8.3-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

Lol, wow. For what it's worth I do plan to do my best to tackle the issue of preventing people from launching multiple emulator instances when spamming the play button. I have actually attempted to fix this in the past, but apparently I didn't tackle it well enough. I'll tackle it when I tackle the startup screen item from the poll.

1 hour ago, Dan said:

One thing I've noticed is that LB Next doesn't seem to remember the thumbnails. If I scroll right through a platform then it generates all thumbnails and further scrolling in that platform is no problem. If I switch platform and then go back however, it has to generate the thumbnails again. It's pretty quick to generate them, though it's not ideal and I'm wondering if this is expected behaviour?

It's actually not re-generating the thumbnails at that point; it's just reloading the cached images (unless you've used the slider to resize the boxes or something). LaunchBox.Next does use a lot less RAM than the old version of LaunchBox, and admittedly the boxes don't always load up quite as fast. I may address this eventually, but it's a trade off either way.

[Rincewind]

Thanks for coming back and explaining your views, for what it's worth your English has come over very well. I can't and won't speak for Jason or any other moderators, I did read your original post and I'm not sure if it did end in a ban or not, all I will say is that it is obvious how pationate Jason is when it comes to his software and that needs to be taken as a positive. My view is feature requests are all well and good but should not be made in the beta release thread, there are other topics related to feature requests and that's where they should be discussed.

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, ALIE said:

It's all about how you bring it forward. 

I mean I have requested/hoped that a feature i wanted - (each theme being able to have unique image sets Covers and such) 

The unfortunate fact for me is that there's just not a huge demand although. I THINK that themes could be taken to a whole new level and themes that is designed with DVD style covers could have that for systems like the snes out having to replace everything. 

 

LOL I just snuck a reminder of my request in ?. but see no crazy demands or exceptions.  I don't think anyone minds people requesting stuff or once in a while trying to bring attention to something. It's all about how you do it ?. 

Good day

 

 

I love feature requests and I certainly don't mind reminders (because I often need them, admittedly). The only thing that tends to rub me the wrong way is comments like "this is ridiculous that this has not been implemented" or "until you implement this the product is useless". I get a lot of that and honestly it drives me nuts lol.

[Mr. RetroLust]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

I love feature requests and I certainly don't mind reminders (because I often need them, admittedly). The only thing that tends to rub me the wrong way is comments like "this is ridiculous that this has not been implemented" or "until you implement this the product is useless". I get a lot of that and honestly it drives me nuts lol.

Don't let it get to you though, not one second, it is time wasted and there is only so much time an individual has, priority is staying focused, feel the support and love your passion. Cheers man, you have made some revolutionairy piece of software and continue to do so, with an ever growing community of people that grow around the core of this program and all things that evolve naturally around and out of it, it is quite a thing to be very proud of! I enjoy it more than I can expres, every day and minute. Just so you know.

[Retrofrogg]

 I have noticed with the spacing settings, that the spacing required depends on the kind of images being displayed. Is it therefore possible to have different images (e.g. box, 3d box, flyer etc) for different platforms, and to have platform-specific spacing settings? This would be great!

Edited May 18, 2018 by Dan

[Retrofrogg]

It would be great to be able to get rid of the black/coloured boxes around the boxes themselves. Makes it look a bit cluttered, and would be cleaner to have just the boxes themselves with the text underneath.

OpenEmu (yes, of course, on the Mac) does this and looks very clean in this regard: https://openemu.org/

Edited May 18, 2018 by Dan

[dov_EL]

@Zombeaver

I have collaborated several times with Microsoft as the official Italian Beta Tester in the period when the BOSS was called Sinofsky . The most effective methodology is to first make a stable build, and then add features to a system , Otherwise you run the risk of having to do it all over again sooner or later.
I'm a huge fun of Launchbox and Jason, I grew up with Coin Op and the Consoles, I'm 42 years old , so if I feel like giving a suggestion to the Team, this should not be an offense, it must be taken as a criticism. Also I feel part of this team because I saw launchbox born , and I want the launchbox to be the best of the best.
Many times the Devs. they may have clear ideas but their heads are confused because of what each one exposes as a big problem while in reality it is not a big problem. Like all those who complain about the performances. I use Launchbox on a PC Mini, Cpu Apollo Lake n3450 (4gb ram), and given the scalability of launchox, the performances are excellent (finding the right compromise with the settings depending on my hardware)
Which is why, in my opinion, it is seriously necessary to correct the "serious" bugs, and not to say that everything is by design as Apple does with its own stupid customers.

Then you are free to think what you want,
we are free men.

Shalom

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, Dan said:

It would be great to be able to get rid of the black/coloured boxes around the boxes themselves. Makes it look a bit cluttered, and would be cleaner to have just the boxes themselves with the text underneath.

OpenEmu (yes, of course, on the Mac) does this and looks very clean in this regard: https://openemu.org/

The problem with this approach (and the reason why the boxes are needed) is the fanart. White text, even with a shadow, just doesn't work well against the wide array of possible fanart backgrounds.

[Zombeaver]

29 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

The problem with this approach (and the reason why the boxes are needed) is the fanart. White text, even with a shadow, just doesn't work well against the wide array of possible fanart backgrounds.

I don't quite follow. It looks fine (better, imo) in Launchbox, which doesn't have them. I don't recall hearing anybody complaining about not being able to read their game titles in Launchbox.

It's not really feature "parity" until I can replicate this in Next. I'm not saying the boxes shouldn't be an option for those that want it, but I think they should just be, well, optional. I'm just not a fan of them aesthetically at all.

[Lordmonkus]

I have no problems with the boxes around the game boxes themselves, I just want the option to pick the colour of them and have them all one colour instead of a dynamic colour chosen based off the predominant colour of the box itself. An option to disable them would be nice as well.

[Jason Carr]

39 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

I don't quite follow. It looks fine (better, imo) in Launchbox, which doesn't have them. I don't recall hearing anybody complaining about not being able to read their game titles in Launchbox.

It's not really feature "parity" until I can replicate this in Next. I'm not saying the boxes shouldn't be an option for those that want it, but I think they should just be, well, optional. I'm just not a fan of them aesthetically at all.

 

1 minute ago, Lordmonkus said:

I have no problems with the boxes around the game boxes themselves, I just want the option to pick the colour of them and have them all one colour instead of a dynamic colour chosen based off the predominant colour of the box itself. An option to disable them would be nice as well.

Okay, I'll just have to implement something similar to the outline method in the original LaunchBox as an option, I guess. I've gotten a lot of negative feedback on that approach over the years, but I guess to each his own. And yes, there will eventually be an option to disable the box coloring.

[Retrofrogg]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

The problem with this approach (and the reason why the boxes are needed) is the fanart. White text, even with a shadow, just doesn't work well against the wide array of possible fanart backgrounds.

Yes I completely agree. I would go further and say that even with the boxes, it is too cluttered for my tastes with the fan art as background. I have just he standard black background to make the game boxes/artwork pop. Hence the option to turn off the surrounding boxes for those users that like it clean like me would be much appreciated. And like Munko says, I would appreciate the option to turn off dynamic coloured boxes also. 

[Zombeaver]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

Okay, I'll just have to implement something similar to the outline method in the original LaunchBox as an option, I guess. I've gotten a lot of negative feedback on that approach over the years, but I guess to each his own. And yes, there will eventually be an option to disable the box coloring.

Awesome, thanks!

[Drybonz]

21 hours ago, Dan said:

One thing I've noticed is that LB Next doesn't seem to remember the thumbnails. 

Yes... I made a post about this previously.  It would be nice if LB could pre-cache the thumbnails so you don't have to scroll through all of your games to prompt it to create thumbnails.  Also, it seems to need to re-build the thumbnails, as you said, frequently.

[dov_EL]

VID_20180518_204909.mp4

[Lordmonkus]

Dude, it has been said it will be looked at when Jason does the loading screen stuff from the last poll.

Drop it.

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, Drybonz said:

Yes... I made a post about this previously.  It would be nice if LB could pre-cache the thumbnails so you don't have to scroll through all of your games to prompt it to create thumbnails.  Also, it seems to need to re-build the thumbnails, as you said, frequently.

See my post at the top of this page. I'll probably end up adding a way to auto-populate the cache at some point as well.

[Jason Carr]

Beta 6 is out now with the implementation of the list view in LaunchBox.Next. Remembering column orders and visibility will be coming in a future beta.

[dov_EL]

11 hours ago, Lordmonkus said:

Dude, it has been said it will be looked at when Jason does the loading screen stuff from the last poll.

Drop it.

OK , but Poll = New Feature or FIx a Bug ? 
This is what I did not understand . We can also add a thousand different features and COOL, but if these are full of bugs, does it make sense to move forward in this direction? I believe mine is a legitimate question

[Lordmonkus]

As far as I am aware the prevention of launching multiple instances of an emulator has never even been implemented, therefor it is not a bug that you can spam the button and launch multiple instances.

This is why it is attached to the loading screen feature from the last poll and will be getting put in fairly soon once Jason gets to the new features from the poll after the work on Launchbox Next is done.

A bug is not something that you want and isn't there, a bug is something that is there but doesn't work correctly or causes another issue.

Launchbox is not "full of bugs" as you put it, in fact the stable build is pretty lacking in bugs. Of course there are some, no software is ever 100% bug free. Much like any other software out there bug fixes and new features get prioritized based on urgency and severity.