7.8-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

20 minutes ago, angelobodetti said:

Will this functionality work for already imported collections?

There won't be a tool to migrate already-imported collections to playlists, but what we can do to get around that is to just share the playlists after they've been generated for folks with existing arcade collections. Part of the point of the playlists is that they're easily shared, so I can imagine having a new Downloads section for people to share their custom-tailored playlists, and including all the stuff like "Capcom Classics". It'll just be a matter of downloading one and dropping it in your LaunchBox\Data\Playlists folder.

[Kevin_Flynn]

Just now, Jason Carr said:

That's a good point on ensuring Adventure AND Action works; I'm not sure what would be best for that, but I'm up for taking ideas. However, the "(1 AND 2) OR (3 AND 4)" logic is more complicated than I intend for the feature to support. I just don't see that as being a common need, and I'd rather keep it easy to use.

For the first one, can you check the field type? If a multi-value or value list provide a drop down of existing values to choose from? If multi-value, allow the use to choose multiple.

[angelobodetti]

2 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

There won't be a tool to migrate already-imported collections to playlists, but what we can do to get around that is to just share the playlists after they've been generated for folks with existing arcade collections. Part of the point of the playlists is that they're easily shared, so I can imagine having a new Downloads section for people to share their custom-tailored playlists, and including all the stuff like "Capcom Classics". It'll just be a matter of downloading one and dropping it in your LaunchBox\Data\Playlists folder.

Perfect. I actually shared my custom playlists earlier in the week in the forums. Not sure if anyone used them or not but I love the idea that we can share.

[Jason Carr]

8 minutes ago, cammelspit said:

@Jason Carr Auto Playlisting for the win! Now you can get rid of that custom filter nonsense. This is MUCH better and it's FASt to populate the lists too!

I did come across a few small things I think you might want to think about. I just made, on a whim, a playlist with all the batman games for every system. I had to revert my combined roms because of issues before and I haven't gotten around to recombining them because I can only do one platform at a time. So what I thought would be cool is to combine all versions of batman returns into one entry, pick my favorite version for all platforms as the main rom and have one entry. I didn't expect it to work that way but here is what I found when I tried to do it. All roms were combined but I ended up with one entry for each platform, not a bad fail safe and probably what most people would want. I think it would be cool to be able to allow it to combine those into one entry if I prefer it for my playlist if I desired. I know this would require you to separate combinations into playlists and platforms separately but it's something to think about at least.

 

As always GREAT work Jason!

That's interesting; I would not have expected it to work that way lol. That is an interesting use case, but we'll probably have to come back to it at a later date.

[cammelspit]

4 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

That's interesting; I would not have expected it to work that way lol. That is an interesting use case, but we'll probably have to come back to it at a later date.

 

 

I half lied, it seems to inconsistently do it that way and also merging into the one platforms game. Seems my 8-bit PC versions of batman the movie combined the bad way. I was just curious to soo how it would behave and I got my answer. LOL

 

EDIT: After expanding it seems to think they are all dos version and the C64 version is now int he DOS platform... Looks like I am not going to try that again

Edited February 24, 2017 by cammelspit

[Jason Carr]

4 minutes ago, Kevin_Flynn said:

For the first one, can you check the field type? If a multi-value or value list provide a drop down of existing values to choose from? If multi-value, allow the use to choose multiple.

That's not a bad idea. Unfortunately it's very difficult to get that check box list drop down control into the grid (and it was also cause for some of the performance issues in the previous custom filters implementation), so I was trying to avoid using that control. That said, what we could do is support the user entering semi-colon-separated values like they are displayed elsewhere, for the multi-select fields. It'd be more ideal if it was more obvious how to do it, but I'm thinking that might be a decent compromise?

[Jason Carr]

21 hours ago, Norfair said:

I've gotten the slow startup and options page two times today. After restarting the computer everything is back to normal, but after a while this comes back.

I have no idea how to troubleshoot this. Can the new .NET framework version be causing this?

It's not likely caused by the .NET framework upgrade since we've been occasionally hearing about this for a while, a few versions back even. It's weird because it seems to pop up every few versions and then disappears, and I have never been able to replicate it. It seems to affect only a very small handful of people, so any ideas you might have about how your system might be different than other people's would be worth considering.

[Jason Carr]

15 hours ago, deliyuerek85 said:

@Jason Carr

Is it possible to add the option "sort by" for playlists? Because than I could for example create a playlist with the name "by Date" where all games would be sorted by release date. This would be really cool and I think it would not be so difficult to add.

I'm still planning on adding some sort of custom sorting solution for playlists, but I'm not quite sure what it will look like just yet.

[Jason Carr]

6 hours ago, Napalm2016 said:

As far as I'm aware there isn't a manage playlists option yet certainly not that Ive found  at least, currently just right click a game you want to add to a play list select the option Add to play list and select new playlist to create a new one, I believe it is still work in progress I'm sure there will be more to come like the auto split of arcade games etc

You can manage playlists using the sidebar. Just choose Playlists at the top and you can view, add, edit, or delete with right-click.

[Kevin_Flynn]

2 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

That's not a bad idea. Unfortunately it's very difficult to get that check box list drop down control into the grid (and it was also cause for some of the performance issues in the previous custom filters implementation), so I was trying to avoid using that control. That said, what we could do is support the user entering semi-colon-separated values like they are displayed elsewhere, for the multi-select fields. It'd be more ideal if it was more obvious how to do it, but I'm thinking that might be a decent compromise?

That's fair. Is this how it would work?

Genre     Contains     Adventure; Action

Which would be Genre is equal to Adventure or Action.

 

Genre    Equals    Adventure; Action

which would be Genre is equal to both Adventure and Action.

[Jason Carr]

5 hours ago, CriticalCid said:

Just did a quick test and the auto-population works really well for me. Thank you Jason!

 

But would it be possible to add support for Custom Fields to it as well? One of the major flaws I had with the Custom Filters was that they didn’t support any Custom Fields. My BitBucket ticket regarding that issue is also one of the highest voted ones

 

https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/368/add-the-option-to-include-custom-fields-in

 

Good point Cid! Hopefully I can get custom fields support in there soon.

[Jason Carr]

2 minutes ago, Kevin_Flynn said:

That's fair. Is this how it would work?

Genre     Contains     Adventure; Action

Which would be Genre is equal to Adventure or Action.

 

Genre    Equals    Adventure; Action

which would be Genre is equal to both Adventure and Action.

Something like that. We could tweak the comparison type names for multiple select fields to make them more obvious, too.

[Jason Carr]

On 2/22/2017 at 5:16 PM, CriticalCid said:

I just installed the new beta and the first thing that I've noticed was that in the platform categories filter the “All” section doesn’t get populated with any games anymore. That seems to be only the case for platform categories as it still works for all other filter options perfectly fine.

 

Just fixed this for the next beta, btw.

[cammelspit]

BTW! I was just able to reproduce the slow startup while populating playlists! If there is a playlists folder and no XMLs in there then it just sits there for ages, had to force quit. Remove the folder entirely and it starts right up like normal. I was restoring my backup before I messed up my batman games, hehe...  

[Jason Carr]

On 2/22/2017 at 7:16 PM, kmoney said:

Thanks for the update @Jason Carr! Am I right in assuming that to use the sort title you just need to put a number in the sort title field under manage platforms ? Like if I wanted my platform called MAME to be first, I would put a "1" in the sort title field in the MAME platform? At least thats what I did and it worked. One thing I noticed is that when I did that it moved the MAME platform to the top position but it also moved my other 2 platforms that start with an "M" right underneath it if I left the sort title field blank in those 2 platforms. It also happens on other platforms when I put a number in the field for a particular platform, it sends other platforms that I don't have a number in the sort title field to other spots in the order instead of just moving them up one spot in the order.

I guess to get the platforms exactly in the order you want,you have to put a number in every sort title field in every platform.

The best way to use the sort title field is to just pretend that you're naming the platform that way. Putting just a number in the field isn't the best way to handle it. What I do for my Nintendo platforms is I use these for the sort titles:

Nintendo 1983 (for the NES)
Nintendo 1996 (for N64)
Etc.

That way all Nintendo platforms are under "Nintendo" and are in the order of release date. That way you can leave all the other platforms without a sort title, and they'll still be sorted mostly correctly.

[Jason Carr]

3 minutes ago, cammelspit said:

BTW! I was just able to reproduce the slow startup while populating playlists! If there is a playlists folder and no XMLs in there then it just sits there for ages, had to force quit. Remove the folder entirely and it starts right up like normal. I was restoring my backup before I messed up my batman games, hehe...  

I wish it was that easy to reproduce. Unfortunately that still doesn't reproduce it on my system.

[Evil_Orko]

i think we need more genres in the database, there is nothing for simulation, pinball, rts, etc. 

[flores9]

@Jason Carr I experienced something strange.

A few days ago I reimported my Genesis collection with the option of grouping games. Everything ok.

Today I changed the name of various games to match with the LBDB. And then I used the auto combined rom function for the Genesis platform.

The example is with the Beyond Oasis game. It duplicates me the entries of additional aplications and in different languages!!

I attached the image. Obviously I only have one rom file per region.

Edited February 24, 2017 by flores9

[Jason Carr]

23 hours ago, Norfair said:

I also found out that changing the title of a platform have major issues. All the information on the Details tab disappears.

I can recreate this every time:

1. I go to "Manage Platforms...". I open a platform. (example "Nintendo 64")
2. I change the Title and press OK. ("Nintendo 64" to "Nintendo 64 Test")
3. Now a weird thing happens. The platform gets two rows in the "Manage Platforms" list. The Folder column is different "Games\Nintendo 64" and "Games\Nintendo 64 Test"
4. I reopen any of the "two" platforms. On the Details tab, I only have the new Title, everything else is blank.
5. I now change the Title back to the old one and press OK. ("Nintendo 64 Test" to "Nintendo 64")
6. I reopen the platform again, now all the details are back.

Thanks @Norfair; just fixed this for the next beta.

[Jason Carr]

31 minutes ago, flores9 said:

@Jason Carr I experienced something strange.

A few days ago I reimported my Genesis collection with the option of grouping games. Everything ok.

Today I changed the name of various games to match with the LBDB. And then I used the auto combined rom function for the Genesis platform.

The example is with the Beyond Oasis game. It duplicates me the entries of additional aplications and in different languages!!

I attached the image. Obviously I only have one rom file per region.

Hmm, did you change your language setting? This also could have been caused by using the beta before the translations had been completed; not something I had thought about.