RocketLauncher

[SentaiBrad]

A lot of that list honestly doesn't sway me. Most of that isn't really convenience except for the multiple controllers, but I only use 1 at a time so... I've had a lot of people tell me what it can do, and read on other stuff it can do and still I see no point. Unless you are seriously low on space the game compression thing is a joke to me still, that wont change. Regardless, if you've been using it and are set up in it that is totally fine. Anyone who wants to use it please keep using it but there isn't anything (except the thing I mentioned previously) that it does that warrants the extra layer of setup for me. Edit: I also don't fullscreen any of my emulators on purpose.

[Jason Carr]

Well, for what it's worth, I'm very glad Rocket Launcher exists, because it solves many problems that people would otherwise be on top of me for, of course. I do plan on integrating everything eventually, but for people who are overly particular about the various features that Rocket Launcher gives you, it really helps to have it available, because this way I can focus more on the frontend for now and less on the nitty gritty elements of launching the games. Also, if anyone has what they consider to be a "perfect" Rocket Launcher setup, I'd love to see it all working as ideally as it gets. Sadly I don't have time to get Rocket Launcher all configured myself (would take too much time away from development), but I'd love to have a good setup to play with to see just how much is possible with Rocket Launcher.

[DOS76]

I personally don't desire to feel that I have a polished system. I'm happy having multiple HTPC's that I can play thousands and thousands of games on but they are first and for most computers to me so I prefer navigating through everything except for the game play itself with my keyboard and mouse that's me I have no issues with that. If I had an arcade machine then yes I could see the desire to have all of that going on but that isn't my use case.

[djvj]

Jason Carr said I can focus more on the frontend for now and less on the nitty gritty elements of launching the games.

And that's one of the biggest reasons for it existing and my continued development. I like to see what everyone can do with their FE. The launching portion always has that one constant between all FEs, they need to handle all the emulators somehow. Why should each FE's author all dedicate time to do the same thing? It's breaking one of the most basic principles.

[DOS76]

You are the actual developer of RocketLauncher?

[Jason Carr]

Yes, we are among royalty. ;)

[fromlostdays]

"To me that is performance loss though. If the game takes 2 to 10 min to load (depending on size and drive speed) isn't that considered a loss? Not to mention decompression takes drive writes each time too. So why not eat the slightly extra space (can also depend on the game) and cut out the middle man? If you are super super pressed on space I could get that though. This is ignoring the pause and bezels which I personally know I can do without. The only compression I do is .cso's for PSP and PS2 games but they don't require decompression."

Sure. This is the kind of hobby where you make you own rules, haha. It's all about what you want, and I'm just thankful that there are people building these programs that give me the options, and sharing the love. Personally, I've been on my xbox one a lot recently, and I dig the full screen static image it displays when I launch a game. As soon as I feel like I have a handle on BigBox, I'm going to go back to RL and see about making all my PC games launch like that, doing away with the progress bar. I might try to set the Fade In to a solid 5-10 seconds, for no other reason than an aesthetic one. By the way, even my PS2 games don't take much longer than that to decompress, but 2 minutes is absolutely too much haha. I'd say you're making a more than fair conceptual point about decompression. Certainly hard drives are getting very cheap, and space isn't as much an issue anymore. And most people that get this far are probably invested in their computers anyway. If you wanted to fit as many games as possible on an SSD though, compression might be useful, and it's a good option to have. Again, its all about personal preference.

[SentaiBrad]

Ah, I didn't realize you were the developer, not that it changes my stance on the software but I hope I didn't offend you.

[SentaiBrad]

fromlostdays said

"To me that is performance loss though. If the game takes 2 to 10 min to load (depending on size and drive speed) isn't that considered a loss? Not to mention decompression takes drive writes each time too. So why not eat the slightly extra space (can also depend on the game) and cut out the middle man? If you are super super pressed on space I could get that though. This is ignoring the pause and bezels which I personally know I can do without. The only compression I do is .cso's for PSP and PS2 games but they don't require decompression."

Sure. This is the kind of hobby where you make you own rules, haha. It's all about what you want, and I'm just thankful that there are people building these programs that give me the options, and sharing the love. Personally, I've been on my xbox one a lot recently, and I dig the full screen static image it displays when I launch a game. As soon as I feel like I have a handle on BigBox, I'm going to go back to RL and see about making all my PC games launch like that, doing away with the progress bar. I might try to set the Fade In to a solid 5-10 seconds, for no other reason than an aesthetic one. By the way, even my PS2 games don't take much longer than that to decompress, but 2 minutes is absolutely too much haha. I'd say you're making a more than fair conceptual point about decompression. Certainly hard drives are getting very cheap, and space isn't as much an issue anymore. And most people that get this far are probably invested in their computers anyway. If you wanted to fit as many games as possible on an SSD though, compression might be useful, and it's a good option to have. Again, its all about personal preference.

Look in to using CSO's then. Not all games should be put in to them because some don't like it and can break, but most of my games are. All but 3 of my PSP games are. https://github.com/unknownbrackets/maxcso/releases This is the CSO utility for PS2 games, a PCSX2 dev made it. http://softadvice.informer.com/Yacc_Download_Psp.html That one is for PSP Games.

[djvj]

SentaiBrad said Ah, I didn't realize you were the developer, not that it changes my stance on the software but I hope I didn't offend you.

Not a problem, no you did not. I enjoy reading what others think about RL (user or not). I approach with an open mind as any dev should who looks to make his app better. You do seem stuck on thinking RL revolves around 7z support though, but I can't fault you for that, it's an important feature, but far from what makes RL so great among it's users. That was simply one of the first big features I added to it back in the day.

[SentaiBrad]

No I get that there are a ton of features, and all valid to someone; But of the list, Sequential Controller ID's and compression support seem like two of the biggest and the compression is a feature that doesn't appeal to me. Though I also have like 14 or 15TB of space. It might seem like I am stuck on it but when users who use RL come over to either change over completely they're constantly asking if we have .rar or .7zip support. Not being there is what prompted the users to figure out how to make RL work with LaunchBox instead. Based on just that I think that it is silly to add more layers for 1 feature. For users who love and want all or most of the RL features it still makes sense that they should keep using if they are comfortable there.

[djvj]

That makes sense then. It's what you are being presented with. Off topic a bit: We are discussing creating full plugins for LaunchBox, but we noticed LB contains all settings/database info in just one xml. Are you planning on breaking this apart as large xmls are a huge performance bottleneck on any language to deal with. I only have 2 small systems in mine and it's already 1.5MB.

[SentaiBrad]

That's a question best answered by Jason, but I've got about 10k games, a 20mb XML and I haven't seen too many issues with performance. The issues we were having (which was opening the edit window for games was taking forever) has been resolved for several versions now.

[Jason Carr]

Yeah, the XML performance thing is mostly a misnomer. Dividing up the XML would not increase performance, it would only slow it down, at least in this case. We store it all in memory anyways so that navigation, searches, etc. are as quick as possible (and it takes up a minimal amount of memory). When stored in memory it is not parsing through XML, so the size of it doesn't matter much. If it was divided up, saving could be faster because there would be less to save, but it currently does not take long to save the file anyways, so that's almost a non-issue (not to mention we do it in a separate thread so it doesn't slow down the UI). Initial load times could also be improved if we divided it up, but truthfully you can't really predict what the user wants to see first, so ultimately you're going to need the entire collection soon enough anyways. I've put a lot of effort into optimizations and at this point I'm pretty certain that the only way to significantly improve performance in useful ways would be to use a proper database instead of XML. But of course that has its own annoyances.

[dmoseder]

I would be excited to see full plugins to for launchbox in rocketlauncher! Thank you Aladdinsane for the screen shots, this has convinced me to give launchbox a try from hyperspin. There are so many people out there that prefer rocket launcher, and have spend countless hours configuring the countless options it offers in order to get their system set up perfect. This is a big deal in my opinion in getting a lot more users to launch box. Sentai, while i understand what you are saying, and i think you have made it clear Rocketlauncher is not for you, reading your posts you do not understand what rocketlauncher has to offer. It isn't just about 7zip, there is SO much more it isn't possible to list them all. Launchbox does not have all of those features yet. There are thousands of people who use rocketlauncher for many different front ends, i don't see how getting more users to launchbox is a bad thing and/or how that would negatively impact you. The thread was not about forcing everyone to use rocketlauncher, at the moment i need rocketlauncher or i would not switch to launchbox until certain features were implemented. I want to see launchbox succeed because hyperspin is a mess, with that being said, this thread would be much more appealing without the last two pages. We should find ways to integrate the things people love and want to use, especially if the program allows it, and it seems to be a very simple fix.

[dmoseder]

To anyone coming from hyperspin, I followed the directions in this post... However i did not set launchbox up in rocketlauncher under frontend, all i had to do was copy my databases folder from my hyperspin folder into my launchbox folder and so far all systems are working!

[SentaiBrad]

No, I totally understand the appeal of RocketLauncher, and I understand that there is a lot more to it. My point of view is from users coming over and asking for specific features in LaunchBox that they are missing. Primarily it has been stuff like archive decompression or getting their metadata to work. With the direction LaunchBox is going though I do feel like LaunchBox is quickly becoming the alternative to everything. It does most things well or better than other front ends and gets updated quickly. We have plans to make sure LaunchBox starts getting updated even faster too, so even some of the features that most users ask for when they start browsing our forums will be there, then what? If LaunchBox has feature parody, at least for the features our users ask the most for, then why does it make sense to use another layer that is redundant? Until that point, no I totally understand and get that people have put time in to RocketLauncher, I've put time like they have in to LaunchBox. If they want to keep using RocketLauncher despite the progress made on LaunchBox then I've already stated that I stil think that is totally fine. These are not two pieces of software that compliment each other though, because there is a lot of redundancy. So at the end of the day my thought process was, does LaunchBox do better the features it has in common with RocketLauncher? My answer was wasn't 100% of the time, but yea a majority better. Will Jason be adding in the features most requested by RL users so that they don't have to try and duct tape two pieces of software together? Yes, it's just gonna take some time.

[DOS76]

Just to add on here until a user (in post #24) asked what he really gained by adding RocketLauncher to LaunchBox nothing was said about it. At that time Brad just gave his opinion that he personally feels that LaunchBox doesn't need RL which is his opinion. When you write that the thread would be more appealing without the last two pages it sounds as if you are implying that a thread that doesn't have opposing views to yourself or any debate would be more appealing . It sounds as if you are trying to censor another users opinion which is far worse than people having conflicting views on things. I personally started playing around with RL the other day because of this post and managed to get a few systems up and running through RLUI (I haven't really messed with any of the settings yet just launching the games which it does more than adequately) but the person asked what he would gain and Brad responded with his opinion then that was followed by other giving their counter points and him responding. Nowhere did anyone get nasty or rude with anyone else it was just people offering their opinions and there is nothing wrong with that. This debate is strictly an opinionated one any way with no party in the right or wrong because whether or not a user should use LB alone or RL and LB in conjunction is purely subjective to the person in question.

[DOS76]

Played a little more with RL today and was having some issues with the systems I added the other day which were Genesis and Master System using Fusion today when launching through RL the games would start and you would here the sound but the RLUI stayed on the screen until I used alt+tab to change the window. Also I added Saturn basically because I wanted to test the mount/unmount feature I set up Daemon Tools as my Virtual Drive in general settings under the third party tool and added my path to the emulator and the games which seemed good but when I tried to launch the games it say it is a folder not a file even when I manually launch it and choose the .cue file I get the same error message. The auto mount feature alone would definitely make using RL even in LaunchBox a must for SSF at this time just to avoid the crazy amount of work that setting it up correctly takes in LB but I can't get it to work at all with SSF.

[Zombeaver]

There's no one-size-fits-all solution for much of anything and emulation (and its various and sundry front-ends) are certainly no exception. I welcome as many options as possible because frankly that gives me more opportunities to find something that suits my needs. Just look at how many different emulators there are for some platforms and consider that there's not necessarily a consensus among users of what's best. What's best for one person isn't necessarily the case for others. Options are a good thing! With that said, I'm personally not a fan of RL because I find it pretty unintuitive/non-user friendly/convoluted and I think LB is an absolute breeze by comparison. The only feature that seemed appealing to me about RL were the overlay features which, frankly, I found pretty underwhelming (those that I could even get to work) when I actually messed with it. The only one that I was really interested in was the disc swapping feature (which I intended to use in conjunction with ePSXe) which actually didn't work correctly for me as it never got the necessary open tray signal (I probably did something incorrectly but at this point I no longer care). Once I figured out how to use RA/Mednafen + m3u's it became a non-issue so I had no reason to mess with RL any further. It actually worked out for the best because prior to that I had no knowledge of RA but that experience is what drove me to RA in the first place and now I'm attached at the proverbial hip . At this point RL would be little more than another potential source of problems to troubleshoot, for little to no gain...for me. The more layers you add the more links you add to the chain that can potentially break (or maybe just get tangled). If you're a preexisting RL user and therefore need to invest very little additional time in order to integrate RL into LB then I can absolutely understand why you'd take that route, but if that's not the case RL seems like an added level of complication in exchange for features that are largely redundant with LB. If the feature-set that's actually unique to RL is something people find appealing enough that they're willing to invest the necessary time and effort, then more power to them, they should just go in fully cognizant of the headaches they might be facing. Personally, none of the various features enumerated thus far in this thread have convinced me that I'm missing anything. But again...that's me. As a side note I think the concept of LB -> RL -> RA is pretty hilarious. That's some serious Inception crap right there