9.10-beta-1 Released

[wallmachine]

4 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

This is a known issue and happens when Big Box custom themes use the views that contain the favorites and recent boxes from the default view, but don't have them in the theme. As of yet, I haven't figured out a way to disable this for themes that don't have the boxes displayed.

So with my plugin what platform view can I use so that i can enter the game view?

[Jason Carr]

On 6/21/2019 at 5:59 PM, wangstage said:

Can you add the proxy server settings? Because downloading game metadata and media wizard is very slow in China. thank you .

I would highly recommend a VPN for this, though I'll admit I'm not 100% clear on the differences between a VPN and a proxy server. I can add that to my list though.

[Jason Carr]

On 6/21/2019 at 7:26 PM, wallmachine said:

So with my plugin what platform view can I use so that i can enter the game view?

It looks like Platform Wheel 2 would be a safe choice, as it doesn't have the boxes.

[JaysArcade]

15 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I would highly recommend a VPN for this, though I'll admit I'm not 100% clear on the differences between a VPN and a proxy server. I can add that to my list though.

In a nutshell and very dumbed down explanation, traffic is encrypted between you and the middleman on a VPN. With a proxy, there is no encryption.

 

[Jason Carr]

Beta 3 is out now with the following:

• Improvement: The Enter key will now launch games in LaunchBox
• Improvement: You can now bulk edit the Broken field on games
• Improvement: When editing an emulator and making it the default emulator for a particular platform, LaunchBox will now ask you if you want to change all games in that platform to use that emulator.
• Improvement: Double-clicking on the video in the game details sidebar in LaunchBox will now open the video fullscreen with VLC
• Improvement: When auto-play videos is disabled in LaunchBox, the videos in the sidebar will now display a black background with a play icon instead of an empty space
• Fixed: Various places in LaunchBox and Big Box were occasionally using the operating system's language/translation settings instead of the language specified in the LaunchBox options

[Lordmonkus]

28 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Improvement: When editing an emulator and making it the default emulator for a particular platform, LaunchBox will now ask you if you want to change all games in that platform to use that emulator.

Thank you for this one, should make one of the commonly asked questions and problems of games not working for people go away.

[DOS76]

Those are all good improvements.

[kmoney]

Excellent quality of life additions!

[MazJohn [Mr Arcade]]

On 6/19/2019 at 1:32 PM, Jason Carr said:

I'm so sorry guys, but I'm giving up on pinball for now. It's just too much of a mess. It's of course already possible to use LaunchBox just fine with pinball, but with so many roadblocks in place towards making it easy, I don't really see the point in optimizing it all. Unless we can make it a straightforward process, it's not really worth the effort, and as best I can tell there really isn't a way to make it a straightforward process at all.

I'm sorry to hear this to be the case. If I recall, Jays Arcade helped the community some time back with a Loader for Future Pinball.

I personally had hoped for the most streamlined way possible to import (assuming they are free to use)  .VPX (Visual Pinball) and .FPT (Future Pinball) files... I guess maybe there just isn't much more  needed to do here that cant be accomplished already.

[JoeViking245]

VPX and FP are free to use and definitely do work in LB/BB.  They are easily imported with a drag-and-drop.  Of course you'll need to set up the Platforms and emulators.

The BIG issue I think is supporting the import of metadata (which is a lot of what LB/BB is about) as there are no standards for file-naming conventions.  For tables or images.  If something were figured out, then there'd be the issue of "...hey! I have JPSalas' version of the table, but the scraped image is from Xenonph's table."  I don't envy the person who sets out to work on that.  For game info (notes), I don't know if IPDB.org is open to allow for scraping.  But then that'd only get info about the commercially made tables (vs Originals).  

As Awesome as it would be, I feel Jason's pain.  I'm guessing he doesn't want to add platform/emu defaults if he can't properly support it beyond that ('the Big issue').  Oh the repercussions he'd get from the masses... lol?

[Chris Kant]

18 hours ago, Lordmonkus said:

Thank you for this one, should make one of the commonly asked questions and problems of games not working for people go away.

this is also for me a very helpful new feature. more of such things to improve the overall "out of the box" feeling of past LB/BB versions 

[JaysArcade]

4 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

The BIG issue I think is supporting the import of metadata (which is a lot of what LB/BB is about) as there are no standards for file-naming conventions.  For tables or images.  If something were figured out, then there'd be the issue of "...hey! I have JPSalas' version of the table, but the scraped image is from Xenonph's table."  I don't envy the person who sets out to work on that.  For game info (notes), I don't know if IPDB.org is open to allow for scraping.  But then that'd only get info about the commercially made tables (vs Originals).  

There actually is a naming convention of sorts in the works that includes a lot of that metadata, but again, its one of these closely guarded things and currently intended only for Pinup Popper. It's called puplookup.csv and is a database of proper table names. I believe the idea is the Pinup Popper frontend will use it to rename either the filenames of the actual tables or maybe it just cross references the names for the Pinup frontend to use to when it creates table media. I'm not really sure. I think its more about enforcing strict filenames and retaining author information in the meta than actual deep meta like the IPDB would provide on commercial tables, but again, I'm not entirely sure.

So when you download AC-DC_Luci-1.5.vpx and add it to the frontend, the database cross references the name, and the name reflected in the frontend will be AC-DC (LUCI Premium) (Stern 2013). Its kind of the same way Launchbox imports games. It strips the .zip or .bin from the name and renames to what is in the database - or at least that is the name you see in the frontend. Since there are several AC DC tables all built and based off of the same table, you wouldn't want to simply name the first table imported as AC-DC. You need something to differentiate them so having the year and manufacturer helps with that.

So VP10_Attack_From_Mars_Dozer_RTM.vpx would be seen as Attack from Mars (Bally 1995) while the metadata would reflect the authors as Dozer - ICPJuggla/Hauntfreaks acknowledging their work bringing the table to life.

Batman Dark Knight tt&NZ 1.0.vpx would be seen as Batman The Dark Knight (Stern 2008) while the metadata would reflect the authors as Ninuzzu and Tom Tower acknowledging their work bringing the table to life

Legend of Zelda.vpx would be seen as The Legend of Zelda (Original 2015)  -  Note how the manufacturer in this case is Original since there is not a physical table. Also this is a JPSalas creation so he would be credited as the author in the meta

Lord Of The Rings (Stern - 2003)Neo LED Mod 1.0.3.vpx would be seen as Lord Of The Rings (Stern - 2003) - etc, etc, etc

For my 2 cents, if Launchbox were to do any kind of database stuff with Visual Pinball, it would only be to get the proper naming down and some basic metadata like table authors. To be able to populate media, there would need to be some kind of built in media recording function, either within LB itself or with a third party plugin. This is how the other frontends deal with gameplay media. the other stuff like logos and such are a little harder to figure out. There are a few Visual Pinball groups on Facebook that have built a spreadsheet that users have created that list all the major tables with links to each table and where to find media for each table. It is amazing how spread out the tables and media can be. The spreadsheet will list a table you like at one forum, the backglass for that table at another site, and a wheel (clear logo) at yet another. The spreadsheet seems to be the only approved method I've seen of sharing among the true vpinheads.

This is all just food for thought. Something to ponder. I've said it before. the rabbit-hole is very deep with virtual pinball.

[dragon57]

Loving the 'default' image features for the categories Jason has recently created. I've been waiting on this for a while. Thanks so much!

[Omen]

@Jason Carr When I try to import files via drag and drop, LB is only importing a few random files each time. I have 99 files selected when I drag them over to LB but only a few show up in the import wizard. This is the first time I've had this issue, and I am on the latest beta.

EDIT: It doesn't appear to be a beta issue, I tried a stable release and I'm still having the problem. It's probably been a year since I've imported anything into LB, so I have no idea why I'm having this issue. I've tried multiple file types, on different platforms, but it's all the same.

 

Edited June 27, 2019 by Omen

[JaysArcade]

That's weird. I had never used drag and drop before last night. I read about it yesterday and thought I would try it. I successfully dragged several (25 or 30) VPX files into LB and it imported them all. I was on the latest beta. Pretty cool feature but not something I would have expected Launchbox to be capable of.

[Omen]

9 minutes ago, JaysArcade said:

That's weird. I had never used drag and drop before last night. I read about it yesterday and thought I would try it. I successfully dragged several (25 or 30) VPX files into LB and it imported them all. I was on the latest beta. Pretty cool feature but not something I would have expected Launchbox to be capable of.

Yeah it's very weird. I've exclusively used drag and drop for the past 3 years without issues, it doesn't make sense why I'm having issues now. Even the import wizard is having the same problem, so I'm starting to think something on my PC is causing the issue.

[Charco]

Are you sure it has not already imported the games and they are hidden? It could be recognising them as duplicates and not importing them. Search for one of the games that has failed to import, it may be that it's there but not associated to a platform and not visible.

[Lordmonkus]

34 minutes ago, JaysArcade said:

That's weird. I had never used drag and drop before last night. I read about it yesterday and thought I would try it. I successfully dragged several (25 or 30) VPX files into LB and it imported them all. I was on the latest beta. Pretty cool feature but not something I would have expected Launchbox to be capable of.

I've been exclusively doing that since day 1, it was the way I first tried it just trying the software out before seeing any guides or anything, it just felt like the natural way of doing things.

[JaysArcade]

2 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

I've been exclusively doing that since day 1, it was the way I first tried it just trying the software out before seeing any guides or anything, it just felt like the natural way of doing things.

I always do things the hard way, LOL. I do drag and drop images in the edit dialog of roms though. Then click the dropdown and select clear logo or game play screen, etc to match the media type. I wish I could do that with videos. Well now that I think of it, I haven't actually tried dragging and dropping a video so maybe it does that already? Hmmm, I'll have to try it later.

[Omen]

40 minutes ago, Charco said:

Are you sure it has not already imported the games and they are hidden? It could be recognising them as duplicates and not importing them. Search for one of the games that has failed to import, it may be that it's there but not associated to a platform and not visible.

Positive, I don't hide games. Also hidden games should have no affect on LB's import wizard, the games I drag should be shown whether they are hidden or not. But just to be safe I searched every XML for hidden games with Notepad++, and there are no hidden games in my collection.

Edited June 27, 2019 by Omen