LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+

[ThePolish]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Thanks guys. Beta 5 is now out which fixes the issue where images were getting lost when editing a game's title. Assuming all goes well with this release we'll probably put out the official 6.12 version tomorrow.

Great job as always Jason. LB has been running smoothly (added a few titles over the last few days), and big box's crashes feel like a thing of the past right now. Had some good downtime the last 3 days to play around and had a blast. This software is a work of art for sure! Keep up the amazing work!

[paulmichel21]

hi all, in beta 5

when I want to view or change controls BigBox crashes. try several times and always crashes at the same point ... Controls

Edited October 14, 2016 by paulmichel21

[staticfade]

Curious if anyone else has tried the second screen option to put marquees on them. It works as described but when I exit a game the screen loses focus and none of my controls respond until I alt-tab to change focus to the other screen. I notice the marquee screen is active because when I hit various keys I see the close window menu open on the marquee screen. I am using Windows 10 and have an X-arcade controller as the input device

[Jason Carr]

 

@paulmichel21 Sounds like's there's either a compatibility issue with a particular controller on your computer or a problem with DirectX's Xinput (could be a missing DLL even). What controllers do you have attached? Are you using them currently in Big Box or trying to enable them? Try running the LaunchBox setup program so it can install all the DirectX libraries if you haven't done that recently on that particular computer.

[Jason Carr]

@staticfade Thanks, I'll look into that today.

[ThePolish]

@Jason Carr I don't have a second screen for a marquee, but I'm curious, does it flip/scroll images? If so would it be possible to do that in the big box library view to auto flip through cart/box art? 

[shinra358]

On 10/13/2016 at 1:00 PM, Jason Carr said:

@shinra358 That should already be possible with custom themes, though might not be quite as flexible on the second monitor. We'll get there eventually but complete customization of the second monitor won't be a super high priority.

when I turn the 2nd monitor on, it stays on either one screen or the other. But unsure if I would want the 2nd monitor to be customizable or if it'll be good if just the details screen is shown on 2nd monitor. hmmm.

 

I do know that if I put bigbox on the 2nd screen and start a game, the game starts on the default screen of course which is cool and bigbox stays open on the 2nd screen. there's no prob with it, but if it can auto turn into the details screen (in place of the marquee screen and togglable from marquee to details via a customizable button from the gamepad) during the game when on wheel mode, that would be very cool. And when the game shuts down, it'll go back to wheel view. Would be cool if this could also happen vice versa. And if no game is playing and you are on 2 monitors, the details screen would auto appear on the screen that bigbox isn't on and during this, the button to show the details screen would be disabled. Kinda like a 3DS. And if no 2nd monitor is detected, it goes as normal.

Also, an automatic option for the marquee screen I would like to request. the specific screens for this option is only useful for more than 2 screen. But if one just has 2 screens, the auto option would automatically place the marquee screen on the screen that bigbox is not on. And if the 2nd monitor is not connected or not on, no marquee screen will be drawn.

 

That is my idea about it.

 

 

 

Bugwise:

- right click and closing bb when it is on the 2nd monitor from the taskbar, the process stays in process list as the window is closed

-if the 2nd monitor is disconnected and bb is turned off, it defaults back to default screen which is great. BUT if the 2nd monitor is just turned off but still connected, it stays on the 2nd monitor. So a check should be included as to whether or not the 2nd monitor is on so that it would default back to the default screen as well when the monitor is just off.

 

EDITED: Read again just in case changes werent seen on first read during the editing.

Edited October 14, 2016 by shinra358

[paulmichel21]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

 

@ paulmichel21  Suena como del no sea un problema de compatibilidad con un controlador en particular en su ordenador o un problema con xinput de DirectX (podría ser un archivo DLL que falta aún). Lo que los controladores no se haya adjuntado? Los estás usando actualmente en la caja grande o tratando de permitirles? Pruebe a ejecutar el programa de instalación LaunchBox por lo que puede instalar todas las bibliotecas de DirectX si no lo ha hecho recientemente en ese equipo en particular.

I use a control interface to usb pc named rof 4 players http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/MLA-616811563-usb-maximum-interfaz-usb-para-simuladores-de-vuelo-y-mame-_JM Launchbox recognizes and lets me switch between player 1 and p2 and p3 or p4. but BigBox not allowed to change only uses the assigned player in LB. Moreover, LB and BB use buttons only let one player. example: play with player 1 but the "escape" button is on the player 4.

another query, you can change the id of controls in windows 7? joyid does not change does not work ...
Thank you

http://www.rofelectronics.com/products/usbpuzzleplus.html

[Drybonz]

There is a lot of potential in the second screen marquee.  It needs some basic features to really stand out.  A couple things I can think of are being able to turn it off and on per system, and being able to select the image type per system.  This would allow you to be able to do things like display backglass images for pinball, marquees for arcade, game maps for rpg's, fan art... the list of things you can do with that second screen could be fantastic... those a just a few quick examples... but it would need to be flexible with what images can be displayed.

[Antropus]

A second screen marquee replacing my arcade machine's current static marquee would sure be a sweet idea, like this:
http://www.abcdgood.com/product/60539444399-803811739/ultra_thin_wide_Bar_Type_LCD_Monitor.html

[DOS76]

@Antropusthanks for that link I'm looking at a few different solutions now this looks promising.

[shinra358]

To add to my other comment above, here is a lil flicker that happens to bigbox if you have a dual monitor setup and the 2nd monitor is off but still plugged in:

 

 

[racinglikeapro]

The Marquee feature is working really well on an Arcade cabinet I've been building this year, thanks so much @Jason Carr!

I've got a couple of minor suggestions which I think would make it even better:

1. Pin to Bottom + Stretch to specific Height: It would be great to be able to pin the marquee to the bottom of the 2nd screen rather than centrally, and also have the ability to set a fixed height which the marquee will stretch to. My marquee screen is a 29inch LG 21:9 display which is split into two sections with some structural MDF in between, and so these two things would basically make it work perfectly. That said, right now I can achieve this anyway by replacing the Image tag in the "GameMarqueeView.xaml" file with the following code, but I feel that these setups would be useful in the GUI perhaps too, as it's the absolute cheapest way to build a decent marquee screen:

<Image Source="{Binding Path=SelectedGame.MarqueeImagePath}" Height="730" Width="2560" Stretch="Fill" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="HighQuality" />

2. Platform Banner Fallback when no Game Marquee available: The image fallback system doesn't work well at all for ultra-wide marquee displays, as often it falls back to box-art, which gets stretched beyond recognition and looks horrible. The perfect setup, and something I don't think I can control with XAML, would be if BigBox would fallback to the "Platform Banner" when there is no game marquee available. This would essentially allow you to setup a generic system marquee when there is no decent marquee art for the game you're playing. 

Anyway, given it's early days, this already works really well, and I'm loving your work. It's already allowed me to ditch a fairly crappy setup where a custom AHK RocketLauncher script would load my marquee via HyperMarquee. This was only once you'd launched the game though, but now it changes as I select which is just amazing. 

Thanks again,

Trav

[Jason Carr]

@ThePolish What do you mean by flip/scroll images? Are you talking about attract mode? It does work with attract mode right now, yes, and will flip through the images as the games are selected in Attract Mode.

@shinra358 Cool ideas about switching the screens out. I won't get those features into 6.12 but it would great to get a ticket in there for those. You should already be able to enable the marquee screen and have it only show up if the second screen is attached. For example, you can still sync your installation between several machines and the second screen will only be used for the marquee if there is a second screen attached to the computer.

Also @shinra358 I'll take a look at that right-clicking the taskbar bug, but I'm not fully following you on the second bug you listed. Can you explain again?

@paulmichel21 Unfortunately that is going to be difficult for me to solve without having one of those boards to experiment with. I'm also having trouble following you. Can you try and break it down for me?

@Drybonz Agreed. Lots of awesome potential, some of which could already be done with custom themes. We'll look to expand on it at some point after 6.12.

[Jason Carr]

@shinra358 I'll watch your video in more detail here after the live stream, but my hunch is that you're looking at Windows driver issues mostly. The thing is, having a monitor connected but off is not a typical scenario and it probably isn't handled well by drivers. Unfortunately I doubt there's much I'm going to be able to do to fix that. Having a second monitor that is connected but is off is not an expected scenario in most cases.

[Jason Carr]

@blackmondo Thanks for those insights. It's great to hear from someone who's testing on an actual marquee screen. I don't think we'll tackle that stuff for the 6.12 release, but it makes sense to look into it soon.

[shinra358]

49 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

@shinra358 I'll watch your video in more detail here after the live stream, but my hunch is that you're looking at Windows driver issues mostly. The thing is, having a monitor connected but off is not a typical scenario and it probably isn't handled well by drivers. Unfortunately I doubt there's much I'm going to be able to do to fix that. Having a second monitor that is connected but is off is not an expected scenario in most cases.

As in the vid, you'll see my drawing table that I use for a 2nd monitor for gaming for ds emulation sometimes. I won't have it on all the time so I wont be using it all the time. Same with anyone else who just has an external monitor. But this would help probably:

 

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/0ff92261-36f1-42f9-8b8f-f07e3b638e30/get-the-monitor-status?forum=csharpgeneral

or

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3913025/detect-if-monitor-is-on-c-sharp

or

https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/de908bcd-ac69-4b34-8a89-216c14fa7b8a/how-to-detect-if-monitor-was-on-or-off-with-c?forum=csharplanguage

 

If you can integrate that along with the variable that detects whether device is connected, it should work. Do you use C# or C++ with this wpf app? The links are C#.

 

 

" but I'm not fully following you on the second bug you listed. Can you explain again? "

You got it in the 2nd post response to me that you made It's the same thing.

 

" You should already be able to enable the marquee screen and have it only show up if the second screen is attached. "

Yes but it wouldn't be automatic. Currently, we have to change 2 options. What I've proposed only requires changing 1 option. If I want bigbox on the 2nd screen, I'd have to go change the marque screen manually so it can show on the first. With my idea, You would only have to change the bigbox default screen option and the marque screen would auto go to the next available screen hence the word 'auto' that would be in the marquee screen selection. Because what would happen if you have the bigbox screen AND marquee screen both set to 'insert number here'?

 

Edit: Oh, and the vid is showing that if you have primary screen set to 2 and marquee screen set to 1 and you launch bigbox from the 1st monitor, that flicker happens and big box will remain on monitor 1 and both will fight for monitor 1 instead of bigbox going to monitor 2 like it's supposed to. Speaking of this, you may not have to detect if monitor is off because it may just be this bug. We'll see when you fix this one whether or not the screen detection method is also needed.

but screen on/off detection would still be needed in order for bigbox to remove the marquee screen if 2nd monitor is off. So when the details screen for the 2nd monitor comes into fruition, there wouldn't be a conflict involving 2 details screens running.

 

 

Edited October 17, 2016 by shinra358

[ThePolish]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

@ThePolish What do you mean by flip/scroll images? Are you talking about attract mode? It does work with attract mode right now, yes, and will flip through the images as the games are selected in Attract Mode.

I'm thinking of just as I flip through games manually. I use a 360 controller and use "x"  to cycle from cart, to box, to 3d cart by tapping it. I'd love to see a slider, say 100ms-1sec that would "hit that X" or perform that cycle action and show off all the art as I'm manually scrolling through games. 

[Drybonz]

Gameboy DS and also pinball (backglass) are just two examples of why you would need to be able to turn the marquee screen on and off on a per-system basis.

[Jason Carr]

Thanks @shinra358. We do use C#. I really need to get 6.12 out so I can't tackle any of that yet, but I'm glad you put in a ticket for it.

@ThePolish That is a great idea. I see what you mean now.

@Drybonz In theory, even double-monitor emulators should just show up on top of Big Box, so I don't think the second monitor thing will be an issue. That said, I have yet to test it.