LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+

[Jason Carr]

@Maddoc1007 On the File Actions dropdown at the bottom of the download page there should be an option to "upload a new version". Let me know if you have any issues there.

@shinra358 Good to hear about the wheels. Unfortunately caching background images wouldn't help much with anything. The reason why it's effective to cache the wheel images and stuff like that is that they can be large images and they're resized down to a smaller cache size to make them load and render more quickly. When it comes to background images, though, the full resolution of the images is typically required so it wouldn't provide any benefit to cache those.

@Sithel Good find on that. I'll get that fixed before the release tomorrow.

@WolfRamiO Are you saying it's scrolling too quickly when you move with the joystick? We could allow you to adjust the scrolling speed for that; can you create a ticket for it?

@AFaustini Looks like we must be missing that. I'll add it to my list.

Thanks all, I did just put out a new beta that adds some additional performance tweaks to the LaunchBox image caching stuff, as well as fixes two issues:

- Fixed: Paths were not being saved relatively when importing games and copying or moving files

- Fixed: Games and platforms in the CoverFlow and wheel views in Big Box can now be selected with the mouse

[ckp]

Since late yesterday's beta update, my scrolling (regular LB) isn't quite as nice. if i scroll on the faster side, it's kind of always empty making it hard to find something when scrolling. I think it was smoother before when scrolling fast with game images there as i scrolled. Not a huge deal, but thought I'd add a comment.

[Antropus]

@Jason Carr, well, I don't know what kinda Voodoo is this, but it's running MUCH faster for me now!!! Opening Launchbox and BigBox in a blink. Great job!

[Jason Carr]

Thanks @Antropus. Put some major work into performance for these betas.

@ckp It used to just delay the scrolling instead, so I think this is a better solution. Try increasing your RAM cache.

[shinra358]

Just got a complete freeze when scrolling the wheel. There's still a problem with moving away from a game while its assets are about to load. Platform wheel is very smooth now

[ckp]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

Thanks @Antropus. Put some major work into performance for these betas.

@ckp It used to just delay the scrolling instead, so I think this is a better solution. Try increasing your RAM cache.

sorry to say that i'm very against giving away my memory . i don't really know how the memory setting works anyway. if i have 7GB image cache but set 1GB ram, I don't know what images get to swap in and out of ram as i navigate the interface, and if it will help at all.

however, i'm still ecstatic with the overall performance improvement of the 6.10 betas using just 512MB ram cache. the scrolling is fine and doesn't really bother me.

one more second shaved off of platform switching and it will be LB nirvana! 

[WolfRamiO]

4 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

@Maddoc1007 On the File Actions dropdown at the bottom of the download page there should be an option to "upload a new version". Let me know if you have any issues there.

@shinra358 Good to hear about the wheels. Unfortunately caching background images wouldn't help much with anything. The reason why it's effective to cache the wheel images and stuff like that is that they can be large images and they're resized down to a smaller cache size to make them load and render more quickly. When it comes to background images, though, the full resolution of the images is typically required so it wouldn't provide any benefit to cache those.

@Sithel Good find on that. I'll get that fixed before the release tomorrow.

@WolfRamiO Are you saying it's scrolling too quickly when you move with the joystick? We could allow you to adjust the scrolling speed for that; can you create a ticket for it?

@AFaustini Looks like we must be missing that. I'll add it to my list.

Thanks all, I did just put out a new beta that adds some additional performance tweaks to the LaunchBox image caching stuff, as well as fixes two issues:

- Fixed: Paths were not being saved relatively when importing games and copying or moving files

- Fixed: Games and platforms in the CoverFlow and wheel views in Big Box can now be selected with the mouse

done, my english is not very good but i think i make a good desciption of the issue ^^ 

[Sithel]

Downloaded the latest and went to back out from games wheel view to platforms via the Escape key and BigBox crashed with this error.

Quote

System.AccessViolationException was unhandled
Message: An unhandled exception of type 'System.AccessViolationException' occurred in BigBox.exe
Additional information: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
 

 

[ckp]

With Beta 9 I can't remove images from games. I was in the process of finding MAME games with screenshots of things like Mechanical and I was right clicking those games and choosing Edit, and then right click the "Mechanical" screenshot and choose 'remove image'.

But since upgrading to Berta 9, it does not remove the image and remains there as my game screenshot. If I go back to Edit the game it is as though I never removed it before.

Edit: i think this only happens if that is the only screenshot. So I decided to remove them using windows explorer thumbnail view. However there a tons of them and this will take forever. 

Edited September 28, 2016 by ckp

[ckp]

21 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

@ckp It used to just delay the scrolling instead, so I think this is a better solution. Try increasing your RAM cache.

@jason, although my permanent ram cache setting will not be higher than 512MB, i tried setting it to 2GB just to see how it would work. so, changing that setting didn't help really. it still shows empty images while scrolling (i waited a while after changing the ram cache setting for LB cpu to settle first). what i am seeing is that while i scroll, only then it seems to increase the LB process ram usage. so changing the ram cache seems to require you to manually and slowly scroll through all images in a platform (my test was MAME with 3212 games) before it will truly cache it to ram. i don't know if that's by design or not, but doesn't seem right.

[Jason Carr]

Went ahead with the official 6.10 release guys because I needed to get it out before I leave for Retropalooza tomorrow. Thanks for that error report @Sithel; I expect that's mostly a fluke (it's the type of error that really should never happen and likely has more to do with a .NET glitch than anything else, but who knows). Let me know if you keep seeing that.

@ckp It's possible we have a remove image glitch, but it's not widespread. I've tested and can't seem to reproduce the problem. If you keep seeing it, let me know the file names of the images specifically so I can troubleshoot.

512 MB should be plenty big for the RAM cache setting. It is normal for images to pop in a split second after scrolling to them with the new version, at least the first time the images are loaded after restarting LaunchBox. It's a trade off for basically improving the responsiveness of everything in general. We can come back to this at some point, though. Things can always be improved.

Thanks guys; let me know if anyone sees any issues with the official release.

[ckp]

I think one upcoming performance improvement that would be nice in LB (not BB) is how long it take for the text and images to come up in the sidebar when clicking on a game.

Anyway, I'm quite happy with things overall. I'll upgrade to the official 6.10 release. This is a release that I think will make a very positive impact.

[andyco47]

is the rocket launcher emu fix yet cus thats wot i use if it aint then no piont i me updating yet.

[Jason Carr]

Hi @andyco47, the Rocket Launcher stuff should continue to work so long as you leave the old LaunchBox.xml in your LaunchBox folder. However, with the new release, any changes you make won't be reflected in the old XML file so they also won't be reflected in Rocket Launcher.

[Sithel]

Updated to the 6.10 official and launched LaunchBox, Images type was set to front boxes and clicked my Atari 2600 platform and selected the side scrill bar and went to drag it to the bottom. As images started to populate, I got this error.

System.InvalidOperationException: Object is currently in use elsewhere.
   at System.Drawing.Graphics.GetHdc()
   at System.Drawing.BufferedGraphics.RenderInternal(HandleRef refTargetDC, BufferedGraphics buffer)
   at System.Drawing.BufferedGraphics.Render()
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmPaint(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

[imdavid555]

3 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Went ahead with the official 6.10 release guys because I needed to get it out before I leave for Retropalooza tomorrow. Thanks for that error report @Sithel; I expect that's mostly a fluke (it's the type of error that really should never happen and likely has more to do with a .NET glitch than anything else, but who knows). Let me know if you keep seeing that.

@ckp It's possible we have a remove image glitch, but it's not widespread. I've tested and can't seem to reproduce the problem. If you keep seeing it, let me know the file names of the images specifically so I can troubleshoot.

512 MB should be plenty big for the RAM cache setting. It is normal for images to pop in a split second after scrolling to them with the new version, at least the first time the images are loaded after restarting LaunchBox. It's a trade off for basically improving the responsiveness of everything in general. We can come back to this at some point, though. Things can always be improved.

Thanks guys; let me know if anyone sees any issues with the official release.

Thanks for the update Jason. Looking forward to trying it out when I get home

Have a great time a Retropalooza Jason! Please take some pics and share when you get back.

[SentaiBrad]

We'll have lots of video instead!

[ALIE]

1 hour ago, SentaiBrad said:

We'll have lots of video instead!

Any chance of one day seeing a complete noob step by step mame guide.  I don't get how to set it up. And the whole updating roms and what not. 

Edited September 29, 2016 by ALIE

[SentaiBrad]

I thought I made the current MAME tutorial that, but it's probably time for an updated version, and you are right: there is probably a lot more I can do there. So, sure. I don't have a time frame per-se, we have a tutorial planned for after we get back from Texas (so next friday's tutorial), but after that Jason and I will talk about it. MAME is certainly confusing.

[Lordmonkus]

Mame is actually very easy to get running. There are some settings for personal configurations but getting it running is very easy.

Either dump your roms into the roms folder which is in your Mame folder, or edit the mame.ini file to put the path to where your Mame roms are. If you use the UI version of Mame just use the UI to add your roms path.

No boxes checked in the emulator settings > details window.

The biggest thing to worry about with Mame is having a good working set of roms with bios. You also got to be careful you aren't trying to run a clone file without having the parent rom in the same folder.

Edit:
I will throw together a quick text tutorial though.