Shuffling BigBox Background Music

[MayorQwert]

Hey! So I have my BigBox set up as a front-end for my Multicade, with numerous arcade titles to play, going so far as to add arcade music to the "Launchbox/Music/Background" folder so that it will shuffle through various arcade musics while the game screen is up. It works excellently and I even added album art and info for each game so it displays the song name, game it's from and who the artist is, along with a nice image of the game box art when a new song plays. To make sure the album art is retained for every song, I have each game's music in a different folder within the Background folder. It displays everything fine, but the issue I'm having is it's not shuffling the music, no matter how I set it up.

 

Here's a better description of the problem: When I launch Big Box, it does select a random song, but afterwards it will sequentially play every song from that game (folder), before moving to the next game alphabetically and playing all the music from it as well. If I force it to next song with the BigBox binding, it will indeed select a random song, but afterwards will go back to playing them alphabetically. I have shuffle turned on in settings, but no matter what it won't actually shuffle them if I leave it sitting. It's annoying, as I want it to ideally shuffle every track together, while also retaining album art and info (if I stick them all in a folder together it will mess up the album art).

 

Does anybody have any suggestions?

 

Edited April 6, 2018 by MayorQwert

[MayorQwert]

Bumping this, as I still can't seem to find a workaround. No matter what, after a few songs it always starts playing through the folders and songs sequentially. First songs from Battle Garegga in alphabetic order, next Battletoads, Boogie Wings, etc. I tried dumping everything into a common folder, but album art is all messed up when that happens. Any suggestions?

[MayorQwert]

Anybody have any issues with randomized background music in Big Box? Bumping yet again as this is still an ongoing issue.

[Joderick]

I'm running into this issue too! The first song is random but then it appears to play alphabetically. I'm going to try taking the music files out of their subdirectories and have all of the files directly under the "Background" folder and let you know how it goes.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Joderick

[MayorQwert]

1 hour ago, Joderick said:

I'm running into this issue too! The first song is random but then it appears to play alphabetically. I'm going to try taking the music files out of their subdirectories and have all of the files directly under the "Background" folder and let you know how it goes.

So glad to FINALLY find someone else having this issue! I think I recall trying that but to no avail. No idea why it does this.

[KaisStudios]

Having the same issue as well and i also can't find a fix.

[MayorQwert]

On 2/22/2019 at 9:18 PM, galvatrondeva said:

So for me, this seems to have something to do with Attract Mode being on. When I disable Attract Mode, restart BigBox, It will play the song i have now come to hate. However it moves past it on its own and work as intended. I cannot seem to have Attract Mode and true Random Background music at the same time. 

 

I wonder  if that is the same for the rest of you having this issue?

I tested it with and without attract mode and unfortunately noticed no difference! I managed to mitigate this somewhat why using Flexible Renamer and Robobasket to both filter individual songs into subfolders and then (using Flexible Renamer) shuffle those folder names such that a rudimentary shuffling system can be established. This is very tedious and not good practice but with the large library I have collected having proper song shuffling is paramount to my BigBox experience.

 

However, the main problem that keeps annoying me to no end is that, no matter what, after a game is played the list will eventually restart back to the first track. The amount of time it takes to do so strangely enough seems to depend on how many songs have been played up until the point the game has been played, but without fail it always resets the list, regardless of how far it made it beforehand. The same is true if I try to skip forwards/back in the songlist, resulting in the playback resetting to the first track. With over 1000 music tracks in my Bigbox library this is seriously hindering the enjoyment I can get out of this unfortunately, as I wish to use my BigBox as an 'Arcade Jukebox' of sorts when games aren't being played. I've been experimenting with other methods to get around using the abysmal media player but haven't found any that seem to quite cut it. My last attempt centered around using an external media player (Such as WinAMP) that can use windows system media controls (play/pause, stop, etc.) in conjunction with autohotkeys. Basically, I start playback on the media player and have it paused when an emulator is launched and played once again when the emulator is closed. This works for the most part, however even when "Always on Top" is on it unfortunately does not display the song title/album/artist/artwork in the corner like usual, which is a major deal breaker considering the meticulous work that I have put into collecting metadata for these tracks. Also, if one attempts to quit the game too fast, it is possible that the script can terminate whereas the emulator does not, leading to the game staying up and having music play over it.

I just really wish the Devs would address this persistent problem, yes media playback is just an extra feature to the actual game playing but considering the work that has gone into adding media functionality in recent updates I think an overhaul to the BigBox media playback is completely justifiable as a concern.

 

Please, someone fix this! ?

[evansoft]

Late to the thread, but I’ve noticed this same problem. It’s slowly making me hate the animal crossing theme, which is a real shame.

[John Dastardly]

Question about background music in general, is it possible to just have one song going on repeat in the background?
I am planning on upgrading to prem soon, and just want a basic track running in the background while browsing games. 
And than have it turn off  when starting a game

[Boomerps2]

On 6/18/2019 at 7:54 AM, John Dastardly said:

Question about background music in general, is it possible to just have one song going on repeat in the background?
I am planning on upgrading to prem soon, and just want a basic track running in the background while browsing games. 
And than have it turn off  when starting a game

Bumping this question because this would be a great feature

[webfly]

I had the same problem when I left the songs in the root folder  "... \ LaunchBox \ Music \ Background"

However, I discovered by chance that by placing the songs that were in the root folder mentioned above, the random function of the music player in the background works perfectly.

I hope this can help.

[Kondorito]

On 1/29/2020 at 12:45 AM, webfly said:

I had the same problem when I left the songs in the root folder  "... \ LaunchBox \ Music \ Background"

However, I discovered by chance that by placing the songs that were in the root folder mentioned above, the random function of the music player in the background works perfectly.

I hope this can help.

@webfly do you mind expanding a little bit more about the above? I did not understand your post. You moved the mp3s from the Background folder to which one?

@MayorQwert were you able to resolve this matter? I am just giving a shot at having background music in BB instead of the video snaps sounds, and I am getting the same behavior; the list is like restarting and from the 170 songs I have, I only keep hearing the same 3.

 

 

[C-Beats]

For those experiencing this issue please see:

 

[ads427]

On 4/7/2018 at 12:25 AM, MayorQwert said:

Hey! So I have my BigBox set up as a front-end for my Multicade, with numerous arcade titles to play, going so far as to add arcade music to the "Launchbox/Music/Background" folder so that it will shuffle through various arcade musics while the game screen is up. It works excellently and I even added album art and info for each game so it displays the song name, game it's from and who the artist is, along with a nice image of the game box art when a new song plays. To make sure the album art is retained for every song, I have each game's music in a different folder within the Background folder. It displays everything fine, but the issue I'm having is it's not shuffling the music, no matter how I set it up.

 

Here's a better description of the problem: When I launch Big Box, it does select a random song, but afterwards it will sequentially play every song from that game (folder), before moving to the next game alphabetically and playing all the music from it as well. If I force it to next song with the BigBox binding, it will indeed select a random song, but afterwards will go back to playing them alphabetically. I have shuffle turned on in settings, but no matter what it won't actually shuffle them if I leave it sitting. It's annoying, as I want it to ideally shuffle every track together, while also retaining album art and info (if I stick them all in a folder together it will mess up the album art).

 

Does anybody have any suggestions?

 

can i ask how you get the album art to work. how do you name the art files/folder and is it a png or jpeg file. thanks