10.12-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

18 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Well, restarting the emulator would close the pause screen and trigger the shutdown screen (if enabled) i would imagine. Launchbox will see the emulator close essentially. Maybe possible, but with my layman knowledge that sounds like a hell of a re-write of the pause and startup/shutdown screens.

Yeah, that would be another issue with restarting the emulator. But I don't think that's a good plan to begin with.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

Yeah, that would be another issue with restarting the emulator. But I don't think that's a good plan to begin with.

Agreed.

[PanteraZombie]

6 hours ago, neil9000 said:

Well, restarting the emulator would close the pause screen and trigger the shutdown screen (if enabled) i would imagine. Launchbox will see the emulator close essentially. Maybe possible, but with my layman knowledge that sounds like a hell of a re-write of the pause and startup/shutdown screens.

Good points... Didn't think about triggering the shutdown screen. Although, I just tested it using MAME's reset shortcut and it didn't trigger the shutdown screen so that's good... just not sure if it will send the updated high score.

Update: Resetting doesn't send the high score, it does require a close.

Edited March 29, 2020 by PanteraZombie

[PanteraZombie]

Just in case it hasn't been mentioned yet for future updates... adding Badges for games to indicate whether a game has "MAME High Scores" & "Retro Achievements" will be really nice! ?

[andyco47]

On 3/19/2020 at 6:48 PM, Jason Carr said:

Hey all, the first 10.12 beta is out now with the following:

• New Feature: A new MAME community high scores system has been built that allows you to share your high scores for MAME arcade games to compete with the community! You can enable uploading your high scores under Tools > Options > Integrations > MAME in LaunchBox; your high scores will then show up in the game details sidebar.

• Improvement: All third-party folders that used to be in the root of the LaunchBox folder have been moved to a new LaunchBox\ThirdParty folder, just to keep things clean and tidy. These folders will be moved to their new locations on first startup of the new version.

• Improvement: Custom theme game images will now optionally use the Database ID field when matching up file names (for Big Box theme developers)

Here's a visual example of the new MAME community high scores feature in the LaunchBox side bar:

Please note that the community leaderboards will show up by default, but high scores will not be submitted until you check the box to upload them from the Options page here:

Please be sure to read all the text on this page, as there are some very important notes here to get you set up. Eventually we'll add a troubleshooting forum post and link it from here, but for now of course we can do any troubleshooting here. The process to set up MAME high scores is somewhat involved, but I've done my best to automate it and do everything that's necessary in the background, if you check the Upload box.

If you're trying to test and/or submit high scores, please be aware that in order for anything to be submitted, or display in the list, you have to actually succeed in achieving a high score on the game's high scores list. Some games have a high barrier to entry with their default leaderboards, and nothing will show up or be submitted until you beat at least the bottom score.

One easy way to troubleshoot is to check to see if there is a .hi file that matches the name of the MAME ROM in the "hi" subfolder of the MAME emulator directory. If nothing is showing up there, then LaunchBox won't have anything to sync, and the issue is likely with MAME.

Finally, I've put lots of debugging information in the log files, so if you're having trouble, make sure you enable logging under Tools > Options > Debugging, and then take a look at the logs. Also, be sure to include the log files when reporting issues here.

I think this MAME high score stuff will be awesome once we get it going in the community. Looking forward to using it myself.

Oh, one more thing, there are lots of other related features coming, such as support for displaying the leaderboards in Big Box. Feel free to make requests, however.

will this work with rocket launcher as emulator and not mame. the reason why i am asking is  when i run with mame as emulator the roms/game says game rom missing but when i run it with just mame and not launchbox it works.and the game run ok with rocket launcher aswell.

Edited March 29, 2020 by andyco47

[Jason Carr]

On 3/29/2020 at 12:19 PM, andyco47 said:

will this work with rocket launcher as emulator and not mame. the reason why i am asking is  when i run with mame as emulator the roms/game says game rom missing but when i run it with just mame and not launchbox it works.and the game run ok with rocket launcher aswell.

I'm not sure about Rocket Launcher, but that may prove to be more difficult than we tackle for this version. I have it on my list, but it may or may not work out, as with Retroarch. Retroarch MAME is currently a higher priority for this feature than Rocket Launcher.

[Jason Carr]

Beta 8 is out now with the following:

• Improvement: Filters for auto-generated playlists are now available for Steam, GOG, and Epic Games, which let you easily filter your Windows platform into child Steam, GOG, and Epic Games playlists

• Fixed: Startup screens startup delay was not working for Steam games when running them from Big Box

• Fixed: MAME high scores error when no Internet connection is available

[Krakerman]

@Jason CarrFixed the video playback in the game detail it looks like I switched it back to VLC and not doing it anymore.

Thanks!

[andyco47]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

I'm not sure about Rocket Launcher, but that may prove to be more difficult than we tackle for this version. I have it on my list, but it may or may not work out, as with Retroarch. Retroarch MAME is currently a higher priority for this feature than Rocket Launcher.

ok thanks for reply i seen to have got it working now with using mame as emulator now.

[Jason Carr]

On 3/30/2020 at 3:36 PM, Krakerman said:

@Jason CarrFixed the video playback in the game detail it looks like I switched it back to VLC and not doing it anymore.

Thanks!

We haven't done anything to fix this, so it's probably just a fluke. Still haven't been able to replicate it.

[Jason Carr]

Beta 9 is out now with the following:

• A new MAME community high scores popup is now available in Big Box, either via the game details menu or the new keyboard and controller bindings

• Added some anti-cheat measures to the MAME high scores system, including disabling save states and only uploading newly achieved high scores

[ed20910]

46 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Beta 9 is out now with the following:

• A new MAME community high scores popup is now available in Big Box, either via the game details menu or the new keyboard and controller bindings

• Added some anti-cheat measures to the MAME high scores system, including disabling save states and only uploading newly achieved high scores

@Jason Carr Getting crashes on the Beta 9. Default Big Box theme doesnt give the error, but Unified Refried and Memories of Yesterday themes crash when cycling views.  Got these 3.  My Refried theme has the code from the original Hi Score plug in added, not sure if that is causing it.

The original plugin allowed local hi scores to be shown for the top 3-5 scores, does the new addition override this?

Edited April 1, 2020 by ed20910
spell correct/add addtnl info

[Jason Carr]

30 minutes ago, ed20910 said:

@Jason Carr Getting crashes on the Beta 9. Default Big Box theme doesnt give the error, but Unified Refried and Memories of Yesterday themes crash when cycling views.  Got these 3.  My Refried theme has the code from the original Hi Score plug in added, not sure if that is causing it.

The original plugin allowed local hi scores to be shown for the top 3-5 scores, does the new addition override this?

These errors are puzzling. They're acting like it can't find the MAME High Scores plugin; we haven't done anything that should remove or interfere with it though. Did you modify those themes yourself? If so, can you send me a copy of the themes?

[RULLUR]

So is the anti-cheat system gonna make it where you can't save, or will it just not be placed as a High Score if you try and save a game?

[Jason Carr]

Just now, RULLUR said:

So is the anti-cheat system gonna make it where you can't save, or will it just not be placed as a High Score if you try and save a game?

Unfortunately, if you turn on uploading your high scores, you won't be able to save. That's the only way to do it securely. Save states tend to mess with the whole system anyways.

[RULLUR]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

Unfortunately, if you turn on uploading your high scores, you won't be able to save. That's the only way to do it securely. Save states tend to mess with the whole system anyways.

Okay, thanks for confirming this more clearly. I rarely save, but want to be able to when I can, so I guess I'll have to further decide if I wanna do the High Scores or not. I think with me I'm trying to just beat the game more than anything, but I do understand the gaming community as a whole on a global level still are keeping the High Score system alive and well which I even appreciate even if I may decide not to take part. I just love all the cool optional features that keep becoming part of LaunchBox/BigBox each time so that all will have a setup that is never 2 alike unless they choose to do so themselves. Any chance we'll get around to a 2020 Poll for other features to be requested soon? I know some are still kinda taking part in the 2019 one as of lately though

[ed20910]

When the plugin was originally released, you had to add a couple of lines to one of the views xml to get hi score popup to show in BB, not even sure they were needed anymore.    It has worked just fine until whatever was done in beta 9.  The theme is just over 1gb.  how do you want me to send it? 

[Jason Carr]

2 minutes ago, RULLUR said:

Okay, thanks for confirming this more clearly. I rarely save, but want to be able to when I can, so I guess I'll have to further decide if I wanna do the High Scores or not. I think with me I'm trying to just beat the game more than anything, but I do understand the gaming community as a whole on a global level still are keeping the High Score system alive and well which I even appreciate even if I may decide not to take part. I just love all the cool optional features that keep becoming part of LaunchBox/BigBox each time so that all will have a setup that is never 2 alike unless they choose to do so themselves. Any chance we'll get around to a 2020 Poll for other features to be requested soon? I know some are still kinda taking part in the 2019 one as of lately though

We definitely have to wrap up the top 20 items on the last poll first. We're making good headway, but there's still a lot of items on the list.

3 minutes ago, ed20910 said:

When the plugin was originally released, you had to add a couple of lines to one of the views xml to get hi score popup to show in BB, not even sure they were needed anymore.    It has worked just fine until whatever was done in beta 9.  The theme is just over 1gb.  how do you want me to send it? 

The problem is, I can't figure out what's going on without the theme. Whatever the issue is seems to be specific to that or those themes. Maybe you can PM me the theme without the media portions? It's really just the XAML files that I need.

[Krakerman]

Hi Jason,

Yeah not fixed just did it again. VLC is the issue not WMP.

[ed20910]

I sent just the views.  I am working on zipping all but the media.  My cab is running beta 8 and the original plugin works fine with the pop up.  the pop up in BB works.  same theme on my laptop on beta 9 throws all those errors.  i even rolled back to beta 8 and get the errors now.