11.0-beta-1 Released

[Jason Carr]

30 minutes ago, Retro_Rage said:

So I appear to be having some pretty big issues since updating to the latest beta. Basically nothing seems to want to save.

When I first start importing items it gets stuck on updating from games db. Had it running for a few hours yesterday, never passed that part. Actually had to force close LB to exit it. Among playing around a bit, I tried to update the metadata from the game ui, it got stuck at the end but still exited it and seemed to update. Now when I import anything, it gets stuck on saving and never passes it.

I also then noticed that nothing seems to save to the db. I rearranged a bunch of categories, changed a few games etc. but nothing saved. Once I restart it just looks exactly the same as before I updated LB. The logs and everything appear to be fine.

Since obviously these are pretty big issues I decided to just go back to stable until the next beta. Hopefully once I go back it is back to normal and was caused by the beta and not something else. Just wanted to point out the issues here first.

It's hard to say for certain, but these issues don't sound like anything that's related to the beta version. Rather, they're more likely data issues, or just issues from not waiting long enough for things to save. If it gets stuck updating from the games database, that's a connection issue (or I suppose possibly a server issue, but I'm not aware of any server issues recently).

When you talk about it getting stuck on saving, most often this means it's just taking a long time. This can be caused by killing the app prematurely. The app saves data during the exit process, which continues after the window closes. So if you kill the app during that process, then things won't save properly.

[Jason Carr]

Beta 3 is out now with the following:

• New Feature: You can now take screenshots that will automatically be associated with your games; see Tools > Options > Screen Capture in LaunchBox or under Controller Mappings or Keyboard Automation in Big Box

• New Feature: A new IGameConfiguringPlugin interface has been added that will allow plugin developers to tell when a game's configuration application is being launched, has launched, or has closed, just like IGameLaunchingPlugin

• Added drag and drop to the new game add/edit dialog for videos and images

• Escape now works with the new game add/edit dialog

• Added a tutorial video link for the new OBS Studio integration (in the LaunchBox options)

• Various other minor fixes/improvements for the new game add/edit dialog

[Retro_Rage]

29 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

It's hard to say for certain, but these issues don't sound like anything that's related to the beta version. Rather, they're more likely data issues, or just issues from not waiting long enough for things to save. If it gets stuck updating from the games database, that's a connection issue (or I suppose possibly a server issue, but I'm not aware of any server issues recently).

When you talk about it getting stuck on saving, most often this means it's just taking a long time. This can be caused by killing the app prematurely. The app saves data during the exit process, which continues after the window closes. So if you kill the app during that process, then things won't save properly.

Thanks. Yea I just realized that it wasn't caused by the beta, just seemed to ironically start about the same time that I updated so quickly blamed that lol. When I downgraded to stable, the issues still persist. I think at this point Ill just let it run on updating overnight and see if it eventually finishes. I know that I do not have any internet issues as everything else seems to be working great. I really hope it does as I have hundreds of systems emulated now and really don't want to hose my hole setup. Do you have any suggestions as to anything that could prevent it from updating the games db?

[Jason Carr]

3 minutes ago, Retro_Rage said:

Thanks. Yea I just realized that it wasn't caused by the beta, just seemed to ironically start about the same time that I updated so quickly blamed that lol. When I downgraded to stable, the issues still persist. I think at this point Ill just let it run on updating overnight and see if it eventually finishes. I know that I do not have any internet issues as everything else seems to be working great. I really hope it does as I have hundreds of systems emulated now and really don't want to hose my hole setup. Do you have any suggestions as to anything that could prevent it from updating the games db?

No, other than weird Internet hiccups. So I would say any issues there are likely to go away. If they don't, let me know.

If you continue to have the other issues you've been having, it may be best to restore from a recent working backup. LaunchBox automatically creates data backups of all your data and you can easily restore one from the Tools menu.

[dreamy]

Hi Jason,

first i want to say awesome update to Launchbox. The new edit window and OBS support is very nice. But it seems that the GOG importer is not working correctly. When i try to import from GOG i just get a blank import window. Import from Steam, Epic and so on works like it should. Also my GOG library is set to public. It doesnt work in LB 11.0 beta 2 and 3. It worked in LB 11.0 beta 1.

[neil9000]

3 minutes ago, dreamy said:

Hi Jason,

first i want to say awesome update to Launchbox. The new edit window and OBS support is very nice. But it seems that the GOG importer is not working correctly. When i try to import from GOG i just get a blank import window. Import from Steam, Epic and so on works like it should. Also my GOG library is set to public. It doesnt work in LB 11.0 beta 2 and 3. It worked in LB 11.0 beta 1.

Yeah, confirmed here also.

[RULLUR]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet since so much has been talked of and I've pretty much skimmed through to see if maybe someone did, but since yesterday my hard drive got ate up like 20gb and I thought it was a glitch or something, but have now found out that pretty much all videos for each game have made 7 copies of themselves within the "Video" folder of each platform when I actually have a folder made outside of the LaunchBox stuff for all that. How can I get this cleaned up easier and not have it not copy and paste itself into the "Video" folder of each Platform 7 times over again? I don't have that kind of hard drive space to be wasting over that.

UPDATE:

I went in manually to remove all the duplicate clips with all the Platforms' "Video" folders and some made duplicates to even 79 of the same clip. I really wish I knew why this is and how to get everything to be directed back to the designated folder I had everything in before. I had some set based on region and everything

UPDATE:

After cleaning the duplicate clips I have found my intro videos for XBOX One, SEGA CD, SEGA NAOMI, and Atari Jaguar have turned into random game clips. Also after cleaning I had about 29gb left of space, but after running BigBox just to scroll through the Platforms, I now have 14.5gb left. I don't know what is the cause of it now, but none of the clips seem to be duplicating anymore. I really hope something gets figured out soon or else I can't play anything on this as it eats away gigs of space for something as little as scrolling. Even cleaning out Cache-BB doesn't do it much justice. So what exactly is eating all this space up @Jason Carr?

Edited June 26, 2020 by RULLUR

[Gill Figno]

Is there a way to make it so videos don't import to the launchbox directory now? I have all my videos on an external drive and now they're all taking up so much room on my C drive that I'm out of space.

[bundangdon]

The video capture is a really nice extra feature! Just wondering if anyone knows how to crop videos? Even when I run retroarch in full screen (which isn't the ideal way for most games), I still have large black bars on the left and right on the output video.

[neil9000]

2 hours ago, bundangdon said:

The video capture is a really nice extra feature! Just wondering if anyone knows how to crop videos? Even when I run retroarch in full screen (which isn't the ideal way for most games), I still have large black bars on the left and right on the output video.

See the blue border around the screen here,

if you click on the active window it turns green,

You can then hold ALT on your keyboard while dragging the edges with your mouse.

[C-Beats]

@RULLUR @Gill Figno

Looking into your reported issues with the video. Did you set up the platform's video folder to be some where else or did you just previously assign the video path to a file in a folder outside of LaunchBox? With the new video types we put in code to utilize the platforms video folder, which the old path did NOT require the video to be in. I am wondering if that is causing some of the potential issues/confusion.

[Rlad]

5 hours ago, bundangdon said:

The video capture is a really nice extra feature! Just wondering if anyone knows how to crop videos? Even when I run retroarch in full screen (which isn't the ideal way for most games), I still have large black bars on the left and right on the output video.

You can set the video output to a 4:3 ratio in settings

[RULLUR]

3 hours ago, C-Beats said:

@RULLUR @Gill Figno

Looking into your reported issues with the video. Did you set up the platform's video folder to be some where else or did you just previously assign the video path to a file in a folder outside of LaunchBox? With the new video types we put in code to utilize the platforms video folder, which the old path did NOT require the video to be in. I am wondering if that is causing some of the potential issues/confusion.

Turns out the ones that had no Intro video anymore where in the same "Video" folder as the Platform they belong to, and that has been fixed now. My main concern now is to what exactly is eating up gigs of Hard Drive space at the slightest of movement. I ended up deleting the clips that copied over as "-01" since the space has been eaten up further.

[rodww]

Minor issues I noticed in 11.0 beta 3 in the new edit game dialog box.  (Unless I'm doing something wrong) it seems that when you do a manual search for a game from the database that wasn't properly discovered during import, if it comes back with no results, the searching button remains greyed out and you can't search again unless you close the dialog box and go back in again.

[C-Beats]

20 minutes ago, rodww said:

Minor issues I noticed in 11.0 beta 3 in the new edit game dialog box.  (Unless I'm doing something wrong) it seems that when you do a manual search for a game from the database that wasn't properly discovered during import, if it comes back with no results, the searching button remains greyed out and you can't search again unless you close the dialog box and go back in again.

Have confirmed this is happening and will be corrected in the next release. Thanks for the report!

[Jason Carr]

Beta 4 is out now with the following:

• Fix for download media possible null reference error
• Sorted media downloads alphabetically on the download media form
• Hopeful fix for the GOG import issues
• Fix for duplicated video files issue (when using manually specified videos)
• Clean up media should now work properly with the new video categories
• Fix for the disabled search button issue (in add/edit)
• Updated all folder browsers in the add/edit screen to use the full file browser

Thanks to everyone for finding all the issues here. Our apologies for the issues with video file duplication (if you happened to experience it). You may have to restore your data from a backup in that case if you want to keep your videos only in the previous locations (then you should be able to just delete the newly-created video files).

[sundogak]

A minor glitch that was in earlier Betas and also on Beta 4 (meant to get in earlier).

1. In additional applications window if you make an edit to the Name in Edit Application and close the Edit Application window the Name field in the Additional Apps window is not updated.  If you reopen the Edit Application window it will show the change in Application Name field  it just doesn't reflect in the Name field.  If you completely close out of the entire Edit window and reopen it, the change will show in the Name Field and Application Name as was changed (i.e., change sticks, just not reflecting immediately in Name field). 

2.  Noted on Beta 2 and behavior on Beta 4.  In the edit window launch tab where path to rom/file is located, the prior behavior was if you hit "Browse" button for an existing ROM, it started inside the folder where the ROM is located for selection (or used to be if ROM name changed but folder path was the same).  Now it starts in whatever the last path was used immediately prior to hitting browse button (i.e., if edited another game/platform it starts there).  So in the example below which is valid path for "Star Wars" the browse button starts in the "Sultan" rom path since it was the last path I manually browsed to prior rather than the Star Wars directory. 

 

Edited June 27, 2020 by sundogak

[ZeSystem]

Hello, I noticed the edit dialog has been changed. This just adds additional clicks and a few annoyance (not being able to look at its meta data while editing other fields and media files) to how I frequently add images to new games I add, with no benefits to me.

I loved the old one so much more than the new one. Is there any way to use just the legacy one?

[DOS76]

On 6/24/2020 at 12:33 PM, Jason Carr said:

Just a quick note on this, the changes were made because we were landlocked, and couldn't really add anything new. We can't just keep making that screen bigger and bigger because then the full window wouldn't be visible on 720p displays (which are common on things like handheld devices, and when using high DPIs on TVs), so that really isn't an option. It really isn't much different this way, because all we did was move the tabs to new pages (and separated out the images). Unfortunately those changes are required and are not up for discussion.

 

[sundogak]

Here is an edge case but has a negative outcome (media is deleted without warning) -Beta 4. I actually encountered it on Beta 3 as well, but at the time thought it was "user error" on my end.

1) Open up the file folder to a media location for game platform, say Clear Logo or Screenshot-Game Title. 

2) Open up LB Edit Game window for a game.

3) Copy paste/drag a new image file associated with that game (and which is properly named for that game for LB to incorporate) into appropriate LB Image folder.  When you close the edit window LB will delete the image from the folder.  The easiest way to test is to CTRL X the image onto desktop from a LB image folder.  Then open Edit Game , then CTRL V back into image folder while Edit Game is open still.  When close Edit Game it will delete from whatever folder the media was added. 

4) It only does it for new media that would be normally associated with the game (i.e., would pick it up through F5) and only if you happen to be on that game at the time you move the image file into the folder. When tested, there were no duplicate images for game so not issue of LB cleaning up a duplicate.

5) If you don't have the edit window open and drag the media into the folder, no issues.  After a F5 refresh, LB normally incorporates as expected. I tried it both with image that LB named and with ROM name and it deletes it each time if image media is newly associated. Unfortunately, it is a permanent delete and doesn't go to recycle.

6) I also tried #3 above on a test video and it will also delete the videos as well.

Not a typical set of events most would get into, but was definitely a "I know I moved it there where did it go?" things. 

Edited June 27, 2020 by sundogak