martinconroy Posted June 1, 2016 Author Share Posted June 1, 2016 Hi, One thing I can't see any info about is this, so wonder if anyone can help. I have several media systems around the house, all of which I want to use BigBox so I have just bought a lifetime licence to support this great product. What I would like however, is that all of these systems access the same information? i.e. if I add games via one system, all can see them, and also usage/ favourites etc are common. As I understand it, all settings are local to the machine so this is not currently possible? Would love to hear thoughts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 Hi Martin, this is definitely possible and it's exactly how we designed the product. All you need to do is subscribe to Dropbox (or Google Drive or Microsoft's OneDrive) and put your LaunchBox folder inside of the synced folder. Dropbox is the best solution, but probably isn't the least expensive. There is also a free version of Dropbox, but it's not big enough to be able to sync ROMs and videos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 An alternative if they are on the same network would also be to take Jason's instructions but replace DropBox with a Windows Homegroup or something similar. This does only work if your PC's are on the same network though. The DropBox solution is great for machines over the internet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martinconroy Posted June 1, 2016 Author Share Posted June 1, 2016 Thanks both - very helpful. All are going to be on the same network so I assume I can just put the folder on the Server, map a drive to where LaunchBox and my games are and then launch. The only issue is that with the EXE being 145MB this can take some time to launch! I was hoping that I could run that locally and all other info be held centrally. Is this not a viable option? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 I tried to set LB up on my server before but ran into issues caused by the fact that you would have to use centrally located emulators which would then not be configured the same on each of your computers. Using RetroArch may make that more usable since it autodetecs controllers but for other systems not so much. Other issues would still be graphics settings, display size and probably some more stuff I can't think of off of the top. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 That can be done too, but if 145mb is having trouble load than Disc images may also have some issues loading as well so keep that in mind. Now your LaunchBox XML and License XML needs to be with the LB exe you are launching. But the images, video and anything else can reside on the Network. You can change where LaunchBox looks for images, video or media when you edit platforms in Tools -> Manage Platforms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 You can put at least all of your older systems roms on the centralized location add them to one instance of LB before you add your other games and then copy that version of LB to all of your PC's giving you a base upon to build with on each of your computers. Then you can test systems like Saturn PS1 and up and see if they will perform from the centralized storage location and if you run into performance issues you will have to readjust and move those more advanced systems to each computer but storing all of those games can get to be expensive if you keep large libraries of disc games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martinconroy Posted June 1, 2016 Author Share Posted June 1, 2016 Thanks guys - I'll have a play and look for the ultimate combination. I suspect the final setup won't change much so I may be as well installing locally and simply copying that content elsewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SentaiBrad Posted June 1, 2016 Share Posted June 1, 2016 You can always keep a master backup on the server that updates to your systems and only keeping to new changes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 2, 2016 Share Posted June 2, 2016 If you're looking to do it all locally without a syncing service like Dropbox, there should be several decent options available. I will say, however, that trying to run LaunchBox and your ROMs directly off of a server is mostly a bad idea for performance reasons. LaunchBox does need direct access to a disk in order to have any kind of decent performance. The LaunchBox folder is used for disk caching and if reading and writing to the folder is slow you'll probably end up with really bad performance. That said, some ideas: There are plenty of software syncing tools that you could use to sync two folders on a network between computers. I'm not overly familiar with any of them so I don't have any recommendations, but in theory you can put LaunchBox on both machines and use a software package that syncs folders in order to keep them in sync. This has the benefit of being 100% local for each machine, so performance will not be an issue. My only other idea is that if you map a drive in Windows, you can configure caching options on the mapped drive. I believe you can even make it so the entire drive is available offline, but syncs up to the server. I haven't really tested to see how stable Microsoft's solution for that is, but it might be something good to try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martinconroy Posted June 2, 2016 Author Share Posted June 2, 2016 Thanks again. I'll get things running well on one machine then try different options/ file locations to work out the optimum solution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CADScott Posted June 2, 2016 Share Posted June 2, 2016 I use a program called FreeFileSync to keep my LaunchBox folder synced between machines. I run a copy of LaunchBox on my Desktop PC, and sync it to my server, and then sync it to a USB hard drive that I can then use plugged into my laptop at work. I have had no issues with this program syncing changes on any of these machines and keeping the entire setup up to date. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted June 3, 2016 Share Posted June 3, 2016 Perfect, thanks @CADScott. Was hoping someone had some experience doing that. Glad it's all working well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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