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LaunchBox Beta Testing - 6.8+


Jason Carr

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28 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Oh, one last thing. There's this as well:

- Improvement: Big Box now hides the taskbar while running in order to prevent it from showing while switching between the startup video and Big Box, and while running games

That will come in really handy I think, but it also scares me, because if Big Box crashes, you'll have no task bar. I'm currently not sure what to do about this. I know Rocket Launcher annoys me sometimes because if it crashes you're often left with a completely broken desktop, which I'd like to avoid, but I don't have any quick solutions. I might try and put another EXE next to it to detect if that happens and recover.

Scares me too, because this is one of the main reasons I migrated all my stuff from RL to using just LB. Since using only LB, I haven't had a single issue where I was left in a jacked up desktop state like I was often left using RL. Hoping for the best... :)

 

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What's all this about Music and Video audio conflicting with each other? I haven't updated in a long while (7.1) but I have videos and music associated with the same game in a lot of cases (mainly because I use LaunchBox as my music player as well, so I have music videos associated with albums which automatically play). As far as I can tell, scrolling over an item in Big Box will play the video audio while on the platform screen, and the music audio (with a muted video) in the games list or games details pages. Is that not how it's working anymore?

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@Kriven its not a conflict it just when you have background music ticked and video volume turned up in BigBox settings you can hear both the video sound and the background music sound while scrolling through the platforms in BigBox and i just asked Jason if he could implement a toggle Keyboard/Gamepad button for using one or the other which ever you preferred without having to go into settings.

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2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

I just solved the taskbar issue. When Big Box is run, I run a separate process that waits for Big Box to exit, and then makes 100% sure that the taskbar is back, whether Big Box closed cleanly or not. So that's solved for the next beta.

There was a dllcall that could be done to toggle it of memory wise (one short line of code). That way if bigbox crashed, it would still reappear. Was trying to find the script. I know I have it somewhere. But by the time I started to look, you had already posted, so :P

Edited by shinra358
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Startup video is a welcome feature.  But can't we have the option to just go into launchbox at the end of the video or on a key/buttonpress instead of a 30 second max?  That cuts my usual intro video way short.  Also, "Initiallizing BigBox" audio still plays underneath it right before it opens.

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Just had a crash scrolling through the SNES category (background music enabled), but only a generic Windows has stopped working message. On the latest beta.... BUT it is less crashy overall! I was just scrolling through the list at a slow enough pace for both the video and audio to kick in; took about 30 - 45 seconds of scrolling before it crashed.

 

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11 minutes ago, damageinc86 said:

Startup video is a welcome feature.  But can't we have the option to just go into launchbox at the end of the video or on a key/buttonpress instead of a 30 second max?  That cuts my usual intro video way short.  Also, "Initiallizing BigBox" audio still plays underneath it right before it opens.

I may add more advanced features later, but for now I need to focus on bugs for 7.5. Also, it's easy to turn off the startup sound if you don't want it.

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1 hour ago, kmoney said:

@Jason Carr One thing I noticed with the newest beta that probally has something to do with the hiding of the taskbar is :

The option in BigBox to switch to desktop mode to enter Launchbox no longer works as it just closes BigBox instead of switching to LaunchBox.

Thanks @kmoney, I just fixed this for the next beta. :)

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17 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

@CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT Did you have background music enabled, or prioritize music over video audio? Background music is different, so I need to confirm.

Just the Prioritize Soundtrack over Video Audio. Attached are the Sound and Video settings I'm using. I don't use VLC because sound for the Platform videos won't play at all (I don't use MP3s for any platforms), but it still crashes in the Games View just the same (music plays fine if I keep the "Prioritize" disabled; just to note). In any case I tend to prefer WMP (I know!) since video seems to load up much quicker than with VLC anyway.

 

This may sound silly and uneducated, but is it possible that something else unrelated is causing the crashing? I ask because it seems that Big Box only crashes in a SNES category, so far. I have Super Nintendo, Super Famicom and MSU-1 platform categories (which is just SNES) and I get consistant crashes in all of them. MSU-1 only has about 5 games and it crashed on me 3 out of 3 times the last times I just tried it (still no error log). However, when I scrolled my Hacks & Fan-Made category (which is a mix of platforms with no default emulator set for it because of that), it never crashed; has about 35 games and I scrolled the list 3 times.

Maybe something weird with having a default emulator set? I don't recall ever getting a crash in my Windows or Amiga category either and they don't use default emulators either.... I'll have to keep testing that theory, unless it's too whimsical a thing to chase after... I know jack squat about coding anything :D

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Edited by CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT
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I managed to get Big Box to crash one other time after the last post in PC Enigine CD, but could not get to crash at all after that (even after opening and closing Big Box 4 more times). I scrolled through several platform categories (including the ones where BB typically crashes, like SNES), observed no crashes, closed Big Box, re-launched and scrolled through them again, spending no more than half a second on each game and it has not crashed anymore for me. Just before my last post, I managed to get 3 crashes in a row in the MSU-1 category almost immediately. I'll keep on scrolling and try to find a rhythm to it :)

Edited by CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT
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Another new beta is out guys. As I stated up above I fixed the potential missing taskbar issue if Big Box crashes; it should recover just fine now. Also, I added some optimizations to reduce the CPU usage while Big Box is not in focus. That said, I'm not 100% happy with it yet, so more work is needed in that area, specifically with VLC. I get 2% CPU usage in Big Box while VLC videos are paused in the background and games are running, which doesn't really affect my systems, but probably has more of an effect on slower systems, so it is something I need to come back to. Basically, VLC is repainting the screen for the videos even while they're paused, which is just how VLC works. Worst case scenario is we could just stop and get rid of the videos when games are launched, which would solve the issue, but it would also ruin the pause and resume functionality after coming back from playing a game.

Also for the optimizations, I changed the way that Big Box identifies whether or not it's in focus, so that less CPU is used when Big Box isn't in focus. Any testing you guys can do switching back and forth between Big Box and other apps (and launching games) would be appreciated. :)

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"Worst case scenario is we could just stop and get rid of the videos when games are launched, which would solve the issue, but it would also ruin the pause and resume functionality after coming back from playing a game. "

Game preview vids aren't that long and is only used for having a peek at the game before you play it. Therefore it replays as soon as it ends so it really isn't necessary to have the vid position saved. Returning to bigbox from game is equivalent to going to view the game details for the first time. So it wouldn't matter if the vid position is saved or not so you are definitely good on that front. The only usefulness for the pause and resume feature would be watching full movies in which bigbox isn't for. But if it was specifically made for that, it would be a movie section for it and it would have its own options in pausing and resuming. So tis no big deal at all about the game preview starting over. Not a big deal with the intro vids or any other vid for that matter. So.....you're good :P

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