9.2-beta-2 Released

[angelobodetti]

Do we have the ability to turn startup screens on per platform? Or only per emulator?

[neil9000]

9 minutes ago, angelobodetti said:

Do we have the ability to turn startup screens on per platform? Or only per emulator?

Just per emulator i believe. 

[angelobodetti]

So how does that work for platforms without an emulator - Like PC Games 

[neil9000]

7 minutes ago, angelobodetti said:

So how does that work for platforms without an emulator - Like PC Games 

You can enable/disable individual games in the edit menu.

[Jason Carr]

20 hours ago, RULLUR said:

Not really, I remember writing in a suggestion about the random button being placed on the dash instead if having to go in through Tools like a few months ago, and it was way less than a year ago I'm sure. I missed out on the one you're talking about, which also sounds like a fun idea too on a BigBox level of things though

I see. I know we've had requests both for that and for a keyboard shortcut, but we've had slightly more requests for the latter, so I'll probably go that route.

[Jason Carr]

3 hours ago, angelobodetti said:

Do we have the ability to turn startup screens on per platform? Or only per emulator?

You can batch edit all the games in a platform if you're looking to change it on a platform level.

[ckp]

I love the 9.2 features. The startup game screen feature needs an even higher maximum seconds for my Cemu games though. Don't have to use nomousy to hide cursor anymore - excellent. Great job!

Edit: i see startup screen stuff on xml files. maybe i can edit the xml directly to let me specify more time than the ui allows and it looks like we can even do this on a game by game basis which is great

Edited December 23, 2018 by ckp

[ckp]

looks like editing the platform xml for specific game startup to true and higher than 30 seconds doesn't work. still seems to max out at 30 seconds.

Edit: ahhh, the value in the xml should be in milliseconds. will try this again...

Edited December 23, 2018 by ckp

[ckp]

huzzah! setting in milliseconds works!

[angelobodetti]

So i have startup turned off globally but i wanted to turn it on just for PC games. So i went into the games and selected "overide default startup settings" then i selected "enable game startup screens".

No luck.... Am i missing something?

[Jason Carr]

8 hours ago, angelobodetti said:

So i have startup turned off globally but i wanted to turn it on just for PC games. So i went into the games and selected "overide default startup settings" then i selected "enable game startup screens".

No luck.... Am i missing something?

If you have startup screens completely turned off in LaunchBox or Big Box, then they're off, period. If you want to enable them only for PC games, you'll have to enable them in LaunchBox and/or Big Box and then configure them either on an emulator or game basis. You can use the batch edit stuff to turn them on and off for each game. Or, just disable them for all your emulators.

[angelobodetti]

14 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

If you have startup screens completely turned off in LaunchBox or Big Box, then they're off, period. If you want to enable them only for PC games, you'll have to enable them in LaunchBox and/or Big Box and then configure them either on an emulator or game basis. You can use the batch edit stuff to turn them on and off for each game. Or, just disable them for all your emulators.

Thank you for the clarification. So I have over 100 platforms and going on 3-400 playlists. 

Why not have the ability turn turn startups on and off by platform/playlist as well?

Game level is great and emulator level has its use cases. But ultimately the “wheel” level is most useful. 

Right now for example I only want it on for a handful of platforms. The only way to do that is turn it on for everything, then over 100 times I need to go through each emulator or “select all” at the game level to turn those off. 

[Jason Carr]

24 minutes ago, angelobodetti said:

Thank you for the clarification. So I have over 100 platforms and going on 3-400 playlists. 

Why not have the ability turn turn startups on and off by platform/playlist as well?

Game level is great and emulator level has its use cases. But ultimately the “wheel” level is most useful. 

Right now for example I only want it on for a handful of platforms. The only way to do that is turn it on for everything, then over 100 times I need to go through each emulator or “select all” at the game level to turn those off. 

The easiest way to do this (which is really pretty easy) is just to select all your games and batch edit them to force the startup screen off. Then you can enable it for the games that you want. I might have considered adding this option earlier in the development process, but at this point I probably won't be restructuring it. It makes more sense to do it on the emulator level since how it works largely depends on the emulator/launching method and not the platform.

[angelobodetti]

Thank you. Can you do custom startup themes per platform or playlist? 

[Retrofrogg]

I'm having a problem with the mouse pointer becoming very pixellated whenever I exit a game via Launchbox now!

[Chadmando]

I love the idea of the startup screens, but this doesn't work at all for me. Project 64 always starts up after the start up screen is shown, no matter how long the startup screen is, it doesn't hide the console window no matter what setting I do. Every time  close pretty well any emulator or windows game Bigbox "hangs" (as in does not accept any controller input until I alt-tab back into bigbox). Steam games console launches before the the startup is finished (using the default startup time) and then if the game loads faster, big box brings BIGBOX into view until the game loads. If I adjust the time to longer, the startup screen and game loads ok, when I close the game the startup screen is still on and hangs at the "startup windows" until I manually close it. I cannot seem to find a setting to change the startup times for all steam games, it looks like I have to do it manually to every one. I think Dolphin is the only emulator working correctly.

EDIT: Some of my hanging issues after closing a game seem to be from my autohotkey script that I had used to alleviate opening mutliple instances of one game, as well as hanging after closing a game lol. It seems like the very same items that have been patched here are breaking with what I was trying to fix manually in previous versions.

Edited December 24, 2018 by Chadmando

[Jason Carr]

2 hours ago, angelobodetti said:

Thank you. Can you do custom startup themes per platform or playlist? 

Yes, this is already available. Check out the LaunchBox\StartupThemes folder.

2 hours ago, Dan said:

I'm having a problem with the mouse pointer becoming very pixellated whenever I exit a game via Launchbox now!

I've heard this from one other person, but I haven't been able to replicate it as of yet. I think it must be a particular system configuration or something. For now, you might just have to turn off startup screens until we can get it figured out.

45 minutes ago, Chadmando said:

I love the idea of the startup screens, but this doesn't work at all for me. Project 64 always starts up after the start up screen is shown, no matter how long the startup screen is, it doesn't hide the console window no matter what setting I do. Every time  close pretty well any emulator or windows game Bigbox "hangs" (as in does not accept any controller input until I alt-tab back into bigbox). Steam games console launches before the the startup is finished (using the default startup time) and then if the game loads faster, big box brings BIGBOX into view until the game loads. If I adjust the time to longer, the startup screen and game loads ok, when I close the game the startup screen is still on and hangs at the "startup windows" until I manually close it. I cannot seem to find a setting to change the startup times for all steam games, it looks like I have to do it manually to every one. I think Dolphin is the only emulator working correctly.

EDIT: Some of my hanging issues after closing a game seem to be from my autohotkey script that I had used to alleviate opening mutliple instances of one game, as well as hanging after closing a game lol. It seems like the very same items that have been patched here are breaking with what I was trying to fix manually in previous versions.

I can't predict all of people's hacks that are in place, so I can't make every situation just magically work perfectly. Startup screens are a complicated mess of a feature, pretty much no matter what we do. I've done my best to make them work generically while not requiring a bunch of tinkering (and we've honestly made great strides in this area compared to previously available solutions), but there's no promises that everything will work perfectly in every situation. That said, I do have literally every emulator on my systems working perfectly with the startup screens, so they do work well with most configurations, and that was my goal.

Merry Christmas everybody.

[Chadmando]

Quote

I can't predict all of people's hacks that are in place, so I can't make every situation just magically work perfectly. Startup screens are a complicated mess of a feature, pretty much no matter what we do. I've done my best to make them work generically while not requiring a bunch of tinkering (and we've honestly made great strides in this area compared to previously available solutions), but there's no promises that everything will work perfectly in every situation. That said, I do have literally every emulator on my systems working perfectly with the startup screens, so they do work well with most configurations, and that was my goal.

Thanks for the reply.
I understand, I made my post before I investigated things properly, I've adjusted my autohotkey script that I have running in the background and fixed most of my issues.
I'm not sure if someone raised this issue, perhaps maybe it's worth making a warning pop up in the settings for project 64. If the setting in project 64 "PAUSE EMULATION WHEN THE WINDOWS IS NOT ACTIVE" is checked then project64 won't work properly with the startup screen, and will only start when the startup screen is timed out. Unchecking this setting fixes the problem.

You have steam games working properly with startup screens? If I don't have steam open prior then the chat menu, and update screen, etc mess up the starting screen. I then have to manually change the setting in each and every steam game if I want to disable the startup screen. Is there a way to change this setting for all Steam games (without changing the settings for each and every individual game), just like how the option is available for emulators?
 

[Jason Carr]

2 hours ago, Chadmando said:

If the setting in project 64 "PAUSE EMULATION WHEN THE WINDOWS IS NOT ACTIVE" is checked then project64 won't work properly with the startup screen, and will only start when the startup screen is timed out. Unchecking this setting fixes the problem.

Good to know; I hadn't discovered this.

2 hours ago, Chadmando said:

You have steam games working properly with startup screens? If I don't have steam open prior then the chat menu, and update screen, etc mess up the starting screen. I then have to manually change the setting in each and every steam game if I want to disable the startup screen. Is there a way to change this setting for all Steam games (without changing the settings for each and every individual game), just like how the option is available for emulators?

Yes, though if Steam isn't signed in the startup screen will just exit to the desktop, basically. You can batch edit all Steam games just by selecting them all and right-click Edit. Then you can disable the startup screens for all the games at once. Currently there isn't a way to define a default setting for Steam, unfortunately. Since every game is different, it wouldn't likely work out all that well anyways. PC games are a major challenge with startup screens just because every single game behaves differently.

[Jason Carr]

The first 9.3 beta is out: