Launchbox 7.15 Released - Change Log

[Lordmonkus]

Version 7.15 - Released December 13, 2017

- New Feature: Retro achievements are now accessible in LaunchBox from retroachievements.org! Add your account under Tools > Options > Search > Retro Achievements, and then your achievements will show up in the LaunchBox game details sidebar.

- New Premium Feature: Retro achievements are now accessible in Big Box as well from the game details menu, or with a hotkey or controller button via Options > Keyboard Mappings > View Achievements or Options > Controller Buttons > View Achievements.

- New Feature: Community star ratings are now available in LaunchBox and will show as a slightly different color. You can download the community's star ratings for your games by using Tools > Download Metadata and Media.

- New Feature: Star ratings set in LaunchBox will now automatically upload to the LaunchBox Games Database in order to contribute to the community's ratings. You can disable this under Tools > Options > Search.

- New Feature: Two new options have been added to Tools > Options > Search: "Use Community Star Ratings when Filtering or Arranging by Star Rating" and "Minimum number of community ratings in order to use". These will allow you to specify whether or not you want to use the community star ratings when filtering and arranging your collection, and how many community votes are required before considering the value.

- New Premium Feature: Star ratings are now available in Big Box! They will show up by default in the game details views, but can be disabled under Options > Game Details.

- New Premium Feature: Star ratings can now be set in Big Box from either the game details menu or via a hotkey or controller button under Options > Keyboard Mappings > Set Star Rating or Options > Controller Buttons > Set Star Rating. An option is available to hide the Star Rating from the game details menu as well.

- Improvement: Three new fields have been added to the LaunchBox list view: Star Rating, Community Star Rating, and Community Star Rating Count

- Improvement: Removed the seldom-used game details popup, which was made mostly irrelevant by the game details sidebar back when we implemented it. It wasn't very usable with all of the added images and became completely horrendous with the achievements; there are also some performance improvements as a result.

- Improvement: Syncing your collection to the cloud now reports progress and is much quicker; viewing your collection on the web is much quicker as well

- Improvement: Star ratings can now be set at half values

- Improvement: The included version of 7-Zip has been upgraded to the latest version (16.04)

- 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

- Improvement: There are two new Theme Settings for Big Box custom themes: Force16X9AspectRatio and Force4X3AspectRatio, which should hopefully resolve issues running certain themes on 16x10 monitors and similar situations

- Fixed: Game titles are no longer overwritten when downloading metadata and images and a new LaunchBox Games Database ID is found

- Fixed: Developers, genres, and other non-game text lists in Big Box had an occasional issue with the text index caused by The, A, and An

- Fixed: Big Box marquee screen had some placement issues when using a smaller resolution on the main display than on the marquee display

- Fixed: When using the Text with Game Details view in Big Box, the logo at the top of the list was sometimes not updating

- Fixed: Viewing videos full screen from the Big Box game details menu was sometimes not showing the video

- 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.

 

Edit:
The Genesis achievements should now be working.

[LogicalEgo]

The new features are such a nice addition and should finally get some people off the fence and over to LaunchBox.

[nanoymaster]

I'm having issues with it getting achievements for the mega drive.. I think could be trying to use the name genesis instead.

it also doesn't display them for the master system?! could it be a sega issue?

[Lordmonkus]

There is a bug on the Retroarchievements end, it's being worked on.

Edit: Genesis achievements now working.

[harryoke]

1 minute ago, nanoymaster said:

I'm having issues with it getting achievements for the mega drive.. I think could be trying to use the name genesis instead.

it also doesn't display them for the master system?! could it be a sega issue?

I think it's a sega problem as the achievements have not been fully ironed out for the platform iirc

[Jason Carr]

There's unfortunately still a bug in the retroachievements.org API. Scott over there is working on a fix for it. Sega Genesis and Master System and I think one other platform are affected.

[nanoymaster]

awesome, thanks for the replies everyone

[LogicalEgo]

4 minutes ago, harryoke said:

I think it's a sega problem as the achievements have not been fully ironed out for the platform iirc

I think the Sega achievements are currently running off the saturn or 32x, which is why they are having troubles  

[Lordmonkus]

I gets joke.

[LogicalEgo]

I love roasting my own favorite systems.

[Lordmonkus]

I definitely have a love / hate relationship with the 32X and Saturn.

I love to hate the 32X cause it was a real turd (yes I owned one) and the Saturn could have been good if it had been supported here in North America.

[harryoke]

1 minute ago, keltoigael said:

I love roasting my own favorite systems.

If those are your favourite systems you've got bigger problems than sega achievements not working , may the lord have mercy on your soul 

[LogicalEgo]

1 minute ago, harryoke said:

If those are your favourite systems you've got bigger problems than sega achievements not working , may the lord have mercy on your soul 

Saturn is a vastly underrated system full of great games. The 32X not so much but I still have a soft spot for it. Cosmic Carnage is some of the best cheese in the galaxy.

[harryoke]

Saturn was always seen as the poor mans psx , well at least here in U.K. , 32x was a complete failure here in U.K. 

Every system has good and bad points , nothing is perfect.

[kmoney]

I agree Saturn is very underated and I grew up with the Sega Master System as my first console so I have huge nostalgia for it .

[harryoke]

1 minute ago, kmoney said:

I agree Saturn is very underated and I grew up with the Sega Master System as my first console so I have huge nostalgia for it .

I think the systems we grew up with will always win over , mine were zx spectrum and Commodore 64 , my kids just laugh at the graphics when I show them... little b***** 

[Lordmonkus]

10 minutes ago, kmoney said:

I agree Saturn is very underated and I grew up with the Sega Master System as my first console so I have huge nostalgia for it .

I don't agree that it's under rated, in fact I agree that it gets the hate it deserves. Sega dropped the ball with it big time and it was a suck ass system here in North America, it had awful game support and it was a difficult system to program for.

Looking back at it now and the fact we can emulate it rather than deal with it and trying to track down the small handful of "good" games it has makes it look much better in hindsight.

[LogicalEgo]

6 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

I don't agree that it's under rated, in fact I agree that it gets the hate it deserves. Sega dropped the ball with it big time and it was a suck ass system here in North America, it had awful game support and it was a difficult system to program for.

Looking back at it now and the fact we can emulate it rather than deal with it and trying to track down the small handful of "good" games it has makes it look much better in hindsight.

Panzer Dragoon, Guardian Heroes, Policenauts, almost perfect arcade ports, FIGHT ME BRO!

[Lordmonkus]

Looking back with hindsight and emulation since that is why we are all here who cares about arcade ports ? we got, for all intents and purposes perfect arcade emulation. Outside of that there is a small selection of great console exclusives but it's a small selection.

I don't think the Saturn is any better or any worse than what people think of it now as it sits, the Saturn got a lot more hate back in the day but now it gets plenty of love but still has serious flaws. I don't think the system is under rated or over rated at all.

[LogicalEgo]

27 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

Looking back with hindsight and emulation since that is why we are all here who cares about arcade ports ? we got, for all intents and purposes perfect arcade emulation. Outside of that there is a small selection of great console exclusives but it's a small selection.

I don't think the Saturn is any better or any worse than what people think of it now as it sits, the Saturn got a lot more hate back in the day but now it gets plenty of love but still has serious flaws. I don't think the system is under rated or over rated at all.