plugin LaunchBox Image Helper Plugin

[DBut73]

Don't know if anybody would be interested in this but I am working on a little plugin/EXE to help sort out Images for games in the Launchbox collection.

It's been written in VB.net and there is nothing special about it, it just does the job it was written for, or at least it does on my system.

I will say this is my very first post in any forum so please be gentle with me, I have no idea what I am doing here, just making it up as I go...……. WooHoo a you-tube video

I am also learning VB.net while writing the plugin, used VB6 in the past and now on VB.net 2017 so a big leap,

Would anybody be interested in testing it on there system? If I can figure out how to get it out there.

Butler_Soft.zip

Edited August 23, 2019 by DBut73
Updated download link

[sundogak]

Looks like a cool plugin. Really like the ability to see the available media in picture form since makes very easy to pick what want and weed out errors. 

[Mick2K]

Woa that looks awesome. Will this ever be released or is there a chance to beta test this?

[Kondorito]

Very nice work!

Some of those features will surely help speed up the process for users to get and manage their media.

I will keep an eye on this topic. 

[DBut73]

Here we go guys, sorry it's taken so long. Sorting out a few little bugs & had a little problem with visual studio and desktop scaling, long story short it decided to re-arrange most of the forms contents in both the plugin and the executable so I had to put it all back in place. (Note to self. DON'T run Visual Studio 2017 with desktop scaling set above 100%)

Download below. unzip into plugin directory, please look at the read me pdf.

Please let me know what you think, I hope it works, as I said before these are my first .NET programs.

Butler_Soft.zip

 

Edited August 23, 2019 by DBut73
Updated Zip file

[Undertherainbow]

Hey, hm.. for me apparently its only finding logo's

One thing , maybe thats the reason, if game has region image aka "north america" its not being found. Or any other region for that matter. Only images from root are found.

--Edit, i noticed small button (sub) ? it offers to move image to front image folder? But i dont want to do that. Sometimes there are duplicate games from different region ,that would put them all together

 

Another thing, which is why i was looking at this in the first place. I have sometimes image name after original game.exe and app cant do "find best match" ? any chance for that?

example game name :

Advanced Busterhawk Gley Lancer

but image name Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer (Japan) (Translated En)

image name is after game.exe . LB has no trouble finding those

 

Edited January 10, 2019 by Undertherainbow

[DBut73]

6 hours ago, Undertherainbow said:

One thing , maybe thats the reason, if game has region image aka "north america" its not being found. Or any other region for that matter. Only images from root are found.

--Edit, i noticed small button (sub) ? it offers to move image to front image folder? But i dont want to do that. Sometimes there are duplicate games from different region ,that would put them all together

I have not done much with the regional images at the moment, the root images will be displayed from the plugin.

The EXE version does get the games region from the XML file, but I have to figure out a way of displaying all the regions that are within each of the image types folders. I am not even sure how I am going to handle the regions on the plugin.

 

6 hours ago, Undertherainbow said:

Another thing, which is why i was looking at this in the first place. I have sometimes image name after original game.exe and app cant do "find best match" ? any chance for that?

example game name :

Advanced Busterhawk Gley Lancer

but image name Advanced Busterhawk Gleylancer (Japan) (Translated En)

image name is after game.exe . LB has no trouble finding those

I will look into this and see what I can do, I did have a string search within the image filenames at one point but it didn't work very well, started showing images that were from other games eg 'Twisted Metal Black' was being picked out when looking for the game 'Black' on the PS2.

I know it still needs a bit more work, but this is only a beta....

Thanks for the feedback

[Undertherainbow]

27 minutes ago, DBut73 said:

I have not done much with the regional images at the moment, the root images will be displayed from the plugin.

The EXE version does get the games region from the XML file, but I have to figure out a way of displaying all the regions that are within each of the image types folders. I am not even sure how I am going to handle the regions on the plugin.

 

I will look into this and see what I can do, I did have a string search within the image filenames at one point but it didn't work very well, started showing images that were from other games eg 'Twisted Metal Black' was being picked out when looking for the game 'Black' on the PS2.

I know it still needs a bit more work, but this is only a beta....

Thanks for the feedback

Maybe use regex search instead? launchbox files do not use special characters, so it shouldnt be too much trouble? Just cut out part ot name which starts with (

Or maybe talk to jason, if there is way to hook into lb api to look and get all images?

Edited January 10, 2019 by Undertherainbow

[mohanned85]

i will give this a try and see mate thx

[DBut73]

7 hours ago, Pixel said:

It downloads a youtube video and stops. I cannot save it.

After pasting an image, it cannot find a temp path.

Can you play the youtube video after it has downloaded within the download form? I may have fixed this on my WIP build, it rings a bell or two.

As for pasting an image, what type of image where you pasting? Box Front, Back, Cart etc

Edited August 23, 2019 by DBut73

[DBut73]

33 minutes ago, Pixel said:

No, I cannot. It just says it's finished. Nothing else.

What is the URL for the video you are trying to download?

PM or post here, I can try it on my WIP build to see if it is working or not.....

[DBut73]

1 hour ago, Pixel said:

Just a random game:

 

I don't think an url matters.

 

I think that is the bug that I noticed...…. The URL does matter because there are some videos that the downloader will not down load, but you usually get an error message telling you. The DLL for downloading is written by somebody else so some of it is out of my control.

Fancy trying out the updated version?

Done a fair bit of work on both the Plugin & EXE including sorting out this bug, video URL copied & downloaded from your post then SAVED to a game.

Should also display images that are named funny i.e. images that have (USA) (Prototype) etc on the end. If it doesn't, I am sure somebody will let me know.....

Added regional folders to the Image paths, region is passed from launch box to plugin (if it is set within launch box), then plugin displays the images from that regions folder. As well as telling you if there are images in the root folder & other sub regions. You should be able to view, copy, move or delete images from other regions or move images to the root folder via the ROOT & SUB buttons in the corner of the images. This only works for Box Front, Box Rear, cart etc. Screen shots DO NOT have regions implemented yet. NOTE: the first time you run the plug-in or the EXE you will be told that we need to find the regional folders, this will only be done on the first run and may take a while depending on how big your collection is and how fast your hard drive is.

EXE lets you set the default images for Box front, Box 3D etc for each of the platforms in your collection.

Added very basic Drag & Drop. Took me a while to work this one out..

Tried to fixed a bug in the 3D box generator that made the position file not line up with box template properly, this needs to be tested so there are a few 3D boxes & Marquee templates with position files in the zip to test it, they should line up but again somebody let me know if this doesn't work.

There is probably a bunch of other stuff that I have forgotten as it has been a while since I posted the first version of this.

Any feedback (good or bad) would be greatly appreciated. I love doing this sort of stuff, did it for MAMEWah a while back now I am doing stuff for LaunchBox.

Butler_Soft.zip

[DBut73]

11 hours ago, Pixel said:

It does not work for me. The same video link. It stops, says finished, cannot save it. The screenshot is attached in my previous post.

That's strange. I wonder if it has something to do with the windows temp folder.

Both apps use the windows temp folder when downloading the youtube video and pasting some images.

Can you check your windows temp folder to see if there is a folder named 'ImageHelper' should be located in "C:\Users\'User Name'\AppData\Local\Temp" for Win 7, 8 & 10, can not tell what OP system you have from the screen shot.

[DBut73]

1 hour ago, Pixel said:

I am on Windows 10. Yes, the folder is there, so the files it downloaded (images and videos).

Does the video file in the temp folder play and can you open the image files?

[DBut73]

Just now, Pixel said:

Yes.

So the video is being downloaded and images saved into the temp folder but not being moved over to the LaunchBox\Videos and LaunchBox\Images folder for some reason.

This is puzzling me I've tested the app on four PC's (laptop, 2 desktops & my Arcade Cab) and they all worked, I'll have to go through my code to see if I can figure out what is happening.

[DBut73]

18 minutes ago, Pixel said:

Now I copied another random URL, and I got this:

That error is from the downloader DLL, if you get an error from the DLL it usually means the video is locked or something and can not be downloaded with this software. A bit of a pain in the backside.

Try downloading with the attached app, this is just the downloader on its own and it lets you save the file anywhere, unfortunately you will still get the above error but try the action biker video again with this.

YouTube.zip