LaunchBox for Android New Version - Beta Testing

[Jason Carr]

4 hours ago, NOVASPRITE said:

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. 

Can you enable debug logs in the options and then send me a log of this happening from the LaunchBox\Logs folder? That way I can better figure out what's going on.

[Jason Carr]

1 hour 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 ?

 

The Neo Geo platform issue is a known issue; on my list.

Per the updates, I haven't heard of any issues thus far. Can you tell me what the error message is? What device are you using?

[Vader]

Hey Jason

Great job, glad to see that Launchbox is back on Android. Development is coming along very well, keep it up. I agree with the others that game searching should be a priority. Kinda hard to go through 2000+ games without a search option. 

You got the touch!!

[NOVASPRITE]

Error logs sent. Thanks for your continued commitment to improvement of this project.  

[Jason Carr]

On 9/1/2021 at 8:27 AM, NOVASPRITE said:

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. 

Can you explain what exactly is crashing? Is it Retroarch that's crashing/not loading I assume?

[spectral]

Is there currently a way to exit out of the a game and go back the LB with a controller? Without having to go into the RA menu and select exit.

[neil9000]

27 minutes ago, spectral said:

Is there currently a way to exit out of the a game and go back the LB with a controller? Without having to go into the RA menu and select exit.

Set a hotkey combo in Retroarch itself.

[spectral]

Just now, neil9000 said:

Set a hotkey combo in Retroarch itself.

Thanks I'll take a look around the options. I'm not too familiar with RA's settings. On PC I don't really tweak anything much beyond whats necessary to get the game to load.

[neil9000]

2 minutes ago, spectral said:

Thanks I'll take a look around the options. I'm not too familiar with RA's settings. On PC I don't really tweak anything much beyond whats necessary to get the game to load.

Settings/Input/Hotkey, you need to set a "Hotkey Enable" button.

Then a button for "Quit Retroarch"

You then hold your "Hotkey Enable" button and press the button you set to Quit.

 

[neil9000]

It's worth noting this wont actually "Close" Retroarch, it will just move it to your task manager and give focus back to Launchbox, much like just pressing the home button, but it will allow another game to be loaded, even while one is currently running in the background.

[NOVASPRITE]

22 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Can you enable debug logs in the options and then send me a log of this happening from the LaunchBox\Logs folder? That way I can better figure out what's going on.

 

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

Can you explain what exactly is crashing? Is it Retroarch that's crashing/not loading I assume?

Yes.  Retroarch 32 bit side loaded crashes.  Just hangs on a black screen when I override the platform core to pick another.  I have to manually close it.  Opening retroarch again directly and going to recent games shows no history of selecting the game with the different core. 

[Nally]

Good Day Team I just watch the latest video of how to export to android from my launchbox build on my pc....i did everything as directed on the video and for some reason when i try to change the data option from using my internal storage to my sd card its says "android is not granted read and write permissions to the folder you've specified" unfortunately, the selected folder cannot be used without read and write permissions. i can see my sd card and add things there....thats strange...

 

[Jason Carr]

48 minutes ago, Nally said:

Good Day Team I just watch the latest video of how to export to android from my launchbox build on my pc....i did everything as directed on the video and for some reason when i try to change the data option from using my internal storage to my sd card its says "android is not granted read and write permissions to the folder you've specified" unfortunately, the selected folder cannot be used without read and write permissions. i can see my sd card and add things there....thats strange...

 

What device are you using? Unfortunately we may not be able to do much about this, because of Android's badly designed storage security mechanisms. There are ways to fix it so that our app can access it, but then we've found we often have issues with sharing the ROM files with emulators. The good news is though, you can always put your ROMs on your SD card regardless.

[Jason Carr]

LaunchBox for Android 0.40 is out now with the following:

• Added a Search option to games lists via the top menu

• Fixed an issue where game emulator settings overrides were not working properly

• Fixed an emulator settings potential crash issue with the MSX, MSX2, and MSX2+ platforms

I believe this should fix the issues with the new game emulator override settings that some users were running into, as well as the emulator settings crash with MSX platforms.

As far as Neo Geo not downloading any art, I looked into this, and unfortunately the LaunchBox Games Database just doesn't really have much art (or games for that matter) for the SNK Neo Geo MVS platform, which is why nothing is being downloaded: https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/platforms/games/210

If you import as SNK Neo Geo AES instead, there is a lot more art available. I'm no expert when it comes to the differences between the two platforms, though (other than the fact that one is for home and one is for arcade), so I'm not sure if it would make sense to copy the games and media from AES to MVS. My hunch though is that that probably wouldn't be a good idea. Thoughts?

[Nally]

@Jason Carr it the same galaxy tab E tablet.....yeah you are right with the roms just wanted my art to b on the SD card as well because of space.....

[NOVASPRITE]

43 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

LaunchBox for Android 0.40 is out now with the following:

• Added a Search option to games lists via the top menu

• Fixed an issue where game emulator settings overrides were not working properly

• Fixed an emulator settings potential crash issue with the MSX, MSX2, and MSX2+ platforms

I believe this should fix the issues with the new game emulator override settings that some users were running into, as well as the emulator settings crash with MSX platforms.

As far as Neo Geo not downloading any art, I looked into this, and unfortunately the LaunchBox Games Database just doesn't really have much art (or games for that matter) for the SNK Neo Geo MVS platform, which is why nothing is being downloaded: https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/platforms/games/210

If you import as SNK Neo Geo AES instead, there is a lot more art available. I'm no expert when it comes to the differences between the two platforms, though (other than the fact that one is for home and one is for arcade), so I'm not sure if it would make sense to copy the games and media from AES to MVS. My hunch though is that that probably wouldn't be a good idea. Thoughts?

Core override issue fixed!!

As for the neo geo AES and MVS issue I think consolidating it all under just NeoGeo. One is console where you have set lives and the other is arcade with coins.  Using the neogeo unibios you can easy change between the two versions upon launch of the same rom. It's like a dip switch setting. 

Edited September 2, 2021 by NOVASPRITE

[Mark Pollack]

Hi,

I'm running 0.40 on a fire stick lite and so far so good.  Thanks so much for adding the search in 0.40!

The one minor issue I have, since 0.3x, is that the image on the main tile to launch the application is empty - some default black box.  I guess firetv is a bit particular in how that stuff gets packaged up.

Thanks!

Mark

 

[xman]

Thanks @Jason Carr for the updates and quick fixes!  Also for the search function!

Just a suggestion.  Do you think it would be possible to program the left trigger for previous letter and right trigger for next letter in the platform games list since it doesn't seem to be used while in the platform, using an Xbox360 controller?

[Vader]

Hey @Jason Carr 

I just imported an almost full MAME rom set, about 2800 games and noticed that there are scrolling lag issues when using the wheel view. I am able to scroll a few games and then Launchbox freezes for a few minutes, before I am able to scroll again. This behavior continues while going throughout the entire list, a bunch of stop and go. On a rare occation, I am not able to continue scrolling, because Launchbox crashes. I notice a similar issue with box view but not as bad. I am using a galaxy tab s7 plus, with my roms on an external SD card. I have added two debug files for you to review to see if that helps.  Hope you can get this fixed, Launchbox is looking awesome, otherwise. Could it be because I have my mame roms files in an arcade folder instead of a MAME folder?

Debug 2021-09-05 08-56-00 AM.log Debug 2021-09-05 09-30-51 AM.log

Edited September 5, 2021 by Vader
added additional info

[Vader]

Hey @Jason Carr

Here is a video recording that I did, which shows the studdering when trying to scroll through the games using the wheel view. I also tested this with the text list with details view and the scrolling was a little better, but even with this view the list whould studder on occation.