Launchbox | Bigbox | 532 Platforms | 534 Playlists | 600,000+ Games | The ridiculous collection (updated Jan 20 '23)

[-McFly-]

This is a re-recording and re-upload to YouTube of my current build as the last one had a few errors I missed. Link to new Video -  Launchbox | Bigbox | 500+ Platforms | 400+ Playlists | 500,000+ Games | The ridiculous collection.

I'm having issues where some videos stick. I've closed / disabled everything I can but it only helps a little. My specs are pretty good (32GB RAM, Octocore, 8GB Video) so I don't think it's that...?

If you'd like a video of the playlists, let me know. As always, comments and criticisms welcome. 🎮

[Starbuck]

Fantastic work.

 

How does tour  tree look where are you putting playlists, best of etc. what are the parents.

[dennis256]

thank you

[Merovingio]

Can you share the XML? How do you make the Plataform Sets? No-Intro full?

[Skiros]

On 12/16/2021 at 9:00 PM, Mongu said:

Can you share the XML? How do you make the Plataform Sets? No-Intro full?

That would be really nice!

[-McFly-]

Here's my latest Data backup .xml for anyone interested. It's all here. Sorry for the late response, I've moved across country and everything's still in boxes... 😜

 

EDIT - removed for update, Christmas 2022.

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by Mcfly.
spelling

[-McFly-]

On 1/4/2022 at 3:22 PM, Skiros said:

That would be really nice!

Platform sets are everything for the platform. I just throw everything into the mix. Why not?

[-McFly-]

On 1/4/2022 at 3:22 PM, Skiros said:

That would be really nice!

Done.

 

[-McFly-]

On 12/16/2021 at 6:00 PM, Mongu said:

Can you share the XML? How do you make the Plataform Sets? No-Intro full?

Done.

[-McFly-]

On 12/16/2021 at 6:00 PM, Mongu said:

Can you share the XML? How do you make the Plataform Sets? No-Intro full?

Done.

[-McFly-]

On 11/10/2021 at 7:41 PM, Starbuck said:

Fantastic work.

 

How does tour  tree look where are you putting playlists, best of etc. what are the parents.

Check out the .xml file I just uploaded.

[-McFly-]

On 1/4/2022 at 3:22 PM, Skiros said:

That would be really nice!

Done.

[-McFly-]

No new video, yet. I'm at 517 Platforms, 563k+ games. I'll probably never stop, just slow down a little...

[mikejoe]

@Mcfly. As I see you have Leapster platform listed (Leapfrog - Leapster Learning Game System), can you please share what do you use to emulate this machine/games?

[C-Beats]

I've removed the last set of comments as they didn't add anything worthwhile to this thread. Please keep drama from other forums out of ours.

[-McFly-]

On 3/1/2022 at 8:25 PM, mikejoe said:

@Mcfly. As I see you have Leapster platform listed (Leapfrog - Leapster Learning Game System), can you please share what do you use to emulate this machine/games?

There isn't a good way to run these roms. MAME does have some ability, but for now it's not there.

[SiriusVI]

On 3/1/2022 at 3:23 AM, Mcfly. said:

Platform sets are everything for the platform. I just throw everything into the mix. Why not?

Hmm, I could think of many reasons:
For one, it can get really messy. There are soooo many different versions of certain games and Launchbox does not organize versions very well. If you put everything into the mix, it might be that e.g. in SNES Donkey Kong Country, the "default" rom will be the competition cartridge instead of the newest revision of the rom. In other cases a demo version of a game might become the default rom. When it comes to computer systems, it gets even worse. Mame software list systems for example contain many roms that are NOT games, but programs, many of which won't even load under mame.

By all means, I get the wish to have everything, but what I also want is that when I open Launchbox and click on a game, the game will in fact start and I can play it and I can be sure it IS a playable game in the first place.

I started out same as you throwing everything together. But I soon realized that when I was browsing a platform, there were so many "samples", betas", "demos", "demo disc collections", "prototypes" and in the case of computer systems, "programs", most of them without metadata or artwork, that it just became an ugly and confusing mess and when I clicked on a rom, there was a very high chance that it was not an officially released (version of a) game, wasn't a game at all or that it wouldn't even launch.

That's why I decided (for now) to stick to 1G1R sets for all my platforms and to exclude all roms that are not officially released games, except for unlicensed games. I might add prototypes back in at some point. That way I can be 99% sure that if I click on a game in any given platform, it will indeed launch and be playable.

For computer systems it was a bit more difficult. For one because they are much harder to get working and also because mame software lists are unusable for me, because of all the software that is included. So I decided to use TOSEC sets, which separate games from applications. The problem here is that TOSEC also includes all different file type variations of a game. So one game might be included 5 or more times just with a different file extension, and I have found no way of automatically building a 1G1R set for TOSEC sets (if anyone knows how to do this, please contact me!!! 😄) 

Long story short: For now I have a very clean collection for all Console and Handheld platforms and a bit of a messy collection of Computer platforms, but even there I can be 90% sure that if I click on a game it will in fact run.

If Launchbox at some point will be able to automatically exclude or flag betas and demos and so on, with the option of "hiding" them when not needed, I might consider rebuilding my collection in a different way. Another option could be making separate platforms for all the "junk", such as: SNES - demos; "SNES - betas", and so on, but this will messy up the platform list some.

Edited March 6, 2022 by SiriusVI

[-McFly-]

On 3/6/2022 at 6:41 AM, SiriusVI said:

Hmm, I could think of many reasons:
For one, it can get really messy. There are soooo many different versions of certain games and Launchbox does not organize versions very well. If you put everything into the mix, it might be that e.g. in SNES Donkey Kong Country, the "default" rom will be the competition cartridge instead of the newest revision of the rom. In other cases a demo version of a game might become the default rom. When it comes to computer systems, it gets even worse. Mame software list systems for example contain many roms that are NOT games, but programs, many of which won't even load under mame.

By all means, I get the wish to have everything, but what I also want is that when I open Launchbox and click on a game, the game will in fact start and I can play it and I can be sure it IS a playable game in the first place.

I started out same as you throwing everything together. But I soon realized that when I was browsing a platform, there were so many "samples", betas", "demos", "demo disc collections", "prototypes" and in the case of computer systems, "programs", most of them without metadata or artwork, that it just became an ugly and confusing mess and when I clicked on a rom, there was a very high chance that it was not an officially released (version of a) game, wasn't a game at all or that it wouldn't even launch.

That's why I decided (for now) to stick to 1G1R sets for all my platforms and to exclude all roms that are not officially released games, except for unlicensed games. I might add prototypes back in at some point. That way I can be 99% sure that if I click on a game in any given platform, it will indeed launch and be playable.

For computer systems it was a bit more difficult. For one because they are much harder to get working and also because mame software lists are unusable for me, because of all the software that is included. So I decided to use TOSEC sets, which separate games from applications. The problem here is that TOSEC also includes all different file type variations of a game. So one game might be included 5 or more times just with a different file extension, and I have found no way of automatically building a 1G1R set for TOSEC sets (if anyone knows how to do this, please contact me!!! 😄) 

Long story short: For now I have a very clean collection for all Console and Handheld platforms and a bit of a messy collection of Computer platforms, but even there I can be 90% sure that if I click on a game it will in fact run.

If Launchbox at some point will be able to automatically exclude or flag betas and demos and so on, with the option of "hiding" them when not needed, I might consider rebuilding my collection in a different way. Another option could be making separate platforms for all the "junk", such as: SNES - demos; "SNES - betas", and so on, but this will messy up the platform list some.

"Hmm, I could think of many reasons:
For one, it can get really messy. There are soooo many different versions of certain games and Launchbox does not organize versions very well. If you put everything into the mix, it might be that e.g. in SNES Donkey Kong Country, the "default" rom will be the competition cartridge instead of the newest revision of the rom. In other cases a demo version of a game might become the default rom. When it comes to computer systems, it gets even worse. Mame software list systems for example contain many roms that are NOT games, but programs, many of which won't even load under mame." I choose to select which version of a game I want to play each time I choose a new game. If I like it and want to play it again, I add it to 'Favorites'. Sometimes I like playing non-standard versions. That's my choice.

"By all means, I get the wish to have everything, but what I also want is that when I open Launchbox and click on a game, the game will in fact start and I can play it and I can be sure it IS a playable game in the first place." - LOTS of "I"s there. Not everyone is you. I'm not.

"That's why I decided (for now) to stick to 1G1R sets for all my platforms and to exclude all roms that are not officially released games, except for unlicensed games. I might add prototypes back in at some point. That way I can be 99% sure that if I click on a game in any given platform, it will indeed launch and be playable." - Absolutely your decision, nobody is telling you how to set up your systems.

"For computer systems it was a bit more difficult. For one because they are much harder to get working and also because mame software lists are unusable for me, because of all the software that is included. So I decided to use TOSEC sets, which separate games from applications. The problem here is that TOSEC also includes all different file type variations of a game. So one game might be included 5 or more times just with a different file extension, and I have found no way of automatically building a 1G1R set for TOSEC sets (if anyone knows how to do this, please contact me!!! 😄)"   -Google is awesome. Also, your choice to stick to a particular set sets your collection apart from mine. Is one better than the other? No. It's all down to what we all individually want our systems to look like.

"Long story short: For now I have a very clean collection for all Console and Handheld platforms and a bit of a messy collection of Computer platforms, but even there I can be 90% sure that if I click on a game it will in fact run." - Awesome!

"If Launchbox at some point will be able to automatically exclude or flag betas and demos and so on, with the option of "hiding" them when not needed, I might consider rebuilding my collection in a different way. Another option could be making separate platforms for all the "junk", such as: SNES - demos; "SNES - betas", and so on, but this will messy up the platform list some." - I expect this will happen, but if it doesn't, that's fine also. This isn't a work of art, it's MY COLLECTION. You can choose to like or dislike, but beyond that your opinions are just that. Yours and yours alone.

Ultimately, you came on here and wrote a long story long to say my setup isn't like yours. I'm not sure if it's jealousy or pettiness. Either way, thanks for your opinion!

[SiriusVI]

9 hours ago, Mcfly. said:

Ultimately, you came on here and wrote a long story long to say my setup isn't like yours. I'm not sure if it's jealousy or pettiness. Either way, thanks for your opinion!

Woot!? You must have completely misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to say my set up was better. I just answered your question from the post above where you asked "why not?" (include everything).

It's just a hobby and a forum exists to exchange ideas and experiences. I just wanted to contribute some of my personal experiences and opinions.

There are also benefits of having everything in my opinion, especially if the goal is cataloguing.

I do have to say that I find it rather curious that you feel like this is some kind of competition or that you feel offended if I point out what I personally think is a bit tedious about adding everything there is to a platform, if you want to keep it functional. But if you are not interested in a discussion I will gladly leave you alone.

👋

Edited March 9, 2022 by SiriusVI

[-McFly-]

10 hours ago, SiriusVI said:

Woot!? You must have completely misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to say my set up was better. I just answered your question from the post above where you asked "why not?" (include everything).

It's just a hobby and a forum exists to exchange ideas and experiences. I just wanted to contribute some of my personal experiences and opinions.

There are also benefits of having everything in my opinion, especially if the goal is cataloguing.

I do have to say that I find it rather curious that you feel like this is some kind of competition or that you feel offended if I point out what I personally think is a bit tedious about adding everything there is to a platform, if you want to keep it functional. But if you are not interested in a discussion I will gladly leave you alone.

👋

I misunderstood the tone of your reply, it's all good!