LaunchBox for Android 0.6 Beta Released!

[DOS76]

yeah this is something on Jason's radar to fix.

[froizki]

7 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

yeah this is something on Jason's radar to fix.

Yep, just got really excited to use Launchbox in Android.
Patience is a virtue.

[dirtybeagles]

I didn't see this specifically on the thread so my apologies if you already answered it. I mainly do my gaming on my shield tv and all my game files are on my Network Shared Drive and it works great with a system like RetroX where I can select my games folder on my share. Does LaunchBox Beta see network shares too? It would be a helpful feature to add the options in the app to select a specific directory in the options. 

[CraigC]

3 hours ago, dirtybeagles said:

I didn't see this specifically on the thread so my apologies if you already answered it. I mainly do my gaming on my shield tv and all my game files are on my Network Shared Drive and it works great with a system like RetroX where I can select my games folder on my share. Does LaunchBox Beta see network shares too? It would be a helpful feature to add the options in the app to select a specific directory in the options. 

Yep, I also have been using Retrox on my Shield for several years now & it’s been awesome! 

If launchbox can be as automated as retrox it will be amazing! 

Looking forward to all the launchbox updates.

Thanx Jason for all your great work!!! ??

[Skidda420]

so after struggling since the release to get LBA running on Nvidia shield with no luck, I figured out what my issue was and hope it will help others. What was happening was I would have my imported folder on my external drive as well and the LBA install and everytime I went to launch a game using LBA Retroarch would just come up with a blank black screen and not launch. So I tried the same step method with Arc Browser on my shield and yielded the same results. Seems something with Retroarch not wanting to play nicely. Fix =  move retroarch onto your internal drive as soon as I did that both LBA and Arc Browser pulled the game up without a hitch  ?

[Retro808]

7 minutes ago, Skidda420 said:

so after struggling since the release to get LBA running on Nvidia shield with no luck, I figured out what my issue was and hope it will help others. What was happening was I would have my imported folder on my external drive as well and the LBA install and everytime I went to launch a game using LBA Retroarch would just come up with a blank black screen and not launch. So I tried the same step method with Arc Browser on my shield and yielded the same results. Seems something with Retroarch not wanting to play nicely. Fix =  move retroarch onto your internal drive as soon as I did that both LBA and Arc Browser pulled the game up without a hitch  ?

There was mention early on that if you had Launchbox installed on an external drive  you needed to make sure you deleted the Launchbox folders located on your Sheild internal storage. It was mentioned back on page 7 and page 8. Posts by Jason and Krater9. Not sure if that would have any affect on your issue with Retroarch, but seemed worth a mention. 

[Jason Carr]

On 8/30/2019 at 3:11 PM, Kmetz7547 said:

So Im such a arcade freak.. i must know which version of mame roms should i be looking for to get to run with this, or am i reading it wrong? If its an old version only that android requires, why not just use an old version? 

We'll get MAME working; the problem is that no one is going to be using such an old ROM set on their desktop PC, so our export process isn't really going to work.

On 8/30/2019 at 7:10 PM, Mu144 said:

Installed on my hawual p20 pro. 

Followed Primes vid on YouTube. 

Had to mess around to get it in the android root location. 

But took forever to copy images for My gameboy colour box art.. 

Games and em are working but no box art in menu. 

What's the path for images for box art?

Everything is located under /Android/data/com.unbrokensoftware.launchbox/files/LaunchBox. Check to make sure the images exist under Images/[Platform Name]/Box - Front - Thumb subfolder.

On 8/31/2019 at 1:04 AM, TechXero said:

I have a question if I may,

I own the nVidia Shield Pro 500gb (Discontinued), but as we all know, having LaunchBox our ROMs library might have gotten way bigger than 500gb (3TB in my case), so how to set up said library on an external drive to work with Android version that I will use on the Shield ? ETA didn't show us how in his recent video.

Thanks, and sorry if question was already asked kindly be kind

I still have yet to try this, but I'll give it a shot here soon. I have the latest version of the Shield TV though, so my efforts might not be the same. I expect that ETA will put out a tutorial for that specifically eventually.

On 8/31/2019 at 3:54 AM, Drakkorcia said:

Purchased the app. Currently have hand picked Retroarch collection. Not sure how this works yet but I don't want to mess with a second LB installation and there is no way I can export my entire collection across multiple external drives onto my smartphone. Can anyone point me to a tutorial for this app? ETA Prime is my go to for all things tutorial. Think I'll head to his channel and see what he has to say.

ETA just put out a tutorial on Friday.

On 8/31/2019 at 5:32 AM, kharil85 said:

1) I have format my phone and install everything. It work now. For Retroarch, I need to exit it completely every time I want to change to new rom. If not, it always goes to menu instead of auto loading. For NDS, since it export the 7zip, it take about a minute for the program to extract and play while I could load instantly if I am using directly Drastic emulator.

2) The export still missing the image file and folder for some of my rom (NDS,Snes,GBA) while N64 and Psp are able to export with image.

Per #1, unfortunately that is just a fluke of Retroarch. I researched for hours trying to find a fix, but unfortunately it doesn't exist. You just have to make sure that Retroarch exits before launching a different ROM. Other emulators exist that work much more properly for Android, and will load up a ROM even if another ROM is running, but unfortunately Retroarch doesn't do that properly. We might eventually have some luck if we report the issue to the Retroarch development team though.

Per 7-zip, I'm going to add an option here soon to allow you to choose whether to extract archives before running the game, on a per-platform basis.

Per #2, check to see if the images are included in the export package before it is transferred over to your device. In the vast majority of cases, the operation to copy the files to the device is just not completing properly. Unfortunately Windows doesn't do a great job making sure that the copy operations complete properly when copying to Android devices. Also make sure that your collection has box front images for those platforms.

On 8/31/2019 at 10:34 AM, sw1fty808 said:

Excellent beginnings for this app. Working great with Galaxy S10.

The only issue I've run into is using the Ipega 9087S controller. When you exit a game back to Launchbox, the d-pad stops working.
Switching the box/list view brings it back to life. Weird but no biggy.

Really looking forward to some type of search or sort function. Scrolling full game sets is a bit tedious.

Really impressed overall though. Launching games is very fast and I've experienced no crashes.

Thank you very much.

Strange with that controller. I'll see if I can pick one up for testing.

On 8/31/2019 at 1:56 PM, Alucard205 said:

Can we get support for "My Boy!"? It's GBA emulater that can actually emulate a link cable.
 

Thanks for all the hard work!

Sure; I'll add that emulator to my list of emulators to add.

On 8/31/2019 at 2:27 PM, mosestyle said:

One stupid quesition, why does the latest version extract game files when launching a game?

I have Huawei P30 Pro, and for some reason it takes ages to extract the games... The previous Launchbox version worked great without any exctration (not what i'm aware of)...

It takes even longer when launching a Dreamcast game since the file size is larger.

 

EDIT: Also is it possible to add Mupen64+ FZ???
There is Mupen64+ AE and AE free, but not FZ version

All previous versions always extracted archive files, but I'm going to add a platform-specific option to enable or disable it, so a fix for that is coming. I'll also look into Mupen64+ FZ.

On 8/31/2019 at 5:14 PM, nearvanaman said:

Has anyone got SNES MSU1 working? When I launch from Launchbox, the unzip takes about 5 minutes. Retroarch starts but with just a black screen. 

If I run the content directly from Retroarch, it runs fine. 

I notice that my MSU1 games are all zipped folders, if that's at all relevant. 

Thanks.

I'm guessing that this issue is related to not having an option to *not* extract the archives. Hopefully it will work once I add that in.

[Jason Carr]

23 hours ago, dirtybeagles said:

I didn't see this specifically on the thread so my apologies if you already answered it. I mainly do my gaming on my shield tv and all my game files are on my Network Shared Drive and it works great with a system like RetroX where I can select my games folder on my share. Does LaunchBox Beta see network shares too? It would be a helpful feature to add the options in the app to select a specific directory in the options. 

At this point, network share drives are not supported. I'm sure we'll add that in eventually, but it probably won't be a focus for a while yet.

13 hours ago, Skidda420 said:

so after struggling since the release to get LBA running on Nvidia shield with no luck, I figured out what my issue was and hope it will help others. What was happening was I would have my imported folder on my external drive as well and the LBA install and everytime I went to launch a game using LBA Retroarch would just come up with a blank black screen and not launch. So I tried the same step method with Arc Browser on my shield and yielded the same results. Seems something with Retroarch not wanting to play nicely. Fix =  move retroarch onto your internal drive as soon as I did that both LBA and Arc Browser pulled the game up without a hitch  ?

Aaah, good to know. I wondered if it might have been some kind of issue like that. Glad we finally have that figured out.

[Jason Carr]

Thanks for all the testing and updates guys. I'm planning to keep hammering things out, and hopefully we can put out the official release early next week.

[neil9000]

@Jason Carr Is there a file we can edit which has the supported platforms in it, or is it actually part of the app? Reason i ask is to do with MAME, i do actually have a current and a MAME 2003 set imported on my PC. That 2003 set "should" technically work with the MAME 2003 core in retroarch. However to distinguish my platforms in Launchbox i have that platform called "Arcade 2003", i have exported that platform to Android, but of course i cant use it as its not on the list of supported Platforms with that name that i use.

 

[neil9000]

16 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Per #2, check to see if the images are included in the export package before it is transferred over to your device. In the vast majority of cases, the operation to copy the files to the device is just not completing properly. Unfortunately Windows doesn't do a great job making sure that the copy operations complete properly when copying to Android devices. Also make sure that your collection has box front images for those platforms.

I actually found that i had better luck transferring to my phone via a FTP client built into one of the many file explorer apps available on the play store, and using Filezilla on my PC to connect to it. Also Filezilla will list in a different tab any files that failed to transfer for some reason, and you can highlight and re-queue them as needed.

[Mu144]

31 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

We'll get MAME working; the problem is that no one is going to be using such an old ROM set on their desktop PC, so our export process isn't really going to work.

Everything is located under /Android/data/com.unbrokensoftware.launchbox/files/LaunchBox. Check to make sure the images exist under Images/[Platform Name]/Box - Front - Thumb subfolder.

I still have yet to try this, but I'll give it a shot here soon. I have the latest version of the Shield TV though, so my efforts might not be the same. I expect that ETA will put out a tutorial for that specifically eventually.

ETA just put out a tutorial on Friday.

Per #1, unfortunately that is just a fluke of Retroarch. I researched for hours trying to find a fix, but unfortunately it doesn't exist. You just have to make sure that Retroarch exits before launching a different ROM. Other emulators exist that work much more properly for Android, and will load up a ROM even if another ROM is running, but unfortunately Retroarch doesn't do that properly. We might eventually have some luck if we report the issue to the Retroarch development team though.

Per 7-zip, I'm going to add an option here soon to allow you to choose whether to extract archives before running the game, on a per-platform basis.

Per #2, check to see if the images are included in the export package before it is transferred over to your device. In the vast majority of cases, the operation to copy the files to the device is just not completing properly. Unfortunately Windows doesn't do a great job making sure that the copy operations complete properly when copying to Android devices. Also make sure that your collection has box front images for those platforms.

Strange with that controller. I'll see if I can pick one up for testing.

Sure; I'll add that emulator to my list of emulators to add.

All previous versions always extracted archive files, but I'm going to add a platform-specific option to enable or disable it, so a fix for that is coming. I'll also look into Mupen64+ FZ.

I'm guessing that this issue is related to not having an option to *not* extract the archives. Hopefully it will work once I add that in.

Thanks Jason, 

I was following ETA Prime video to closely it seems.

removed the LB part and copied it to my Android folder. 

Why I couldn't link to images I'm guessing. 

 

I know now the package that launchbox spits out is then copied to the root. 

 

Can I recommend that DraStic be added to the emulator list for Ds. 

Retroarch seemed to stutter a lot on castlevania Dos intro. 

 

Looking forward to more game information and maybe a last played tab. 

[jeanfreitas]

@Jason did you see the video I posted Friday? Mu launchbox updated to 0.15 but PPSSPP Gold continues with the same error

 

[Jason Carr]

5 hours ago, neil9000 said:

@Jason Carr Is there a file we can edit which has the supported platforms in it, or is it actually part of the app? Reason i ask is to do with MAME, i do actually have a current and a MAME 2003 set imported on my PC. That 2003 set "should" technically work with the MAME 2003 core in retroarch. However to distinguish my platforms in Launchbox i have that platform called "Arcade 2003", i have exported that platform to Android, but of course i cant use it as its not on the list of supported Platforms with that name that i use.

 

There's a lot involved with that, so I'm not exactly sure if you'll be able to pull that off or not at this point. In theory, it might work if your Scrape As is arcade on the desktop, but I'm not entirely sure. I have a lot to look into yet with MAME on Android.

5 hours ago, Mu144 said:

Thanks Jason, 

I was following ETA Prime video to closely it seems.

removed the LB part and copied it to my Android folder. 

Why I couldn't link to images I'm guessing. 

 

I know now the package that launchbox spits out is then copied to the root. 

 

Can I recommend that DraStic be added to the emulator list for Ds. 

Retroarch seemed to stutter a lot on castlevania Dos intro. 

 

Looking forward to more game information and maybe a last played tab. 

Thanks @Mu144. DraStic should already be there for DS.

27 minutes ago, jeanfreitas said:

@Jason did you see the video I posted Friday? Mu launchbox updated to 0.15 but PPSSPP Gold continues with the same error

 

Yes, I did, but I was receiving conflicting information from people. Regardless, I've fixed PPSSPP Gold for the 0.16 beta release.

[Jason Carr]

I just submitted version 0.16 to the Play Store with the following:

• New per-platform option to extract ROM archives or not
• Fixed missing games issue from Android platform; due to the poor classification of games vs. apps on Android, some apps may show up now, but at least all games will be included. Eventually you'll be able to hide apps that you don't want displayed.
• Added support for two new emulators: My Boy! for GBA and Mupen64Plus FZ for N64
• Fixed the PPSSPP Gold emulator
• Extracted ROM archives are now cleaned up with a max of ten archives kept, and existing archives will be used instead of re-extracting

[Kmetz7547]

ok i have tested all systems the launchbox app will allow me to test on my SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 10+ and these are my results:

LOADS FINE USING PROVIDED EMULATORS:

AMSTRAD CPC . 

ATARI 2600 .

ATARI 7800 .

ATARI JAGUAR .

ATARI LYNX .

BANDAI WONDERSWAN .

BANDAI WONDERSWAN COLOR .

COMMODORE 64 .

NINTENDO 64 .

NINTENDO DS .

NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT CENTER .

NINTENDO GAMEBOY .

NINTENDO GAMEBOY ADVANCE .

NINTENDO GAMEBOY COLOR .

SEGA 32X .

SEGA DREAMCAST .

SEGA GAMEGEAR . 

SEGA GENESIS.

SEGA MASTER SYSTEM .

SEGA SG-1000 .

SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM .

SONY PLAYSTATION .

SONY PSP .

SUPER NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM

 

PROBLEMS :

ATARI 5200 - Emulation Halted Error  (In Emulator)

BALLY ASTROCADE - Black Screen

COMODORE AMIGA - Black Screen

EMERSON ARCADIA 2001 - Black Screen

GCE VECTREX - Black Screen

MAGNAVOX ODYSSEY 2 - Black Screen

MATTEL INTELLIVISION - Black Scren

MICROSOFT MSX - Retroarch Crash

MICROSOFT MSX 2 - Retroarch Crash

NINTENDO GAMECUBE - No Available Emulator

NINTENDO SUPER FAMICOM - No Available Emulator

NINTENDO VIRTUAL BOY - Error Occured (booting)

SEGA SATURN - Loads with Visual Glitches

SONY PLAYSTATION 2 - Wont Load

 

 

 

[Kmetz7547]

Side note ,

I have uploaded my sony psp minis and the app sees them but provides no emulator..

ppsspp works with these so could this be updated on a future release?

Thanks, back to testing....

[Mu144]

19 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

There's a lot involved with that, so I'm not exactly sure if you'll be able to pull that off or not at this point. In theory, it might work if your Scrape As is arcade on the desktop, but I'm not entirely sure. I have a lot to look into yet with MAME on Android.

Thanks @Mu144. DraStic should already be there for DS.

Yes, I did, but I was receiving conflicting information from people. Regardless, I've fixed PPSSPP Gold for the 0.16 beta release.

OK cool I had DraStic installed already and figured it was an option because of this. 

Good to know its an option its a solid loader. 

 

I set up a new launchbox to try platforms because pulling from my collection took to long. 

What are the current systems compatible? 

 

[bundangdon]

2 hours ago, Kmetz7547 said:

ok i have tested all systems the launchbox app will allow me to test on my SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 10+ and these are my results:

LOADS FINE USING PROVIDED EMULATORS:

AMSTRAD CPC . 

ATARI 2600 .

ATARI 7800 .

ATARI JAGUAR .

ATARI LYNX .

BANDAI WONDERSWAN .

BANDAI WONDERSWAN COLOR .

COMMODORE 64 .

NINTENDO 64 .

NINTENDO DS .

NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT CENTER .

NINTENDO GAMEBOY .

NINTENDO GAMEBOY ADVANCE .

NINTENDO GAMEBOY COLOR .

SEGA 32X .

SEGA DREAMCAST .

SEGA GAMEGEAR . 

SEGA GENESIS.

SEGA MASTER SYSTEM .

SEGA SG-1000 .

SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM .

SONY PLAYSTATION .

SONY PSP .

SUPER NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM

 

PROBLEMS :

ATARI 5200 - Emulation Halted Error  (In Emulator)

BALLY ASTROCADE - Black Screen

COMODORE AMIGA - Black Screen

EMERSON ARCADIA 2001 - Black Screen

GCE VECTREX - Black Screen

MAGNAVOX ODYSSEY 2 - Black Screen

MATTEL INTELLIVISION - Black Scren

MICROSOFT MSX - Retroarch Crash

MICROSOFT MSX 2 - Retroarch Crash

NINTENDO GAMECUBE - No Available Emulator

NINTENDO SUPER FAMICOM - No Available Emulator

NINTENDO VIRTUAL BOY - Error Occured (booting)

SEGA SATURN - Loads with Visual Glitches

SONY PLAYSTATION 2 - Wont Load

 

 

 

@Kmetz7547 I'm not an admin here or anything but to be more specific, could you provide the emulator names instead of system names? For example, Nintendo NES = nes.emu, retroarch, etc. Also, I'm wondering which android emulator plays Bally Astrocade games? I'm also doing some testing with this, so your list could be very helpful 

[Kmetz7547]

54 minutes ago, bundangdon said:

@Kmetz7547 I'm not an admin here or anything but to be more specific, could you provide the emulator names instead of system names? For example, Nintendo NES = nes.emu, retroarch, etc. Also, I'm wondering which android emulator plays Bally Astrocade games? I'm also doing some testing with this, so your list could be very helpful 

 

LOADS FINE USING PROVIDED EMULATORS:

AMSTRAD CPC . (Retroarch - cap32_libretro_android.so)

ATARI 2600 . (Retroarch - stella_libretro_android.so)

ATARI 7800 . (Retroarch - prosystem_libretro_android.so)

ATARI JAGUAR . (Retroarch - virtualjaguar_libretro_android.so)

ATARI LYNX . (Retroarch - handy_libretro_android.so)

BANDAI WONDERSWAN . (Retroarch - mednafen_wswan_libretro_android.so)

BANDAI WONDERSWAN COLOR . (Retroarch - mednafen_wswan_libretro_android.so)

COMMODORE 64 . (Retroarch - vice_x64_libretro_android.so)

NINTENDO 64 . (Retroarch - mupen64plus_next_libretro_android.so)

NINTENDO DS . (DraStic)

NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT CENTER . (Retroarch - nestopia_libretro_android.so)

NINTENDO GAMEBOY . (Retroarch - gambatte_libretro_android.so)

NINTENDO GAMEBOY ADVANCE . (Retroarch - mgba_libretro_android.so)

NINTENDO GAMEBOY COLOR . (Retroarch - gambatte_libretro_android.so)

SEGA 32X . (Retroarch - picodrive_libretro_android.so)

SEGA DREAMCAST . (Retroarch - flycast_libretro_android.so)

SEGA GAMEGEAR . (Retroarch - genesis_plus_gx_libretro_android.so)

SEGA GENESIS. (Retroarch - genesis_plus_gx_libretro_android.so)

SEGA MASTER SYSTEM . (Retroarch - genesis_plus_gx_libretro_android.so)

SEGA SG-1000 . (Retroarch - genesis_plus_gx_libretro_android.so)

SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM . (Retroarch - fuse_libretro_android.so)

SONY PLAYSTATION . (Retroarch - pcsx_rearmed_libretro_android.so)

SONY PSP . (PPSSPP)

SUPER NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM. ((Retroarch - snes9x_libretro_android.so)

 

PROBLEMS :

ATARI 5200 - Emulation Halted Error  (In Emulator)   (Retroarch - atari800_libretro_android.so)

BALLY ASTROCADE - Black Screen   (Retroarch - mess2015_libretro_android.so)

COMODORE AMIGA - Black Screen   (Retroarch - puae_libretro_android.so)

EMERSON ARCADIA 2001 - Black Screen  (Retroarch - mess2015_libretro_android.so)

GCE VECTREX - Black Screen   (Retroarch - vecx_libretro_android.so)

MAGNAVOX ODYSSEY 2 - Black Screen   (Retroarch - o2em_libretro_android.so)

MATTEL INTELLIVISION - Black Screen   (Retroarch - freeintv_libretro_android.so)

MICROSOFT MSX - Retroarch Crash   (Retroarch - bluemsx_libretro_android.so)          Black Screen   (Retroarch - fmsx_libretro_android.so)

MICROSOFT MSX 2 - Retroarch Crash   (Retroarch - bluemsx_libretro_android.so)          Black Screen   (Retroarch - fmsx_libretro_android.so)

NINTENDO GAMECUBE - No Available Emulator   

NINTENDO SUPER FAMICOM - No Available Emulator

NINTENDO VIRTUAL BOY - Error Occured (booting)   (Retroarch - mednafen_vb_libretro_android.so)

SEGA SATURN - Loads with Visual Glitches   (Retroarch - yabause_libretro_android.so)

SONY PLAYSTATION 2 - Wont Load   (Retroarch - play_libretro_android.so)