9.2-beta-2 Released

[Jason Carr]

5 hours ago, deliyuerek85 said:

Ok, there is no response to my last comment ?

I will no longer bother you with my requests, which seem to not interest any other person. Sorry.

Please, for everyone's sake, do your best not to make sweeping negative generalizations/assumptions. I'm sorry I didn't respond to each and every post you made in this thread. I am one guy after all.

3 hours ago, deliyuerek85 said:

Yeah of courso you are right. But my frustration is because that I have so many "additional applications" for most of my games now. For example, it is weird that the a game startup screen appears if I open an article/pdf or play a commercial video of that game and it closes with a "game over" screen. For my understanding, the "additional apps" section meant not only for alternate versions of that specific game. If that is so, than I obviously misunderstood the concept of that section.

Please don't get me wrong. I am wery much appreciating the hard work that Jason is putting into this project. I'm only a little bit frustrated, that something that I was completely satisfied with, is changed now. ?

Nothing is changed, clearly. In fact, that's the problem you're bringing up. It's that I haven't added another new feature, not that something changed. You can always disable the startup screens and use LaunchBox and Big Box exactly as they were before.

Regardless, I will look into the additional app thing, perhaps to automatically not use the startup screens for documents, maybe. That seems like the best solution to me here. It may or may not make it into today's release, however.

[Zombeaver]

1 minute ago, mcfilmmakers said:

Please take the time to read what I say correctly. I said the feature is MEANT to launch ADDITIONAL apps in tandem with the game. That does not exclude the ability to launch any app without a game. The question at hand is what the INTENDED PURPOSE of the feature is, not what the feature can do.

Please read what I say correctly.

You are mistaken.

They're literally there to give you something in addition to the base game, in tandem or without. Period. It's not some secret life hack.

[mcfilmmakers]

Just now, Zombeaver said:

Please read what I say correctly.

You are mistaken.

They're literally there to give you something in addition to the base game, in tandem or without. Period.

You can't assign an additional app to a game that doesn't exist. it is either additional or not. Whether you choose to launch it with the game or not is your choice, but this is not the INTENTION of the feature.

Again, at issue is not what the feature can do, but what the INTENT of the feature is. On that, I am not wrong and you said so yourself.

Quote: "They're literally there to give you something in addition to the base game," This supports my statement.

To say "in tandem or without." does not prove me wrong. It simply explains what the feature can do, which I do not deny.

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, Suhrvivor said:

Steam doesn't work for me, whenever Steam's "Launching Game" window appears, the fade goes away  and sends you back to the frontend once that pesky window disappears. Then the game launches after a while.

Every Windows/Steam game is different, so the startup screens are not guaranteed to work perfectly for every game. You may also have to tweak the startup screen settings for each game to get the best results. You may have to increase the startup delay, for example, or check the box to hide all exclusive non-fullscreen windows. Most games I am able to get working just fine, but sometimes it does take some tweaks, and the game will need to be already downloaded and installed, of course.

1 hour ago, Suhrvivor said:

By the way, I started experimenting with the startup themes and ended up making one for myself, It's in the download section in case anyone wants to check it out. 

That is legit looking awesome. Love it!

[Jason Carr]

10 minutes ago, mcfilmmakers said:

Please take the time to read what I say correctly. I said the feature is MEANT to launch ADDITIONAL apps in tandem with the game. That does not exclude the ability to launch any app without a game. The question at hand is what the INTENDED PURPOSE of the feature is, not what the feature can do.

Lol. Actually, that was not the original intended purpose of additional apps. The launch with features were added later on. Zom is correct; additional apps are meant to be used for whatever you need them for.

[mcfilmmakers]

2 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Lol. Actually, that was not the original intended purpose of additional apps. The launch with features were added later on. Zom is correct; additional apps are meant to be used for whatever you need them for.

I stand corrected then. In that case, the startup and game over screens ought not to appear at all for any of these such apps.

[deliyuerek85]

17 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Please, for everyone's sake, do your best not to make sweeping negative generalizations/assumptions. I'm sorry I didn't respond to each and every post you made in this thread. I am one guy after all.

I'm sorry. I did not mean to blame you for something. I know you can not answer to every post in here. I only felt that I was ignored because my topic is not interesting enough.

Edited December 20, 2018 by deliyuerek85

[Jason Carr]

I will be releasing shortly. I added in some logic for additional apps; additional apps will only use the startup screen now if they use an emulator, use DOSBox, use Steam, or have an EXE file extension. All other additional apps (such as PDF documents) will not use the startup screen. Hopefully that'll prove to be a solution.

[mcfilmmakers]

Just now, Jason Carr said:

I will be releasing shortly. I added in some logic for additional apps; additional apps will only use the startup screen now if they use an emulator, use DOSBox, use Steam, or have an EXE file extension. All other additional apps (such as PDF documents) will not use the startup screen. Hopefully that'll prove to be a solution.

Makes sense.

[deliyuerek85]

Thank for the effort Jason.

I don't want to be nitpicky (after all, you didn't want to inplement it yet), but I have added a portable PDF Reader as an Emulator to open PDF files. Will it use the setting of that Emulator, or that of the game where the app is located?

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, deliyuerek85 said:

Thank for the effort Jason.

I don't want to be nitpicky (after all, you didn't want to inplement it yet), but I have added a portable PDF Reader as an Emulator to open PDF files. Will it use the setting of that Emulator, or that of the game where the app is located?

Unfortunately it will still use the startup screens for this. We'll have to wait for a future release to address that.

Edit: I don't see why that method should be necessary anyways since you can just set the system to use that PDF reader by default.

[deliyuerek85]

Ok, thanks anyway.

And sorry again.

[Jason Carr]

24 minutes ago, deliyuerek85 said:

Ok, thanks anyway.

And sorry again.

No worries.

The official release just went live.

[Dingo]

Good job Jason.

[RULLUR]

6 hours ago, mcfilmmakers said:

Additional apps is meant to be used to run an app WITH the game (such as joy2key), that's why you're getting startup and game over screens... you're supposed to be playing the game. To do what you want, you should be launching the game through rocket launcher with hyperpause and look at the articles/commericals through the pause screen while in game.

I've always wondered how I can get Joy-to-Key to run with a game, and only with the profile I had set for that game too. Not sure where in the Forum of Threads I need to seek a discussion on that answer I seek though. @neil9000once told me of Controller Companion, but the setup with that I'm trying to figure out because I tried it with Blood on DOS and it wasn't working right for me. All I know is I wanna get these PC based games going with a console gaming feel.

[Mr. RetroLust]

I do have a weird thing going on with my mouse pointer after having used Big Box and closed the program, the mouse pointer changed to a more pixelated pointer (as if the pointer itself has changed to a lower resolution) with a bigger shadow outline on the right side, when clicking things it is off by a few pixels, when going to mouse options and selecting the default pointer theme it is back to normal again.
Note: I do use the program; X-Mouse Button Control v2.17, on 4K monitor and windows DPI settings are at 200%, I haven't seen this happen in the previous version though.

[PanteraZombie]

Awesome work with the new update Jason! The new startup and shutdown screens are working great once tweaked for a few emulators, even for Windows games. I have a question though... I know how to duplicate and rename platform xmls for disc games to get them to spin, but is there a way to make it work per game? I'm just thinking I might run into a situation where a computer platform might have both cds and disks/carts. Thanks!

Edited December 21, 2018 by PanteraZombie

[Jason Carr]

7 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

I do have a weird thing going on with my mouse pointer after having used Big Box and closed the program, the mouse pointer changed to a more pixelated pointer (as if the pointer itself has changed to a lower resolution) with a bigger shadow outline on the right side, when clicking things it is off by a few pixels, when going to mouse options and selecting the default pointer theme it is back to normal again.
Note: I do use the program; X-Mouse Button Control v2.17, on 4K monitor and windows DPI settings are at 200%, I haven't seen this happen in the previous version though.

That's odd. We do some processing that hides the cursor (of course) but nothing that should change it. It could be some kind of odd incompatibility between that X-Mouse program and the Win32 API calls we're using, I suppose. I would reboot and see if it happens again, and then try and narrow it down by disabling mouse hiding in LaunchBox or disabling X-Mouse Button Control.

1 hour ago, PanteraZombie said:

Awesome work with the new update Jason! The new startup and shutdown screens are working great once tweaked for a few emulators, even for Windows games. I have a question though... I know how to duplicate and rename platform xmls for disc games to get them to spin, but is there a way to make it work per game? I'm just thinking I might run into a situation where a computer platform might have both cds and disks/carts. Thanks!

Right now no, but honestly that would be easy to add so I can certainly do that. I can probably add it before the next release. That is a good point.

[Mr. RetroLust]

3 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

That's odd. We do some processing that hides the cursor (of course) but nothing that should change it. It could be some kind of odd incompatibility between that X-Mouse program and the Win32 API calls we're using, I suppose. I would reboot and see if it happens again, and then try and narrow it down by disabling mouse hiding in LaunchBox or disabling X-Mouse Button Control.

Right now no, but honestly that would be easy to add so I can certainly do that. I can probably add it before the next release. That is a good point.

I tried what you suggested, hiding/unhiding mouse but this didn't make a difference, I turned off X-Mouse and another program called Dual Monitor Tools which locks mouse pointer on main monitor (seeing as they both do something with the mouse pointer) after closing these I tried Big Box again but it made no difference. I found something of the core of this problem though which makes matters worse for me personally as I used to use a work-around solution for another issue, I'll try to explain it as best as I can:

I have set Override high DPI scaling behavior for Big Box (using right click menu for Big Box icon) some time ago as my marquee monitor doesn't work otherwise. I am running this on a Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050, connecting main 4K monitor with HDMI and marquee monitor (2560x1080) from DVI to HDMI, in case it helps the analysis.

1. When set to: "System or System (Enhanced)" I have it set at this option normally, it causes the main 4K monitor to run Big Box in 1080p but with marquee monitor working, since the new 9.2 version the mouse pointer problem occurs while using this setting. Note: Big Box does actually run smoother in scrolling and text scrolling in 1080p on my system than 4K does at the moment.

2. When set to Application: When using this setting the 4K monitor runs in 4K but the marquee monitor is not being used by Big Box, I can see the marquee window minimalized when alt-tabbing in the taskbar on the main monitor but it won't activate on the marquee monitor, no matter what I do, I have tried several suggestions and logic but it doesn't work for me. This setting does not cause the mouse pointer issue.

All in all I much prefer situation 1 where Big Box runs in 1080p but the marquee monitor is working, although it's a real pain now with the mouse pointer problem as the few pixels off have become even bigger now (I think it's 200px off now) and I have to use the keyboard to navigate to the mouse options in order to revert it back. Situation 2 is a solution for the time being but I love the marquee screen as much as I love Launchbox/Big Box itself and that is a lot of love!  Hope this problem doesn't give you a headache after all the hard work you've just done recently.

[ed20910]

18 hours ago, RULLUR said:

I've always wondered how I can get Joy-to-Key to run with a game, and only with the profile I had set for that game too. Not sure where in the Forum of Threads I need to seek a discussion on that answer I seek though. @neil9000once told me of Controller Companion, but the setup with that I'm trying to figure out because I tried it with Blood on DOS and it wasn't working right for me. All I know is I wanna get these PC based games going with a console gaming feel.

you can set joy2key to switch to a profile for a specific .exe.  i am still learning some things with it but i have a profile set up for bigbox, and one for kodi when i launch via bigbox.  when joy2key detects the kodi.exe launch, it automatically switches to the profile i have set up and when kodi closes, it switches back to the bigbox profile. To start, be sure your profile is created in joy2key.  Go to settings-Associate profiles with applications.   Select "Add", You can name the app name, chose the path of the .exe, and what profile it needs to load with that .exe.  Once added, you can select what you want joy2key to do when that particular .exe is not active.  Do nothing, it will keep that profile active, switch to last manually chosen profile, or specify a default profile to go back to.