8.6-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

2 hours ago, Suhrvivor said:

How come the new generic playlists only contain arcade games? You would expect that a playlist in LaunchBox titled "2-Players Games" would include all multiplayer games, not just for one platform. If they're only for Arcade, they should be named "2-players Arcade games", don't they?

The new playlists are auto-populate playlists and use genre names and other criteria that only work for the MAME metadata. They're purposefully displayed under the Arcade platform category for this reason. They're easy to rename to whatever you like, however.

2 hours ago, dragon57 said:

Hmm, has beta 9 been taken down? Neither of my installations here is updating from beta 6, and I verified all the Update settings in the Options panel are still correct and unchanged.

It should still be up. Do you have background updates enabled?

17 minutes ago, dragon57 said:

I just noticed I have a number of duplicate Playlists after upgrading to Beta 9 and redoing my MAME metadata and Platform import. The lists that are duplicates also have different amounts of games in them, so they aren't true duplicates across the board, but they exist and if you edit one and try to hit OK without changing anything, LaunchBox tells you that you can't have duplicate Playlist names.

Any suggestions as to how to clean this up without getting into worse trouble?

Assuming you don't have any custom playlists that you need to keep, it should be safe to just delete them all. Then you can go to Tools > Create Missing Arcade/MAME Playlists and it will recreate them.

[dragon57]

Looks like I'm in business again. After a few hours, beta 9 seemed to be out there and LaunchBox downloaded it. I am guessing server load, or something.

I nuked all my playlists and had LB recreate them and all seems ok on that front now. Thanks!

[Jason Carr]

Beta 10 is out now with the following:

- New default playlist clear logo images for all of the new MAME/Arcade genre and player playlists thanks to @RetroHumanoid

- Notes are now added to the publisher-based playlists (I forgot to put them back in when I changed them to be auto-populating playlists)

- A ton of new platform/category/playlist videos are now available in the video downloader from @RetroHumanoid, @Padou, @dragon57, and @CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT. Huge thanks to all these guys for all the amazing videos.

- Translation updates thanks to @Kondorito, @Bardock, @Cauptain, and @Opak

[Lordmonkus]

On 8/27/2018 at 5:57 PM, Jason Carr said:

- Fixed: LaunchBox was occasionally creating Manuals, Music, and Videos folders in emulator directories

This bug still exists, I just encountered it.

[RULLUR]

I haven't updated much of the Metadata to my games lately unless it gets listed as whatever file it's called, but I have at times get the wrong cover on things that even aren't that game or even that platform. I have made my own cover art for some things and I later come back to it being either overwritten or the one I deleted gets added in with the cover art I made. Not sure if that has been fixed long ago or not or what, and what can be done about it since I like things to be as precise as can be to even having a Japanese Cover and Metadata of a game I Imported and not have it be given either or both the American Cover and/or Game Title to it. I have even gone from clicking the x by where it gives the LaunchBox ID to it in hopes it won't automatically classify it as the wrong thing and then further to go in the Image Folders and Delete out the wrong Images, but sometimes they come back wrong.

The bug that @Lordmonkus mentioned still be around kinda reminded me of my above statement and felt the need to address it and know if or when that too has been fixed.

[Jason Carr]

7 hours ago, Lordmonkus said:

This bug still exists, I just encountered it.

Good to know; I think I found the issue and it should be fixed (hopefully) for the next beta.

7 hours ago, RULLUR said:

I haven't updated much of the Metadata to my games lately unless it gets listed as whatever file it's called, but I have at times get the wrong cover on things that even aren't that game or even that platform. I have made my own cover art for some things and I later come back to it being either overwritten or the one I deleted gets added in with the cover art I made. Not sure if that has been fixed long ago or not or what, and what can be done about it since I like things to be as precise as can be to even having a Japanese Cover and Metadata of a game I Imported and not have it be given either or both the American Cover and/or Game Title to it. I have even gone from clicking the x by where it gives the LaunchBox ID to it in hopes it won't automatically classify it as the wrong thing and then further to go in the Image Folders and Delete out the wrong Images, but sometimes they come back wrong.

The bug that @Lordmonkus mentioned still be around kinda reminded me of my above statement and felt the need to address it and know if or when that too has been fixed.

If you run an update on metadata and choose not to overwrite anything, the wizard will add any new images that aren't in your collection. It never, ever deletes images. But depending on your priorities, it may show a different image than it did before if it thinks there's a better option, or if you have multiple options that it thinks are good. If you're overriding a game's metadata though, and you're happy with it, it may be best not to run a metadata update on it, because the whole point of metadata updates are to update the data with what's on the server. I did add a fix a while back to stop titles from being changed though.

[RULLUR]

Thank you Jason for letting me know of this. I had an issue with it for example I was Importing multiple copies of ChaosEdit which is an editor for games like Wolfenstein 3D and others within that same engine to my Windows Platform section, and it decided to give everything in Metadata for Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition. I deleted all the images from the "Edit" menu and put my own stuff in manually, and later came back to it having Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition artwork again. Might've been I didn't clear out traces of it in the Images folder and so that was why they went back in place to all the other copies of ChaosEdit I was using for other Wolfenstein 3D mods projects I was working on when instead I wanted to have only the cover art I made for it? Since then I guess going in and ridding any trace of the wrong Metadata Images hasn't made anything come back all wrong.

Edited August 30, 2018 by RULLUR

[Jason Carr]

Alright, beta 11 is out with the following:

- Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation thanks to @Cauptain

- Hopeful fix (again) for folders being created in emulator folders

- I noticed that performance in Big Box while going from platform categories into platforms was made a lot slower by all the new auto-populate playlists, so I did some work to speed that up, and it seems to be much faster now.

Unless any new issues come up, I'll probably let this beta simmer over the weekend and we'll put out the official release on Monday or Tuesday.

[Cjax08]

Sweet. Awesome work as always. Hey I’m positive I’m not the first one to think about this, but is there something holding the importer back from being able to sort games by controller type needed? Such as light guns, steering wheels, dual joysticks etc etc. I know that there used to be a controls.ini project somewhere out there that I think has been abandoned, but isn’t that information included in the mame.xml now anyways? Launchbox is already one of the best ways to filter a mame set for ANY use. I feel like if filtering by controls were possible it would put it above almost anything else out there. I was thinking that if getting super specific with controls isn’t possible, then what about a simple flag of some sort or something in the metadata that indicates if it’s anything other than simple 4/8 way joystick and buttons. For most people that is all they are equipped to use anyways. And if it separated everything NOT in that criteria into another folder or another playlist, then that would make things a lot simpler even. Just spitting ideas here. I’ve loved this software for a while now Jason, and I can’t thank you enough for putting in the work you do. 

[Lordmonkus]

I believe this is something planned, we had a discussion about this exact thing in Discord a couple of nights ago.

[Jason Carr]

7 minutes ago, Cjax08 said:

Sweet. Awesome work as always. Hey I’m positive I’m not the first one to think about this, but is there something holding the importer back from being able to sort games by controller type needed? Such as light guns, steering wheels, dual joysticks etc etc. I know that there used to be a controls.ini project somewhere out there that I think has been abandoned, but isn’t that information included in the mame.xml now anyways? Launchbox is already one of the best ways to filter a mame set for ANY use. I feel like if filtering by controls were possible it would put it above almost anything else out there. I was thinking that if getting super specific with controls isn’t possible, then what about a simple flag of some sort or something in the metadata that indicates if it’s anything other than simple 4/8 way joystick and buttons. For most people that is all they are equipped to use anyways. And if it separated everything NOT in that criteria into another folder or another playlist, then that would make things a lot simpler even. Just spitting ideas here. I’ve loved this software for a while now Jason, and I can’t thank you enough for putting in the work you do. 

This is something I definitely want to do, but it is complicated and we're pushing for the 8.6 release at this point, so unfortunately it won't make it in for the next release. Hopefully I can take a look at it soon though.

[Jason Carr]

Just a shameless plug for the Unified Redux theme for Big Box:

I've updated it to work very well for the new MAME/Arcade playlists.

[RULLUR]

I wonder if something like a Joy-To-Key can be built-in for games that don't come that way as standard. I'd love to Launch some older PC Game and not have to open Joy-To-Key before doing so..especially if I'm playing on my GPD Win.

[neil9000]

1 hour ago, RULLUR said:

I wonder if something like a Joy-To-Key can be built-in for games that don't come that way as standard. I'd love to Launch some older PC Game and not have to open Joy-To-Key before doing so..especially if I'm playing on my GPD Win.

You could set joy to key as a additional app to launch before a specific game im guessing.

[RULLUR]

You mean like as a Command Line to be tied into the game that is being Launched with it somehow? I just wanna find a better way than opening Joy-to-Key and picking which control setting for whatever I'm about to play and THEN Launch the game. I would love to just Launch a game and have it already know the control setting without making any other clicks around it.

If you ever used GPD Win..it can be somewhat annoying to switch between Mouse Mode and X-Input Mode while in the middle of a game to where even doing so will make things unresponsive unless you came in already switched to X-Input Mode in the same ways as if you Launched a game and forgot to plug in or turn your controller on and have to exit and come back for it to work.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, RULLUR said:

You mean like as a Command Line to be tied into the game that is being Launched with it somehow? I just wanna find a better way than opening Joy-to-Key and picking which control setting for whatever I'm about to play and THEN Launch the game. I would love to just Launch a game and have it already know the control setting without making any other clicks around it.

If you ever used GPD Win..it can be somewhat annoying to switch between Mouse Mode and X-Input Mode while in the middle of a game to where even doing so will make things unresponsive unless you came in already switched to X-Input Mode in the same ways as if you Launched a game and forgot to plug in or turn your controller on and have to exit and come back for it to work.

Have you heard of controller companion? It costs £2/$3 on steam and is similar to joy to key, but has a much better interface and you can set profiles which will auto load when the game is launched as it see's the .exe launch and auto loads the profile. I use it myself and its a great program.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/

[neil9000]

For example here is my Diablo 3 profile which lets me use the controller and auto loads when the game starts.

[RULLUR]

First I ever heard of this, but sounds way more awesome than Joy-to-Key though. The price and everything sounds very worthy, and I thank you so much for introducing me to it too Neil. Does this also work well with MS-DOS titles? I know Joy-to-Key works with DOS games, but just wanted to make sure of this one can too or not.

[neil9000]

Just now, RULLUR said:

First I ever heard of this, but sounds way more awesome than Joy-to-Key though. The price and everything sounds very worthy, and I thank you so much for introducing me to it too Neil. Does this also work well with MS-DOS titles? I know Joy-to-Key works with DOS games, but just wanted to make sure of this one can too or not.

I have not personally used it with DOS games, but i dont see why it wouldn't. When you setup a profile you point it to the .exe so it knows what to associate the profile with, so as long as the DOS games have a .exe it should work. However i cant guarantee that as i dont play DOS games. 

[RULLUR]

Fair enough. sounds like something I'm gonna definitely check out though and will be helping out with some of us who use GPD Win handhelds without hassle of switching controller modes. I especially like how Jason had GPD Win in mind when working on LaunchBox for that same reason as well to where you can stay in X-Input the whole time and make it open right as you turn the Handheld on too if you want. This Controller Companion sounds like it's gonna make that pocket-sized portable LaunchBox experience so much easier too

Edited August 31, 2018 by RULLUR