LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+

[ckp]

17 hours ago, paulmichel21 said:

another thing. I'm trying to add xppader to a platform but I have no way. LB only allows you to add application to each game.

I need to launch xppader with a specific profile, in the emulator sega model 3.

Can you add the option?

This is possible by emulator. You can go to Manage Emulators, open the emulator you use for sega model 3 and add your autohotkey Xpadder startup command and exit command (can use taskkill command to exit Xpadder) in the autohotkey tab. Using the ahk script will cause Xpadder to startup when the game is launched and exit when the game is exited. There have been multiple requests/votes to add this functionality to the Launchbox gui per emulator and/or platform, but at least you can use autohotkey per emulator for now.

 

[WolfRamiO]

@Jason Carr when you change the theme on bigbox... its need  restart bigbox to fully apply it... pls fix or put a dialog box asking to restart it 

EDIT: its happends when you are in the game list and press ESCAPE to go to the options and then the game list dissapeers!

Edited November 21, 2016 by WolfRamiO

[paulmichel21]

23 hours ago, damageinc86 said:

Thats actually way easier if you use rocketlauncher and joy2key.  You can make a profile directly from within rocketlauncher and have it be a game profile, then you select the game from whatever system you are in, and then whenever that game is launched it will start up that exact profile for you.  

Thanks but, I just want to use LB so that the pc does not slow down and i use xppader 

[paulmichel21]

9 hours ago, ckp said:

This is possible by emulator. You can go to Manage Emulators, open the emulator you use for sega model 3 and add your autohotkey Xpadder startup command and exit command (can use taskkill command to exit Xpadder) in the autohotkey tab. Using the ahk script will cause Xpadder to startup when the game is launched and exit when the game is exited. There have been multiple requests/votes to add this functionality to the Launchbox gui per emulator and/or platform, but at least you can use autohotkey per emulator for now.

 

Excellent I would love to know how I script.. can you help me with this ahk script?

[paulmichel21]

how to run bat file with ahk script? any help? thanks

[Jason Carr]

Thanks all, new beta is out. It's basically just a bugfix release to attempt to fix the various bugs with the background music and other related things. This should hopefully fix the background music image bug reported by @imdavid555 above. Hoping this also fixes the stability issues when using the "prioritize music over video audio" setting.

@paulmichel21 Can you start a new thread for the AHK stuff?

Also, we're not done with optimizations for the beta downloads, but please do let me know how they fair for you with this beta. Thanks.

[Klamp]

On 11/15/2016 at 3:04 PM, Jason Carr said:

Thank you @paulmichel21; I will look into that.

Beta 10 is out now guys with a few fixes:

- The VLC NULL reference issue was still happening because I completely missed what was causing the problem; I really hope this one is finally fixed now lol. This was happening for people who were using music without videos or who were using WMP for the videos.

- Platform-specific image types were not being remembered/used properly in LaunchBox when using the new platform category filter type

- The issue with using the same platform name ("Arcade") as platform category (also "Arcade") has been fixed; the filters should now work properly in that case

Also, some questions for you guys. Does anyone who uses custom fields extensively want to do some performance testing with these latest changes? Or would you mind sharing your Data folder with me? I need to know if the recent performance fixes did anything to resolve performance issues with custom fields.

Finally, what are you guys' thoughts on getting rid of the Windows Media Player video playback engine option? Now that VLC is fixed and is not causing problems it seems to be the best choice by far (performance is better and there's a bug or two that still exists with WMP that is not an issue with VLC). Does anyone know of any good reasons to keep WMP? Is anyone still choosing to use WMP? If WMP is worse in all aspects and isn't really providing any added value, then it's not worth my efforts to keep working with it. Thanks all.

I still use WMP because for some unknown reason videos have no sound when I choose the vlc engine.

[imdavid555]

Wow the download for the new beta was insanely fast for me. Felt like just a few seconds.

Thanks again Jason. Will let you know if it happens again!  

 

[heelsinc]

anyone having issues with over scanning in big box since switching to the new beta?  Never had this issue before but now in the big box options menu I can hardly see what the options say that's how much of the left side is cut off.  Any idea why just one program would have such a huge over scan issue while nothing else does?  Any ideas how to fix it?

[Jason Carr]

@heelsinc Big Box doesn't change the resolution or the video mode at all; it just uses your current video settings. So I'm rather confused by how overscan would even be possible. Maybe the window was just somehow out of place? Are you able to consistently replicate it, even after a reboot?

[heelsinc]

same thing happens every time I open Big Box.  As the Big Box logo opens up over the homepage of the computer the whole screen shifts to where the menu bar on the bottom is only half way visible and and the icons that were on the left are cut in half also.  It puts the whole thing into an overscan then when I close big box everything goes back to normal.  I have no clue why it's happening but lets not dig into it to much more because as of last night I decided to move the computer to a different TV.  It was in the spare room and since I started using Big Box I have become some what of a hermit.  So I'm moving it to the living room so if I'm using it I'm at least around the family.  I'll report back if the same thing happens or if it was just some weird shit with that TV.

 

Works fine on the living room TV which is better anyway cause it's a brand new 70 inch compared to an old 42.  Still confused why the upstairs TV was doing that but oh well.

Edited November 22, 2016 by heelsinc

[LogicalEgo]

Pardon my dumb question but is there or is there going to be a feature to auto dim after x amount of time while attract mode is running in BigBox? It might already be there and I completely over looked.

[Jazzphone]

@Jason Carr is there a possibility of getting the search magnifying glass fixed before 7.0?

This has been an issue ever since the sort alphabet option has been introduced.

I tiny annoyance that is hopefully an easy fix.  It happens on all themes including the default.

 

Edited November 22, 2016 by Jazzphone

[Kriven]

Will Platform Categories eventually make their way to Big Box?

If they do, will they be given the same metadata and image treatment that individual platforms have?

[Maddoc1007]

@Jason Carr Have been playing around with the background music i like it very much except for a few small niggling facts

1.   When setting to play music over platform videos it does not mute the background videos this causes hissing even when video volume is fully turned down.

2.   I have my music on a separate drive and music mapped as that drive per platform in LaunchBox (screenshot) but it wont play the background music even if there is a folder in Music named Background on that drive it will only play the music if it is in a folder called Music with a Background folder in LaunchBox itself.

3.   If i put folders named after each platform in the Music/Background folder it will play all music irrespective of platform.

4.   Wont play .m3u music playlists.

 

Wishlist for Background Music.

1.   Mute sound in background Video when using play music over video.

2.   An option to map the Background Music to Drive of Choice.

3.   Play Background Music per platform (once we change platform it will play only the music associated in that platform folder in Background Music).

4.  Music will stop playing when we go to options screen or an option in settings to do this.

5.   Ability to play .m3u media playlists.

 

Edited November 25, 2016 by Maddoc1007
Left out some info

[drtechnolust]

Is anyone else having issues deleting games. I select all the games from the mame platform and then select delete. I see the program starts to not respond then the games disappear. I click on another platform and then I see mame disappear. I reopen the program to see lauchbox have mame readded back. This happens for Mame (9000+ games) , FBA (4000+ games) and Amstrad CPC (4000+ games). 

 

[salyangel]

On the last beta, watching video in full screen doesn't work with VLC with WMP it's OK.

[Jason Carr]

On 11/22/2016 at 10:39 AM, keltoigael said:

Pardon my dumb question but is there or is there going to be a feature to auto dim after x amount of time while attract mode is running in BigBox? It might already be there and I completely over looked.

That actually has yet to be requested that I can recall so it hasn't been implemented. Feel free to put in a ticket for it.

@Jazzphone I assume you're using a 4:3 monitor? The trouble is that it's not exactly an easy fix because of the changing aspect ratios.

@Kriven I'm still hoping we can get platform categories into Big Box before 7.0, but at this point it's not a guarantee. It's still relatively high priority but we keep adding in more and more stuff to 7.0, so I need to cut it off here at some point.

@drtechnolust I have indeed heard that recently about deleting games, as well as possibly that game metadata is not updating on rare occasions. If anyone has any further details on this stuff, it'd be appreciated. It's on my list to tackle before 7.0.

@salyangel Will look into that.

[Jason Carr]

Thanks guys. New beta is out with the LaunchBox multi-track music support and controls in the bottom bar. Could use some major testing because a lot has changed music-wise in LaunchBox to support it all.

[Jazzphone]

52 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

That actually has yet to be requested that I can recall so it hasn't been implemented. Feel free to put in a ticket for it.

@Jazzphone I assume you're using a 4:3 monitor? The trouble is that it's not exactly an easy fix because of the changing aspect ratios.

@Kriven I'm still hoping we can get platform categories into Big Box before 7.0, but at this point it's not a guarantee. It's still relatively high priority but we keep adding in more and more stuff to 7.0, so I need to cut it off here at some point.

@drtechnolust I have indeed heard that recently about deleting games, as well as possibly that game metadata is not updating on rare occasions. If anyone has any further details on this stuff, it'd be appreciated. It's on my list to tackle before 7.0.

@salyangel Will look into that.

@Jason Carr this is a 16x9 display.  The Screen grab is just a portion to show the magnifying glass icon being cut off in the upper left hand corner in the Games List View.