Launchbox on Steam Deck

[MontyMole]

Somebody else here registering their interest in Launchbox on the Steam Deck. I'm expecting an email soon (according to Valve) inviting me to purchase my pre-order (I've gone for the 512gb model because of my interest in retro games!)

I would be happy to pay for another forever licences to - I'm not assuming my current licence would be transferable - if it means supporting the Launchbox team, personally, I would happily pay again.

[rbarr110]

I am all for Launchbox on the steam deck.

[Druiditup]

So I got you order in on Monday. (Finally!) was hoping we had some more info on LB/BB for the deck. I’m still pretty new to the emulation stuff and figured getting a collection ready would make it easy to just transfer stuff to an sd card for the deck.

[cleverest]

14 hours ago, Druiditup said:

So I got you order in on Monday. (Finally!) was hoping we had some more info on LB/BB for the deck. I’m still pretty new to the emulation stuff and figured getting a collection ready would make it easy to just transfer stuff to an sd card for the deck.

Emudeck is the best way to get stuff like this on the Deck....until an official LB version for it comes out at least; IF it ever does.

I have a custom made 16TB LB collection myself. (Taking up 15.5TB of space)...I recommend going big if you're going to do that, haha

[Lordmonkus]

14 hours ago, Druiditup said:

So I got you order in on Monday. (Finally!) was hoping we had some more info on LB/BB for the deck. I’m still pretty new to the emulation stuff and figured getting a collection ready would make it easy to just transfer stuff to an sd card for the deck.

I edited your post, please don't discuss buying illegal drives from sellers on certain sites. Drive sellers are scumbags.

[Trevo525]

Steam Deck just passed 1 million units sold. Is that enough to start taking it more seriously? (referring to the people who said it's no big deal on the first page of this thread) I'm not really sure what makes it so difficult to port to Linux in the first place. LB is a C# application. Is it based on .net Framework and not core? Either way, I use RetroDeck on mine because I like having a launcher for roms seperate from my Steam games and EmulationStation-DE does just fine. It sure isn't Launchbox though..

[neil9000]

15 minutes ago, Trevo525 said:

I'm not really sure what makes it so difficult to port to Linux in the first place

Unfortunately that is part of the problem, people think its easy, it's not.

 

15 minutes ago, Trevo525 said:

LB is a C# application.

True.

16 minutes ago, Trevo525 said:

Is it based on .net Framework and not core?

It's .net core, and it relies on some Windows exclusive libraries too. As stated previously it would more or less have to be a complete rebuild and not a port. Actually Android is closer to Linux than Windows so if it does ever happen its possible that it would be a port of the Android version and not the Windows version.

Also it should be notet that 1 million is nothing compared to the estimated more than 1 Billion people who use Windows. At the end of the day though it's business and that needs to be respected, this isnt a hobbiest product, made by volunteers, its a Company making a product and having business related costs like staff who need paying and things that hobbiest projects like Batocera or Retrodeck do not have to contend or deal with.

Long story short, its not as easy as you think.

[Trevo525]

21 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Unfortunately that is part of the problem, people think its easy, it's not.

 

True.

It's .net core, and it relies on some Windows exclusive libraries too. As stated previously it would more or less have to be a complete rebuild and not a port. Actually Android is closer to Linux than Windows so if it does ever happen its possible that it would be a port of the Android version and not the Windows version.

Also it should be notet that 1 million is nothing compared to the estimated more than 1 Billion people who use Windows. At the end of the day though it's business and that needs to be respected, this isnt a hobbiest product, made by volunteers, its a Company making a product and having business related costs like staff who need paying and things that hobbiest projects like Batocera or Retrodeck do not have to contend or deal with.

Long story short, its not as easy as you think.

Thanks for the response. I commented here before I read the main thread in the /linux/ subforum. I am a professional c# developer, and I assumed that it would have been created with wpf in mvvm and therefore pretty easy to port to different platforms. But, I didn't know the different libraries that are being used that are Windows specific.

[C-Beats]

7 minutes ago, Trevo525 said:

Thanks for the response. I commented here before I read the main thread in the /linux/ subforum. I am a professional c# developer, and I assumed that it would have been created with wpf in mvvm and therefore pretty easy to port to different platforms. But, I didn't know the different libraries that are being used that are Windows specific.

Not sure how you came to that conclusion. WPF is a Windows exclusive framework that utilizes DirectX for all hardware rendering (which again is a Windows exclusive framework), so unsure how why you think it could be ported to other platforms at all, let alone easily. You could potentially utilize software like Wine to run the app on other platforms, but it wouldn't be a native app for that platform.

[dracossaint]

31 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Unfortunately that is part of the problem, people think its easy, it's not.

 

True.

It's .net core, and it relies on some Windows exclusive libraries too. As stated previously it would more or less have to be a complete rebuild and not a port. Actually Android is closer to Linux than Windows so if it does ever happen its possible that it would be a port of the Android version and not the Windows version.

Also it should be notet that 1 million is nothing compared to the estimated more than 1 Billion people who use Windows. At the end of the day though it's business and that needs to be respected, this isnt a hobbiest product, made by volunteers, its a Company making a product and having business related costs like staff who need paying and things that hobbiest projects like Batocera or Retrodeck do not have to contend or deal with.

Long story short, its not as easy as you think.

i figured it would be a android port and it would be a down the road thing and when its more fleshed out.

I would suggest open sourcing the Android/linux port, but like you said its a business that needs to pay staff. But i will say they did put all their eggs in one basket by relying too much on one os's Library system.

I get why they did it, they had to pick a priority and the one with the largest install base makes sense. But i will argue moving away from relying specifically on that library sooner rather then later would be a smart move.

So as to start alleviating porting to a new device and some update doesn't screw them down the road if it gets depricated by something Microsoft dose. I dont know coding outside basic python for file sorting, ill freely admit that. So i have no idea on how difficult that is.

But their a small company fighting droves of free open source alternatives. Eventually even if x competitor isnt as comprehensive and fully featured as launch box. People will start to migrate towards it instead. Because they wont be willing to try it, when they can go with the free option. This software is a niche within a niche, So when people get curious and want to take a spin at it. Why would they pay for it?

(i Hold a lifetime licence mind you for this and emumovies, something to keep in mind )

[Jason Carr]

54 minutes ago, dracossaint said:

i figured it would be a android port and it would be a down the road thing and when its more fleshed out.

I would suggest open sourcing the Android/linux port, but like you said its a business that needs to pay staff. But i will say they did put all their eggs in one basket by relying too much on one os's Library system.

I get why they did it, they had to pick a priority and the one with the largest install base makes sense. But i will argue moving away from relying specifically on that library sooner rather then later would be a smart move.

So as to start alleviating porting to a new device and some update doesn't screw them down the road if it gets depricated by something Microsoft dose. I dont know coding outside basic python for file sorting, ill freely admit that. So i have no idea on how difficult that is.

But their a small company fighting droves of free open source alternatives. Eventually even if x competitor isnt as comprehensive and fully featured as launch box. People will start to migrate towards it instead. Because they wont be willing to try it, when they can go with the free option. This software is a niche within a niche, So when people get curious and want to take a spin at it. Why would they pay for it?

(i Hold a lifetime licence mind you for this and emumovies, something to keep in mind )

To be honest, stuff like this is so far out in left field and so full of false information that it really is just spreading misinformation. The fact that we exist, are growing tremendously, and have such a large base of users is proof that the majority of this is false. We just hired another developer, and we are now 4.5 strong (4 full-time and one part-time).

Most of this stuff I've already addressed, but I will reiterate some of it. We would love to be on Linux, but it's not feasible as of right now because the technology that exists is very far behind on Linux. Big Box is a huge success partially because of the theming engine, which is highly customized, but it's based on WPF and XAML. Without that theming engine, Big Box as we know it would not exist, and we would have to throw away all existing themes. Obviously, that's a very, very bad idea. To code something like WPF is way outside of the scope of what a 3-developer team can accomplish in any decent amount of time, and there is literally nothing on Linux that even comes close to competing with WPF in terms of development ability and performance. It doesn't exist.

The closest thing that I've found is indeed Xamarin.Forms/MAUI, and that is the course of action that we plan to take in the future. Unfortunately though, both Xamarin.Forms and MAUI are very immature thus far on Linux, and our attempts to port them were not fruitful thus far. But I do believe that eventually we will be able to go that route.

Regardless, the notion that Microsoft is deprecating, or planning to deprecate WPF any time soon, is false, and would be a very stupid move for Microsoft.

We have found so much success because we have two (now three) full-time developers working on the project, so we can meet the community's needs very well, and much better than the open source projects out there. They don't have the bandwidth to build what we can build, because we have full-time staff doing it, which is enabled, of course, by the fact that Big Box is a paid product.

[dracossaint]

23 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

To be honest, stuff like this is so far out in left field and so full of false information that it really is just spreading misinformation. The fact that we exist, are growing tremendously, and have such a large base of users is proof that the majority of this is false. We just hired another developer, and we are now 4.5 strong (4 full-time and one part-time).

I'm sorry this came off in that fashion, but I wasn't trying state these things as factual I even said this out of my depth. Also thank you for taking time to address this. Also i will point to services like spotify,netflix and other subscription based services and what affect they had on media companies. I'm not saying it isn't growing or not popular, I'm point to the fact people are cheap and it could be something that limit exposure to a good frontend. 

1 hour ago, dracossaint said:

I dont know coding outside basic python for file sorting, ill freely admit that. So i have no idea on how difficult that is.

 

26 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

The closest thing that I've found is indeed Xamarin.Forms/MAUI, and that is the course of action that we plan to take in the future. Unfortunately though, both Xamarin.Forms and MAUI are very immature thus far on Linux, and our attempts to port them were not fruitful thus far. But I do believe that eventually we will be able to go that route.

The retort for that ill point out is systems like emustation, but i will readily admit again that i dont know these things. it was meant as a conversation piece and I'm not surprised its immature atm for such things. Hence when the android version was more fleshed out, because i figured y'all was working a bit from scratch as well and

 

29 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Regardless, the notion that Microsoft is deprecating, or planning to deprecate WPF any time soon, is false, and would be a very stupid move for Microsoft.

Microsoft have done many stupid things for reasons that seem logical to them in the past. May I point out Microsoft edge and the whole link handling situation that went on for a bit.
They have been tried for internet explorer for simplty including it in the os, so even attempting what they did is kinda dumb to put it mildly.

 

37 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

They don't have the bandwidth to build what we can build, because we have full-time staff doing it, which is enabled, of course, by the fact that Big Box is a paid product.

As i think it should be and my main point was about how people are naturally drawn to the cheaper alternative more then not. I wasn't trying to downplay your team, it was me stating a concern I have. So I am glad its unfounded. Ill just go back to being a village idiot now. Thanks for taking time to address this once again and keep up the wonderful work. 

[Dan Patrick]

I don't want to dig up a finished thread here, but I just want to say my unnecessary 2 cents. The steam deck is obviously a hit but it can run windows really well from what I hear, especially now compared to launch.

Here ETA uses LB on windows 10 (before windows 11 even worked) back in march and it runs great. The Steam Deck Is The New King Of Hand-Held Emulation! Amazingly Fast EMU Performance - YouTube

I've seen on several LB Youtube videos where a comment says "Is LB coming to steam deck?". The team knows it's wanted but once they get those few sales from steam deck users then is it worth the time to the small team. It currently would take way longer than it's worth apparently. If there were 100 million steam decks out there then that'd probably be different. Think about how many windows and android users there are. Those 2 platforms have more potential for money. Plus, they don't have to do anything that they don't want to do so enough said, I guess. 

I do truly think LB is far and away the best front end. Yes, there's free front ends that still are good programs. For example, I think Pegasus is snappy and looks nice although seemingly hard to set up. Most other desktop front ends look pretty dated to me. But LB has the theme creator which is a game changer and other front ends even use LBs data base to scrape because it's huge. I've been using LB since like 2012 I think, and the speed and customization is so much better since then. What other front end could have that kind of track record? (not sponsored lol) 

[dracossaint]

No, not for steamedeck specifically, Linux in general. Agreed the sells will not be as large as it is for something like Android or Windows. But having A little sbc loaded with launchbox that ya could tout around with ya as ya travel. Plug that into a hotel tv or etc and bam!

That would be an awesome thing to have. Also I'd bet some of those customers would be repeat customers just like with Android launchbox. 

[Dan Patrick]

I gotcha, I know Steam OS is linux. Agreed that would be awesome and there'd be some repeat customers. Anything's possible, I thought the android port would never happen. Safe to say there is no plan for a Linux build though. 

[Alumriel]

TL;DR - install Windows 10 on a MicroSD card, then use BigBox there. 😉

I used this guide and it worked wonderfully - https://wagnerstechtalk.com/sd-windows/

Even though the Steam Deck doesn't yet support dual boot, it's pretty easy to switch back and forth using the bios boot menu.

Edited October 12, 2022 by Alumriel
added link to guide I used

[MrMarStar]

Hey guys,
I've been using Launchbox on my PC for a few years now, and I love it! I've often thought about buying with BigBox, but I wouldn't have any added value by doing so.
There's something else I love though.. The Steam Deck. I ordered it within the first hour and received it pretty much exactly 1 year later, and it's great!
It can't be a "deal" to install this windows crap on deck just to use Launchbox. What makes the deck special is: Step 1 Turn on Step 2 Play games and not just choose your operating system to have games there. That's exactly what made PC so shitty.
What I want to say with that:
Please please please bring a Steam Deck version of Launchbox. From my point of view, this software can also cost money!

[BendBombBoom]

I too wish Launchbox was on Steam Deck. I'd like to see it on as many platforms as possible. I'd be happy to be pay a per platform fee if it supported development of Launchbox on those new platforms.

Edited October 21, 2022 by BendBombBoom
Grammar/Spelling

[FistyDollars]

I've had a Steam Deck practically since launch, and I use playlists through RetroArch directly. It looks...fine...but I also wish LaunchBox were available for the Deck. Would simplify things greatly and would certainly look better than RetroArch. I get that Jason is hesitant to go to a new platform after what happened the first time with Android, but it's such a good machine for on the go emulation that it's a shame I can't keep it looking as good as my Desktop. And can you imagine being able to sync between both versions? I'd pay again just for that feature alone!

[dracinn]

Is there a way to use Launchbox DB for Emudeck?