LaunchBox Beta Testing

[kmoney]

Thanks for the new beta Jason! Some things I notice with the new beta is that when I go into options and then hit esc to back out it seems very stuttery almost like its struggling with a fps drop or something and my speakers sound out a little poping noise for a slight second. Kinda hard to explain and it seems to only happen with the options menu. I have a very beefy pc so I know thats not an issue. Also coverflow seems very sluggish,maybe it needs time to build a cache or something. I agree that alpha numeric definitly needs to be implemented in these new views. As it stands coverflow is very plain right now but does have potential. Right now I am still liking the default bigbox view the best still. I think a lot of people that use bigbox want that arcade type feeling view mode especially those that are coming over from hyperspin or maybe will be using it on an arcade cabinet and coverflow seems more like something for an htpc. I think that once we get that view mode nailed down whatever that may be thats gives the arcade type experience even more hyperspin users will be coming over here in droves. CriticalCid has some great ideas especially in that other thread that he linked to up above.

[Justified]

DOS76 said Okay I need a little help. Where are the settings to change the views? I don't see them. Also I had BB crash both times I ran it once after closing out of a game and once when I was just randomly scrolling. Edit: Just happened a third time when I exit out of RA it goes back to the screen with the options on it but when you hit back to return to the list it crashes.

Inside BigBox, go to Options->Games Lists->And Select the desired view, by hitting Enter on the "Game List View" (First row on the left)

[DOS76]

Thanks I'm liking both of those views but prefer CoverFlow so far. Did have BigBox crash again though after exiting a game.

[Jason Carr]

Drybonz said I'm getting a crash when I grab and drag the scrollbar to scroll in the game details sidebar. It does not crash if I mouse wheel scroll through it... only using the scrollbar. Error message is just the generic "has stopped working".

@Drybonz, what video playback engine are you using in LaunchBox, just in case that is the problem? I haven't yet been able to replicate this either.

[Jason Carr]

DOS76 said Came home and found LB crashed with this error message

Thanks @DOS76, have this fixed for a beta release later today.

[Jason Carr]

ALIE said new views has potential very nice start. i found bug when using overflow, i cant go side ways with my controller only keyboard arrows. also that Concept above NICE!!!!

I have the controller issues fixed also, for the beta to be out later today.

[Jason Carr]

CriticalCid said The new views are awesome! I’m really thankful for this! Some thoughts from me: CoverFlow: - My analog sticks and the shoulder buttons of my Xbox 360 gamepad aren’t working in CoverFlow. The enter and back buttons of the pad and keyboard navigation is working fine. - I would like it if it uses fanart as well. At the moment it’s just a boring black background for every game. - I also would like to have more game info in it. At least genre, year, developer and publisher would be nice. Horizontal cover: - The shoulder buttons of my 360 pad are acting weird. If I press RB it goes one entry back and if I press LB it goes one entry forth. I dont know if the one entry jump is on purpose (if yes, it would be nice if you could change that) but the directions are definitely inverted. General: - It would be nice to have the new alpha-numeric navigation in the new views as well - Instead of a general viewtype for everything it would be awesome to change that for every platform individually. - A button to change the viewtype on-the-fly when I’m navigating in a platform would be nice (I’m kinda used to it through Kodi). New views suggestions: - A mix of CoverFlow and the Horizontal viewtype. Similar like the Aeon Skins or the standard view for Rom Collection Browser in Kodi. - As already suggested in THIS THREAD a big video view for recorded HyperSpin themes. Similar like my mockup (for 16:9 themes) and HyperVision (for 4:3 themes). Also see my detailed suggestions in Post #6 in the linked thread.

Thanks @CriticalCid. I just fixed the issues with the Page Up/Page Down functionality for the next beta. I agree we definitely need the alpha navigation for both new views; not sure how best to implement that visually but I'll experiment with that soon. That may be what I try and tackle on Monday during the live development Twitch session. I agree about the fanart as well, but not sure if it will look good with the box art reflections. I'll give it a shot and see. The Hyperspin video themes are indeed planned, so hopefully we'll see those soon as well. I ran into a hitch with being able to use VLC for video backgrounds (I can't put anything over top of the VLC videos), so not sure how I'm going to solve that one. Windows Media Player does work for that but there's been so many problems with it that I don't want to rely on it anymore.

[Jason Carr]

kmoney2315 said Thanks for the new beta Jason! Some things I notice with the new beta is that when I go into options and then hit esc to back out it seems very stuttery almost like its struggling with a fps drop or something and my speakers sound out a little poping noise for a slight second. Kinda hard to explain and it seems to only happen with the options menu. I have a very beefy pc so I know thats not an issue. Also coverflow seems very sluggish,maybe it needs time to build a cache or something. I agree that alpha numeric definitly needs to be implemented in these new views. As it stands coverflow is very plain right now but does have potential. Right now I am still liking the default bigbox view the best still. I think a lot of people that use bigbox want that arcade type feeling view mode especially those that are coming over from hyperspin or maybe will be using it on an arcade cabinet and coverflow seems more like something for an htpc. I think that once we get that view mode nailed down whatever that may be thats gives the arcade type experience even more hyperspin users will be coming over here in droves. CriticalCid has some great ideas especially in that other thread that he linked to up above.

The options stutter for a second when you go back out of them because it's saving the settings to disk. I've tried to remedy that in the past but apparently didn't succeed 100% on that. I'd say that's not a big priority though since it only happens when coming out of the Options menu. Yes, both new views will be sluggish while the image cache is built. Once it's built it should be smooth, though. We'll work on a more Hyperspin-like view soon. :)

[Jason Carr]

Beta 4 is now out; it mostly just fixes the aforementioned bugs above. Please let me know if anyone is still seeing any Big Box errors or crashes. Thanks!

[DOS76]

I just restarted LB twice and no option to update.

[Jason Carr]

Sorry, Derek; sometimes it takes 5 minutes to update. Should be good now.

[kmoney]

@Jason I have another idea to implement in the default view and I am not sure how hard it would be to implement for bigbox. I wish I was good at photoshop and I would create it for you. Here is a video by a guy over at the hyperspin forums that has made the gamecube boxes a kind of animated and I think this would be an awesome feature for bigbox for all the game boxes to flip from front to back automatically. I know you can flip the box in the second game selection screen but I rarely go into that second game launching screen at just launch my games from the first screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCBySfMwyoU Also gameex has a feature that is similar to that with the mame games that has some high quality actual arcade cabinets pics of the game does a 3d animated spin. I think that would be a great alternative to the arcade flyers is to have a high quality pic of the actual arcade cabinet, for example (pacman) do a 3d 360 animated spin.

[DOS76]

Sorry I should be more patient. Controllers are working great in the alt views now. Any chance you would add the ability to go left from the first game to the last game in the other views?

[Klamp]

Jason Carr said Beta 4 is now out; it mostly just fixes the aforementioned bugs above. Please let me know if anyone is still seeing any Big Box errors or crashes. Thanks!

Navigation with controllers work in Cover flow. -Controller buttons does not work for play game, view images. -Error message when pressing I, F, M or P on keyboard in coverflow. Big Box still works after the errorwindow is closed. -Not sure if its me but it seems like the cover images are somehow blurred compared to the original cover images.

[Drybonz]

Jason Carr said

Drybonz said I'm getting a crash when I grab and drag the scrollbar to scroll in the game details sidebar. It does not crash if I mouse wheel scroll through it... only using the scrollbar. Error message is just the generic "has stopped working".

@Drybonz, what video playback engine are you using in LaunchBox, just in case that is the problem? I haven't yet been able to replicate this either.

VLC

[DOS76]

I'm duplicating the results for the keyboard buttons the same as @Klamp I'm finding that button 3 and 4 aren't doing anything in coverflow so you can't directly launch a game.

[jrusso4587]

Jason, I got a chance to check out the new views and it's definitely a good start. I like the suggestion for a view that is a combination of the 2 (coverflow on half the screen with info and video on the other). I am no UI design expert, but I would also think that adding borders to the outline of the screen and the video would make it much more visually appealing. That would also apply to Big Box as a whole as well. Other than that, I am happy with where this is going and look forward to further updates. Thanks. Joseph

[Kriven]

I forgot to mention something that was happening to me when I used the new view (not the coverflow... the one with the front all in a line and the details below). When I came across games with associated videos, that video would continue to play no matter what selection I looked at, even games with their own videos. That video would simply remain a constant while I browsed. It even persisted in the background when I left the Game List and went back to the filters menu.

[SentaiBrad]

An update folder cleaner has been suggested on the BitBucket and will make it eventually. Also no, there is no Premium feature that does this and LaunchBox does not rename any files at all. All it does is not show the user anything inside of brackets. This is to make the UI look a bit cleaner. You can see the full file path when you edit a game and you can even display it in the Game Details bar on the side. Region marking has also been heavily requested as well. Edit: I also wanna point out that it is also this way for scraping purposes. There doesn't exist an entry for "Castlevania (J)", the items in the Brackets are not apart of the name of the game and are just extra information.

[kmoney]

Klamp said

Jason Carr said Beta 4 is now out; it mostly just fixes the aforementioned bugs above. Please let me know if anyone is still seeing any Big Box errors or crashes. Thanks!

Navigation with controllers work in Cover flow. -Controller buttons does not work for play game, view images. -Error message when pressing I, F, M or P on keyboard in coverflow. Big Box still works after the errorwindow is closed. -Not sure if its me but it seems like the cover images are somehow blurred compared to the original cover images.

I think the reason why your cover images are blurred is because the images are blown up to a bigger size and the image quality pixel is not high enough to support the bigger zoomed in look but I could be wrong. Mine are the same way and appear blurred as well. I would actually prefer them to be less zoomed in.