8.6-beta-1 Released

[neil9000]

Just now, RULLUR said:

I've always found at times when I update MAME in the times before I even had LaunchBox I would dump all my ROMs into the newest version and get rid of the the older MAME, but then some games would no longer work in the latest MAME after. So because this happens, I decided to kinda play it safe with keeping them around and using LaunchBox to run the ones that work with whatever version certain ones work best with.

So what would be best in making things run much cleaner?

The thing with mame is the roms change, better dumps are found or more data gets pulled from the actual arcade machines, as well as the mame emulator improving as well and needing new files. what rom works in one version of the emulator may be broken in the next version as the rom has been updated and has new files in it. As i said above you should really match your romset with the same version of mame, and if you dont plan on updating your romset then dont update the emulator either because as you have found roms can and will break.

[RULLUR]

Okay, I think I'm starting to understand this better than I used to since most things seemed to be somewhat whispered about how to do MAME properly as it keeps updating. Any idea why I keep getting those command prompts popping up even when I get a game to run? Seems ever since those have happened around yesterday evening they have made things run slower and stuttered in both framerate and sound

[sagaopc]

Please @Jason Carr fix the Razer Hydra controller Bug with launchbox!!!! when you launch launchbox with Razer Hydra Plugged, the mouse cursor goes to the top and doesn't works properly

[neil9000]

2 minutes ago, sagaopc said:

Please @Jason Carr fix the Razer Hydra controller Bug with launchbox!!!! when you launch launchbox with Razer Hydra Plugged, the mouse cursor goes to the top and doesn't works properly

That sounds more like a mouse software issue than a Launchbox one, i have never personally seen any mouse do that.

[sagaopc]

2 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

That sounds more like a mouse software issue than a Launchbox one, i have never personally seen any mouse do that.

Isn't a mouse software bug, is a launchbox compatibility bug with razer hydra, because with I disconnect the razer hydra, it automatically back to works normally!

[sagaopc]

@Jason Carr

 

Edited August 27, 2018 by sagaopc

[Jason Carr]

18 hours ago, Mah0uPh0x said:

When I add or import roms into Launchbox.next, it keeps creating folders inside my emulator folders for some reason. As you can see by the attached screenshot, the "Manuals" and "Music" folders were created in my RetroArch directory. And inside those folders are platform folders. I'm not sure what could be causing this issue.

Good to know; I'll get this fixed for the next beta.

3 hours ago, RULLUR said:

The problem I'm having when it comes to MAME is trying to get everything to run correctly in which was to maybe Download every version of MAME from v1-200+. I don't have things as a set really. I just get a few ROMs here and there in which I don't quite know which is compatible with what. All I know now is that my oldest MAME is v155 and seems to do best with most of my games, but now it seems to have framerate issues in which the sound is stuttered up and once I exit a game I see a command prompt window appear for like a split-second and then close. When I run others that don't do v155 at most I'll get a command prompt window popping up scrolling a list of errors I can't read quick enough with at times I can see it say something of a "fatal error". I even have ran some from a version between 155-199 that open a prompt with a blinking cursor and then kinda close, or I get a game to load at a percentage that seems finished and then it crashes.

I'm not exactly clear on the new MAME Import feature, and seems now having all versions of MAME adjusted manually to whichever ROM is now crashing too at most since I Bulk Edited to v200 and this new feature is kinda unclear to me since I don't have my ROMs in sets

@neil9000 is correct in saying that the new importer is not going to work well for you unless you use a proper full set (that's why full set is in the title of the new wizard). You can always continue to use the previous, normal ROM importer just fine.

[Jason Carr]

40 minutes ago, sagaopc said:

Please @Jason Carr fix the Razer Hydra controller Bug with launchbox!!!! when you launch launchbox with Razer Hydra Plugged, the mouse cursor goes to the top and doesn't works properly

The Razer Hydra is a motion sensing controller. It sounds like either it's not configured properly or maybe it's sending out a signal while it's not being used. You should be able to just disable the controller in LaunchBox (turn off Use All Controllers and just select the controller that you want to use instead of the Hydra). Either way, it's quite an edge case and unfortunately I can't spend $400 on one to troubleshoot it.

[Omen]

@Jason Carr I imported my Mame 0.200 set with the option to filter out games that are not compatible with Mame. In the event an updated set is eventually released with newly compatible roms, will I have to delete my roms from LB and re import my updated set each time there's a Mame update?

[Jason Carr]

3 minutes ago, Omen said:

@Jason Carr I imported my Mame 0.200 set with the option to filter out games that are not compatible with Mame. In the event an updated set is eventually released with newly compatible roms, will I have to delete my roms from LB and re import my updated set each time there's a Mame update?

No, you can simply re-run the importer and it will use the updated MAME data and add any missing games. The one thing it will not do, however, is remove games that have been removed from MAME. So if you want the absolute cleanest set, then yes, you would need to remove the games and reimport. However, that shouldn't really be necessary.

[Omen]

17 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

No, you can simply re-run the importer and it will use the updated MAME data and add any missing games. The one thing it will not do, however, is remove games that have been removed from MAME. So if you want the absolute cleanest set, then yes, you would need to remove the games and reimport. However, that shouldn't really be necessary.

Awesome, that's exactly how I was hoping it would work. ?

[Jason Carr]

Alright, beta 7 is out now with the following:

- Fixed: Gif images were not displaying in the LaunchBox Game Details Sidebar

- Fixed: The list view in LaunchBox was not sorting secondarily by title when other columns were the primary sort

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

- The very last iteration of game controller performance improvements have been reverted to the previous version due to feedback suggesting that it made it worse; we should still be good to go so long as "Use All Controllers" is unchecked on afflicted systems

- The right-click menu cache on startup was causing some delays, so that has been removed; it was mostly moot anyways since calculations need to run on a per-game basis. The main menu caching does still happen; let me know if you're still seeing significant startup delays as a result.

- New Premium Feature: Now that MAME/Arcade metadata is much more accurate, the MAME/Arcade playlists have been overhauled to use the auto-filtering playlist system instead of a list of games (which turns out to be much more effective and also more performant). In addition, many new playlists have been added, including playlists for 2-player and 4-player games, as well as various genres like Beat Em Ups, Racing Games, etc. These new playlist options are available in the new "Import MAME Arcade Full Set" wizard as well as the "Create Missing Arcade/MAME Playlists" option from the Tools menu. Please keep in mind though that you will need to update and overwrite your metadata for your MAME games or the new playlists will not work properly.

- Improvement: The Download Metadata and Media and Import ROMs from Files wizards have been updated to prioritize the new, more accurate MAME data

For users that have used the new full-set MAME arcade importer in previous betas, you should be able to re-run the wizard and it will automatically update your metadata with the new information (Source was added to the MAME metadata in order to facilitate the new playlists). It will also offer to create all the new playlists. The good news here is that you shouldn't have to delete your MAME games and start over.

For users that have not yet used the new full-set MAME arcade importer, it is definitely recommended to delete your Arcade platform and playlists and start over, because you'll get a whole ton of new features (such as additional apps with the clones and much better filtering/prioritizations). However, if you don't want to start over, you can run the Download Metadata and Media wizard and tell it to overwrite all metadata (uncheck all media so that you don't re-download anything). This will update your MAME games to use the much improved MAME metadata, and allow the new playlists to work properly. The new playlists won't work very well at all if you continue to use the previous metadata. Finally, you can create all the new playlists and update the old ones by going to Tools > Create Missing MAME/Arcade Playlists.

[neil9000]

Just re-ran the new MAME import wizard and let it create the classics playlists and all seems to have gone without a hitch. Excellent work as always Jason.  

[Jason Carr]

Beta 8 is out now with a fix for the Namco System 22 playlist, which was incorrectly set the to CPS3 games. If you use Tools > Create Missing MAME Playlists it should fix the issue (assuming you had already downloaded them all from beta 7).

Edit: It looks like you do have to first delete your existing Namco System 22 playlist, however.

[JesseBlue]

Just re-scraped all my MAME games... I love it! Finally proper "Genre", "Publisher" and "Source" metadata! 

But the manual search (for a single game) still uses the old metadata?

[kmoney]

All the new mame playlists and metadata are a really nice touch and really enjoying it. I just updated the metadata with a curated mame.xml that had the older metadata and it worked great with the newer metadata. All these new features are going to come in handy especially when you have people over and want to play a specific category such as BeatEmUps or Fighters and etc.and you can just go directly to the playlist. The bar has been really raised with all these additions?

[Jason Carr]

56 minutes ago, JesseBlue said:

Just re-scraped all my MAME games... I love it! Finally proper "Genre", "Publisher" and "Source" metadata! 

But the manual search (for a single game) still uses the old metadata?

Adding a single game will still use the updated metadata.

[Kondorito]

Guys, question; I have a custom MAME set (parents only). Will it make a difference/improvement on specific fields if I ran the update the metadata to the entire set? i.e. Genres, developer and or publisher will be more accurate). 

Edited August 28, 2018 by Kondorito

[Jason Carr]

15 minutes ago, Kondorito said:

Guys, question; I have a custom MAME set (parents only). Will it make a difference/improvement on specific fields if I ran the update the metadata to the entire set? i.e. Genres, developer and or publisher will be more accurate). 

I don't think it will matter with this latest beta, sans for clones (which you're not using) and games that might have been removed or added from MAME since your set was created. Let me know if you have any issues with the playlists though, as that would mean that some of the metadata didn't come through.

You might find that you get better results though if you start over with a full set and prioritize regions with using the new full set importer (assuming you have the disk space).

[ZeSystem]

5 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

For users that have not yet used the new full-set MAME arcade importer, it is definitely recommended to delete your Arcade platform and playlists and start over, because you'll get a whole ton of new features (such as additional apps with the clones and much better filtering/prioritizations). However, if you don't want to start over, you can run the Download Metadata and Media wizard and tell it to overwrite all metadata (uncheck all media so that you don't re-download anything). This will update your MAME games to use the much improved MAME metadata, and allow the new playlists to work properly. The new playlists won't work very well at all if you continue to use the previous metadata. Finally, you can create all the new playlists and update the old ones by going to Tools > Create Missing MAME/Arcade Playlists. 

I have hundreds of MAME games with customized genres (that better explain the game), replaced/removed/added customized new clear logos, etc.

How do I keep them and update to the new meta list? Please don't tell me there is no way...