8.4-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

On 8/3/2018 at 2:20 PM, Dan said:

I have this problem intermittently too. For what it’s worth, I use a 4K screen so would be keen that it all works in 4K! 

 

Unfortunately the issues that I'm working on having nothing to do with having a 4K monitor. I wish it was that easy lol.

5 hours ago, CDBlue said:

Lately I've tended to not install the betas and wait for official releases. But, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to upgrade to the latest beta to test out LB.NEXT.  Very nice indeed.  I switched to it as my main LB desktop version instead of the old LB version.  Speed is great, functionality is great, so far for me anyway it's been bug free.  Great job Jason, can't wait to see what's next (pun intended) 

Great to hear.

[Jason Carr]

Beta 16 is now out, with some hopeful fixes for various issues. To be honest, some of these bugs have been truly nasty to fix; I'm having nightmares hearkening back to the days of the Big Box VLC stability issues.

Anyways, here's what I've changed/fixed for this beta:

• Added LaunchBox.Next support for "minimize on game launch" and "restore on game exit" options
• Fixed LaunchBox.Next side bar combo box and search box not sizing properly for custom fonts
• Added significant debug logging information for .Next window events (to provide better debugging information for freezing issues on some systems)
• Changed the debug logging to use a timestamp instead of a GUID in the file names (for easier navigation in debug logs)
• Forcing debug logs to be enabled for all beta versions (see below)
• Added a missing, thought-to-be-unused DLL reference, which could possibly be causing the stability issues (though that's a shot in the dark)

As described above, I've made some minor changes to the debug logging system, as well as force-enabled it for beta versions. This means that a new LaunchBox\Logs folder will show up that logs various debugging information that can help when troubleshooting things like crashes. Each time LaunchBox, Big Box, or .Next are started up, a new file will show up in the LaunchBox\Logs folder with a timestamp on it, so you can easily find the latest file. In the future, if you experience a crash with a beta release, please post your debug log file here in addition to any other error messages that you have.

Thanks all, please let me know how this beta fares; specifically, I'm most interested in any crashes that you get.

[ZeSystem]

13 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Beta 16 is now out, with some hopeful fixes for various issues. To be honest, some of these bugs have been truly nasty to fix; I'm having nightmares hearkening back to the days of the Big Box VLC stability issues.

Anyways, here's what I've changed/fixed for this beta:

• Added LaunchBox.Next support for "minimize on game launch" and "restore on game exit" options
• Fixed LaunchBox.Next side bar combo box and search box not sizing properly for custom fonts
• Added significant debug logging information for .Next window events (to provide better debugging information for freezing issues on some systems)
• Changed the debug logging to use a timestamp instead of a GUID in the file names (for easier navigation in debug logs)
• Forcing debug logs to be enabled for all beta versions (see below)
• Added a missing, thought-to-be-unused DLL reference, which could possibly be causing the stability issues (though that's a shot in the dark)

As described above, I've made some minor changes to the debug logging system, as well as force-enabled it for beta versions. This means that a new LaunchBox\Logs folder will show up that logs various debugging information that can help when troubleshooting things like crashes. Each time LaunchBox, Big Box, or .Next are started up, a new file will show up in the LaunchBox\Logs folder with a timestamp on it, so you can easily find the latest file. In the future, if you experience a crash with a beta release, please post your debug log file here in addition to any other error messages that you have.

Thanks all, please let me know how this beta fares; specifically, I'm most interested in any crashes that you get.

How about forcing the logging by default for beta versions, but still provide an option to turn it off?

I have everything installed on SSD, and I really would rather not have them logging since my beta experiences have been always great without problems worth reporting.

[Mr. RetroLust]

21 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I'm most interested in any crashes that you get.

Uh oh, behold Jason wants us to crash now ??

[CDBlue]

My last coffee is out of my system.... crashing hard.  Is this considered a Java bug

[DOS76]

[Jason Carr]

Thank the Lord, I already have confirmation from @Retro808 that the stability issues seem to be fixed with this beta. Do let me know if anyone else is experiencing any crashes.

34 minutes ago, ZeSystem said:

How about forcing the logging by default for beta versions, but still provide an option to turn it off?

I have everything installed on SSD, and I really would rather not have them logging since my beta experiences have been always great without problems worth reporting.

I understand your request here, but I've already confirmed that the logging does not impact performance in any noticeable way (it does I'm sure but it's not noticeable). It's also worth noting that if performance is your focus, the betas are definitely not advised. Beta releases are just that, betas, and I don't recommend using them as your daily driver unless you're up for some occasional issues and you're not concerned with getting the best possible experience. Because you won't.

[CDBlue]

Ok all is good now.  Just upgraded my Java and the crash is gone

[Zombeaver]

I just got a crash.

Debug 2018-08-06 07-51-24 PM.log

[ZeSystem]

22 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Thank the Lord, I already have confirmation from @Retro808 that the stability issues seem to be fixed with this beta. Do let me know if anyone else is experiencing any crashes.

I understand your request here, but I've already confirmed that the logging does not impact performance in any noticeable way (it does I'm sure but it's not noticeable). It's also worth noting that if performance is your focus, the betas are definitely not advised. Beta releases are just that, betas, and I don't recommend using them as your daily driver unless you're up for some occasional issues and you're not concerned with getting the best possible experience. Because you won't.

I don't expect beta versions to be flawless or without issues. I don't mind it being unstable . If it's a minor convenience, I can report it, and still use it until it gets fixed, or if it's a major problem I can use the stable version until then.

Not sure why you still want to force it on every beta user without giving an option to turn the logging off because this just discourages more users like me to even test them out and provide feedback. You can simply turn it on by default and still give us an option to turn it off. I don't really see the downside to this approach and it only brings flexibility and more positive experience for concerned users like me.

It's not the performance impact I'm worried about. I highly doubt it would have any impact on my 5GHZ 8700k + SSD, but I don't like the app writing whatever you decided to log (note that I'm not worried about nor trying to raise an issue about telemetry at all) every time I use it on my SSD, and gradually increase the file count. Sure, I can delete it, but this is just unnecessary inconvenience.

As a software developer myself, I completely understand how important it is for bug tracking, but it's never late for users to enable it whenever they want to reproduce it before reporting it. If they bothered reporting it, you would still prefer them to provide how they encountered the bug so the users should be fine going back to turn the logging on (for those who had it off) then, and reproduce it to provide more concise information on their report. If they can't reproduce it (which I believe is an incredibly rare case, if anything) and had the option turned off, then it's the user's fault. LaunchBox navigation and usage isn't all that complicated and it would be hard to forget how the issue you experienced happened and not be able to reproduce it again.

[CDBlue]

Maybe I misunderstood his post about it, but didn't Jason just force-enable loging in this last beta, in an attempt to track down these last hard-to-reproduce bugs?  Again, not sure if that's the case or not as I typically don't use the betas for the point he actually mentioned.  If so, is there a limit on how many log files will be created or will it create an unlimited amount of files?  If there's a limit on, let's say, 10 log files and then it'll start auto-deleting the oldest one so that there are only 10 logs files at all times, that should not be an issues for most modern-day SSD's that have typically have more read/write cycles available to them that when they first came out.

[Jason Carr]

23 minutes ago, ZeSystem said:

I don't expect beta versions to be flawless or without issues. I don't mind it being unstable . If it's a minor convenience, I can report it, and still use it until it gets fixed, or if it's a major problem I can use the stable version until then.

Not sure why you still want to force it on every beta user without giving an option to turn the logging off because this just discourages more users like me to even test them out and provide feedback. You can simply turn it on by default and still give us an option to turn it off. I don't really see the downside to this approach and it only brings flexibility and more positive experience for concerned users like me.

It's not the performance impact I'm worried about. I highly doubt it would have any impact on my 5GHZ 8700k + SSD, but I don't like the app writing whatever you decided to log (note that I'm not worried about nor trying to raise an issue about telemetry at all) every time I use it on my SSD, and gradually increase the file count. Sure, I can delete it, but this is just unnecessary inconvenience.

As a software developer myself, I completely understand how important it is for bug tracking, but it's never late for users to enable it whenever they want to reproduce it before reporting it. If they bothered reporting it, you would still prefer them to provide how they encountered the bug so the users should be fine going back to turn the logging on (for those who had it off) then, and reproduce it to provide more concise information on their report. If they can't reproduce it (which I believe is an incredibly rare case, if anything) and had the option turned off, then it's the user's fault. LaunchBox navigation and usage isn't all that complicated and it would be hard to forget how the issue you experienced happened and not be able to reproduce it again.

 

Just now, CDBlue said:

Maybe I misunderstood his post about it, but didn't Jason just force-enable loging in this last beta, in an attempt to track down these last hard-to-reproduce bugs?  Again, not sure if that's the case or not as I typically don't use the betas for the point he actually mentioned.  If so, is there a limit on how many log files will be created or will it create an unlimited amount of files?  If there's a limit on, let's say, 10 log files and then it'll start auto-deleting the oldest one so that there are only 10 logs files at all times, that should not be an issues for most modern-day SSD's that have typically have more read/write cycles available to them that when they first came out.

I may come back to this at a later date, but as for right now, I have more important things to worry about than the file count on the beta releases.

[ZeSystem]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

 

I may come back to this at a later date, but as for right now, I have more important things to worry about than the file count on the beta releases.

Sigh, alright. It's a shame to see you couldn't be flexible about this.

I appreciate the quick responses. Hopefully, the forced logging can help you tracking down some nasty bugs. Looking forward to the upcoming official release.

[CDBlue]

No worries.  I'm not complaining about the file count (sorry if that came across that way).  I was just posting a possible solution if you were looking to alleviate people's concerns about performance due to the extra logging.  I have no issues with it either way, I know the extra logging comes in handy to track down bugs, and I know how to highlight and delete files as/if needed lol

[Jason Carr]

3 minutes ago, ZeSystem said:

Sigh, alright. It's a shame to see you couldn't be flexible about this.

I appreciate the quick responses. Hopefully, the forced logging can help you tracking down some nasty bugs. Looking forward to the upcoming official release.

 

1 minute ago, CDBlue said:

No worries.  I'm not complaining about the file count (sorry if that came across that way).  I was just posting a possible solution if you were looking to alleviate people's concerns about performance due to the extra logging.  I have no issues with it either way, I know the extra logging comes in handy to track down bugs, and I know how to highlight and delete files as/if needed lol

Thank you guys; sorry if I came across a bit blunt. I'm just neck-deep in debugging this difficult to reproduce crash that Zom posted above, and I'm more interested in fixing the bug than other things that will set me back.

[cammelspit]

Just updated to the latest beta, way more laggy than the last several releases. I'll admit, I haven't used it for the last two or three beta releases but as of this last update at least, it has gotten rather bad. Here is a video, it's easier than trying to explain it and you should be able to see what I mean. At least the CPU usage seems to come down when not scrolling when before it would like to lock at 100% and just sit there indefinitely. Anyways thought I would let you know this since I have an uncommonly massive library so this might not manifest for some users. BTW, I used the 'all' platform category because it illustrates it better but I do have some single platforms that behave similarly just not quite as bad. Otherwise, happy to finally be able to make LB go right to LBN instead of Launchbox Classic as next is still much MUCH better in a lot of ways. Thanks!

 

[Jason Carr]

3 hours ago, cammelspit said:

Just updated to the latest beta, way more laggy than the last several releases. I'll admit, I haven't used it for the last two or three beta releases but as of this last update at least, it has gotten rather bad. Here is a video, it's easier than trying to explain it and you should be able to see what I mean. At least the CPU usage seems to come down when not scrolling when before it would like to lock at 100% and just sit there indefinitely. Anyways thought I would let you know this since I have an uncommonly massive library so this might not manifest for some users. BTW, I used the 'all' platform category because it illustrates it better but I do have some single platforms that behave similarly just not quite as bad. Otherwise, happy to finally be able to make LB go right to LBN instead of Launchbox Classic as next is still much MUCH better in a lot of ways. Thanks!

 

Hopefully things will be a lot smoother once the background caching completes (as noted by the progress bar at the top). Are you scrolling the whole time in the All view in that video? Or just line by line?

[cammelspit]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

Hopefully things will be a lot smoother once the background caching completes (as noted by the progress bar at the top). Are you scrolling the whole time in the All view in that video? Or just line by line?

The whole time. I don't necessarily hate having a placeholder scroll by while the image loads but it just freezes up and hitches, which is the real issue since you can't browse the games library effectively. I just imagine my LB screaming at me 'NOOOO GOD PLEASE NOOOO! TOOO MUUUUUUUUCH!!! AAAhhhhh!!!' lol. ?

[Jason Carr]

16 hours ago, cammelspit said:

The whole time. I don't necessarily hate having a placeholder scroll by while the image loads but it just freezes up and hitches, which is the real issue since you can't browse the games library effectively. I just imagine my LB screaming at me 'NOOOO GOD PLEASE NOOOO! TOOO MUUUUUUUUCH!!! AAAhhhhh!!!' lol. ?

Are you scrolling with the mouse wheel or a game controller?

[Jason Carr]

Beta 17 is out now; thanks to @neil9000 we've discovered that the remaining crashes in .Next were being caused by game controllers (or the game controller code), at least for him. Still confirming with @Zombeaver and @Retro808 that their issues are the same. This beta adds some more logging related to game controllers so that we can better troubleshoot it going forward. There's also a minor controllers fix that might resolve some issues.