7.15-beta-1 Released

[emko]

something strange, with playlists i was not getting any images to show up for recent added/played on the platforms list also you can't even change the image type with the key B like you can on regular platforms, i always remembered this working fine before 

in BigBoxSettings.xml

  <GameImageType>3d Boxes</GameImageType>

changed it to 

  <GameImageType>Boxes</GameImageType> and now its working, what is this setting for? for default image type?

 

also maybe could you add like a text indicator to what View/Image type you just changed to this is a issue when you setup your image types to also include other types when that type is missing and for some platforms you can't tell what image type your on other then the clear logo type.

 

Thanks

[cleverest]

On 11/17/2017 at 2:48 AM, damageinc86 said:

So, you have to either use one of their emulators from that site, or retroarch?  Damn,...none of which I've gotten into.  Looks really cool, but I use mednafen for most of my systems.  It would be cool if integrating this into an emulator could become a more standard thing codewise for devs to talk to each other about.  So it can be applied to more emulators. 

I may have missed this later in the thread, but when using Retroarch, are only certain emulators supported (EX: choosing a specific one for Nintendo, etc..), or any in Retroarch for that supported system?

[Charco]

Correct. Here is some further information on compatible cores:

https://docs.libretro.com/guides/retroachievements/

[cleverest]

On 11/29/2017 at 5:55 PM, Lordmonkus said:

Sub folders for organizing games.

I would also love this, or at least the ability to right click a playlist and EXPORT the GAMES (move or copy) to a folder named the same...

[Jason Carr]

On 12/8/2017 at 5:56 PM, kmoney said:

@Jason Carr I believe I have found a bug with the scan for added roms per platform feature. I was adding in some new games on a paticular platform and it found the games and went through the metadata wizard fine but it didnt ask what emulator I wanted to use which should be fine because if you are scanning per platform it should use the same emulator that the rest of the games in that platform uses. When the games were added I had to edit each game and pick an emulator to use as it didnt automatically pick it for me.

I believe it should look for any emulator marked as default for that platform. So if you don't have an emulator marked as default, then one won't be set. Can you confirm if you have a default emulator set for that platform?

On 12/8/2017 at 5:59 PM, alnyden said:

Do we need to select “overwrite all data” since that field isn’t empty?

No, the community star ratings will be updated even when you select "don't update existing fields". The user can't change the community star ratings values, of course, so there's no harm in always overwriting them.

On 12/9/2017 at 5:05 AM, NJDave71 said:

Even though I have notice slow sluggishness with UI over the last few betas I want to shift focus a bit.

For those of us developing themes are there any new fields that can be mapped to the UK?

I am toying with the idea of reducing my collection down to a best of and seeing if less xml files speed things up.  I also wonder if all those arcade playlists impact the ui.

You can bind pretty much anything these days using the SelectedGame.[Field] property. I believe the same works for SelectedPlatform.[Field]. Playlists do affect how long startup takes, but I don't think they'll make a significant difference once Big Box is loaded. In my testing, the latest betas have not shown any performance differences on my handful of machines, so I would guess that there's some kind of outside factor there, though it could be related to different data or media. Most recently there have been some major updates coming down the pike from MS, so it could be somehow related to that as well. It's always worth attempting a reboot to see if that helps too, of course.

 

On 12/9/2017 at 1:23 PM, UnderwoodNC said:

Hey all!  Thanks for your patience, I've been putting in 80-100 hour weeks at work lately, so it's taken me a while.  My apologies.

Fix for the AddToGamesDb issue is live in the downloads.

 

Thank you so much @UnderwoodNC. Honestly, I really don't know how you survive 80-100 hour weeks! When I still had my full time job and I was doing LaunchBox as well, I'd sometimes get to 80 hours, but I was going back and forth between real work and fun stuff. And even then, it was killing me lol.

[Jason Carr]

On 12/9/2017 at 6:47 PM, emko said:

something strange, with playlists i was not getting any images to show up for recent added/played on the platforms list also you can't even change the image type with the key B like you can on regular platforms, i always remembered this working fine before 

in BigBoxSettings.xml

  <GameImageType>3d Boxes</GameImageType>

changed it to 

  <GameImageType>Boxes</GameImageType> and now its working, what is this setting for? for default image type?

 

also maybe could you add like a text indicator to what View/Image type you just changed to this is a issue when you setup your image types to also include other types when that type is missing and for some platforms you can't tell what image type your on other then the clear logo type.

 

Thanks

Ah, I just tested and I see that the "Switch Image Type" button isn't working for switching the image types on the platforms view for playlists. That GameImageType setting controls what type of images are displayed for that playlist. And yes, it can definitely be confusing. Generally, it's recommended to get all your image types configured in LaunchBox first, and then Big Box will use them as well. Good point though; we can definitely improve that sooner or later.

I'll add the Switch Image Type issue to my list. The fix may or may not make it into 7.15, but I'll do my best.

[kmoney]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

I believe it should look for any emulator marked as default for that platform. So if you don't have an emulator marked as default, then one won't be set. Can you confirm if you have a default emulator set for that platform?

@Jason Carr I use Rocketlauncher for my default emulator for all platforms. And of course if you use Rocketlauncher, you do not have to fill out any of the associated platforms information in LaunchBox as it is not required. Could that be the reason why?

 

[Charco]

That's a bingo.

[Jason Carr]

@kmoney Ah, indeed it is why. That's a good point. Not quite sure how we'll resolve that, but good to know.

[Charco]

Something I noticed recently is that for my playlists category in Big Box it shows the Total Games and Play Count as 0, even though I play games from these playlists on a regular basis. Using CriticalZone Blue Box theme.

https://imgur.com/a/M82hS

[Jason Carr]

9 minutes ago, Charco said:

Something I noticed recently is that for my playlists category in Big Box it shows the Total Games and Play Count as 0, even though I play games from these playlists on a regular basis. Using CriticalZone Blue Box theme.

https://imgur.com/a/M82hS

Thanks @Charco. This is a known issue and comes from some performance optimizations I made a while back. At the time I chose to just deal with this as a performance trade/off. But yes, we do need a solution.

[Jason Carr]

Alright guys, beta 12 is out with the following:

- Improvement: The end of the Download Metadata and Media process in LaunchBox has been optimized to be multi-threaded so that the interface does not appear to be locked up when finishing up the process

- Improvement: When switching the global theme in the Big Box options, platform-specific and playlist-specific themes are now reset in order to reduce confusion

- Fixed: After closing the Options window, the LaunchBox main window border was corrupted on some systems

- Fixed: "Prioritize Music over Video Audio" in Big Box was not working on rare occasions and the video audio and music would both play at the same time

- Fixed: On Big Box games text list views, the selection bar was sometimes missing when first loading up the view

- Fixed: When switching themes per platform or playlist in Big Box, sometimes it was confusing and/or the theme was not saving due to invalid views for certain themes. The view is now reset to the default when switching themes for a particular platform or playlist.

I believe that was everything on my immediate list to fix before the release, so hopefully this will be our release candidate for 7.15. Depending on how things go, we may release either tomorrow or Wednesday. Any testing you guys can do would be very much appreciated.

[Massatomic]

49 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Alright guys, beta 12 is out with the following:

- Improvement: The end of the Download Metadata and Media process in LaunchBox has been optimized to be multi-threaded so that the interface does not appear to be locked up when finishing up the process

 

i swear you read my mind!

I was just looking at a locked up LB from using metadata and media update and wondering if you had made it multi threaded. Then i jump on the forums to see this!  

[Jason Carr]

Just now, Massatomic[ said:

i swear you read my mind!

I was just looking at a locked up LB from using metadata and media update and wondering if you had made it multi threaded. Then i jump on the forums to see this!  

Hehehe. I'm surprised it hadn't been mentioned yet. I just did it because it was bothering me when I did it myself.

[shinra358]

@Jason Carr Music over movie priority is still messed up.

When you go into details view from game view, the music stops until you press the details button again. After that, cancelling to go back to the game view plays the vid sound and the music sound never comes back.

[Jason Carr]

50 minutes ago, shinra358 said:

@Jason Carr Music over movie priority is still messed up.

When you go into details view from game view, the music stops until you press the details button again. After that, cancelling to go back to the game view plays the vid sound and the music sound never comes back.

Gotcha. That was not a specific use case that I set out to fix, but I see that now. I'll see if I can get that in before release.

[cleverest]

"- Fixed: After closing the Options window, the LaunchBox main window border was corrupted on some systems"

Yup I had that issue....solid white border....locked up a bit, if that's the one.

[Jason Carr]

Welp, beta 13 is out now. I just can't seem to stop working today, for whatever reason.

So I was playing with @PhillsDoodles amazing new Retrorama theme, and I ran into the issue where things didn't look quite right because of my 16x10 monitor (most themes are built for 16x9). So, of course I set out to fix it. There are now two more settings in the ThemeSettings.xml file:

    <Force16X9AspectRatio>true</Force16X9AspectRatio>
    <Force4X3AspectRatio>false</Force4X3AspectRatio>

These settings will allow you to force a theme to be displayed either in 16x9 or 4x3 aspect ratio. In theory, then on monitors that are not that exact aspect ratio, they will maintain that aspect ratio instead of awkwardly filling the screen. Obviously it's better if a theme can support all aspect ratios instead of letterboxing everything, but in the case of a theme like Retrorama where everything is heavily image-based, that's not really a possibility.

There are probably many other themes that can benefit from this as well. All the theme developers will probably now want to murder me for waiting this long to implement it, considering I got it done in a couple hours.

@CriticalCid @eatkinola @y2guru @Hexxxer @keltoigael @NJDave71 @Omen @Cookz718 @Grila @viking @Rincewind @SNAK3ATER @shro2016 @nosh @ea4492 @Maddoc1007 @vsilvalopes @faeran @walter10h @Scottad @Sithel @Akezhar @Thanos Reigns @niglurion @kerszr

Wow we have a ton of amazing theme developers! Didn't expect the list to be that long.

[cleverest]

Thanks Jason, please keep working! :-) Haha! Really appreciate the progress!

[Jason Carr]

...and beta 14 is out. Had to put out yet another beta because I introduced a bug in saving the themes per platform/playlist.