11.5 Beta Testing

[Drybonz]

14 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Ignoring clones takes priorities out of the picture completely.

The problem I ran into tonight, with importing the MAME set to test, is that when you ignore clones you can't import a few important ones manually after your initial import if you have a merged set.  Example is Pacman... you import the set with no clones... when you go to import the single game manually there's no way to do it because the MAME importer wants you to add a whole folder and the rom importer can't pick out the clone because it's merged with puckman.

*edit*  Also... on a side note, when I run Centipede, I get an error for missing files, but if I run the parent directly from MAMEui, it runs ok.  Not sure if maybe the wrong version got imported?

Edited September 12, 2020 by Drybonz

[lockian]

I'm still having regular freezes with Launchbox since the .NET Core change. It's quite frequent and really just takes me clicking on a few titles before nothing will load for a good minute or so.

I've definitely noticed when it does work it's getting a lot faster but these freezes haven't really stopped for me. An observation, in one of the older logs I sent through you would have seen quite a few JSON parsing issues with RetroAchievements, I'm still getting those. I've also noticed the icon graphics for the achievements are the only thing not loaded when these freezes occur.

EDIT: I'm certain it's the RetroAchievements. If I remove my credentials and test then everything is fine. I can click on as many titles as I like without the issue.

Edited September 12, 2020 by lockian

[damobeanrod]

G'day, 
Haven't been here for a while Linux user nowadays 80% of the time. Just wanted to say still a massive fan and more so in seeing Linux Support coming in!

I run my BB / LB from a Fileserver... (Yes sorry I'm one of those... its a reasonable server NVME storage for the share, unfortunately only gigabit nic at this stage.)

Now back on topic I can confirm for me most themes were broken in BB on 11.4 for me.
I am yet to see an issue since upgrading to 11.5 Beta 5 so just passing on the feedback to say nice work on fixing it up. 

Probably more for interest I have had LB/BB slow off an SMB share Ubuntu Server 20.04 and 18.04 (stop watch 2 mins to open).
Windows Server 2019 same data shared opens in 10-20 seconds. On typical throughput tests both servers perform similarly. (both in small and large file tests)
I built multiple virtual servers to test this on the same physical server.
Don't expect you to do anything about this - just providing info you may find interesting.  I know it's not a core goal but I love the idea of my library working all around the house. 

If you want me to test anything specific always happy to help.

Have 4 Physical machines running a mix of Manjaro, W10, Ubuntu, SVR 2019. 

[Owls21]

I'm on beta 5 and noticed Big Box is not regaining focus on exiting MAME or Retroarch. 

[Owls21]

A simple restart seems to have fixed the focus issue. 

[alondero]

Has anyone reported any problems with Nvidia Gamestream upon updating to a recent version of Launchbox? I just reformatted my PC after Gamestream seemed to not start correctly and being unable to diagnose it. Gamestream worked fine after a reformat until I started up BigBox and Launchbox (which required me to install the .NET Core and C++ resditributable. Following a restart Gamestream for me doesn't work again. Want to help debug this before I reformat again (and want to get Launchbox AND Gamestream working like I've always done...)

[Jason Carr]

On 9/11/2020 at 8:11 PM, Drybonz said:

The problem I ran into tonight, with importing the MAME set to test, is that when you ignore clones you can't import a few important ones manually after your initial import if you have a merged set.  Example is Pacman... you import the set with no clones... when you go to import the single game manually there's no way to do it because the MAME importer wants you to add a whole folder and the rom importer can't pick out the clone because it's merged with puckman.

*edit*  Also... on a side note, when I run Centipede, I get an error for missing files, but if I run the parent directly from MAMEui, it runs ok.  Not sure if maybe the wrong version got imported?

Currently the easiest way to add a "fake" ROM is to just manually add a new game and put the missing file into the ROM File field. Unfortunately I think that granular level of control is just going to require a bit of tinkering.

I would need more details on the Centipede issue in order to figure that one out.

On 9/11/2020 at 11:30 PM, lockian said:

I'm still having regular freezes with Launchbox since the .NET Core change. It's quite frequent and really just takes me clicking on a few titles before nothing will load for a good minute or so.

I've definitely noticed when it does work it's getting a lot faster but these freezes haven't really stopped for me. An observation, in one of the older logs I sent through you would have seen quite a few JSON parsing issues with RetroAchievements, I'm still getting those. I've also noticed the icon graphics for the achievements are the only thing not loaded when these freezes occur.

EDIT: I'm certain it's the RetroAchievements. If I remove my credentials and test then everything is fine. I can click on as many titles as I like without the issue.

It makes sense that this would be RetroAchievements, yes, if it's trying to download a bunch of the RetroAchievements images, and can't run any additional threads. Do you have a low core count on that system? What CPU are you running?

On 9/12/2020 at 4:53 AM, damobeanrod said:

G'day, 
Haven't been here for a while Linux user nowadays 80% of the time. Just wanted to say still a massive fan and more so in seeing Linux Support coming in!

I run my BB / LB from a Fileserver... (Yes sorry I'm one of those... its a reasonable server NVME storage for the share, unfortunately only gigabit nic at this stage.)

Now back on topic I can confirm for me most themes were broken in BB on 11.4 for me.
I am yet to see an issue since upgrading to 11.5 Beta 5 so just passing on the feedback to say nice work on fixing it up. 

Probably more for interest I have had LB/BB slow off an SMB share Ubuntu Server 20.04 and 18.04 (stop watch 2 mins to open).
Windows Server 2019 same data shared opens in 10-20 seconds. On typical throughput tests both servers perform similarly. (both in small and large file tests)
I built multiple virtual servers to test this on the same physical server.
Don't expect you to do anything about this - just providing info you may find interesting.  I know it's not a core goal but I love the idea of my library working all around the house. 

If you want me to test anything specific always happy to help.

Have 4 Physical machines running a mix of Manjaro, W10, Ubuntu, SVR 2019. 

Thanks for the info @damobeanrod. From what I hear, there have been some huge performance increases in Wine as of late, so hopefully that will continue. I'm headed back to Linux here soon to see how we can improve it as well.

On 9/12/2020 at 12:37 PM, Owls21 said:

I'm on beta 5 and noticed Big Box is not regaining focus on exiting MAME or Retroarch. 

 

On 9/13/2020 at 8:48 AM, Owls21 said:

A simple restart seems to have fixed the focus issue. 

Let me know if you run into this issue on a regular basis.

19 hours ago, alondero said:

Has anyone reported any problems with Nvidia Gamestream upon updating to a recent version of Launchbox? I just reformatted my PC after Gamestream seemed to not start correctly and being unable to diagnose it. Gamestream worked fine after a reformat until I started up BigBox and Launchbox (which required me to install the .NET Core and C++ resditributable. Following a restart Gamestream for me doesn't work again. Want to help debug this before I reformat again (and want to get Launchbox AND Gamestream working like I've always done...)

That's interesting. I guess it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that Gamestream has some kind of weird incompatibility with .NET Core. If it does, though, I'm sure they'll be fixing it here soon because they'll have a million complaints about it.

[Jason Carr]

I think at this point it's clear that 11.5 is a big improvement over 11.4, so I'll be putting out 11.5 as a quality of life release here shortly.

[alondero]

FYI - I've narrowed down the issue with Gamestream to the latest x64 Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable so it's not a LB/BB thing. Raised an issue with Nvidia.

Edited September 14, 2020 by alondero

[Drybonz]

8 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Currently the easiest way to add a "fake" ROM is to just manually add a new game and put the missing file into the ROM File field. Unfortunately I think that granular level of control is just going to require a bit of tinkering.

I would need more details on the Centipede issue in order to figure that one out.

What about an "add clone" option in the import menu that would let you add a clone from a list based on the current MAME set as long as the files were in your set?

As for Centipede, it seems to be launching normally.  I'm not sure why I was getting the message that files were missing the other day, but since I can't reproduce it now, I would say disregard.

[lockian]

16 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

It makes sense that this would be RetroAchievements, yes, if it's trying to download a bunch of the RetroAchievements images, and can't run any additional threads. Do you have a low core count on that system? What CPU are you running?

Hi Jason, it's a 4930k. 6 cores, 12 threads.

[alondero]

@Jason Carr is there a way of updating Launchbox without forcing me to update the latest c++ redistributable? I've got an x64 version installed and my current version of LB 11.5-Beta 5 works with it fine, but when I attempt to install the official version it says that Visual C++ 2015 is required (which when installed currently breaks Gamestream for me.... ?

[mcfilmmakers]

24 minutes ago, alondero said:

@Jason Carr is there a way of updating Launchbox without forcing me to update the latest c++ redistributable? I've got an x64 version installed and my current version of LB 11.5-Beta 5 works with it fine, but when I attempt to install the official version it says that Visual C++ 2015 is required (which when installed currently breaks Gamestream for me.... ?

You can have mutilple C++ redistributables installed at the same time...

[alondero]

 

1 minute ago, mcfilmmakers said:

You can have mutilple C++ redistributables installed at the same time...

Yeah, though this is the same 2015-2019 x64 instance. Not a different redistributable series. Essentially both LB and Gamestream work with 14.26.28720.3 but Gamestream breaks with the latest version of 2015-2019 x64 (at least on my machine and after a number of reformats...). LB requires me to install the latest version of the 2015-2019 x64 redistributable when I try to update my LB....

[Jason Carr]

19 hours ago, Drybonz said:

What about an "add clone" option in the import menu that would let you add a clone from a list based on the current MAME set as long as the files were in your set?

As for Centipede, it seems to be launching normally.  I'm not sure why I was getting the message that files were missing the other day, but since I can't reproduce it now, I would say disregard.

Not a bad idea. Can you create a BitBucket ticket for it?

11 hours ago, lockian said:

Hi Jason, it's a 4930k. 6 cores, 12 threads.

Okay, I'll do some testing on some older hardware to see if I can reproduce. Obviously the core count doesn't look to be an issue.

57 minutes ago, alondero said:

@Jason Carr is there a way of updating Launchbox without forcing me to update the latest c++ redistributable? I've got an x64 version installed and my current version of LB 11.5-Beta 5 works with it fine, but when I attempt to install the official version it says that Visual C++ 2015 is required (which when installed currently breaks Gamestream for me.... ?

Unfortunately I don't have a solution for this currently. I'd have to re-engineer the setup. My best idea currently would be to install it on another system and copy the files over.

[bbweiners]

Hi @Jason Carr,

I'm not sure if this is something that has been brought to your attention already, or if it happened with this beta, but the Boxes view no longer shows game boxes.

You can test this using Grilla's switch theme. It will load everything except the boxes (box front artwork). You just see a thin gray rectangle where the boxes should be shown.

Thanks.

[Retro808]

It has been a few versions (beta and stable) since this happened, but getting quite frequent instances of closing BigBox and it still hanging in task manager. I have to force close it.

[Jason Carr]

5 hours ago, bbweiners said:

Hi @Jason Carr,

I'm not sure if this is something that has been brought to your attention already, or if it happened with this beta, but the Boxes view no longer shows game boxes.

You can test this using Grilla's switch theme. It will load everything except the boxes (box front artwork). You just see a thin gray rectangle where the boxes should be shown.

Thanks.

Wow, how the crap did we all miss *that*. I smell an 11.6 release. Thanks for the report.

[Jason Carr]

4 hours ago, Retro808 said:

It has been a few versions (beta and stable) since this happened, but getting quite frequent instances of closing BigBox and it still hanging in task manager. I have to force close it.

How long has it stayed open after exiting?

[Retro808]

5 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

How long has it stayed open after exiting?

Longest has been 35 minutes before I chose to close it manually. I did notice a lot of time changing themes and then later exiting BigBox caused the hang. If I stayed on the same theme and just moved around BigBox or played some games the frequency of the hang was less.