LaunchBox for Android New Version - Beta Testing

[Nabizzles]

Yes. That will work. Same thing happened to me when I updated my Z Fold 3. All your stuff will still be there. 

[rvandesteene]

I asked before but never got it my video snaps to work.  Do you need a paid emu movies account for this to work?  I try to download data for my systems (only 2 right now ps2, and 3ds) about once a week and snaps are not showing when I open the systems.  Thanks for anyone who can help.

[Vader]

@rvandesteene This occured becuase you had probably had launchbox 1.0 beta 2 installed prior to the phone being updated.  Android 12 did not like this beta, so if it was installed prior to the update to Android 12 (One UI 4) , the update would simply uninstall the app. Your license data is still intacted. To reinstall launchbox Just go to your data folder for Launchbox and look in the updates folder. There you see all the updates that have been previously downloaded. Just install the update prior to 1.0 beta 2 which was 0.42 then run Launchbox, when you do it will ask you to update to another beta, this update is 1.0 beta 3 which fixes the issue that beta 2 had with Android 12.

Hope this helps

[rvandesteene]

@Vader if one of the things that beta 3 was going to solve was video snaps it did not fix it for my device.  At this point I might try uninstalling the app and all folders for launchbox on my device and start from scratch and see if that works.  Appreciate the help.

[Vader]

@rvandesteene beta 3 fixed the issue with beta 2 not working on android 12. Regarding the snaps, I do belive that you do need a paid account, but i'm not sure. I have not gotten to that part yet.

[neil9000]

9 hours ago, rvandesteene said:

Do you need a paid emu movies account for this to work? 

Yes, movies, music, and manuals have always been a part of the emumovies premium subscription.

[gonzalo_hvega]

I just came across this being worked on again, so excited and thankful for you to have come back to Android development!

I was a user that purchased the original LaunchBox through Google play, any chance I could apply for the beta and have my purchase transferred to the new license format? If so, can I just send email from Google play email as per previous instructions. Or is it too late ?

Thanks!

Edited January 18, 2022 by gonzalo_hvega

[faeran]

2 hours ago, gonzalo_hvega said:

I just came across this being worked on again, so excited and thankful for you to have come back to Android development!

I was a user that purchased the original LaunchBox through Google play, any chance I could apply for the beta and have my purchase transferred to the new license format? If so, can I just send email from Google play email as per previous instructions. Or is it too late ?

Thanks!

Email support@unbrokensoftware.com with the Google Play email address you used while purchasing the app.

You can also check out the Android License page for more info: https://www.launchbox-app.com/android-license

[Jason Carr]

@Buckshot60 @Ally68 Thanks, I have that issue solved for the next beta.

18 hours ago, BroganTrundler said:

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. 

Will review those emulators.

17 hours ago, rvandesteene said:

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?

Yup, should be relatively easy to get it all back with the same process. No idea why your phone would have removed it on an update though; that shouldn't be happening as far as I'm aware.

[rvandesteene]

@neil9000 Thank you for clarifying my issues with the snaps.  Can snaps be added in manually or only though the emu movies tool in Launchbox?

[Jason Carr]

14 hours ago, rvandesteene said:

@Vader if one of the things that beta 3 was going to solve was video snaps it did not fix it for my device.  At this point I might try uninstalling the app and all folders for launchbox on my device and start from scratch and see if that works.  Appreciate the help.

Are you referring to the export from the desktop app for the videos? If so, you will need to update to the beta of the desktop app to fix that.

[rvandesteene]

@Jason Carr @neil9000 Neil was able to help me understand why  the download was not working in Android.  I do not currently have a premium account with EMU movies.  A follow up question, can I mannuly add video snaps from my android device or can that only be done with the Desktop Launchbox software.  Thanks again for answering all my questions.

[Ally68]

Thanks jason

[Jason Carr]

LaunchBox for Android 1.0-beta-4 is out now with the following:

• Fix for crashes on startup with Nvidia Shield devices (introduced in a recent beta)
• Fix for launching games with Snes9x EX+ on Android 11+
• Added some additional warnings for emulators that are not always working to launch games on Android 11+

For anyone who had issues with the previous beta and needs to manually update, you can download the APK for beta 4 directly here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bhutfrdol75gp4l/LaunchBox-Android-1.0-beta-4.apk?dl=0

There are now four emulators that have been updated to work properly with Android 11+:

• Dolphin
• Snes9x EX+
• Mupen64Plus FZ
• Mupen64Plus FZ Pro

Thankfully, the above emulators do prove that things can work just fine on Android 11+, but it requires that both LaunchBox and the emulator itself are updated properly. The problems come into play when an emulator developer chooses to update to the latest Android API, but does not implement all the necessary features in order to support launching games properly. For example, often times an emulator developer will update the internal code to use the new Android Storage Access Framework, but unless they add additional code to properly launch games from shared content URLs, then launching games will be broken by default. Google is the biggest cause of this problem, because they've made horrible design decisions as to these changes, and the documentation is incredibly confusing. So we can't really blame any emulator developers, but the emulators will need to be updated in order to fix the issue.

Here's a list of emulators that we are aware of having known issues launching games on Android 11+:

• AetherSX2
• Citra
• Citra MMJ
• Pizza Boy GBA Pro
• Pizza Boy GBC Pro
• PPSSPP
• Redream

There's probably more that we haven't run into yet as well. There are known hacks that work to force some of these emulators to launch games on Android 11+, but they are not good solutions, as they provide a bad user experience (such as forcing the user to have to re-select a folder with the Android Storage Access Framework). For example, Arc Browser has a hacky solution right now that uses an external app to handle translation, but it's confusing to set up, and I would much prefer to avoid that kind of a solution. Ideally, we can reach out to the development teams of all of these emulators and work with them to get the issue fixed properly.

Soon I'll be doing my best to reach out to them all to start up a conversation. If anyone has any direct contacts, please let me know.

In the mean time, do remember that RetroArch works great with most platforms and there are zero issues launching games with it, because they have refrained from targeting the latest Android API (which honestly is just about the wisest thing you can do right now).

Thanks for bearing with us on all of this; we'll be working on finishing up the video support and hopefully working with emulator devs to improve compatibility with the above emulators before the official 1.0 release.

[BroganTrundler]

Snes9x EX+ seems to be working great for launching games now, thanks! There is however a small problem with it not recognizing my save data either through the manual saves in the game or the save states in the app. When I open a game through the standalone emulator the save data is there, but not when launching it through LaunchBox. This isn't a problem with any of the other emulators I've tried through LaunchBox (DraStic, DuckStation, Pizza Boy GBC and Dolphin) though so I don't know if there's something spesific with the Snes9x emulator, or if there's a fix for it. 

[Jason Carr]

1 minute ago, BroganTrundler said:

Snes9x EX+ seems to be working great for launching games now, thanks! There is however a small problem with it not recognizing my save data either through the manual saves in the game or the save states in the app. When I open a game through the standalone emulator the save data is there, but not when launching it through LaunchBox. This isn't a problem with any of the other emulators I've tried through LaunchBox (DraStic, DuckStation, Pizza Boy GBC and Dolphin) though so I don't know if there's something spesific with the Snes9x emulator, or if there's a fix for it. 

Huh, that's interesting. I would expect that to be on the emulator developer to fix. Or at least we'd need their input if we do need to change how we launch it.

[Buckshot60]

The new 1.0 Beta-4 fixed the crashes on my Nvidia Shields, but it didn't resolve the bigger issue of not being able to access my network attached storage due to the new scoped storage BS. Patiently waiting to really test out Launchbox on Android. Thanks for all the hard work!

Edited January 19, 2022 by Buckshot60

[Soop]

19 minutes ago, Buckshot60 said:

The new 1.0 Beta-4 fixed the crashes on my Nvidia Shields, but it didn't resolve the bigger issue of not being able to access my network attached storage due to the new scoped storage BS. Patiently waiting to really test out Launchbox on Android. Thanks for all the hard work!

I've had a look too and posted in another thread.  If you have root access you should be able to put a symlink in below the /emulated/storage/0/ directory (I believe) and access it that way.  I don't have root to my device, so I'm hoping for a workaround.

[Ally68]

Beta 4 seems to fix crash

[Jason Carr]

I spoke with Tahlreth, the AetherSX2 developer tonight. I was as careful and polite as I could have possibly been, but unfortunately he has no interest in supporting frontends or allowing frontends to launch games in AetherSX2. He ended the conversation with "I might just make the activities private next update", suggesting that he is going to completely disable any chance of frontends launching games at all.

So unfortunately that is bad news, but it is his choice if he does not want frontends to be able to launch games in AetherSX2. From what I can tell, his reasoning is that he wants users to use his user interface only, and does not want it to be hidden or bypassed by a frontend.

So, for now, we have to give up on supporting AetherSX2.