to Options? Or is it just reverting that fixed the issues? If the beta is locking up then I'll need to get it fixed.

Yep, it was just the beta. I haven't encountered a single lockup in either LaunchBox or BigBox so far on 5.8. I can try the update tomorrow possibly.

[DOS76]

What is strange though is on my side it seems like the new betas are extremely responsive on multiple computers all with large libraries.

[Mute64]

Sweet, it now works fine on my end Jason, no lock up on " loading game pop up" after exiting the game.

[dov_EL]

Jason Carr said Just put out a new beta to address some of the issues with the game loading popup. I finally saw it happen once where the interface didn't refresh after returning from a game. Let me know what issues remain. :)

AWESOME !!!

[Jason Carr]

Great to hear guys. Still no explanation for @Bedwyr's lockups, though. Has anyone done any further testing on the 7-zip stuff? Thanks!

[Soundtrackgeek]

Jason Carr said Great to hear guys. Still no explanation for @Bedwyr's lockups, though. Has anyone done any further testing on the 7-zip stuff? Thanks!

Seems to work fine for all the systems I've tested except for PSX. I get this error no matter what game I choose: I've checked Retroarch to use compressed files and it seems to work great on NDS games. Strangely I think it did something to my Launchbox because I disabled Retroarch as default emulator and set up ePSXe as default PSX emulator but it still runs Retroarch and gives me that error.

[DOS76]

You will have to also select all of you PSX games using control+a and then right click one of them and choose edit than change the emulator to ePSXe. When you change the default emulator then any new games will use the new default setting but any of the games you already added will keep the emulator that you already assigned.

[Soundtrackgeek]

DOS76 said You will have to also select all of you PSX games using control+a and then right click one of them and choose edit than change the emulator to ePSXe. When you change the default emulator than any new games will use the new default setting but any of the games you already added will keep the emulator that you already assigned.

Thanks! That did it. At least I know they work well now using 7z files. Tried 5 and all ran well in ePSXe. Must be a Retroarch thing with PSX.

[Jason Carr]

Great. I'll chalk that up to a Retroarch issue, I guess. Let me know if anyone runs into any additional issues with the 7-zip stuff. Sounds like it's time to move on to other things. :)

[Bedwyr]

Ok, so regarding my issues. Tried Beta 4 update and it seems to have cleared the Big Box freeze ok as that was likely the same issue others had. The LaunchBox Options menu problem is still there, however. I have not yet tried other actions that bring up a popup window, but I'll report back if I see the same thing when using other functions. As it is... - It usually doesn't happen the first few times I try to load the options window. - However, after a few tries whether I've restarted LaunchBox or not, attempting to load the window will -- a) cause LaunchBox to lag with no window appearing -- b) cause the interface to attempt to go into some kind of fullscreen mode -- c) freeze entirely sometimes bringing up a program response dialogue (no error message or code) The fullscreen popping is weird because the text goes fuzzy as if it is trying to display using some kind of DPI scaling or lower fullscreen resolution. I'm pretty sure it's not the latter because I don't get resize flashing when I attempt to alt-tab out. The DPI thing requires a bit of background to explain. First: I'm running an HTPC on Windows 10 with a 1080p television at full resolution. The only display driver is a GTX 660 card. Windows 8 used to have a really crappy DPI scaling algorithm that got some pretty satisfactory improvements by 8.1. For whatever reason Microsoft went with a different or older scaling algorithm that leaves some scaled windows, especially older win32 program dialogues (think 7zip or Filezilla) fuzzy. There is a set of registry settings I can load at start time to force 8.1 style rendering, but for some reason it played hob with other software settings, so I disabled it. The appearance I'm trying to describe is exactly what those win32 windows look like when trying to display at 115% or 125% zoomed. As if LaunchBox went from a regular unzoomed window to a DPI zoomed fullscreen app popping over the taskbar. That's the point where it freezes. I *do* have DPI scaling disabled on the exe's compatibility tab so that I don't have to deal with the fuzzies. I have to squint across the room at smaller text, but it's still better.

[Jason Carr]

Hi @Bedwyr, the situation you describe is basically what happens when LaunchBox is busy working in the user interface thread. I put some work into making sure that long processes happen in background threads instead of the main user interface thread (to help prevent that stuff), but I haven't gotten all of them. I assume LaunchBox does come back after a while? Or does it stay that way permanently? Also, by the way, per DPI scaling, LaunchBox should show up fine without any blurring at most DPIs (100%, 125%, 150%, and 200% are the DPIs that I test with). The only exception to this is when Windows uses different DPIs for two different monitors, and Windows will unavoidably fall back to the blurring approach. Just curious that you're seeing blurring there.

[Riffman81]

I can't get the compressed ROM feature to work no matter what I do... I constantly get this error on every beta release I've tried. Any idea's on what I might be doing wrong? I'm using .zip files with latest stable version of Retroarch. I should point out I do have .7z and WinRAR both installed on this machine... could it be a possible conflict? I haven't tried this on my HTPC setup as it's working flawlessly with the latest stable version of LaunchBox, I'm not wanting to compromise that until I can get this working...

[Bedwyr]

Jason Carr said Hi @Bedwyr, the situation you describe is basically what happens when LaunchBox is busy working in the user interface thread. I put some work into making sure that long processes happen in background threads instead of the main user interface thread (to help prevent that stuff), but I haven't gotten all of them. I assume LaunchBox does come back after a while? Or does it stay that way permanently? Also, by the way, per DPI scaling, LaunchBox should show up fine without any blurring at most DPIs (100%, 125%, 150%, and 200% are the DPIs that I test with). The only exception to this is when Windows uses different DPIs for two different monitors, and Windows will unavoidably fall back to the blurring approach. Just curious that you're seeing blurring there.

I think I may have found at least one trigger. First what I tested: - I started LB and opened Options at least 6 times, no problem. - Exited and restarted LB and opened Options at least 6 times, no problem. - Did this a third time, no problem. - Started and exited a game, no problem. - Launched BB, exited BB without starting a game, then launched LB and opened Options. Got the hang. I timed it for at least one minute. Clicked on the window and it stretched itself over the taskbar to full screen. Moments later got the "not responding" dialogue and killed LB. - Thereafter LB freezes when opening the dialogue window every time. So it appears running BB has something to do with it. Are any resources shared that maybe aren't getting released?

[Jason Carr]

Alright, new beta is out after a day of bugfixes. @Riffman81, I think I finally figured out what was going on with the archives. Apparently Microsoft's Date Modified and Date Created file properties cannot be trusted, which is what was causing me the issues. This should be a lot more stable of an approach now. I also fixed a bunch of outstanding bugs and closed more than 30 bug tickets on Bitbucket, so it was a good day. See the changelog for more details. Oh, and I made LaunchBox delete all associated games when deleting platforms, which should help prevent that ever-so-common "why can't I import?" issue. Thanks to all for testing.