9.8-beta-1 Released

[FlightRisk]

I have no idea what overhead my playing a sound with code behind will have on the startup screen. It isn't elegant, but I may just add silence to the beginning of my audio files in Audacity.

[Line]

Awesome work! I've set up LEDBlinky and Launchbox/Big Box and would like to request that you add an option to have LEDBlinky speak game controls on the pause screen for custom added games. Thanks! 

[Aevans0001]

I second what @Line said above.

I also would second the suggestion that we should be able to see the picture of the control panel.  Emumovies has a downloaded file with a lot of the arcade control panels included.

 

Errors I have found

 On Occasion Pause screen freezes up after viewing manual.  I thought it was a rocketlauncher, but even after i disabled rocketlauncher it was still occasionally locking up.  I tried it on 2 games and it locked up on Bagman mostly.  

Great Work @Jason Carr

[deliyuerek85]

Great job Jason. Thank you for adding the exit button.

What also would be nice is to be able to decide what file types to show in the pause screen. For now it's only PDF I assume. You could maybe add a option to specify file types to show in the pause screen.

For example:

File types to show in pause screens: pdf; exe; ahk; bat; mp4

One reason is, that I have created batch files that are opening the exact page in a pdf file where a magazine article or a guide for the game is.

I also specified another application for PDF files, just like an amulator, but in the pause screen they are opening with the included pdf reader.

Edited May 9, 2019 by deliyuerek85

[Jason Carr]

11 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

Phenomenal work as usual Jason. Some issues/questions. Just testing with Arcade games running MAME:

1. Startup: Fade in to startup blanks the mouse cursor, shutdown screen does not
2. Startup and Pause: How do I get backgrounds? I just have a black background with "loading" in the center, the game clear logo in the top left and sometimes a cart in the top right (capcom roms). Pause has a logo at the top left and a menu under it.
3. Startup: If I turn off startup screens, but leave pause screens, and use Launchbox to launch, the pause screens show only "resume game" and "exit game".
4. Pause: Is there a way to control the fade effect in and out duration (the "attack" and "release" for you musicians, vs. just the "sustain" we have now?

2 side questions:

Is there a way to assign a key sequence (like a macro or auto hotkey script) to do the equivalent of right clicking on a game, selecting "launch with" and choosing "MAME" (or whatever other emulators are in the list)?

Is there a way to delay a sound playing in my startup theme using XAML? I use "mediaelement". It plays as soon as the startup screen loads. So I hear "loading" before I even see the word "loading". I could set it to "manual", but have no idea in XAML how to do what I would do with a timer. I could assign "play" to a click event, bu then how do I automatically "click" it after 500 milliseconds? As I write I am thinking I need an event in XAML that calls a code behind routine that uses a DispatchTimer.

1. This is by design, as it helps to find the mouse faster after playing games. It feels awkward to me to have to wait until the shutdown screen is closed to find the mouse cursor and start using it.

2. Both use game fanart as backgrounds. It falls back to platform fanart if there is no game fanart. Can be easily changed by modifying the theme if necessary.

3. Ah, I'll look into this. It might be a glitch.

4. Currently there is no way to speed up or slow down the fades. I'll see if that's a common request and add that to the list if so.

Not really following what you're trying to do with launching MAME. There's always a way to do something like that, but it won't be easy. You'd probably have to use a third-party program. AutoHotkey should be able to do it, but I don't know when or where you want to do it.

Timing the playback, I'm not sure. There are ways to use timers with animations, but I'm not sure if you can hook them up to MediaElement.

[Jason Carr]

11 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

I have no idea what overhead my playing a sound with code behind will have on the startup screen. It isn't elegant, but I may just add silence to the beginning of my audio files in Audacity.

That would certainly be easiest.

[Jason Carr]

11 hours ago, Line said:

Awesome work! I've set up LEDBlinky and Launchbox/Big Box and would like to request that you add an option to have LEDBlinky speak game controls on the pause screen for custom added games. Thanks! 

Not a bad idea. I'll look to see if that's easy to pull off.

[Jason Carr]

10 hours ago, Aevans0001 said:

I second what @Line said above.

I also would second the suggestion that we should be able to see the picture of the control panel.  Emumovies has a downloaded file with a lot of the arcade control panels included.

 

Errors I have found

 On Occasion Pause screen freezes up after viewing manual.  I thought it was a rocketlauncher, but even after i disabled rocketlauncher it was still occasionally locking up.  I tried it on 2 games and it locked up on Bagman mostly.  

Great Work @Jason Carr

I'll see if we can display those images in the default theme. Either way, it's easy to modify a theme to show those arcade panel images.

Per the PDFs locking up, that's a new one that I haven't experienced or heard of. Has anyone else experienced lockups while viewing PDFs? What platform were those games on?

[Jason Carr]

7 hours ago, deliyuerek85 said:

Great job Jason. Thank you for adding the exit button.

What also would be nice is to be able to decide what file types to show in the pause screen. For now it's only PDF I assume. You could maybe add a option to specify file types to show in the pause screen.

For example:

File types to show in pause screens: pdf; exe; ahk; bat; mp4

One reason is, that I have created batch files that are opening the exact page in a pdf file where a magazine article or a guide for the game is.

I also specified another application for PDF files, just like an amulator, but in the pause screen they are opening with the included pdf reader.

Unfortunately I think opening up a separate application is likely to screw with the pause screens and startup screens, so I won't be adding those options for this release. PDFs will always use the built-in reader on the pause screens. It's using the Chrome web engine to display them, so we could support any type of document supported by Chrome, but unfortunately things like EXEs are not going to work.

[deliyuerek85]

6 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Unfortunately I think opening up a separate application is likely to screw with the pause screens and startup screens, so I won't be adding those options for this release. PDFs will always use the built-in reader on the pause screens. It's using the Chrome web engine to display them, so we could support any type of document supported by Chrome, but unfortunately things like EXEs are not going to work.

Support for EXEs are not nessesary. It was only an example because I have converted some BAT files to exe files. But it would be nice, if you could add at least support for BAT files.

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, deliyuerek85 said:

Support for EXEs are not nessesary. It was only an example because I have converted some BAT files to exe files. But it would be nice, if you could add at least support for BAT files.

Unfortunately we'll have the same issues with BAT files, or anything that is not opened with the Chrome viewer. So that's a negative.

[Jason Carr]

12 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

If I turn off startup screens, but leave pause screens, and use Launchbox to launch, the pause screens show only "resume game" and "exit game".

I just tested for this and can't seem to replicate. All the options are showing up for me, even with startup screens off. I tried disabling the startup screens both via the emulator and the global setting, but neither seem to be making any difference. Can you re-test and provide further details?

[neil9000]

12 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

Startup: If I turn off startup screens, but leave pause screens, and use Launchbox to launch, the pause screens show only "resume game" and "exit game".

 

5 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I just tested for this and can't seem to replicate. All the options are showing up for me, even with startup screens off. I tried disabling the startup screens both via the emulator and the global setting, but neither seem to be making any difference. Can you re-test and provide further details?

I cant replicate this either. @FlightRisk are you testing this with roms or PC games? On PC games if i dont have a manual i only have resume and exit as obviously reset and save/load states are not relevant if not using a emulator.

[Retro808]

46 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I just tested for this and can't seem to replicate. All the options are showing up for me, even with startup screens off. I tried disabling the startup screens both via the emulator and the global setting, but neither seem to be making any difference. Can you re-test and provide further details?

I had this happen last night as a fluke, so not sure if related to what FlightRisk is seeing. I then closed LB and deleted the default theme folder then reopened to have LB regenerate it. It worked again. It happened when I was testing a Pause theme I was working on. 

[Omen]

@Jason Carr would it still be possible to add an AHK option for Pause Exit, like save and load have? I've run into a couple of emulators (RPCS3 & CxBx-Reloaded) that use a second window for the game. This causes pause and automation exit functions to only close the game window, leaving the emulator running. Also having the option for an exit AHK would allow for possible future emulator issues.

[Retro808]

15 minutes ago, Omen said:

@Jason Carr would it still be possible to add an AHK option for Pause Exit, like save and load have? I've run into a couple of emulators (RPCS3 & CxBx-Reloaded) that use a second window for the game. This causes pause and automation exit functions to only close the game window, leaving the emulator running. Also having the option for an exit AHK would allow for possible future emulator issues.

Confirming the Exit from pause with RPCS3 only works if you do it twice. Pause, select Exit, then Pause again and select Exit before the emulator actually shutdowns to BB. 

[FlightRisk]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

I just tested for this and can't seem to replicate. All the options are showing up for me, even with startup screens off. I tried disabling the startup screens both via the emulator and the global setting, but neither seem to be making any difference. Can you re-test and provide further details?

Here are my steps. I get that RL is probably the issue here, but was hoping for a reason:

1. set default to use RocketLauncher (which runs MAME and is set to have loading and unloading fade screens and bezels)
2. Find a game, right click and select "launch with" and choose MAME 
3. press the pause screen key (J in my case)

I get the expected pause screen with several menu items on it including the load and save states

1. turn off startup screens so they don't compete with launchbox (or leave it. same result)
2. just click on the game which will now launch through RL
3. Press the pause button

This time, I get a pause screen with only 3 items on it; resume game, manual and exit game. Also pause button no longer works, but I can scroll to resume

 

 

[FlightRisk]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

1. This is by design, as it helps to find the mouse faster after playing games. It feels awkward to me to have to wait until the shutdown screen is closed to find the mouse cursor and start using it.

This is regarding my "macro" question. Basically, I am just trying to hit one button in order to do a LB menu sequence instead of having to do the same thing over and over manually when testing. For example, If I click on a game, the default right now is set to RL to launch. To test with MAME, I have to right click on the game, scroll to "launch with", then scroll to MAME, then press ENTER. It would be nice to highlight the game and then duplicate those keystrokes with one key or button press.

Alternately, can LB be set to ask every time as an option? IOW, when I double click on it, can it give me a popup with the available emulators and I choose the one I want. That would at least eliminate having to deal with moving my hands between the keyboard and mouse or using the mouse but having to right click and use menus.

[FlightRisk]

2 hours ago, neil9000 said:

I cant replicate this either. @FlightRisk are you testing this with roms or PC games? On PC games if i dont have a manual i only have resume and exit as obviously reset and save/load states are not relevant if not using a emulator.

I posted my exact steps in the post before this one. I am using my "Arcade" menu running Arcade roms.( 005, 10 Yard Fight, 1941 counter attack). I am seeing the menu for "manual" now. What goes a way are the menus other than "exit game", "resume game" and " view manual". The "reset game", "save state" and "load state" are missing. Maybe by design? Just reporting it to learn why.

[Retro808]

9 minutes ago, FlightRisk said:

I posted my exact steps in the post before this one. I am using my "Arcade" menu running Arcade roms.( 005, 10 Yard Fight, 1941 counter attack). I am seeing the menu for "manual" now. What goes a way are the menus other than "exit game", "resume game" and " view manual". The "reset game", "save state" and "load state" are missing. Maybe by design? Just reporting it to learn why.

So tried you steps exactly as you posted in the earlier thread and no issue. Did you shut off Loading Screens globally or just for the emulator? Not sure if it would matter, but worth clarifying.