LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+

[Zombeaver]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Yeah, the m3u thing will only work for certain emulators and platforms, unfortunately. I agree that it is the best solution for those platforms though, so we'll probably add an option for that at some point. Putting out a new beta now. It's a one-liner, but it should really help with multi-disc imports:

- Improvement: Importing multi-disc ROMs that are named correctly with (Disc 1) or (Disk 2) will now stop importing duplicates and create the extra discs as additional applications instead
 

That's still a nice QOL improvement so thanks!

The additional apps method unfortunately just isn't ideal since it requires that you completely exit the emulator/game then relaunch with the next disc which, while annoying, is still at least functional in most cases. It becomes more problematic, however, when you're dealing with games that actually don't prompt for a save as part of the swap process. I'd have to go back and check but I believe this is actually the case for MGS, for example. In those scenarios, the additional apps method isn't even usable because you don't actually have a save file to load on that disc yet, it tells you to put in the first disc, and you get nowhere (unless you resort to something funky like savestating on the swap screen, exiting, renaming the save state to the name of the second disc, loading the second disc, and loading the save state...).

Fortunately, the biggie for this is PSX which supports m3u (and PBP) through Mednafen beautifully. Preliminary support for it exists in Mednafen Saturn as well, based on my testing, but it doesn't seem to quite work yet; the infrastructure is there though. PC Engine-CD/TurboGrafx-CD are also covered through m3u/Medafen. There's only a handful of multi-disc Sega CD games and DOS is covered through the image mounting tools in LB. Most things are actually covered by m3u. There are a few instances where additional apps are basically the only option (I'm not counting RocketLauncher) but they're probably actually fewer than instances where m3u can be used.

One instance where additional apps definitely are really useful is with games that are multi-disc but are actually independently playable like Resident Evil 2, Gran Turismo 2, and Rival Schools. These have multiple discs, but they're basically separate games (different protagonist, different modes, etc.). These are cases where typical m3u disc swapping doesn't actually make much sense. I'd love to eventually see a "How do you want to import these?" option for multi-disc so you could do either additional apps or m3u.

Thanks for your continued dedication to improvements as always!

[Jason Carr]

Thanks for that run-through @Zombeaver. All makes sense; we'll definitely add automatic m3u support here soon. The trick will be to do it only when we should (when supported by the platform and emulator). I think we can wait to do it until launch though, so at that point we can just check if it's supported and if it is, automatically make the m3u.

[ALIE]

Question for already imported multi disc games . can i merge them out needing to re import?

[Jason Carr]

Sadly no, not at this point. Thankfully though you should be able to delete the games but leave the images and media and the media will re-show up if you re-import and just uncheck all the downloads.

[ALIE]

9 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Sadly no, not at this point. Thankfully though you should be able to delete the games but leave the images and media and the media will re-show up if you re-import and just uncheck all the downloads.

Yah it's not a major issue so it should be fine.  Question like the Region & Disc  could  (proto), (Beta), (Unl) be added?... 

Also maybe I missed it but is region sorting in Big Box.  If not it should definitely be in since when playing Big Box is what most use. 

Anyway to end this little rant like the rest I really appreciate your hard work ? Amazing.. 

Edited August 11, 2016 by ALIE
Spellchecker said Disco instead of Disc :)

[Jazzphone]

So the sorting and auto populating of extra discs is working extremely well.  I have reimported most of my CD based games and it has worked beautifully!

Bravo Jason, Bravo!

[Jason Carr]

Awesome to hear. Thanks @Jazzphone.

[Riffman81]

The new forums are rockin'!! Nice work Jason!

[Jason Carr]

Thank you @Riffman81.

@ALIE (proto), (Beta), (Unl), that does make sense. We can add that stuff in here at some point. I do have plans for better region handling as well.

[Zeromod]

@Jason Carr Man, I have to say the new forums are way more responsive than the last ones. Not sure if you guys switched board software, but this is way snappier. Keep on growing, you guys are killing it.

[Jason Carr]

Thanks @Zeromod. Yeah, we switched pretty much everything out.

[Mute64]

Is a Coincident that we dont get beta updates for a week... the same week no mans sky comes out? .... lol jokes tho @Jason Carr 

 

By the way this bug is still in this latest beta, just letting ya know, no stress.

 

[Jason Carr]

Lol, I blame these new forums, actually.

Yeah, apparently the fix for the CoverFlow views somehow got messed up again. I think it's only happening on the CoverFlow views, but this is on my shortlist (again).

[shinra358]

For the disc # stuff, do we need to reimport in order for it to take effect?

 

Also:

Senpai Pwease. Add these in next update:

 

-steam banners for platform and game wheels. theres a folder for it in every section but it can't be utilzed. I know emus arent steam games but I would like to use custom steam banners for everything. And to keep it separate from normal boxes and clear logos.

 

-Senpai, mouse clicks on platform and games as indicated in bitbucket.

 

 

Senpai, me no can't wait~

Edited August 13, 2016 by shinra358

[Jason Carr]

Hey guys, I gotta run away for a few but I wanted to let you guys know that I got Steam trailer video downloads working. Going to try and put out the beta with it tonight.

[Mute64]

Jason Carr is like the Gabe Newell of  Front-ends , all hail lord Jason. ;p

[Jason Carr]

Except I probably just pissed off Gabe Newell.

[CriticalCid]

W00t!? Steam trailer downloads? Awesome!

Did you also have considered what I wrote under that ticket about metadata and screenshot downloads from Steam? There are currently over 10.000 games listed in Steam and alone in 2015 there were 3.500 games released on that platform. It would be a complete full-time job to add all these games to the LaunchBox database.

So as Steam features a lot of screenshots and metadata for the games anyway (and you can probably assume that the official info’s there are correct) it would be great if the importer could download them as well. Because as of now I have huge gaps for my Steam games in LaunchBox. Especially for a lot of smaller indie titles.

[Jason Carr]

Yeah, the good news is I now have a means of gathering all that Steam game data. I still have to put in the work to be able to actually integrate it all, but it's all accessible. So sooner or later we can download other stuff from Steam as well. At least until Gabe Newell sues us for taking all of their bandwidth.

I have the Steam trailer downloads working great but I'm having issues getting the .webm files to play properly in Windows Media Player, figures.

[Jason Carr]

Alright, I went ahead and put this beta out despite the fact that I'm having trouble getting the Windows Media Player video playback engine to play the .webm video files properly. It's really dumb because I can play them when I open them up in WMP manually, but only the second time open them. Facepalm. Lol.

I've tried changing the file extension from .webm to .avi, .mpg, and .mp4, and I can get them to play, but they play without audio. Fail again. Of course they work perfectly fine in VLC. I'm also sure you could install a codec to get them to play fine in WMP, but ideally we need it to work out of the box.

This beta also should fix the CoverFlow views not remembering the selected game issue, and has an updated French translation thanks to @Wattoo.