10.15-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

@mcfilmmakers Clearly something is wrong, but it's tough to figure out what's happening without being able to replicate it. First things first, are you on Windows 7 or Windows 10? Make sure you're all up to date with Windows updates. Beyond that, I'm not quite sure where to go from there. Perhaps if you can zip up and send me your Logs folder, I can search through it and see if I can find any clues.

The error messages you posted above are normal and shouldn't be causing any of those issues.

[mcfilmmakers]

@Jason CarrWindows 10 and fully up to date on everything including drivers. I'll send you my logs but there's nothing unusual that i can find in them

[Jason Carr]

3 minutes ago, mcfilmmakers said:

@Jason CarrWindows 10 and fully up to date on everything including drivers. I'll send you my logs but there's nothing unusual that i can find in them

I'm seeing a couple of concerning things in the logs:

2020-05-15 02:02:56 PM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: The given path's format is not supported.
   at System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission.EmulateFileIOPermissionChecks(String fullPath)

This means that somewhere, somehow, there's an invalid file system path in your data. That could cause these issues, so we should look into that. I'm seeing a lot of this in the logs.

2020-05-15 02:02:56 PM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: Pixel format not supported.
   at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.ColorConvertedBitmap.FinalizeCreation()

This means that there's most likely at least one corrupted image somewhere in your collection. I doubt this is the cause of these issues though.

I've really only looked at the latest log, but I think the first issue is a likely culprit. I'll dive in deeper with your data to see if I can figure anything further out.

[mcfilmmakers]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

I'm seeing a couple of concerning things in the logs:

2020-05-15 02:02:56 PM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: The given path's format is not supported.
   at System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission.EmulateFileIOPermissionChecks(String fullPath)

This means that somewhere, somehow, there's an invalid file system path in your data. That could cause these issues, so we should look into that. I'm seeing a lot of this in the logs.

2020-05-15 02:02:56 PM FIRST CHANCE EXCEPTION: Pixel format not supported.
   at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.ColorConvertedBitmap.FinalizeCreation()

This means that there's most likely at least one corrupted image somewhere in your collection. I doubt this is the cause of these issues though.

I've really only looked at the latest log, but I think the first issue is a likely culprit. I'll dive in deeper with your data to see if I can figure anything further out.

hm, odd since everything was drag and dropped. Glad you're finding things though. As for the images, everything was imported via launchbox wizard too so we should track that down if at all possible.

[Jason Carr]

2 minutes ago, mcfilmmakers said:

hm, odd since everything was drag and dropped. Glad you're finding things though. As for the images, everything was imported via launchbox wizard too so we should track that down if at all possible.

At this point, nothing can really be looked into from that front. Could have been caused by a million and one things, including killing the app or a related crash to the above.

[mcfilmmakers]

So after an hour and 10 minutes I got fed up and killed the launchbox background process.

Reopened launchbox and into the emulator associated platforms... It's asking me to confirm default platforms starting from the letter "i".....

So, it is saving things but it's taking a DAMN long time to do so. I'm going to rename my images folder and see what this does for the background process.

Edited May 15, 2020 by mcfilmmakers

[Jason Carr]

@mcfilmmakers Okay, first off, why do you have 837 platforms? It seems like you have platforms that should probably be defined as playlists instead. I've never seen that many platforms before in any collection, so who knows, maybe you've reached some kind of upper limit that we've never seen before. Your total number of games though is only 34,000, which is nowhere near the largest number of games that I've seen. That's why it's puzzling though having that 837 platforms.

That said, in the past with collections like this I've seen massive issues with platform names not matching the XML names, and similar issues like that. By chance, have you manually altered the XML files by hand, or used any third-party tools? To be honest, this collection is a real doozy.

[mcfilmmakers]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

@mcfilmmakers Okay, first off, why do you have 837 platforms? It seems like you have platforms that should probably be defined as playlists instead. I've never seen that many platforms before in any collection, so who knows, maybe you've reached some kind of upper limit that we've never seen before. Your total number of games though is only 34,000, which is nowhere near the largest number of games that I've seen. That's why it's puzzling though having that 837 platforms.

That said, in the past with collections like this I've seen massive issues with platform names not matching the XML names, and similar issues like that. By chance, have you manually altered the XML files by hand, or used any third-party tools? To be honest, this collection is a real doozy.

That's a totally fair question! It's temporary. I'm re-sorting the MAME platform into subgroups so there's a temporary explosion of platforms. Not efficient, I know, but I had no choice because playlists won't let me sort things out the way i need them to for the moment. I have no intention on keeping anywhere near that many platforms for long. 

I have never manually edited my xml files or used third party tools.

[Jason Carr]

Beta 10 is out now with the following:

• Fix for closing the Download Platform Theme Videos window before the initial population is complete
• Fixes for some Origin issues reported above
• Fixes for various Audit issues reported above
• Various additional fields added to Audit
• Download Metadata and Media will no longer prompt about storefronts that you don't have in your collection

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, mcfilmmakers said:

That's a totally fair question! It's temporary. I'm re-sorting the MAME platform into subgroups so there's a temporary explosion of platforms. Not efficient, I know, but I had no choice because playlists won't let me sort things out the way i need them to for the moment. I have no intention on keeping anywhere near that many platforms for long. 

I have never manually edited my xml files or used third party tools.

Unfortunately though, in doing that, you may be hitting some limits as to what LaunchBox or your machine can handle. If I had to guess, you're running into significant performance issues due to the number of platforms and such. On top of that, I'm guessing that every time you've killed the process, it was in the middle of saving things and taking forever due to the large number of platforms, so you may have corrupted your data somewhere in there as well.

So it's a bit of a mess. I will take some time to look into the data further to see if I can figure anything out, but unfortunately I can't promise that I'll get anywhere.

[mcfilmmakers]

9 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Unfortunately though, in doing that, you may be hitting some limits as to what LaunchBox or your machine can handle. If I had to guess, you're running into significant performance issues due to the number of platforms and such. On top of that, I'm guessing that every time you've killed the process, it was in the middle of saving things and taking forever due to the large number of platforms, so you may have corrupted your data somewhere in there as well.

So it's a bit of a mess. I will take some time to look into the data further to see if I can figure anything out, but unfortunately I can't promise that I'll get anywhere.

Totally fair. It's my estimation that it the number of platforms causing the issue. I can't fathom how it's a PC performance issue given that none of my resources max out. I'll stop monopolizing the thread now. I'll pop in once the platform list is reduced to let you know how performance is at that point.

Also holy crap. I didn't realize I had that many platforms. Not cool. I seriously thought it was closer to 100.

[mcfilmmakers]

Last post, promise.

I narrowed down the issue: Manage Emulators -> Associated platforms - > default.

Avoiding that completely avoids all of my issues. The problem is Launchbox trying to go through 800+ platforms and setting the emulator as default for each one. For some reason, it takes a LONG time for Launchbox to do that, and fractions of seconds to do everything else. My methodology:

edit 1 game metadata. close launchbox. -> background process closes instantly.
edit 1 platform parent. close launchbox -> background process closes instantly.

edit 100 game metadata. close launchbox -> background process closes after 20-30 seconds.
edit 100 platform parent. close launchbox -> background process closes after 20-30 seconds.

Any combination of the above yields similar results.

Open Manage Emulators -> Associated platforms. do nothing. All the popups open confirming defaults. close launchbox. - > background process takes FOREVER.

To be fair, 99% of users won't have so many platforms and won't be setting them all as defaults for the same emulator. That said, this is the only process that is time intensive. So while I don't expect this to be resolved particularly for that reason, it does raise an opportunity to look there for a chance at improving performance in the future.

Secondly, the issue is caused by the following reason: in 10.14 these defaults were all already established and confirmed. I could enter the associated platforms without the popups showing up because launchbox knew all the associations. When I updated to the beta (now beta 10), Launchbox is now checking the additional applications in each game and platform for those default associations and needed to reconfirm them. All 800+ of them. Since it takes a long time to save that association in the background x the sheer number of associations to make, there's your problem.

So in short: Launchbox IS doing it's work as it should be, it just takes a long time to do it and it has to do it because it is checking for associations it never made in 10.14.

Edit: After Launchbox finally got through all the platforms in the background process, the issue no longer occurs. This is definitely the source of the problem.

I'm curious to know whether the others having "another instance is currently running" issues may be having those issues because they made edits on associated platforms.

Edited May 16, 2020 by mcfilmmakers

[CriticalCid]

16 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

• Fixes for some Origin issues reported above

Beta-10 fixed that issue for normal games but it still occurs if the game is launched as additional app.

 

 

I also re-imported my games from the Epic Games store and noticed that the importer doesn’t find all of my games anymore. It now only finds 99 games out of 112. It doesn’t matter if I have ‘import duplicates’ checked or not (I don't own them in other stores aynway).  I haven’t compared all of my games yet to identify the missing ones but the missing ones I noticed so far are:

- Thimbleweed Park

- Unreal Tournament

- World War Z

I’m pretty sure these games were detected when I imported my Epic games 2 weeks ago.

Edit: Just tested it on a completely fresh LB installation. Same issue.

[TheNewClassics]

Just an FYI, doubt it has to do with the beta itself, but when I try to download Nyny77's Platform video for Amstrad GX4000, LB just gets stuck importing the video and I have to close LB and restart.

[jetbootjack]

On 5/14/2020 at 11:14 PM, mcfilmmakers said:

Closed Launchbox. 10 minutes later, tried opening Launchbox again and it said the Launchbox session was still open, check task manager, etc. Computer was idle, CPU and RAM nowhere near being full use.  Tried again 5 minutes later, still the case.

Hi,

I get this issue on both a long standing system and a reasonably fresh installed system (setup from BETA 10.8) running the latest BETA too.

Both BigBox and LaunchBox stay running, seen in the task manager, for a long while after exiting the application. Typically I use BigBox and once I exit that I see it in task manager with usage fluctuating between 0 and 0.5% CPU and stays active sometimes for a few minutes and sometimes for hours (at which point I end the task).

I have 33 platforms on one system and 15 on the other - around 10K roms on each...

sTeVE

[Jason Carr]

On 5/16/2020 at 6:29 AM, mcfilmmakers said:

Last post, promise.

I narrowed down the issue: Manage Emulators -> Associated platforms - > default.

Avoiding that completely avoids all of my issues. The problem is Launchbox trying to go through 800+ platforms and setting the emulator as default for each one. For some reason, it takes a LONG time for Launchbox to do that, and fractions of seconds to do everything else. My methodology:

edit 1 game metadata. close launchbox. -> background process closes instantly.
edit 1 platform parent. close launchbox -> background process closes instantly.

edit 100 game metadata. close launchbox -> background process closes after 20-30 seconds.
edit 100 platform parent. close launchbox -> background process closes after 20-30 seconds.

Any combination of the above yields similar results.

Open Manage Emulators -> Associated platforms. do nothing. All the popups open confirming defaults. close launchbox. - > background process takes FOREVER.

To be fair, 99% of users won't have so many platforms and won't be setting them all as defaults for the same emulator. That said, this is the only process that is time intensive. So while I don't expect this to be resolved particularly for that reason, it does raise an opportunity to look there for a chance at improving performance in the future.

Secondly, the issue is caused by the following reason: in 10.14 these defaults were all already established and confirmed. I could enter the associated platforms without the popups showing up because launchbox knew all the associations. When I updated to the beta (now beta 10), Launchbox is now checking the additional applications in each game and platform for those default associations and needed to reconfirm them. All 800+ of them. Since it takes a long time to save that association in the background x the sheer number of associations to make, there's your problem.

So in short: Launchbox IS doing it's work as it should be, it just takes a long time to do it and it has to do it because it is checking for associations it never made in 10.14.

Edit: After Launchbox finally got through all the platforms in the background process, the issue no longer occurs. This is definitely the source of the problem.

I'm curious to know whether the others having "another instance is currently running" issues may be having those issues because they made edits on associated platforms.

That all makes sense. Thanks for sleuthing that out.

[Jason Carr]

On 5/16/2020 at 7:52 AM, CriticalCid said:

Beta-10 fixed that issue for normal games but it still occurs if the game is launched as additional app.

 

 

I also re-imported my games from the Epic Games store and noticed that the importer doesn’t find all of my games anymore. It now only finds 99 games out of 112. It doesn’t matter if I have ‘import duplicates’ checked or not (I don't own them in other stores aynway).  I haven’t compared all of my games yet to identify the missing ones but the missing ones I noticed so far are:

- Thimbleweed Park

- Unreal Tournament

- World War Z

I’m pretty sure these games were detected when I imported my Epic games 2 weeks ago.

Edit: Just tested it on a completely fresh LB installation. Same issue.

Thanks Cid, @C-Beats has the additional apps issue fixed for the next beta. Per the Epic Games issue though, we can't seem to reproduce. However, Epic Games has been having major issues lately with their servers due to GTA being free; maybe that has something to do with it? Might be worth trying again to see if it was a server issue that got fixed.

[C-Beats]

On 5/16/2020 at 10:52 AM, CriticalCid said:

Beta-10 fixed that issue for normal games but it still occurs if the game is launched as additional app.

 

 

I also re-imported my games from the Epic Games store and noticed that the importer doesn’t find all of my games anymore. It now only finds 99 games out of 112. It doesn’t matter if I have ‘import duplicates’ checked or not (I don't own them in other stores aynway).  I haven’t compared all of my games yet to identify the missing ones but the missing ones I noticed so far are:

- Thimbleweed Park

- Unreal Tournament

- World War Z

I’m pretty sure these games were detected when I imported my Epic games 2 weeks ago.

Edit: Just tested it on a completely fresh LB installation. Same issue.

Epic is having issues with their servers due to the free GTA V thing. I was having some issues over the weekend. I just did a fresh import with mine and was able to pull all my games correctly (Word War Z included, don't have the other two you mentioned). Could you try again now that they seem to have their services back up and running properly and let me know if you still have that issue?

[C-Beats]

4 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Thanks Cid, @C-Beats has the additional apps issue fixed for the next beta. Per the Epic Games issue though, we can't seem to reproduce. However, Epic Games has been having major issues lately with their servers due to GTA being free; maybe that has something to do with it? Might be worth trying again to see if it was a server issue that got fixed.

JINX!

[Jason Carr]

18 hours ago, TheNewClassics said:

Just an FYI, doubt it has to do with the beta itself, but when I try to download Nyny77's Platform video for Amstrad GX4000, LB just gets stuck importing the video and I have to close LB and restart.

Just tested this and didn't have any issues downloading that particular file. Most likely it was just an Internet hiccup.

8 hours ago, jetbootjack said:

Hi,

I get this issue on both a long standing system and a reasonably fresh installed system (setup from BETA 10.8) running the latest BETA too.

Both BigBox and LaunchBox stay running, seen in the task manager, for a long while after exiting the application. Typically I use BigBox and once I exit that I see it in task manager with usage fluctuating between 0 and 0.5% CPU and stays active sometimes for a few minutes and sometimes for hours (at which point I end the task).

I have 33 platforms on one system and 15 on the other - around 10K roms on each...

sTeVE

We've added a bunch of debug logging for the shutdown/saving process to help with this for the next beta. Make sure you have debug logging enabled so you can help us out with the log file if it happens again after the next beta.