is the LauchBox portable?

[aRcAdEsTaTiOn]

Hi everybody, is the Lauchbox portable? I see only a install version of Luchbox. My game database is on a portalbe hard disk drive. when i change the computer, for example by a friend, the drives are different. i hope, that is not a stupid question best regards aRcAdE

[Jason Carr]

No problem, Arcade. Yes, LaunchBox is entirely portable. All the installer does is extract the necessary files to run LaunchBox. There is zero installation required. In fact, the LaunchBox "setup" is only a WinRAR self-extracting EXE.

[aRcAdEsTaTiOn]

Thank for fast answer. puh...than i have luck with the question for a portable path, i must the normal commands // for a flexible path?

[Jason Carr]

Not entirely understanding you, but LaunchBox should automatically make all paths relative when you browse to files. So for the most part, you shouldn't have to worry about it, so long as you keep LaunchBox and your games all in one place.

[aRcAdEsTaTiOn]

ah ok. Thats great. only one question i have because transparent png pictures. does Luchbox support it?

[Jason Carr]

Yes, though you might want to turn off "Draw Game Image Borders" under the View menu. But it should work great.

[aRcAdEsTaTiOn]

Many thanks Jason for this great and fast support. great frontend

[SsjCosty]

I've actually had some issues with the portability. I tried running it from a flash drive on another computer and it failed because of a missing xinput1_3.dll. So I downloaded the x360ce driver and used that to generate the missing DLL file. Then after LaunchBox finally started, I tried running one of my SNES games and it failed because Retroarch threw an error as d3dx9_43.dll was missing.

This was on Windows 10, and according to this article it seems that the error "occurs because the application or game you are trying to run might be designed for older version of DriectX." As mentioned in the article, the solution was to install the DirectX End-User Runtime from Microsoft's website. I think it may be a good solution to keep that installer on your flash drive too if you want to benefit from LaunchBox's portability, just in case the destination computer doesn't have it installed.

 

[Zombeaver]

There will always be certain dependencies likes this, yes. That doesn't mean it's not portable. Portability just means you can move the folder and its contents from one folder to another or one computer to another and it will run, and the emulators/roms/media/metadata will still exist/function (if they're contained within LB's folder structure or, if not, so long as their paths are still valid) so long as those dependencies are met. If Retroarch (or any other emulator you're using) has its own set of dependencies (like d3dx9_43.dll) then those will be needed as well. That's not something LB really has any control over. .NET Framework is also necessary, although it's included when updating.

Portability means it doesn't have to be located in a specific folder on a specific computer for it to work - you can pick it up from one place and move it elsewhere. The computer you move it to may or may not innately have the ancillary software/drivers installed in order to support it though. That's true for basically anything though, portable or not. I think keeping a copy of the xinput dll and the DirectX Runtime on the flash drive is a good call though.