folder paths for games with windows environment variables?

[Zottel]

Hello,

I would like to set the folder paths for every game with windows environment variables, for example:

%USERPROFILE%\LaunchBox\Games\Nintendo Game Boy\...

to easy copy existing Launchbox Profiles to other Windows User Profiles.

But it doesnt work. Why cant Dropbox handle with environment variables?

[Jason Carr]

Hi @Zottel, if you're keeping everything in your LaunchBox folder, then it won't be necessary. LaunchBox uses relative paths and if you keep everything inside of that folder, it will automatically work wherever you move it, so you shouldn't need to use paths like that.

[Gerardo]

On 9/2/2016 at 9:00 PM, Jason Carr said:

Hi @Zottel, if you're keeping everything in your LaunchBox folder, then it won't be necessary. LaunchBox uses relative paths and if you keep everything inside of that folder, it will automatically work wherever you move it, so you shouldn't need to use paths like that.

Hi Jason,

I feel Zottle have a point in here.

In fact I was stuck for many hours trying to figure out how to organize the emulators, images and ROMS in a different folder structure than the native way.

A couple of reassons behind this are:

Size of HDD.. I cannot fit all my games collection in a single HDD. Of course I can pick platform by platform to indicate were those games are located but what happen with the images and their massive amount (and also necesseray) folders. It looks tremendous to click platform by platform and all the other folders one by one just to point where all those files are located. You can say... you can edit the .xml yes... I did it and it is also a super time consumming task per platform.
Ability to move the folders around the network or inside the same computer and remap all just by changing a variable in a single place.
Flexibility for such an amazing FrontEnd!
Was dreaming for an update that tackle this kind of freedom regarding the folder structure and easy remapping.

From the point of view of a .Net developer.... and with much respect for the work you´ve all have done... let me me suggest a couple of things to put it on the table for further updates:

1) It will be great, when we create a platform to get asked about 2 simple questions...

Where do you like to place the games for this platform? This is kind of solved as you let us point were are the games located with the option to let them in that place. By the way.. a checkbox to remember that answer for futer games will be pretty nice.
Where do you like to place the assets for this platform? By assets I refer to Images, Manuals, Music, Videos. We cannot do the same as we do with the games.
2) It will be super to count with a single place to configure the main folder for Games so, each time we create a platform that General config is suggested by default. In addition, the actual customization per platform it is great in case someone wants to remap that game to other place or define a custom path per slot.

3) A single place to configure the root folder for the Assets of the platform. Same case as with Games. This avoid us to configure thousend of slots to remap all the images of all the platforms to other place.

4) Ability to rellocate each platform content (game/assets) with a couple of clicks. This will be super useful in case we ran out of HDD space. In fact if we can see the size in Gigabytes of each platform directly inside launchbox it will help a lot.

5) This last point comes because of a typical case scenario. Let´s imagine I have a 200 GB HDD full of games and emulators... let´s imagine I would love to go to a party, to a friends house, to a hollyday and would like to carry with me just my favourites games. What should I do? Use and insane amount of time searching rom by rom, image folder by image folder and collecting all by hand?
Let´s also suppose I have a key drive with say 32 gb. Wow.... apart of all the manual task I also need to check all the time not to pass the 32gb... Lots of manual work just for some hours of fun.
At 1st, it will be amazing to be able to physically separate all the games of a platform and aside that folder count with another folder just with the favourites. So favourites not only means a virtual division but a physical one.
As a brilliant solution, it will be amazing to collect just the favourites games with their related emulator folder and asset folder per platform knowing in advance the size of it to let me see if I can fit it in the destination disk or external drive.
Of course if Launchbox it self will be also copy to that exported folder it will be great!

This not only alow us to quickly prepare a collection to play with friends at another place but to also get rid of games we might never use ever again so a delete function for the games not collected will be great too.

And what about to create this based on custom collections rather than with the favourites? for example a key drive collection, a hollydays collection, a kids collection, etc etc etc

Last but not least, I would like to thank again for this amzing software that made my free time super fun not only to play but to also enjoy cutomizing it.

Sorry for the long taught full of ideas.

Cheers,

Gerardo.