10.15-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

13 minutes ago, Rlad said:

I have that issue to, as mcfilmmakers says scrolling the left column pulls it out of the lock.

Also when deleting a game launchbox will jump back to the top, was this the behaviour of previous versions? It's kind of annoying if your working through a number of games and have to keep scrolling back down everytime. You can avoid it if you select another game just before it gets deleted but i don't remeber having to do this before.

Per jumping back to the top on delete, you can stop that from happening if you disable dynamic box sizing. Dynamic box sizing affects a lot of things like that. It's worked the same since we added it.

[nearvanaman]

17 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Just drag and drop the shortcuts it drops on your desktop and choose the "none of the above" option in the wizard.

Yes, thanks. For installed that works - although I link directly to the exe file. I tend not to install games I'm not actively playing so I was wondering if it was possible to link to a non-installed game using the game ID (subsequently found this thread). I haven't yet found a public "Game ID" for Twitch games similar to SteamDB.  GOG Galaxy has an import for Twitch but the Game IDs are not listed. Thanks.

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, mcfilmmakers said:

I figured it had to do with media... so here's the thing. Running the media clean up tool gets me THOUSANDS of duplicate files that I would love to delete. But there's no option to delete only duplicates and keep the files not in use, you can only select all or select none

I'm not 100% sure that it has to do with media. One thing you could try doing temporarily though is renaming your media folders so that there's no media in LaunchBox to see if you still get the issue. Make sure you take a backup of your Data folder first though (but that's automatic unless you've turned off automatic backups).

[Rlad]

14 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Per jumping back to the top on delete, you can stop that from happening if you disable dynamic box sizing. Dynamic box sizing affects a lot of things like that. It's worked the same since we added it.

Yeah that sorted it, cheers.?

[mcfilmmakers]

16 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I'm not 100% sure that it has to do with media. One thing you could try doing temporarily though is renaming your media folders so that there's no media in LaunchBox to see if you still get the issue. Make sure you take a backup of your Data folder first though (but that's automatic unless you've turned off automatic backups).

Renaming my images folder provided a MASSIVE performance boost. CPU usage at 0% when idle, RAM usage at 1.8GB when idle. CPU usage at 21% when scrolling but the scrolling is smooth as butter. The difference is  juts as noticeable in list view. The sleep time when editing metadata is the same though.

This got me thinking: Launchbox must either a) be trying to cache images when scrolling, even in list view when it doesn't need to or b) the background images feature must be causing the lag.

So, I reverted back to my old images folder and disabled the background blur from 50 to 0. 

CPU usage at 0% on idle, 30% when scrolling. Scrolling smooth as butter. 1.2 GB ram usage. CPU usage at 40% on image view but ram usage still 1.2GB and smooth as butter, The long delay when editing data still exists, but expected due to database size.

So it's the blurred background causing the lag, even on idle. I can expect more cpu/ram use to create the blur effect, but not necessarily to that extent and not all the time. I'd expect the increased use when a new image has to be loaded but once loaded and effect applied, for the cpu/ram usage to dissipate. So that addressed the scroll/cpu/ram issue.

As for the bigger issue of the games list not waking up, i'll keep the background blur disabled for the next little while as I do more edits and report back on whether things change there.

[bbneo]

40 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I've tested this and haven't been able to reproduce it. We should probably figure out what's happening here though; it's probably related to the 7-Zip upgrade we did in one way or another. Do you have a LaunchBox\7-Zip\x64\7z.exe file in your LaunchBox install?

There is no more 7-Zip folder at the root of the LaunchBox folder. It was move to the ThirdParty folder.

I did further testing and I can confirm that the potential "bug" was introduced on version 10.15-Beta5. Before that, on Beta4 the extraction work as it should.

Again I am testing with clean installations on the default path proposed by the install wizard meaning C:\users\"MyUsername". I just add a Dreamcast game which is compressed with WinRAR to my Games list and use Redream as Emu. (same process of all tests)

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, bbneo said:

There is no more 7-Zip folder at the root of the LaunchBox folder. It was move to the ThirdParty folder.

I did further testing and I can confirm that the potential "bug" was introduced on version 10.15-Beta5. Before that, on Beta4 the extraction work as it should.

Again I am testing with clean installations on the default path proposed by the install wizard meaning C:\users\"MyUsername". I just add a Dreamcast game which is compressed with WinRAR to my Games list and use Redream as Emu. (same process of all tests)

I missed the ThirdParty folder when I typed that out. Do you have this folder?: LaunchBox\ThirdParty\7-zip\x64

It's the x64 folder I'm curious about specifically. Also, are you on a 32-bit or 64-bit system?

I just tested installing the latest beta to a new folder in the default location, and I'm still not seeing any issues. My only thought is maybe you're on a 32-bit system and the 32-bit version isn't working?

[Jason Carr]

1 hour ago, mcfilmmakers said:

Renaming my images folder provided a MASSIVE performance boost. CPU usage at 0% when idle, RAM usage at 1.8GB when idle. CPU usage at 21% when scrolling but the scrolling is smooth as butter. The difference is  juts as noticeable in list view. The sleep time when editing metadata is the same though.

The media is almost always the biggest cause of performance issues, of course. Media-heavy things aren't always easy to do quickly.

1 hour ago, mcfilmmakers said:

This got me thinking: Launchbox must either a) be trying to cache images when scrolling, even in list view when it doesn't need to or b) the background images feature must be causing the lag.

So, I reverted back to my old images folder and disabled the background blur from 50 to 0. 

CPU usage at 0% on idle, 30% when scrolling. Scrolling smooth as butter. 1.2 GB ram usage. CPU usage at 40% on image view but ram usage still 1.2GB and smooth as butter, The long delay when editing data still exists, but expected due to database size.

So it's the blurred background causing the lag, even on idle. I can expect more cpu/ram use to create the blur effect, but not necessarily to that extent and not all the time. I'd expect the increased use when a new image has to be loaded but once loaded and effect applied, for the cpu/ram usage to dissipate. So that addressed the scroll/cpu/ram issue.

That's odd, but it's a good path forward. I know that the blurred backgrounds aren't causing much lag on the systems I've seen and tested, so I'm guessing something funky is going on with them on your system somehow. Certainly strange. It almost feels like you're using a broken/old blurring mechanism. Are you using the LaunchBox default theme? Any chance you're using a custom theme that might be causing the lag?

1 hour ago, mcfilmmakers said:

As for the bigger issue of the games list not waking up, i'll keep the background blur disabled for the next little while as I do more edits and report back on whether things change there.

Thanks, sounds good.

[mcfilmmakers]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

Are you using the LaunchBox default theme? Any chance you're using a custom theme that might be causing the lag?

Thanks, sounds good.

Using the default theme. I never used any other themes. As for the sleep issue, so far there have been no issues.

[Jason Carr]

5 minutes ago, mcfilmmakers said:

Using the default theme. I never used any other themes. As for the sleep issue, so far there have been no issues.

So the gaussian blur process that blurs the backgrounds does require some heavy processing, but I've never seen it cause severe performance issues. Are you using a USB drive or anything with slow disk access? It does write a new temporary image file to the drive to do it. It also uses multi-threading to attempt to do it quickly, but it should only use the number of cores available on your CPU. Still, I suppose older CPUs could be more affected by it.

[mcfilmmakers]

17 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

So the gaussian blur process that blurs the backgrounds does require some heavy processing, but I've never seen it cause severe performance issues. Are you using a USB drive or anything with slow disk access? It does write a new temporary image file to the drive to do it. It also uses multi-threading to attempt to do it quickly, but it should only use the number of cores available on your CPU. Still, I suppose older CPUs could be more affected by it.

No USB drives. Everything is one your bog standard hard drive. Still, none of the cores ever gets maxed out so while it might use more resources, I'm never actually out of them. I mean, I'm running After Effects concurrently with Premiere and Photoshop while watching Twitch and don't run into slow down issues.

So as much as I'll admit my CPU is old, it is far from being outperformed. Anyhow, seems that the blur is indeed the culprit. No idea if anything can be done about that but at least it's not a more dramatic issue.

[bbneo]

7 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

I missed the ThirdParty folder when I typed that out. Do you have this folder?: LaunchBox\ThirdParty\7-zip\x64

It's the x64 folder I'm curious about specifically. Also, are you on a 32-bit or 64-bit system?

I just tested installing the latest beta to a new folder in the default location, and I'm still not seeing any issues. My only thought is maybe you're on a 32-bit system and the 32-bit version isn't working?

Yep, using a 64bit machine and I do have the folder: LaunchBox\ThirdParty\7-zip\x64

I got closer to the source of the problem: LB 10.15 Beta4 uses 7z verion 16.04 and Beta5 uses latest 7z version 19.00)

My games are packed with WinRAR 5 (precisely 5.71) and for some reasion ,7z verison 19.00 creates the error.

 

EDIT: Ignore this. Problem solved below. 

Edited May 10, 2020 by bbneo

[bbneo]

I downloaded the original files from the official 7-Zip Website and placed in folder LaunchBox\ThirdParty\7-zip\x64. Works fine now. 

I don't know how these got corrupted. 

Edited May 10, 2020 by bbneo

[rodww]

First of all, thanks again for such an awesome application, just love this program, and it keeps getting better and better every day!

I was testing 10.15-beta 8 and noticed during import (a minor issue), it seems to prompt to import other game types even though I didn't include them?   Unless I'm missing something and this is intended behavior?

Below in screen #1 I only have 'Search for game information and media..' checked, but when I get to the end of the wizard it prompts me to log in to download data for Epic Games and Origin Games (of which I have none in my collection, and did not select to scrape any for....)

[RULLUR]

21 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

What do you mean by sort by Versions?

The "Version" Category for game titles. Like I wanna easily be able to find all the mods for a certain game and all that.

[CriticalCid]

I found 2 other issues with the PC games launcher importers (sorry @C-Beats)

I own the “Command & Conquer - Ultimate Collection” on Origin (which is essentially a bundle of many different titles from the C&C series, each game has its own entry inside Origin and LB) and when I try to start a game from this collection it always launches “Command & Conquer - The Ultimate Collection Additional” and not the game I actually wanted to start. All games have a different "OriginAppId" and "OriginInstallPath" inside the Windows.xml, so it's not the issue that they all point to the same game.

I’ve tried these games with other third-party launchers (GOG Galaxy and Playnite) to see if it’s a general API issue but they both launch the correct games, so I’m not entirely sure what LB does differently here.

 

 

The other thing is that the Uplay importer seems to only import games that don’t require an additional launcher to start the game. For example, I own several Ubisoft games that I bought on Steam which require both Steam and Uplay to be open to start them. Even though I bought them on Steam they also appear in my games list inside Uplay. These games don’t get imported.

Now it might be no biggie that they are missing as I still have them imported inside LB through Steam but it would still be nice to have that Uplay badge so I can see directly if a game also requires Uplay in order to play it.

Of course I’ve also tested this with the other launchers and GOG Galaxy does import all games I have listed inside Uplay while Playnite has the same behavior as LB.

[C-Beats]

28 minutes ago, CriticalCid said:

The other thing is that the Uplay importer seems to only import games that don’t require an additional launcher to start the game. For example, I own several Ubisoft games that I bought on Steam which require both Steam and Uplay to be open to start them. Even though I bought them on Steam they also appear in my games list inside Uplay. These games don’t get imported.

Now it might be no biggie that they are missing as I still have them imported inside LB through Steam but it would still be nice to have that Uplay badge so I can see directly if a game also requires Uplay in order to play it.

Of course I’ve also tested this with the other launchers and GOG Galaxy does import all games I have listed inside Uplay while Playnite has the same behavior as LB.

This was done intentionally because the import would pull and assign them like a Steam game because of the application path that would need to be set (Uplay just launches the steam://.... link). Because of this we chose simply NOT to show them as to hopefully cause less confusion.

[CriticalCid]

Ah, makes sense. Thanks for the clarification

[sundogak]

@Jason Carr On LB 10.15 Beta 8 I noticed that the audit platform tool no longer sorts alphabetically if you click for a column sort.  For example, if you click on Release Date column to find blank ones it will sort them like before.  Blank ones grouped and non-blank grouped.  However, the sort within that grouping is all jumbled in each (the games with release dates and no release dates). It does it for the other columns, so not just release date.

The prior behavior was that whatever you click to sort by as the primary it would then sub sort alphabetically within that grouping.  For example, blank release dates alphabetically, then non-blank alphabetically.  Minor, but makes finding things in the list a bit harder since it doesn't appear to have any order I can make heads or tales of. 

Thanks for taking time to improve the audit feature overall, it saves lots of time in finding metadata issues.

[Spartan117B01]

On 4/28/2020 at 12:10 PM, Jason Carr said:

Yes, Origin is coming soon.

I've already imported my Origin Games. Will I be able to add the badges to those titles cuz I have an issue with them not showing on manually import Steam Games. The import process missed a few and I did it manually; just incase you were wondering.