9.0-beta-1 Released

[guardianali]

Auto Generate playlists arent working well when it comes to certain things. 

For instance, when you look at the genre options available in launchbox, you have shooter and you also have shooter / gun. 

If I make one playlist and make it Equal Shooter and also Not Equal Gun, it shows EVERYTHING that isnt Gun..even non shooter games. It goes follow both. 

Also, its a pain to put in platform every time. If you cant do nestled Playlists unless your already in platform category, and I right click on a console, it should already auto populate an "Platform is Equal to " field with the platform you right clicked on to make it. 

[angelobodetti]

Am I the only one who’s playlist platform categories disappeared?

@Jason Carr per your request I messaged you a zip of my data folder.

Edited October 22, 2018 by angelobodetti

[Jason Carr]

On 10/21/2018 at 7:30 AM, angelobodetti said:

Am I the only one who’s playlist platform categories disappeared?

@Jason Carr per your request I messaged you a zip of my data folder.

Thanks @angelobodetti; as best I can tell, this issue was a relic of some bugs we had in previous betas that left your data in sort of a limbo state. I've added some force-fixes in the next beta that should fix it.

On 10/20/2018 at 10:05 PM, guardianali said:

Auto Generate playlists arent working well when it comes to certain things. 

For instance, when you look at the genre options available in launchbox, you have shooter and you also have shooter / gun. 

If I make one playlist and make it Equal Shooter and also Not Equal Gun, it shows EVERYTHING that isnt Gun..even non shooter games. It goes follow both. 

Also, its a pain to put in platform every time. If you cant do nestled Playlists unless your already in platform category, and I right click on a console, it should already auto populate an "Platform is Equal to " field with the platform you right clicked on to make it. 

Yes, I have plans to streamline the process of creating playlists. For the shooter situation, you can just say genre Equals shooter, which will only contain games with the exact Shooter genre. The queries do become complicated when adding more than one filter on the same field, and I know that can be improved.

[Jason Carr]

On 10/20/2018 at 11:40 AM, dbalcar said:

Just got this error while in LB 9.0 beta 1  and clicking on a video snap.  I had looked at like 10 games before this one then got this error.  I was on  lemmings (US prototype)pe) 

This should be fixed for the next beta as well.

[Jason Carr]

Beta 2 is out now with the following:

- Improvement: LaunchBox performance has been significantly improved when loading up the platform categories list in the sidebar, specifically when dealing with categories and total game counts. Loading the counts is now threaded so they may not show up immediately and will load in the background for large collections.

- Improvement: Items with children are no longer always sorted first in the LaunchBox side bar, which was a bit disorienting now that platform categories are more flexible

- Improvement: Big Box performance has been improved when loading up details for platform categories with many children

- Fixed: Rare null reference error when loading game details in the sidebar in LaunchBox

- Fixed: Rare data issue with platform categories not showing up

- Fixed: Playlists were sometimes not updating when manually adding games to playlists

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

Beta 2 is out now with the following:

- Improvement: LaunchBox performance has been significantly improved when loading up the platform categories list in the sidebar, specifically when dealing with categories and total game counts. Loading the counts is now threaded so they may not show up immediately and will load in the background for large collections.

- Improvement: Items with children are no longer always sorted first in the LaunchBox side bar, which was a bit disorienting now that platform categories are more flexible

- Improvement: Big Box performance has been improved when loading up details for platform categories with many children

- Fixed: Rare null reference error when loading game details in the sidebar in LaunchBox

- Fixed: Rare data issue with platform categories not showing up

- Fixed: Playlists were sometimes not updating when manually adding games to playlists

 

[Retrofrogg]

Great regarding the items with children now being alphabetically. This leads me to another point - can you change the "nested name" for a platform, just like you can for a playlist? This would be extremely useful!

[angelobodetti]

Thanks @Jason Carr! Beta 2 resolved the missing category bug. 

[Jason Carr]

6 hours ago, Dan said:

Great regarding the items with children now being alphabetically. This leads me to another point - can you change the "nested name" for a platform, just like you can for a playlist? This would be extremely useful!

That's a good thought; currently you can't but I might be able to add that in eventually.

[Retrofrogg]

Honestly that would be amazing. I had begun to change my platform names to add the year in brackets afterwards - but that messes up the folder associations and so I have to rename the folders, which takes a while! A nested name would be a lot easier. Or perhaps even better would be a way for LB to do this automatically but I don’t know if that’s on your radar. 

[Mr. RetroLust]

@Jason Carr I hope this is the right place to ask this if not i'm really sorry, it's a bit hard for me to find the right search terms in english. Since the overhaul of the mame importer tool I'm a bit confused how to import/update an image from the database without also downloading the metadata from the database. Since this metadata is outdated and/or doesn't have the same metadata as the importer has (which is so useful for the new playlists but also has so much more info). Is there a way to do so or is it still being worked on? I reckon I have to remove said game and import it again to get the mame metadata and updated images? Wouldn't it be best if all the mame metadata is transfered to the database at some point and the entries locked (so games won't be renamed back and forth, would be better for playlist stability as well I guess) so all we would have to do update the entries with new images/media?

[Jason Carr]

7 minutes ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

@Jason Carr I hope this is the right place to ask this if not i'm really sorry, it's a bit hard for me to find the right search terms in english. Since the overhaul of the mame importer tool I'm a bit confused how to import/update an image from the database without also downloading the metadata from the database. Since this metadata is outdated and/or doesn't have the same metadata as the importer has (which is so useful for the new playlists but also has so much more info). Is there a way to do so or is it still being worked on? I reckon I have to remove said game and import it again to get the mame metadata and updated images? Wouldn't it be best if all the mame metadata is transfered to the database at some point and the entries locked (so games won't be renamed back and forth, would be better for playlist stability as well I guess) so all we would have to do update the entries with new images/media?

If you run the Download Metadata and Media Wizard and tell it not to overwrite existing fields, then no metadata will be overwritten and you'll get any new images that are available. Also, I could be wrong, but I think the MAME metadata is always prioritized if you're working with MAME/arcade, even when updating metadata. I haven't specifically tested for this, but I remember working on it back when we did the MAME overhaul.

[Jason Carr]

Beta 3 is out now with a new "Auto-Generate Child Playlists" feature:

This option is available when right-clicking on platforms in the LaunchBox sidebar while in Platform Categories view. It allows you to generate child playlists for All Games, Genres, Regions, Play Modes, Developers, and/or Publishers and optionally put them in child categories.

Now we're gonna need a bunch of new media for Big Box.

[Mr. RetroLust]

3 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

If you run the Download Metadata and Media Wizard and tell it not to overwrite existing fields, then no metadata will be overwritten and you'll get any new images that are available. Also, I could be wrong, but I think the MAME metadata is always prioritized if you're working with MAME/arcade, even when updating metadata. I haven't specifically tested for this, but I remember working on it back when we did the MAME overhaul.

Superb man, thank you so much! I have looked beyond that option, gonna try that

[rexryan]

Did a few..Awesome job.

[Omen]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

Beta 3 is out now with a new "Auto-Generate Child Playlists" feature:

I already started adding playlists to platform sub categories, I am so happy to see that everything I did is the same way you've implemented it! I thought everything I did was in vain, but it seems gamer minds think alike! ?

[sergeb]

Jason,

great "Auto-Generate Child Playlists"!*

Could you add also '"favorite games Auto-Generate Child Playlists",as I told you earlier in this thread?

thanks!

serge

(and maybe later a "by year Auto-Generate Child Playlists"?)

 

On 10/17/2018 at 6:29 PM, Jason Carr said:

I do plan to add some easier options to auto-generate playlists. Currently I'm planning on adding something to the right-click menu for platforms to auto-generate genre playlists, etc., so I can probably add a Favorites one as well.

 

Edited October 24, 2018 by sergeb

[Jason Carr]

3 hours ago, faydesmee said:

I generated playlists for PS2. It takes ages (at least a few minutes) to start LB at 60%/70% CPU usage. I have 728 playlists.

This is indeed one concern I had. It is going to be a tradeoff at some point. If you have a large collection, it may be best not to create playlists for developers and publishers, as they tend to have the most playlists by far.

2 hours ago, sergeb said:

Jason,

great "Auto-Generate Child Playlists"!*

Could you add also '"favorite games Auto-Generate Child Playlists",as I told you earlier in this thread?

thanks!

serge

(and maybe later a "by year Auto-Generate Child Playlists"?)

 

 

Ah yes. I'll add that to my list.

[sergeb]

thanks!

[deliyuerek85]

 @Jason Carr

Hi Jason, playlists are still not updating automatically, if I add a new game to a platform via the "Add" button.

The new feature to automatically generate categories is really cool. However, it would be cool, if you could add a "sort by" button in BigBox within the platforms/playlists. You could add the button into the sidebar next to the search button for example. I dont want to create a playlist for example for "Playstation (sorted by year)", "Playstation (sorted by title)", Playstation (sorted by date added)" etc.