Your List of Small Things

[letstalkaboutdune]

Lots of great feedback here. Some of the quality of life improvements that I would like include:

• Bulk edit ROM paths, as many have already requested
• In Big Box attract mode, a way to slow the speed of scrolling. The two time settings available right now set the min/max time the software scrolls, but it always scrolls at the same (very fast) speed.
• In Big Box attract mode, a check in the code to make sure that the same title is not landed on twice in a row.
• "Smart" platform change. What I mean by this is if I currently have games in a certain platform, if I decide to change them to a different platform then their images and video do not necessarily move over to the appropriate directories for the newly assigned platform.
• The ability to delete game images from the edit window with a single click (a "Remove Image" button) or key press. This would save a good bit of time versus right-clicking and then clicking  "Remove Image."
• Save import settings, especially for emulated arcade games.
• Bug: Details for games that have been added via the "Add" button versus an Import wizard do not show up while auditing that platform, even after a refresh. For example in SS1.png, WWF WrestleFest was added this way and does not show any info from columns "Revision/Version" through "Runnable."
• Bug:  In the "Manage Emulators" -> "Edit Emulator" -> "Associated Platforms" window, copying and pasting from any field into another will paste the entire row, instead of the single field. For example, if I select and copy the platform name "Jaleco," when I paste it into the row below it will instead paste:

  Jaleco

  -L "C:\Emu\RetroArch\cores\mame_libretro.dll"

  True

• Probably beyond the scope of this thread, but a natively-implemented way to compare your local game information and media with the GamesDB (in bulk). If your local database contains anything that's missing from the Games DB, it could automatically be uploaded and submitted. I've got around 1,000 arcade games that I've been importing, organizing, and filling out all the information by hand (dozens and dozens of hours worth of work!) and would love to be able to easily submit that for others' benefit.

Sorry if any of this is duplicate information. Thanks for the wonderful software!

Edited July 3, 2017 by letstalkaboutdune
Added more features, corrected paste to table.

[JaysArcade]

Not sure why we've gone from using the bitbucket ticket system for this stuff to creating a new poll every release, but since this seems to be the way Jason is doing things now, here are the few things I would like to see him look at.

1. I'd like to see the startup video timing issues fixed for sure. I can fine tune the timing of the video to work OK, but for a beta release user, the timing is out of whack it seems  after installing each release. 

2. AHK tab on per game basis. I have set up several games that I've needed to create scripts to run before launching the game that a simple AHK tab would fix. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/1446/autohotkey-on-a-per-game-basis

3. Non repeating clear logo on platforms with only one system. And while I'm on this topic, how about the ability to just have a single game or app on the main wheel without the need to create a platform for it to be in? This is a pretty basic function available in other frontends. I think this is probably beyond the scope of your question though, but maybe not the not repeating clear logo thing. https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/1521/ability-to-launch-a-program-or-game-from

That's really all I can think of right now.

[Lordmonkus]

@JaysArcade

Bitbucket is used for bug reports and a way for people to voice what sort of features they would like. Once a suggestion on Bitbucket gets enough votes then it gets considered for a spot on the poll.

As far as this thread is concerned this is my own personal initiative to get an idea on what sort of already existing features could use a coat of "spit and polish" to refine them a bit more instead new features.

[JaysArcade]

Thats cool. Just saying it seems like Jason used to base his new features and things he was going to work on based off of Bitbucket. Now it seems like he is doing something else. It wasn't an attack on you Brother Monkus.

[Lordmonkus]

It's all good, I wasn't taking it as an attack at all.

Jason still does base his new features off the Bitbucket stuff but I think the problem is the requests are piling up on there and he uses the polls to help decide where to focus in on.

I'm just hoping with this thread I can nudge him in the direction of polishing up existing features before adding some new features.

[CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT]

- Points 2 and 3 that @lordmonkus suggests

- The Clean up images tool to be a clean up media tool and include video/music/manuals that no longer have an associated game.

- The ability to mark a game as Completed while in BigBox and ability to delete games and associated media (I wouldn't consider this a new feature since it exists in LB). It's already possible to mark a games as a Favorite or Broken and you can even add games to Playlists while in BigBox, so it'd be nice to get some of these functions from LB rolled into BB.

- Additional apps being sorted in ascending order in BigBox. Example: If you have a Disc 02 and Disc 03, in LB, it will be in ascending order in the game's right-click menu. However, in BigBox, it lists them in descending order (e.g.: Disc 03 will come before Disc 02)

- @JaysArcade's suggestion about the non-repeating logo for platforms with few games in them. Perhaps adding a hard stop to the wheel scroll (so "Z" doesn't loop back to "A" and vice versa) would make that possible? Then it could be made a toggle feature in BigBox's options: Full Wheel scroll and Locked Wheel Scroll... or something like that?

 

 

Edited July 4, 2017 by CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT

[ALIE]

 

• Theme specific Game Art for a themes. like  BigForce Theme By Grila such a awesome theme but its so heavily reliant on that specific game cover style and replacing all covers for using one theme isnt fun. 

 

        I know these was on the poll so might be a bit redundant but.

 

• Start up video's repeating fix.  

 

• Theme specific Start up video's.
• sub-categories and sub Platforms.
• kmoney :  3. I am not sure if this is simple or not but being able to to have the ability to have a option to prioritize different music over video sound per platform would be awesome.

 

Edited July 4, 2017 by ALIE

[chglcu]

This list isn't prioritized or anything. Just a quick brain dump of the stuff I can remember that annoys me from time to time:

1. Mark completed in Big Box. There's menu items for the other flags, but not completed.
2. Logo priorities like we have for other image types. I'd like to be able to prefer Steam Banners and fallback to Clear Logos, for example.
3. Might be more of a DB thing, but I'm getting a ton of Japanese art in the root image folders instead of the region folders, so LaunchBox is randomly showing me Japanese box art when North American is also present.
4. Scrape non-steam game art from Steam when available. Having to do more work for GOG games is annoying.
5. Download game screenshots from Steam like we can with videos.
6. In Big Box, be able to assign one button to cycle between platforms, playlists, statuses, etc. Having to use separate buttons for each cuts into the limited number available on a controller.
7. Option to switch from background music to video audio when viewing game details.
8. Don't deselect all but one game after doing batch editing.
9. Allow remove from playlist when not viewing that particular playlist. Add to playlist pops out a submenu, why can't there be a Remove from playlist that does the same?
10. Separate image priorities in LaunchBox and Big Box. In LB, I'd prefer not having fanart in the background, while I might want it there in BB.
11. Remember last directory in pretty much all open dialogs.
12. Some kind of default options per platform for image types to download might be nice. For example, I never download theme videos, and want to download Box Art from EmuMovies for all platforms except Windows, because they all have a jewel case look that isn't consistent with everything else.
13. Less optimistic game name matching. For example, the other day, I had a game called "Knights" (not in the DB) matched to "Blood Knights". Very easy to miss these when doing a bulk import.
14. A way to clear all metadata from a game. When fixing mismatched games, I frequently forget to go into all the tabs.
15. Improve per-game DOSBox options. For example, having to use a complete custom config file to change "ems=true" to "ems=false" is really annoying, especially due to the next item in my list.
16. Use DOSBox mounts and executables specified in LaunchBox when using a custom config. In my opinion, ideally a custom dosbox config should only need to contain the lines that are actually different from the default behavior.
17. When importing MAME roms, an option to combine parents and clones would be nice. Currently they can only be combined if the names match. It would be nice to automatically combine stuff like Pac Man and Puck Man, preferably with some kind of region preference option.
18. An option to import game metadata from Steam instead of the DB where available would be nice. The DB is frequently missing stuff like release dates and developers when the data is there on Steam.
19. Big Box option to use random game videos for playlists when no playlist video exists. The platform version of this option doesn't seem to work for playlists.

Also, #'s 1, 3 and 4 on lordmonkus's list would be great.

Also, also: This list got a bit long, so just want to offset that negativity by saying that I really like the program and it's completely replaced Steam as my frontend of choice at this point.

Edited July 6, 2017 by prolecat

[Lordmonkus]

I have taken the requests up until this point and compiled them into an edited for clarity list. The compiled list is the 2nd post on the first page which I had reserved when I made this thread.

Edit:
If people still want to contribute to this thread please feel free to do so but check the list already for anything already on it. If you see something on it you would like as well please quote it from the list into a new post and I will then update the "Compiled" list with an * indicating another person has requested this.

[Thatman84]

You should change the title of this post to the BIG list of small things!!

nice work on the list.

[Lordmonkus]

Hehe yeah it did get pretty big but even if we can get the bulk of the things that got multiple requests that would be a nice big improvement overall.

[bundangdon]

2 hours ago, lordmonkus said:

I have taken the requests up until this point and compiled them into an edited for clarity list. The compiled list is the 2nd post on the first page which I had reserved when I made this thread.

Edit:
If people still want to contribute to this thread please feel free to do so but check the list already for anything already on it. If you see something on it you would like as well please quote it from the list into a new post and I will then update the "Compiled" list with an * indicating another person has requested this.

Looks great! But please don't forget my #1 on my (original) list. I've been waiting for this to happen for quite a while 

1. The option to allow the selected title in the basic vertical rom list (BigBox) stay centered (instead of scrolling all the way down or up)

[Lordmonkus]

It's in there, it just unfortunately had only you asking for it so it had to go in the lower section of the list. I will slide it up within that section of the list unless you can convince some other fine people to request it as well. If you can get a couple more people to vote for it I will push it up further into the (*) section.

[bundangdon]

5 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

It's in there, it just unfortunately had only you asking for it so it had to go in the lower section of the list. I will slide it up within that section of the list unless you can convince some other fine people to request it as well. If you can get a couple more people to vote for it I will push it up further into the (*) section.

Oops! Sorry, didn't catch it. I was mixed up with my other post about a week or so ago, where I brought up my bitbucket request which discussed the same option/feature. Thanks for the information!

[Lordmonkus]

I bumped it up to 4th in the non * listed requests.

I tried to organize that section in order of what I felt would benefit the most people over personal pet requests but of course it is a difficult thing to try and do since it is fairly opinion based.

[yesno112233]

Things I really want:

Sort Games by recently/most frequently played in bigbox. Launchbox already has this
 

Launch bigbox using xbox controller (if someone has figured out how to do this with 3rd party programs please let me know!!)

[neil9000]

1 hour ago, yesno112233 said:

Things I really want:

Sort Games by recently/most frequently played in bigbox. Launchbox already has this
 

Launch bigbox using xbox controller (if someone has figured out how to do this with 3rd party programs please let me know!!)

You can launch bigbox with a controller but you will need xpadder or similar. You just right click the bigbox exe and choose create shortcut, then right click the shortcut and select properties, you can choose a "shortcut key" then you can map that key  to a controller button or better yet a combo using xpadder or similar.

[yesno112233]

im a total noob, is there a tutorial for this? I tried to find one on youtube and google but i dont think im searching for the right terms

[neil9000]

28 minutes ago, yesno112233 said:

im a total noob, is there a tutorial for this? I tried to find one on youtube and google but i dont think im searching for the right terms

Check out some of the reply's in this thread, obviously you would be choosing the specific buttons you want personally, but it should give you a general overview.

Edit: I missed a step in my original reply, i have edited it.

[Lordmonkus]

2 hours ago, yesno112233 said:

Launch bigbox using xbox controller (if someone has figured out how to do this with 3rd party programs please let me know!!)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/

This program is worth the couple of bucks it costs. It's easy to use and is awesome, I set this up on my HTPC and the "guide" button is set to launch BigBox.