7.12-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

Hey all, the first 7.12 beta is here with the work from the live stream this morning (and my work to wrap things up). I've also re-upgraded to the .NET Framework 4.7, so we should get those performance improvements back.

Here's the change log:

- Improvement: Checkboxes on the import wizard now remember their settings for each import (where relevant). Selected image types are also remembered.

- Improvement: Upgraded once again to the .NET Framework 4.7 (had previously reverted due to some minor end user issues with .NET 4.7). Hopefully all issues are ironed out by now; if necessary, you will be prompted to install the latest .NET Framework when upgrading.

Going forward, @Vlansix is working on adding retro achievements, so that is planned for this release. I'll be going through the rest of the poll items next to see what's next for me to tackle.

[Lordmonkus]

8 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Improvement: Checkboxes on the import wizard now remember their settings for each import (where relevant). Selected image types are also remembered.

Awesome job on this Jason, now if you can tweak it just a bit to auto detect the platform being imported to based on the selected platform so we don't have to pick from the dropdown menu along with remembering the "Move / Copy / Leave" roms location that would be even better.

What you got now though really saves a lot of extra mouse clicks, thank you very much.

[Hexxxer]

Awesome, I was goofing around with trying to get retro achievements in a few weeks ago. 

Any word on per system themes? I recall it was a highly desired feature a few months back.

[eatkinola]

1 hour ago, Hexxxer said:

Any word on per system themes?

Don't know if Jason plans to implement this, but I have a working plugin solution I can share. I used it to implement the Nostalgia theme I just alpha-released. It's not a comprehensive solution, but it automatically swaps out the background and sets video placement based on the selected game's system; or the selected platform, category, playlist. Not sure if you'd need more than that.

[Norfair]

15 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

- Improvement: Checkboxes on the import wizard now remember their settings for each import (where relevant). Selected image types are also remembered.

I really like these kinds of improvements.

It would be nice to have the selected image types applied for "Tools" -> "Download Metadata and Media..." too.

[Zombeaver]

19 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

- Improvement: Checkboxes on the import wizard now remember their settings for each import (where relevant). Selected image types are also remembered.

Nice. Definitely a great improvement there. I've been importing a lot of stuff in small groups lately so this'll definitely come in handy. Thanks!

[LogicalEgo]

20 hours ago, wallmachine said:

any news on themes? can videos and artwork be fixed, such as placement, aliment, resizing...

You can already do this with Notepad++ or Visual Studio. If you are talking about scaling, DPI fixes those are future fixes but if you are talking about freely scaling windows, dragging and dropping things around I don't ever see that happening. My suggestion would be to download your favorite theme, start tinkering with it and bug the author. Jason has a great Theme Tutorial Series to get you started on the basics.

[SagaXIV]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering, I don't know if it's on the bucketlist, but Windows game import could use "some" rehaul, for exemple a dialog as to drive/folders to scan in, etc. Keep up the great work!

[Chris Kant]

thank you for the good work. is there the possibility to have again a pole about what features we want the most in the next release?

[Lordmonkus]

1 hour ago, SagaXIV said:

Hi everyone,

I was wondering, I don't know if it's on the bucketlist, but Windows game import could use "some" rehaul, for exemple a dialog as to drive/folders to scan in, etc. Keep up the great work!

Agreed it could use an overhaul but it's also something that would be extremely tricky to do. Most, if not all PC games have multiple executable files so which one does the scan pick up as the game.exe ? You do not want to accidentally use the uninstaller and you don't want to run the launcher executable.

Right now the best and recommended way to import your PC games is to put shortcuts to your games in a folder and import those shortcut files as your "rom" files. Now this process can be cleaned up in Launchbox by allowing the choice of "no emulator" on import instead how of it is right now where you have to pick one and then after the import bulk edit the games to remove the emulator.

1 hour ago, Chris Kant said:

thank you for the good work. is there the possibility to have again a pole about what features we want the most in the next release?

There will be another poll once the current one is cleaned up along with more of the "small things" list.

[Zombeaver]

5 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

Agreed it could use an overhaul but it's also something that would be extremely tricky to do. Most, if not all PC games have multiple executable files so which one doe the scan pick up as the game.exe ? You do not want to accidentally use the uninstaller and you don't want to run the launcher executable.

To be fair, the same is true for DOS games and the DOS importer works just fine. On the final page of the importer it has a drop-down list of all the .exes it finds in the folder so you can choose which one you want to use.

6 minutes ago, lordmonkus said:

Right now the best and recommended way to import your PC games is to put shortcuts to your games in a folder and import those shortcut files as your "rom" files. Now this process can be cleaned up in Launchbox by allowing the choice of "no emulator" on import instead how of it is right now where you have to pick one and then after the import bulk edit the games to remove the emulator.

An option to choose no emulator would definitely help and would at least provide a simple workaround until something more elegant could be implemented, the only issue there is simply one of if not being intuitive. Most people when they're trying to import some PC games are going to see the first screen of the importer and think "Well this isn't really a rom...". That said, it'd still be a solid improvement over current functionality.

[SagaXIV]

Noted Lordmonkus! Also thanks for reminding me the tip of the shortcuts ^^ Will restart to use it ASAP

[DR9]

I'm gonna get flamed but these aren't really much of in way of changes and the save settings should have been done LONG ago. I guess development really dropped off on LB over the last few months.

Edited September 30, 2017 by DR9

[Lordmonkus]

5 minutes ago, DR9 said:

I guess development really dropped off on LB over the last few months.

Did it drop off some ? Yes, but not as much as it appears on the surface. There was a lot of website and database work done which is not immediately visible. Also it was the summer and Jason needed to take some time with the wife and kids.

Also keep in mind this beta is just the changes for this beta which was work done this week.

5 minutes ago, DR9 said:

the saving setting should have been done LONG ago

You could say that about a lot of changes that are to come but the list of things to be done is a mile long and everyone has their own personal thoughts on what should be prioritized. This is what happens when you have 1 full time and 1 part dev for a niche product that simply doesn't make enough money to hire a team of developers.

[Jason Carr]

On 9/28/2017 at 2:17 PM, lordmonkus said:

Awesome job on this Jason, now if you can tweak it just a bit to auto detect the platform being imported to based on the selected platform so we don't have to pick from the dropdown menu along with remembering the "Move / Copy / Leave" roms location that would be even better.

What you got now though really saves a lot of extra mouse clicks, thank you very much.

Agreed that would be a win. Hopefully I can get that added in soon.

On 9/28/2017 at 6:09 PM, Hexxxer said:

Awesome, I was goofing around with trying to get retro achievements in a few weeks ago. 

Any word on per system themes? I recall it was a highly desired feature a few months back.

That's actually fairly high up on the poll so it's still planned for soon.

On 9/29/2017 at 6:04 AM, Norfair said:

I really like these kinds of improvements.

It would be nice to have the selected image types applied for "Tools" -> "Download Metadata and Media..." too.

Agreed. Should be relatively easy to implement since we already have the settings, so that's planned as well.

On 9/29/2017 at 11:56 AM, Zombeaver said:

To be fair, the same is true for DOS games and the DOS importer works just fine. On the final page of the importer it has a drop-down list of all the .exes it finds in the folder so you can choose which one you want to use.

An option to choose no emulator would definitely help and would at least provide a simple workaround until something more elegant could be implemented, the only issue there is simply one of if not being intuitive. Most people when they're trying to import some PC games are going to see the first screen of the importer and think "Well this isn't really a rom...". That said, it'd still be a solid improvement over current functionality.

The reason the DOS importer works so well is because there's a static list of DOS games available that we use as a database in order to find them properly. Unfortunately nothing like that exists for Windows, which makes such a process a million times more difficult.

21 hours ago, DR9 said:

I'm gonna get flamed but these aren't really much of in way of changes and the save settings should have been done LONG ago. I guess development really dropped off on LB over the last few months.

Here's a tip, if your post starts with "I'm gonna get flamed" then don't say it. Save us all the cancerous negativity. Development is indeed ramping back up, but it's not any fun to read garbage comments like this in the process.

[DR9]

@Jason Carr I see, ok, I will never say negative or anything against LB. I said my piece which I don't think was wrong but your taking like I'm bashing entire LB project or something and then calling me garabage for the post. I also unlike most people around here support you by being a Patreon donator to LB.

[Lordmonkus]

Well since I am not exactly one to keep my opinions to myself very often I am going to comment here.

While I agree that Jasons post was a bit harsh I do agree with what he is saying in general. If you start out a post with "I'm gonna get flamed" then it might just be best to not post it. You said that development had really dropped off over the last few months and that is simply not true at all. It only slowed down over the last couple of months and like I explained that was due to website and server work which needed to be done along with Jason taking some summer time with his wife and kids. Jason also never called you "garbage" he simply said your comment was.

I personally would not have suggested that Jason posted in such a harsh manner but having said that I cannot say I wouldn't have done so myself depending on my mood at the time.

[Jason Carr]

Forgive me for my a bit harsher than normal words, @DR9; I was not calling you garbage, but we all know that garbage does come out of all of our mouths from time to time. I appreciate everyone in this community and especially all of our Patrons, but I do tire of the negativity, especially negativity with zero redeeming qualities and that simply didn't need to be said. I didn't find any purpose to the post.

[Zombeaver]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

The reason the DOS importer works so well is because there's a static list of DOS games available that we use as a database in order to find them properly. Unfortunately nothing like that exists for Windows, which makes such a process a million times more difficult.

Except that it's not exactly uncommon for the DOS importer to choose the default .exe/.bat incorrectly; something that's not the end of the world because you can still hand-select them from a drop-down of the .exes within the given folder on the final screen of the import. Auto-assignment of the correct .exe would be ideal, sure, but simply having that same drop-down functionality would be nice regardless. You're never going to have some kind of comprehensive list of game .exes for all Windows games - I don't think anyone should assume that some sort of backend logic will always pick everything correctly so simply making the process less of a hassle is still a plus, even if it's not quite no hassle.

[Jason Carr]

3 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

Except that it's not exactly uncommon for the DOS importer to choose the default .exe/.bat incorrectly; something that's not the end of the world because you can still hand-select them from a drop-down of the .exes within the given folder on the final screen of the import. Auto-assignment of the correct .exe would be ideal, sure, but simply having that same drop-down functionality would be nice regardless. You're never going to have some kind of comprehensive list of game .exes for all Windows games - I don't think anyone should assume that some sort of backend logic will always pick everything correctly so simply making the process less of a hassle is still a plus, even if it's not quite no hassle.

Sure, that makes sense. It's currently getting the EXE path from the Windows shortcut in the Start menu, so I guess it was assumed that it would be correct. There are numerous issues with the Windows import for sure (due to the difficulty of it all), but the biggest issues are more along the lines of trying to identify what is and is not a game, and what is relevant to import.