LaunchBox for Android New Version - Beta Testing

[lbshotmaker]

I just gave this a shot, it shows a lot of promise. My android frontend of choice is Dig and the importing process is nicer with launchbox.

As of right now, I do think it needs a few features, some fairly:

Urgent:

• Clear instructions somewhere on how to get the exact info you need to set up custom emulators, including rom path key. Even if it's a link to a thread post that's fine, but it needs to be clear on how to find all this information
• Game text search
• Game voice search (should be much easier on android than windows)
• Ability to change settings for individual games

Not so urgent:

• Themes could do with some work - please include a grid theme for platforms as well as games
• Custom theme support

I can tell it's still early days for this frontend so I'll be keeping an eye on it with interest. I expect you'll have basic feature parity with the windows version before long

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, lbshotmaker said:

Clear instructions somewhere on how to get the exact info you need to set up custom emulators, including rom path key. Even if it's a link to a thread post that's fine, but it needs to be clear on how to find all this information

This is an Android problem. It's not easy to get this information at all, which is why we're manually entering in so many emulators. This isn't a solvable issue, because of Android's poor design. Often times the only way to get this information is to ask the developer or look at the code.

The rest of the suggestions are planned.

[lbshotmaker]

Quote

This is an Android problem. It's not easy to get this information at all, which is why we're manually entering in so many emulators. This isn't a solvable issue, because of Android's poor design. Often times the only way to get this information is to ask the developer or look at the code.

The rest of the suggestions are planned.

I may be able to help you out with that -

I used this app:

Package Name Viewer 2.0 – Apps on Google Play

Which gave me the package name and activity of all my apps. It lets you copy all the info so you can paste it in and delete what you don't need. There are a few alternatives on the play store too, that's just the first one I found.

With that, the only thing left to make easy is the custom rom path key, honestly I don't know what that is! I had to reverse a Dig entry to get Dolphin MMJR2 working (the correct key was AutoStartFile)

Edited August 30, 2021 by lbshotmaker

[Jason Carr]

6 minutes ago, lbshotmaker said:

I may be able to help you out with that -

I used this app:

Package Name Viewer 2.0 – Apps on Google Play

Which gave me the package name and activity of all my apps. It lets you copy all the info so you can paste it in and delete what you don't need. There are a few alternatives on the play store too, that's just the first one I found.

With that, the only thing left to make easy is the custom rom path key, honestly I don't know what that is! I had to reverse a Dig entry to get Dolphin MMJR2 working (the correct key was AutoStartFile)

Yeah, that's the thing. Some emulators are (sort of, kind of) easy to figure out, while others literally require access to the code or for the developer to answer. Still a terrible design on Android.

Good to know about that app though. That does make it easier than my previous method, for some emulators at least.

[BDogg49]

I actually used the info I had from Dig to set up some custom emulators. It was cutting and pasting but ultimately only took around 5-10 minutes max. I know everyone doesn't have Dig set up but if you do that's one way you could create some custom emulators for now.

[Jason Carr]

LaunchBox for Android 0.38 is out now with the following:

• Added a new option to "Skip Menu and Play Game on Tap", which will remove a step and allow you to immediately play games without pulling up the game menu; if enabled, you can still access the game menu with a long press

• Emulator settings can now be overridden on individual games via the game menu

• Fixed the DuckStation emulator to no longer have issues launching games

[orson9999999]

I haven’t gone through the entire thread, so maybe this has already been mentioned, but I ran into something odd with the Launchbox Android export feature, specifically for PS1 and PC-Engine CD games: some games only exported the .cue file but not the .bin file. This problem didn’t occur with any of the Sega CD games I exported.

It’s an easy manual fix, but it took me awhile trying to figure out the problem when some games were working while others weren’t. 

[Jason Carr]

22 minutes ago, orson9999999 said:

I haven’t gone through the entire thread, so maybe this has already been mentioned, but I ran into something odd with the Launchbox Android export feature, specifically for PS1 and PC-Engine CD games: some games only exported the .cue file but not the .bin file. This problem didn’t occur with any of the Sega CD games I exported.

It’s an easy manual fix, but it took me awhile trying to figure out the problem when some games were working while others weren’t. 

Hmm, I'll add this to my list to review. It's strange that it works properly on some platforms but not others though. Maybe the Sega CD games are pointing at the bin files instead of the CUE files?

[orson9999999]

1 minute ago, Jason Carr said:

Hmm, I'll add this to my list to review. It's strange that it works properly on some platforms but not others though. Maybe the Sega CD games are pointing at the bin files instead of the CUE files?

I’m not sure, as a few of the PS1 games did move properly. Maybe it’s just a problem on my end, but I had the same result when I tried exporting again, same games affected, etc. 

[Jason Carr]

3 minutes ago, orson9999999 said:

I’m not sure, as a few of the PS1 games did move properly. Maybe it’s just a problem on my end, but I had the same result when I tried exporting again, same games affected, etc. 

Can you take a look at the application path field of a few of the games that worked, and a few of the games that didn't, and compare them? Maybe post them here?

[orson9999999]

8 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Can you take a look at the application path field of a few of the games that worked, and a few of the games that didn't, and compare them? Maybe post them here?

Sure, I’ll check next time I’m back at my computer. 

[Jason Carr]

LaunchBox for Android 0.39 is out now with the following:

• Read-only access to network shares on Nvidia Shield devices can now be used to import games from; however, media cannot be stored over the network as Nvidia Shield network shares are always read-only

• Added a bunch of saved game/state file extensions to the exclusions list for importing games, which should help to not import saved game/state files that are in the file system next to ROM files; thanks to @dmaker for the list

• Improved multi-track bin/cue file imports to not import extra bin file tracks, so long as the bin files start with the same file name as the cue file (if they're all in the same folder)

• Improved multi-track bin/cue file imports to not import extra bin file tracks if each set of bins and cues are in individual subfolders and the "Import Files from Subfolders" option is checked

• Added support for Pizza Boy GBC Free, Pizza Boy GBA Free, and Pizza Boy GBA Pro (though the free versions are unable to actually launch games from a frontend)

• Improved controller navigation and controller compatibility by adding more button bindings

[orson9999999]

8 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Can you take a look at the application path field of a few of the games that worked, and a few of the games that didn't, and compare them? Maybe post them here?

All of the games are pointing to the .cue files in launch box. Coming back to your post now, it sounds like copying the full file path is what you really wanted, though. I can do that when I get another chance. 
 

One other difference I noticed is that the PS1 .bins that didn’t transfer were from games with multiple bin files (none of the .bins exported).  However, the PC-Engine CD game only has one .bin, and that didn’t move either. I only have the one PC-Engine game, so don’t have much for comparison there. 

[ItchyRobot]

@Jason Carr
A GUI 'bug'.

When I have my Xbox bluetooth controller connected and navigate launchbox(Android) games in Box Grid view, and scroll down to very last line of boxes, I can not read the names of the games. The scrolling stops short, cutting off the game names. Though, if you use your fingers to scroll through the tough screen, the scroll goes all the way to the end showing the game names fine.

[BDogg49]

I'm not sure if anyone else is having this issues but if I select a different emulator for Arcade it changes while I am in Launchbox but it doesn't seem to save if I exit and reenter Launchbox.

[NOVASPRITE]

Game specific cores not working properly for me on ROG phone.  Was able to select override platform emulator and pick a different core.  Got black screen or bounced back to game selection.  Tested arcade platform on mame 2003 switching core of game to fbneo. Tried it again with platform fbneo core and override game code to mame2003.  Same crash. 

[Thatman84]

Wanted to say the new release is a very nice improvement on the original.

Good work, fingers crossed it does well and warrants continued dev. ?

 

With that a couple of questions, NeoGeo MVS import for games on my phone is only scraping 1 game media (puzzle bubble). I expect there is more media available? I have imported and deleted and imported again. LB finds all 141 of my games fine

I had trouble with permission when updating in the app. I have launchbox set to allowed for unknown app installs. I did find the APK in the updates folder and .39a installed fine

Seems my error screenshot is not uploading ?

 

[NOVASPRITE]

53 minutes ago, Thatman84 said:

Wanted to say the new release is a very nice improvement on the original.

Good work, fingers crossed it does well and warrants continued dev. ?

 

With that a couple of questions, NeoGeo MVS import for games on my phone is only scraping 1 game media (puzzle bubble). I expect there is more media available? I have imported and deleted and imported again. LB finds all 141 of my games fine

I had trouble with permission when updating in the app. I have launchbox set to allowed for unknown app installs. I did find the APK in the updates folder and .39a installed fine

Seems my error screenshot is not uploading ?

 

Doesn't find any art for my neogeo games either.  Just bangbead. 

[Jason Carr]

6 hours ago, ItchyRobot said:

@Jason Carr
A GUI 'bug'.

When I have my Xbox bluetooth controller connected and navigate launchbox(Android) games in Box Grid view, and scroll down to very last line of boxes, I can not read the names of the games. The scrolling stops short, cutting off the game names. Though, if you use your fingers to scroll through the tough screen, the scroll goes all the way to the end showing the game names fine.

It looks like this is happening because it tries  to center the selected game in the view. If the size of the box is too big, it gets cut off at the bottom. I might be able to figure out a fix for this, but in the mean time, you can fix it by just decreasing the height of the boxes in the Boxes Grid View Settings.

[Jason Carr]

4 hours ago, BDogg49 said:

I'm not sure if anyone else is having this issues but if I select a different emulator for Arcade it changes while I am in Launchbox but it doesn't seem to save if I exit and reenter Launchbox.

This can happen if something kills the LaunchBox app before it finishes saving the platform XML file. Arcade is usually the biggest platform, so it makes sense that it happened with Arcade. Android will sometimes kill the app when it's in the background, so in the mean time a simple fix would be to just wait a few seconds after making the change before moving on to another app or a game. In the future, though, we might want to add some kind of GUI signifier that things are still saving.