8.8-beta-1 Released

[neil9000]

I am on a 55inch TV as well and am about 2 metres from the TV as well. I know that Windows says 300% (Recommended) but thats way to big for my liking, its close to 720p at that high scaling, which looks really bad to me. I found 150% was my sweet spot and as i said 200% is the equivalent to 1080p, so you are effectively running at around 720p on a 4K TV, but whatever works for you i guess. Also i should add if you right click the desktop and go to view you can make the desktop icons bigger without adjusting the scaling.  

[PattersonCZ]

Ok i will try 150% scaling and i will see.

[Jason Carr]

I will fix the DPI scaling issues guys, no worries. Just didn't notice it was an issue.

I'll be back to development and back to this thread tomorrow morning to start fixing bugs and addressing issues here. Thanks for all the feedback.

[Jason Carr]

On 9/22/2018 at 9:36 AM, rexryan said:

OK so I created a Platform called Atari. I set the parent as Consoles i then added 2600.7800 etc. I then created another platform called prototypes.All worked perfect.i clicked on the Atari tab pic attached and an error popped up then the system disappeared,PIc Attached.

@rexryan After looking at your data, it looks like everything is there and working properly. Did it just start working again after a restart?

[Jason Carr]

On 9/22/2018 at 9:50 AM, rexryan said:

sent it also put the systems out side of the platform category

I'm pretty sure it's because these are just checked to show in the Root in the parents tab. I'm guessing you got this resolved though since the data you sent me doesn't have that issue (or maybe it's resolved on a subsequent page of this topic...)

[Jason Carr]

On 9/22/2018 at 9:50 AM, deliyuerek85 said:

Ok, now the Platforms are shown in the root. But now the contents of the root folder are not sorted correctly in BigBox. I don't know in which order they are listed. It seems to be random.

Should be fixed for the next beta.

[Jason Carr]

On 9/22/2018 at 11:07 AM, Dan said:

Brilliant update Jason! This feature will take the organisational capabilities of Launchbox onto another level. Nice work. Sounds like the teething issues are being addressed pretty pronto too.

Going to try it out as soon as the update has finished. Quick question - there's a lot of talk about nesting categories & platforms etc. Can it be used to group ROMs? For example, having USA and JAP under NES, for example?

Yes, it can. Probably the best way to do this would just be to use auto-populate playlists that search for values in the Region or Version fields, and place them underneath the platform.

On 9/22/2018 at 11:17 AM, Dan said:

Just loaded up the new beta (8.2) for the first time. 2 of my platform categories (computers and consoles) just show 0. There used to be 5 or 6 platform in each before! Any advice? See pic:

 

EDIT: switching around the view settings seems to have fixed it!

Have you seen this since? Are you able to replicate it at all?

On 9/22/2018 at 1:02 PM, MadK9 said:

@Jason Carr Had some serious performance issues with Beta 1/2, LaunchBox would load and just be be blank for about 5 seconds, then populate, also in BB in Platform Category mode, Video loading was terrible to where some would take 5 seconds to catch up to what video to actually play.

I rolled back to 8.7 and all the performance issue were gone everything really snappy and no issues in BB at all.

Love the new feature, but for me the performance hit is too much, watching system monitor was seeing LB/BB spiking to around 80% cpu usage and staying that way for extended periods even if i left LB sitting doing nothing, took some time to fall off (this wasn't all the time).

I would say maybe it was an issue my end, but rolling back to 8.7 fixed all the issues i was having.

Remind me what your hardware is? I am interested to know how much performance is affected by the new stuff. Also, if you can zip up and PM me your LaunchBox\Data folder, I can do some performance testing to see if there's anything I can speed up. Keep in mind that new features almost always require more processing, and performance is often affected. I've already done some work to help with performance, but I may do some more to see how things can be improved.

[Jason Carr]

On 9/22/2018 at 9:41 PM, bundangdon said:

One small bug I noticed just now. After adding a sub-category under Atari 7800 within the category "Classics". It doesn't show all systems within the folder-tree like before, as shown here. Even after I remove the same sub-category, it still reads "No results were found". Nothing major but certainly noticeable?

Please PM me your Data folder, and I can troubleshoot, assuming it still happens after a restart?

[Jason Carr]

On 9/23/2018 at 2:32 AM, deliyuerek85 said:

I have noticed, that the games in the Playlists are not sorted correctly in BigBox. For example, I have a playlist, where the games should be sorted by "Date added". But they are now sorted randomly. But that issue is only in BigBox.

Another bug that I have discovered is, that my playlists, where the games should listed, that are released between a specific time period, are not populated anymore:



But in the edit menu they can be seen:

Ha, I'm turning into a broken record. I think something fishy is going on here; can you PM me your LaunchBox\Data folder?

[Omen]

On 9/22/2018 at 7:47 AM, Jason Carr said:

The only known remaining issue regarding the new nested stuff is that if you delete a parent that has children, sometimes you can orphan the children. I'll probably fix this in a future beta just by throwing them in the root in that case. I also still need to modify the right-click menu in the sidebar.

This explains my missing Favorites and Playlists categories. They weren't empty but have disappeared for some reason, and I get the error about it already existing when I try and add them. I can't wait for the fix that adds them to the root.

[GreenGriffon]

1 hour ago, Omen said:

This explains my missing Favorites and Playlists categories. They weren't empty but have disappeared for some reason, and I get the error about it already existing when I try and add them. I can't wait for the fix that adds them to the root.

This happened to me as well. I had 2 custom categories for "Collections" and "Playlists", which despite having games in them disappeared with Beta 2. Multiple restarts didn't  fix the problem.

I had to manually remove all references to them in Parents.xml and Platforms.xml before they reappeared. Then after I moved everything into others, I deleted these two categories, recreated them, then moved everything back into them.

Now it's working fine, but it was a confusing problem to resolve.

[Omen]

16 minutes ago, GreenGriffon said:

This happened to me as well. I had 2 custom categories for "Collections" and "Playlists", which despite having games in them disappeared with Beta 2. Multiple restarts didn't  fix the problem.

I had to manually remove all references to them in Parents.xml and Platforms.xml before they reappeared. Then after I moved everything into others, I deleted these two categories, recreated them, then moved everything back into them.

Now it's working fine, but it was a confusing problem to resolve.

Damn that sounds like a ton of work, I guess I better get started now lol. Thank you for finding a solution to this issue. ?

Edited September 24, 2018 by Omen

[GreenGriffon]

7 minutes ago, Omen said:

Damn that sounds like a ton of work, I guess I better get started now lol. Thank you for finding a solution to this issue. ?

You might want to wait and see what Jason fixes for the next Beta before you dive in.  He might already have something in the pipeline to resolve it.

I was having buddies over the next day and wanted my collection back to normal, otherwise I would have waited for a fix.

[Omen]

11 minutes ago, GreenGriffon said:

You might want to wait and see what Jason fixes for the next Beta before you dive in.  He might already have something in the pipeline to resolve it.

I was having buddies over the next day and wanted my collection back to normal, otherwise I would have waited for a fix.

Yeah I'll just wait for the next beta, I'm also having issues with my categories being out of order in BB, but Jason says a fix is coming for that also.

[deliyuerek85]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Ha, I'm turning into a broken record. I think something fishy is going on here; can you PM me your LaunchBox\Data folder?

I've sent it to you.

[Retrofrogg]

Something I've noticed - regarding the platform selection window and the game counts. Game counts are great. However, with the new nested feature, a lot of the "parent" folders have a count of 0 - because there are no games in them. There might be some sub-folders however.

I think it would be an improvement if the count in this scenario would show the number of "items" (this would include sub-folders), not just games. Makes mores sense to me and makes the number useful in this scenario.

[rexryan]

4 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

I'm pretty sure it's because these are just checked to show in the Root in the parents tab. I'm guessing you got this resolved though since the data you sent me doesn't have that issue (or maybe it's resolved on a subsequent page of this topic...)

I did figure the root issue, but I still have the issue if im in platform category view and i make a platform to hold all my atari systems that goes ok. If i  go to create a Sega platform for those systems screen flashes as if its updating and all of a sudden atari platform is gone.

[Kevin_Flynn]

I haven't tried the beta yet. Is it possible to skip a platform / playlist if there's only one option?

Nintendo

- - - Nintendo Entertainment System  (SKIP)

- - - - - - Game 1

- - - - - - Game 2

- - - - - - Game 3

 

For instance, I have a Pinball category; however, only one Platform - Pinball FX - I don't want to asked what platform as the wheel is just repeated.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Kevin_Flynn

[azuravian]

1 hour ago, Kevin_Flynn said:

I haven't tried the beta yet. Is it possible to skip a platform / playlist if there's only one option?

Nintendo

- - - Nintendo Entertainment System  (SKIP)

- - - - - - Game 1

- - - - - - Game 2

- - - - - - Game 3

 

For instance, I have a Pinball category; however, only one Platform - Pinball FX - I don't want to asked what platform as the wheel is just repeated.

I understand different people's needs are different, but why create a category to only have one playlist in it?  Why not just have "Pinball FX" as the category or rename "Pinball FX" to "Pinball"?

Edited September 25, 2018 by azuravian

[bundangdon]

9 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Please PM me your Data folder, and I can troubleshoot, assuming it still happens after a restart?

Jason, thank you very much for the fast reply! It seems to be working okay now, after I edited some of the xml files in the 'data' folder. However, one thing I noticed is that there somehow needs to be the ability to create a "platform category". With the new nesting system, that function seems to be gone unless you manually edit 2 of the xml files in the 'data' folder. With so many "Consoles" I like to separate the older systems into another root folder such as "Classics"