8.0-beta-1 Released

[SNAK3ATER]

Hello @Jason Carr, great work on LB 8.0 and looking forward to Retroarch Netplay integration and thanks for including video support in Wall View!

I have an inquiry regarding steam banner support, what are the current APIs used to retrieve artworks for steam banners? There are a couple of websites I would like you to review for a possibility of integrating them into metadata search as they cover alot of games including other platforms such as classic consoles and arcades:

http://steam.cryotank.net/  - Amazing database for steam banners that covers lots of systems/games

http://www.steamgriddb.com/ - Well known database that offers different steam artwork styles such as Blurred, Textless, minimal and normal game artworks

Steambanners.booru.org - Another great steam grid resource with access to more than 20,000 artworks

Speaking of Steam banner support, it can enhance the look of a theme if the platform has enough artwork content such as windows platform:

However since Windows is the only platform with enough steam banners content that means other platforms will have alot of missing artwork:

In order to remedy this I suggest an ImageType fallback strategy to be implemented where a theme creator or a user specify Bigbox to look for an alternative source if the selected game does not have an artwork in the specified imagetype; For example I can set the theme's main imagetype to Steam banner and the secondary imagetype to fanart/screenshot that way if a game doesn't have an artwork in the steam banner folder Bigbox will look into fanart folder to retrieve the game's missing artwork.

I believe adding the aforementioned websites in LB metadata search and supporting imagetype fallback will help megitate the missing artwork issues in BigBox.

 

Finally, this might not be as important as solving the missing artwork issue for me but it would be an added benefit to us theme creators:

Add a separate view for the selected game options page, currently this view is tied up with TextGamesView to my knowledge but it would be nice to have an option of designing a unique look for the game options view:

I believe that's all the requests I have for now as you had already answered most of our previous requests so kudos for listening and working with the community Jason!

Cheers,

[bundangdon]

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 5:57 PM, bundangdon said:

That's odd because now the details pane is saving and remembering its last position, as I've tested this a few times in a few different ways while closing or exiting from LaunchBox. Prior to this beta release, it was not saving at all. I guess you somehow inadvertently fixed this issue. Well done!

Oops! @Jason Carr I guess I may have spoken too soon. After a system reboot, the issue has come back again. I guess it wasn't (inadvertently) fixed after all. Oh well! Hope that you can get it done in one of the next beta updates

Edited February 9, 2018 by bundangdon
fixes

[Drodrick]

On 6/2/2018 at 12:33 PM, Jason Carr said:

Beta 8 is out now with the following:

- Improvement: LaunchBox now supports jump to game by letter (press an alphanumeric key on the keyboard), similar to Windows Explorer

- Fixed the multiple Retroarch emulators issue for Retroarch Netplay. If Retroarch is the main emulator on the game (if the title of the emulator starts with "Retroarch"), then that emulator will be used. Otherwise, LaunchBox will search for an emulator with the title of "Retroarch" that has an associated platform that matches the platform of the game.

- Hopefully fixed @wallmachine's issue backing out of the System menu when changing themes. Found a rare anomaly that I'm hoping was the cause of the problem.

Those are great news!!! thanks a lot!, I'm just want to no know if It is no possible to implement "jump to name by pressing the letter" in Big box? I mean, it would be faster that the search bar (that is very useful with controller) but with keyboard It is better jump by letter.

Otherwise, Is it possible, apply this function with the beginning of the names, I mean sometimes I want to found games started by -MA or -MET or -ZELD, like in the windows file explorer, Is that possible?

Thanks a lot for these Betas Jason

Edited February 9, 2018 by Drodrick

[DOS76]

In BigBox you either press left or up depending on whether you are scrolling in a horizontal or vertical orientated view this will pull up all the letters and you then scroll to the letter you want.

[Charco]

I am wondering if he meant using a keyboard in BB though? Like press F on your keyboard to go to F in your game wheel? I imagine the vast majority of people use BB with a controller or joystick, but I guess it would be no harm if it were to be added. 

[DOS76]

yep I misread it. While that would be nice I wouldn't expect anything beyond the current solution get added to BigBox

[Charco]

Doubt I'd use it anyway.

[NJDave71]

When the Letter Navigation is available @Jason Carr should add a trigger to accept letter navigation.

[alnyden]

On February 7, 2018 at 2:58 PM, NJDave71 said:

As of beta 8 the slow response ifof bigbox was addressed.  I have tested this theme on 4 machines with no issues.  

Well for me at least, it's taking 30 seconds to load Aeon Nox with background videos.  It was fixed in Beta 7 but the issue returned in 8.

[NJDave71]

Are you using Aeon Nox 2.0?    is it the game platform/game video or the Custom Space video?

[alnyden]

23 minutes ago, NJDave71 said:

Are you using Aeon Nox 2.0?    is it the game platform/game video or the Custom Space video?

Aeon Nox Redux, recently downloaded, is that 2.0?  It's the game video.  Great theme.   

[NJDave71]

Thank you and I am sorry its slow.  I don't know if its something in the Theme code or the if its the latest beta.      

[Jason Carr]

@SNAK3ATER Per the Steam banner scraping, we're using the official steam banners right now, downloaded from http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com, which I think is official. We can certainly add more in the future if there's a good site with an API that allows for searching. Currently Steam banners are only downloaded for Steam games, of course.

We already have a sophisticated image type fallback strategy that works via the Image Priorities settings in the LaunchBox options. It looks like the main issue though is that there are no image priorities settings for Steam banners or banners. You could certainly hijack one of the existing categories though to customize it however you like, and then use that in the theme, though it would probably be better for me to add options for Banner Priorities.

Makes sense about the game options view.

[Jason Carr]

10 hours ago, bundangdon said:

Oops! @Jason Carr I guess I may have spoken too soon. After a system reboot, the issue has come back again. I guess it wasn't (inadvertently) fixed after all. Oh well! Hope that you can get it done in one of the next beta updates

Yeah, I never removed it from my list because I didn't figure it was actually fixed.

[Jason Carr]

8 hours ago, Drodrick said:

Those are great news!!! thanks a lot!, I'm just want to no know if It is no possible to implement "jump to name by pressing the letter" in Big box? I mean, it would be faster that the search bar (that is very useful with controller) but with keyboard It is better jump by letter.

Otherwise, Is it possible, apply this function with the beginning of the names, I mean sometimes I want to found games started by -MA or -MET or -ZELD, like in the windows file explorer, Is that possible?

Thanks a lot for these Betas Jason

The issue with this is that a lot of the key bindings that people typically use already use a lot of the letters, especially on typical arcade controllers. It would work though if the key bindings were changed not to use the letters. If it keeps coming up as a request I'll consider implementing it, but as it stands unfortunately I don't think it's a popular enough request to make it a priority.

Windows Explorer uses some kind of magic timing logic that's hard to figure out and sometimes hard to predict the outcome of, though I will admit that I do use it. For now the search box should work pretty quickly for that.

 

[Jason Carr]

2 hours ago, alnyden said:

Well for me at least, it's taking 30 seconds to load Aeon Nox with background videos.  It was fixed in Beta 7 but the issue returned in 8.

Is anyone else seeing any performance issues with Aeon Nox 2.0? Or any other theme? These performance issues are puzzling me because I haven't experienced any of them in any of the 8.0 betas.

@alnyden What do you mean by "taking 30 seconds to load"? When does it take those 30 seconds?

[Drodrick]

35 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

The issue with this is that a lot of the key bindings that people typically use already use a lot of the letters, especially on typical arcade controllers. It would work though if the key bindings were changed not to use the letters. If it keeps coming up as a request I'll consider implementing it, but as it stands unfortunately I don't think it's a popular enough request to make it a priority.

Windows Explorer uses some kind of magic timing logic that's hard to figure out and sometimes hard to predict the outcome of, though I will admit that I do use it. For now the search box should work pretty quickly for that.

 

Thanks for your answer, Thats true, I think it should be just a selectable YES/No option: for example:  Enable BIGBOX Letter Select ? YES/NO "Enable jumping in the list by typing the first letter of an item. For some arcade controls you may want to turn this off as certain controls can be mapped to letters, which could cause inadvertedly jumping in the list."

[Lordmonkus]

@Jason Carr Something that has come up in Discord recently is the option for the search in Launchbox to not auto search based on what is typed but instead to wait until the user has pressed the Enter key.

The way it currently is can be problematic for those on slower systems and slow typers.

[CriticalCid]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

@SNAK3ATER Per the Steam banner scraping, we're using the official steam banners right now, downloaded from http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com, which I think is official. We can certainly add more in the future if there's a good site with an API that allows for searching. Currently Steam banners are only downloaded for Steam games, of course.

Here you go

http://retrogaming.cloud/

 

Their API Documentation:

http://retrogaming.cloud/api/v1

[SNAK3ATER]

31 minutes ago, CriticalCid said:

Here you go

http://retrogaming.cloud/

 

Their API Documentation:

http://retrogaming.cloud/api/v1

Nice find Cid! This site has lots of steam banners for retro platforms and it has an API for searching too. Can this be added to future beta updates jason?