LaunchBox for Android New Version - Beta Testing

[Jason Carr]

Hey all, just a quick update. I am currently trying to solve all of these issues (if that wasn't obvious). However, we may not have a choice with Android 10/11 other than to force users to re-select their ROM folders using the new scoped storage in order to get certain emulators to work. I've been trying to avoid doing that (because it's a terrible user experience), but at this point I don't think Google is giving us any other option. So anyways, solutions are coming, but of course it's a huge mess, thanks to Google, and it will still take me a while yet, unfortunately. We'll get there. Thanks for your patience.

5 hours ago, Thornback said:

I just upgraded my Shield TV to Android 11, which broke Snes9x, Mupen64 and PPSSPP. It now throws a permission error.

What gives?

Edit: According to Jason's post above it is up to emulator developers to work around this, yes?

I don't know why my setup is affected because the files are all saved in internal storage (USB formatted to expandable storage). Isn't this scoped storage problem exclusive to external storage devices?

This is most likely related to the above long conversations (including the original reason why we temporarily stopped working on the Android app years ago). You can blame Google for absolutely terrible design decisions. The final solution here unfortunately has to involve new frontend development from us, as well as new development for the emulator developers. It's a mess. It should all get fixed up eventually though.

22 hours ago, hobapli said:

After opening Launchbox, the changes I made to the xml file are lost and rearranged. Frankly, all the "mp4" or video related entries disappear when I open and close the application after doing this. I really don't understand where I went wrong. I downloaded it a couple of days ago from the link in my email. Could it be out of date?

You need to make 100% sure that LaunchBox is all the way closed if you're going to manually update the XML files. It sounds like it was open.

[GabiAle97]

@Jason Carr I've sent you some info about that issues than may come handy. Hope it helps! Check the inbox

[Nabizzles]

Recently updated my Android on my Fold 3 to Android 12. Launchbox disappeared off the phone, but all the data was still there. I redownloaded the app and installed it and all my games were there - but since I was updating to the Beta releases, Launchbox immediately asked me if I wanted to update to the latest Beta. I said yes. It downloads the Beta and then I get an error message when I try to apply the update: There was an error parsing the package. 

Do I just need to uninstall and reset my whole Launchbox because it didn't carry over nicely when I upgraded Android?

 

EDIT: I just deleted the whole app, deleted all the app data, rebooted the phone, reinstalled, and tried to update to the Beta. Same error. 😭😭😭

Edited January 14, 2022 by Nabizzles
New news

[Vader]

Hello. I thought I would throw in my experiance. I just updated to 1.0 beta 2 on my Galaxy Tab S7 Plus and had no issues. I'm currently on Android 11 and have Launchbox installed on my main storage drive and my roms on my sd card. 

I am wondering if the installation issues that some are having are related to where Launchbox is installed i.e. main storage vs sd cards. Also I made sure that install unkown apps was set to allow.  I haven't installed the beta on my other devices yet (shield, phone etc) but will update once i do.

[Nabizzles]

44 minutes ago, Vader said:

Hello. I thought I would throw in my experiance. I just updated to 1.0 beta 2 on my Galaxy Tab S7 Plus and had no issues. I'm currently on Android 11 and have Launchbox installed on my main storage drive and my roms on my sd card. 

I am wondering if the installation issues that some are having are related to where Launchbox is installed i.e. main storage vs sd cards. Also I made sure that install unkown apps was set to allow.  I haven't installed the beta on my other devices yet (shield, phone etc) but will update once i do.

All of my Roms and everything is on my main storage drive on Launchbox... Because the $1800 Galaxy Z Fold 3 does not have an SD Card slot. 

[Vader]

@Nabizzles Did you check to see if you have the install unkown apps option set to allow? Also i don't have a fold of my own to test on, but I can ask my wife when she gets home from work, to see if she will lend me hers to test the app on. However I do know that she has not yet recieved the android 12 update, though. This could be the issue. 

Perhaps someone else who also has Android 12 can comment, if they are having similar issues as yours or not.

Hope this helps

 

[Mortalis]

8 hours ago, Nabizzles said:

Recently updated my Android on my Fold 3 to Android 12. Launchbox disappeared off the phone, but all the data was still there. I redownloaded the app and installed it and all my games were there - but since I was updating to the Beta releases, Launchbox immediately asked me if I wanted to update to the latest Beta. I said yes. It downloads the Beta and then I get an error message when I try to apply the update: There was an error parsing the package. 

Do I just need to uninstall and reset my whole Launchbox because it didn't carry over nicely when I upgraded Android?

 

EDIT: I just deleted the whole app, deleted all the app data, rebooted the phone, reinstalled, and tried to update to the Beta. Same error. 😭😭😭

I have the same issue on my Note 20, I had it on Android 11 and 12.

[Nabizzles]

2 hours ago, Vader said:

@Nabizzles Did you check to see if you have the install unkown apps option set to allow? Also i don't have a fold of my own to test on, but I can ask my wife when she gets home from work, to see if she will lend me hers to test the app on. However I do know that she has not yet recieved the android 12 update, though. This could be the issue. 

Perhaps someone else who also has Android 12 can comment, if they are having similar issues as yours or not.

Hope this helps

 

Yes, I made sure that I had the unknown apps toggle set to install. That would be great if you can. If you manually check for the Update, it'll probably be there. 

[Vader]

2 hours ago, Nabizzles said:

Yes, I made sure that I had the unknown apps toggle set to install. That would be great if you can. If you manually check for the Update, it'll probably be there. 

@Nabizzles @Mortalis I just got the android 12 update for my tablet and yes there seems to be somthing with the new beta that Android 12 doesn't like. I had it running prior to the update and after the update the entire app was gone. When I tried to reinstall it, i got the parsing error. I think @Jason Carr needs to look into this to see why the new beta is being blocked by android 12. I was able to get Launchbox running by installing the 0.42 update. Hopefully Jason can figure this out.  I also noticed that the icon for the new beta is diffrent. It is showing a system icon, when the other updates show the launchbox icon. 

[Soop]

Any (rough) idea when the new updates will get rolled out to non-beta?  I've been messing around with Android stuff for the past few weeks, and now I'm just waiting for either Launchbox to update, or the fire HD to get rooted, then I can crack on with my goal of attempting SMB access.

[0kti]

Latest beta not working on Android 12. Can't install. 

[hobapli]

On 1/14/2022 at 12:14 AM, Jason Carr said:

Hey all, just a quick update. I am currently trying to solve all of these issues (if that wasn't obvious). However, we may not have a choice with Android 10/11 other than to force users to re-select their ROM folders using the new scoped storage in order to get certain emulators to work. I've been trying to avoid doing that (because it's a terrible user experience), but at this point I don't think Google is giving us any other option. So anyways, solutions are coming, but of course it's a huge mess, thanks to Google, and it will still take me a while yet, unfortunately. We'll get there. Thanks for your patience.

This is most likely related to the above long conversations (including the original reason why we temporarily stopped working on the Android app years ago). You can blame Google for absolutely terrible design decisions. The final solution here unfortunately has to involve new frontend development from us, as well as new development for the emulator developers. It's a mess. It should all get fixed up eventually though.

You need to make 100% sure that LaunchBox is all the way closed if you're going to manually update the XML files. It sounds like it was open.

I paid today and got a license. Works great even on a $30 android tv. I want to try the video previews even though it has error. It does not detect the changes I made to the xml files in the data folder ("AndroidGameplayScreenshotPath" for "AndroidVideoPath" ). you can make sure i killed the launchbox before i edit the file and put it back in the folder

Can you help me with this? I'm really looking forward to seeing video previews in my cabinet.

Almost forget; does it delete the files that are extracted from  the temporary folder itself? so it would be a great option for Psx games.

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by hobapli

[Isoku]

I really like the additional app feature but one question about the standard when i have 2 or 3 roms as additonal app.

How can i change the standard app what launches?

For example i have earthbound in the snes category. The (USA) original and 3 alternatives with translations.

To my luck the translation what i play as main file is the standard but how can i change it to the original as standard?

[Jason Carr]

On 1/15/2022 at 12:22 PM, hobapli said:

I paid today and got a license. Works great even on a $30 android tv. I want to try the video previews even though it has error. It does not detect the changes I made to the xml files in the data folder ("AndroidGameplayScreenshotPath" for "AndroidVideoPath" ). you can make sure i killed the launchbox before i edit the file and put it back in the folder

Can you help me with this? I'm really looking forward to seeing video previews in my cabinet.

Almost forget; does it delete the files that are extracted from  the temporary folder itself? so it would be a great option for Psx games.

 

I think you should be able to fix this without any hassle by upgrading LaunchBox for Windows to the latest beta, as the issue with the exported videos should be fixed in the latest beta on the desktop. It would also be good to test this before we put out the next official version on the desktop.

12 hours ago, Isoku said:

I really like the additional app feature but one question about the standard when i have 2 or 3 roms as additonal app.

How can i change the standard app what launches?

For example i have earthbound in the snes category. The (USA) original and 3 alternatives with translations.

To my luck the translation what i play as main file is the standard but how can i change it to the original as standard?

Are you referring to LaunchBox for Windows or LaunchBox for Android? On Android, we still need to add a feature to change the default version to run.

[Isoku]

7 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I think you should be able to fix this without any hassle by upgrading LaunchBox for Windows to the latest beta, as the issue with the exported videos should be fixed in the latest beta on the desktop. It would also be good to test this before we put out the next official version on the desktop.

Are you referring to LaunchBox for Windows or LaunchBox for Android? On Android, we still need to add a feature to change the default version to run.

Of course im talking about the Android version.

but then i have to wait a bit for this feature. I just tought i missed something.

[Jason Carr]

LaunchBox for Android 1.0-beta-3 is out now with the following:

• Launching the newest versions of Dolphin, Mupen64Plus FZ, and Mupen64Plus FZ Pro now work properly on Android 11+ (once again you can thank Google for repeated poor design decisions causing these unnecessary issues)

• Fix for occasional crash when returning to LaunchBox from other apps

• Fix for the issues installing the beta on Android 12

Thanks guys for bearing with me on all of this stuff. As you know, Google has made all of this a nightmare, but we are slowly making progress. Also, I apologize for the misinformation on AetherSX2. I was negligent and got excited that something finally worked, but somehow didn't notice that it wasn't actually loading the game, only the startup screen. Sigh.

But anyways, in my testing, the latest versions of Dolphin, Mupen64Plus FZ, and Mupen64Plus FZ Pro are all working now on Android 11 and 12. I finally found something in the documentation that seems to make those emulators work. As far as I can tell, we've now implemented the launching code for Android 11 and 12 correctly, even for emulators that require the scoped storage garbage. That said, the following emulators still don't work to launch games properly:

• AetherSX2
• PPSSPP

The fix that worked for Dolphin and Mupen64Plus does not appear to work for those two. It's possible that something else will work, but we might need to add some extra annoying "select folder again" dialogs in order to make them work as-is. Ideally, the emulators would be updated to work properly with the same types of content URLs as Dolphin and Mupen use.

We would appreciate any testing regarding any other emulators that used to work, but don't work any longer on Android 11/12. I may be missing some that need updated. Also, if anyone is able to get us in touch with either the AetherSX2 or the PPSSPP development team, please let us know. Honestly I haven't spent much time trying to reach out to either team (yet).

Thankfully, we are making slow progress on this stuff.

[Buckshot60]

Hey there, I'm running Launchbox on an Nvidia Shield TV Pro on Shield Experience 9.0.1 (latest Nvidia hotfix published 1/12/22). As of right now, the stable 0.42 version does not seem to have access to network storage (I have an smb enabled NAS mounted to the shield storing my ROMs). I just downloaded the Android 1.0-beta-3 version to see if it would help in importing ROMS from my NAS. Unfortunately it is giving me the same issue as Android 1.0-beta-2, which is as follows:

Initially, I am prompted with the following screen upon install.

After hitting OK, the application crashes. I proceed to the application settings in android and adjust permissions for files and media from "Allow only while using the application" to "Allow all the time". Re-open the application and briefly receive the below error message. Then the application crashes before I have the opportunity to do anything.

I'm assuming there isn't much I can do from my end to fix this issue, but I hope this can help with development.

[Ally68]

Same

[BroganTrundler]

 

15 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

We would appreciate any testing regarding any other emulators that used to work, but don't work any longer on Android 11/12. I may be missing some that need updated. 

This is my first time trying out LaunchBox, so don't know if there have been problems with these emulators before, but I'm having problems with the ROMs not loading for Pizza Boy GBC, Pizza Boy GBA and Snes9x EX+

 

Edit: I got Pizza Boy GBC to work by putting the specific GBC folder as the ROM folder instead of the parent folder. However doing the same on Pizza Boy GBA did not fix that emulator. 

Edited January 18, 2022 by BroganTrundler

[rvandesteene]

My Samsung note 20 ultra just ran an update and my Launhbox disappeared.  The folder still exists on my SD card.  Can I download apk from website and load my existing licence?