LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+

[salyangel]

Oh sorry it's a bad reflex yes I have rocket launcher.

[kmoney]

Wow....I can see a huge difference in startup times on my rig with both BigBox and LaunchBox. Everything seems to flowing smoother as well while scrolling through the wheels and just going in and out of the option menus as well. I must say I think this is the biggest performance improvement update thus far in BB and LB!! Rock on @Jason Carr 

[kmoney]

@Jason Carr I just noticed a new issue after the newest beta and its a strange one. If I immediately scroll to the Arcade/MAME platform after BigBox starts up, MAME video will not even startup while on the wheel and I cannot even press enter to enter the MAME platform until Bigbox has been running for about 5 to 6 seconds after startup, then the mame video finally starts and I can press enter to go into the games view. This only happens upon startup and does not happen once you are in BigBox as everything works normal. Is this because Mame has more games than any of my other platforms and it is still parsing the xml even after startup? I can go into any of my other platforms immediately after startup, it only seems to affect Mame. I have about 2800 games in my MAME platform which is the same before the newest beta.

[ThePolish]

My fitbit has a stopwatch.....

Launch seconds from open click on desktop. 

BETA 21 LB/BB 4.8/7.2
Beta 22 LB/BB 4.2/5.8

Thanks @Jason Carr

[Charco]

@ThePolish and how many games are in your collection?

[ThePolish]

2 minutes ago, Charco said:

@ThePolish and how many games are in your collection?

2689 over 17 platforms. 

[Charco]

@ThePolish cool. That's fairly decent loading times

I have about 9,000 so I am expecting a good performance boost too.

[drtechnolust]

Beta 22

LB - 25 seconds

BB - 19 seconds (Hear BB Sound) 34 Seconds (Start of platform video) 

67 Platforms with 23,013 Games 

[ThePolish]

This could be a separate thread all of its own haha. I imagine a lot of system specs too, I just upgraded to  ssd and new i5 as well. Maybe someone can start a benchmark thread! 

[salyangel]

15 hours ago, kmoney said:

@Jason Carr I just noticed a new issue after the newest beta and its a strange one. If I immediately scroll to the Arcade/MAME platform after BigBox starts up, MAME video will not even startup while on the wheel and I cannot even press enter to enter the MAME platform until Bigbox has been running for about 5 to 6 seconds after startup, then the mame video finally starts and I can press enter to go into the games view. This only happens upon startup and does not happen once you are in BigBox as everything works normal. Is this because Mame has more games than any of my other platforms and it is still parsing the xml even after startup? I can go into any of my other platforms immediately after startup, it only seems to affect Mame. I have about 2800 games in my MAME platform which is the same before the newest beta.

I have the same problem on my arcade system with 2790 games. Very slow when I change the letter.

[Jason Carr]

Thanks all. New beta is out that just fixes a bunch of random obscure bugs from Bitbucket, as well as the error @cammelspit posted.

[kmoney]

 Just got this error after updating to the newest beta.

Version 7.0-beta-23



System.ArgumentException: An item with the same key has already been added.

   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentException(ExceptionResource resource)

   at System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2.Insert(TKey key, TValue value, Boolean add)

   at ()

   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Search.LocalDb.GetPlatforms()

   at (String , Boolean )

   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Search.LocalDb.GetValidPlatformName(String name, Boolean officialOnly)

   at (Platform , String )

   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Data.Platform.GetCustomThemeImagePath(String imageType)

   at (Platform )

   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Data.Platform.GetBigBoxPlatformRandomBackgroundImagePath()

   at (PlatformFiltersViewModelBase )

   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Wpf.BigBox.ViewModels.PlatformFiltersViewModelBase.<selectionChangedTimer_Elapsed>b__11_0()

   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)

   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean preserveSyncCtx)

   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)

   at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

 

[cammelspit]

Just installed beta 23 and got an error with the DX setup. I am sure you don't update the DX stuff every time but this is the first time I have seen this, it usually does it's thing.

[WolfRamiO]

all themes that i try in the new beta are broken!

[Pacman56]

2 days ago, I watched the recorded twitch broadcast which mainly focused on improving BB startup performance with large collections (50K games) which happens to be my collection size. I was so excited that evening! I wanted to put it to the test but for some reason, the performance results I'm experiencing are quite different from the ones I've seen on the stream. This morning I downloaded and installed the latest beta (7.0-beta-23), but my ~50K collection takes 1 min 20 sec to start. In trying to isolate the problem, I created a new (clean) LaunchBox installation folder and copied my production "Data" folder onto it. This of course means, no videos, images, manuals, etc. As a result, performance was slightly improved to a startup time of 58 sec but that still far from what I've seen on the twitch broadcast. A lot of times I hear that moving your LaunchBox folder an SSD improves performance but that was not the case for me as you can see in the Performance Results section below. I decided to start Task Manager and selected the performance tab to see which hardware resources are solicited when starting BB and could clearly see that the storage device on which LB/BB is installed is hardly moving from 0%. After running these tests several time, the xml data gets cached by the OS and the HDD activity stays down to nearly 0% during BB startups. However, the CPU is always at 28% 3.85 GHz during the entire time BB is starting. Once the wheel is displayed, the CPU goes down to ~6% 2.52 GHz. Additionally, when loading the platform view using the following sequence [from the platform view, hit esc, select Options, select Back then Back again], the new “Please Wait” message will appear and it will takes 25 seconds for the view to be displayed. Switching View also takes 25 sec.

Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hardware:
Processor: i5-4690K OC @4.6 using ASUS AI Suite
RAM: 16GB
GPU: GeForce GTX 950
250GB SSD (Operating System)
1TB HDD (Dedicated to BigBox and emulators)

Software:
Windows 8.1 (on SSD)
LaunchBox 7.0-beta-23 (on 1TB WD Black)

BigBox Settings:
Theme: Default or CriticalZonev1.3 (performance issue is present either way)
Collection Size: 49389

Performance Results (1TB HDD 7200RPM dedicated drive, with all images, videos, etc):
Start BigBox:   1 min 20 sec
Switch View:    25 sec
View Platforms: 25 sec

Performance Results (1TB HDD 7200RPM dedicated drive, images and videos removed):
Start BigBox:   58 sec
Switch View:    25 sec
View Platforms: 25 sec

Performance Results (250GB SSD OS drive, images and videos removed):
Start BigBox:   61 sec
Switch View:    25 sec
View Platforms: 25 sec

[neil9000]

3 minutes ago, Pacman56 said:

2 days ago, I watched the recorded twitch broadcast which mainly focused on improving BB startup performance with large collections (50K games) which happens to be my collection size. I was so excited that evening! I wanted to put it to the test but for some reason, the performance results I'm experiencing are quite different from the ones I've seen on the stream. This morning I downloaded and installed the latest beta (7.0-beta-23), but my ~50K collection takes 1 min 20 sec to start. In trying to isolate the problem, I created a new (clean) LaunchBox installation folder and copied my production "Data" folder onto it. This of course means, no videos, images, manuals, etc. As a result, performance was slightly improved to a startup time of 58 sec but that still far from what I've seen on the twitch broadcast. A lot of times I hear that moving your LaunchBox folder an SSD improves performance but that was not the case for me as you can see in the Performance Results section below. I decided to start Task Manager and selected the performance tab to see which hardware resources are solicited when starting BB and could clearly see that the storage device on which LB/BB is installed is hardly moving from 0%. After running these tests several time, the xml data gets cached by the OS and the HDD activity stays down to nearly 0% during BB startups. However, the CPU is always at 28% 3.85 GHz during the entire time BB is starting. Once the wheel is displayed, the CPU goes down to ~6% 2.52 GHz. Additionally, when loading the platform view using the following sequence [from the platform view, hit esc, select Options, select Back then Back again], the new “Please Wait” message will appear and it will takes 25 seconds for the view to be displayed. Switching View also takes 25 sec.

Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hardware:
Processor: i5-4690K OC @4.6 using ASUS AI Suite
RAM: 16GB
GPU: GeForce GTX 950
250GB SSD (Operating System)
1TB HDD (Dedicated to BigBox and emulators)

Software:
Windows 8.1 (on SSD)
LaunchBox 7.0-beta-23 (on 1TB WD Black)

BigBox Settings:
Theme: Default or CriticalZonev1.3 (performance issue is present either way)
Collection Size: 49389

Performance Results (1TB HDD 7200RPM dedicated drive, with all images, videos, etc):
Start BigBox:   1 min 20 sec
Switch View:    25 sec
View Platforms: 25 sec

Performance Results (1TB HDD 7200RPM dedicated drive, images and videos removed):
Start BigBox:   58 sec
Switch View:    25 sec
View Platforms: 25 sec

Performance Results (250GB SSD OS drive, images and videos removed):
Start BigBox:   61 sec
Switch View:    25 sec
View Platforms: 25 sec

Hey Pacman56, u may remember me from the live stream or that time when.....

HDD or SSD should not make much of a difference, I have my entire 1.5tb launchbox collection on a external usb 3.0 drive.and its just fine from there.

[neil9000]

Maybe @cammelspit can chime in here as well?

 

[Pacman56]

2 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Hey Pacman56, u may remember me from the live stream or that time when.....

HDD or SSD should not make much of a difference, I have my entire 1.5tb launchbox collection on a external usb 3.0 drive.and its just fine from there.

I totally agree with you neil9000. There isn't much disk activity when loading the xml files as observed using Task Manager.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, Pacman56 said:

I totally agree with you neil9000. There isn't much disk activity when loading the xml files as observed using Task Manager.

Yeah bear with me, just thinking out loud, as I say runs fine off usb. your specs are much higher than mine also so.

 

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Yeah bear with me, just thinking out loud, as I say runs fine off usb. your specs are much higher than mine also so.

 

Silly question, but have you overwritten your install with a previous version? or more simply have you rolled back? at any point?

 

I should probably read properly, but there is a lot of info there!!

 

Edited December 14, 2016 by neil9000
clarification