12.15 Beta Thread

[Fursphere]

On Beta 4 - LEDBlinky doesn't appear to be lighting up the 'front end controls' from the platform list.      If you select a game on the 'quick select' menu, it lights up the controls, or if you enter a platform the games all seem to work. 

But at the 'default' platform list, it doesn't light up the "front end controls' anymore.   

[C-Beats]

12 hours ago, Fursphere said:

On Beta 4 - LEDBlinky doesn't appear to be lighting up the 'front end controls' from the platform list.      If you select a game on the 'quick select' menu, it lights up the controls, or if you enter a platform the games all seem to work. 

But at the 'default' platform list, it doesn't light up the "front end controls' anymore.   

I don't use LedBlinky so I want to make sure I'm understanding your report. When starting Big Box LedBlinky isn't being told the front end was started? Not sure what you mean by "front end controls"

[Fursphere]

1 hour ago, C-Beats said:

I don't use LedBlinky so I want to make sure I'm understanding your report. When starting Big Box LedBlinky isn't being told the front end was started? Not sure what you mean by "front end controls"

False alarm.   Its working fine.  I screwed it up on my end.    All good now.

[C-Beats]

3 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

False alarm.   Its working fine.  I screwed it up on my end.    All good now.

Awesome, thanks for the update.

[Jason Carr]

Beta 5 is out now with the following:

• Improvement: Deleting a game in LaunchBox no longer scrolls the user back up to the top of the view
• Improvement: Added Platform binding to Big Box's FilterDetailsViewModel (for theme devs)
• Improvement: Platform-specific views now will try to find a view based on the platform's Scrape As value if one cannot be found for its exact name
• Improvement: VLC has been updated to the latest version
• Fixed: The MAME Full-set Import Wizard now properly reflects that 0.162 is the oldest supported version of MAME that can be used
• Fixed: Controller buttons not working to skip the startup video in Big Box (introduced in the last beta)

[Drybonz]

1 hour ago, Jason Carr said:

Improvement: Deleting a game in LaunchBox no longer scrolls the user back up to the top of the view

I love this.  I had just been dealing with this yesterday and was thinking how much more efficient it would be if it didn't return you to the top of the view each time.  Very nice improvement.

[xmas]

2 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Beta 5 is out now with the following:

• Improvement: Platform-specific views now will try to find a view based on the platform's Scrape As value if one cannot be found for its exact name

Oh, for a second, I thought Platform-specific views as platform-specific arrange list view... It would be nice if I could sort by 'title' in Nintendo 64, sort by 'year' in NEC TurboGrafx-16 and sort by 'date added' in Microsoft Game Pass.

[Joe35car]

9 hours ago, Drybonz said:

I love this.  I had just been dealing with this yesterday and was thinking how much more efficient it would be if it didn't return you to the top of the view each time.  Very nice improvement.

This is nice. To avoid going back to the top I would click on a game next to it right after deleting. 

[Fursphere]

Launchbox Crash in 12.15-5

Steps to reproduce

1 In LB go to Playlists

2 Create a new Playlist

3 Enter a name

4 go to auto-populate tab

5 click auto populate checkbox

6 select 'title' 'contains'

7 enter a search parameter (anything seems to work).   DO NOT HIT ENTER

8 click on 'games' tab

this will cause LB to crash 100% of the time for me

If you hit enter in step 7 before clicking the 'games' tab, it works as expected.

[C-Beats]

10 hours ago, Fursphere said:

Launchbox Crash in 12.15-5

Steps to reproduce

1 In LB go to Playlists

2 Create a new Playlist

3 Enter a name

4 go to auto-populate tab

5 click auto populate checkbox

6 select 'title' 'contains'

7 enter a search parameter (anything seems to work).   DO NOT HIT ENTER

8 click on 'games' tab

this will cause LB to crash 100% of the time for me

If you hit enter in step 7 before clicking the 'games' tab, it works as expected.

LB shouldn't actually crash, but Windows will probably tell you the app has stopped responding. Doing an auto-pop with no filters takes that window FOREVER to grab all the games (which it does on the main thread) and so Windows see's it as locked up and offers to close the app for you. If you let it go though it will eventually come back with that tab full of every game in your library. Is something we should probably make work a bit better, but certainly isn't new to this version.

[Fursphere]

3 minutes ago, C-Beats said:

LB shouldn't actually crash, but Windows will probably tell you the app has stopped responding. Doing an auto-pop with no filters takes that window FOREVER to grab all the games (which it does on the main thread) and so Windows see's it as locked up and offers to close the app for you. If you let it go though it will eventually come back with that tab full of every game in your library. Is something we should probably make work a bit better, but certainly isn't new to this version.

I'll try it again to confirm, but I'm pretty certain its a hard crash - not a "stopped responding" scenario.  

There were a couple of other crash scenarios while working with playlists too, but I'm not sure how to replicate them on demand yet.   

[Jason Carr]

Beta 6 is out now with the following:

• Fixed: Popups were not always playing the Select and Back sounds (introduced in 12.14)
• Improvement: The shutdown screen has been disabled for Steam games, which generally results in a smoother experience

[skizzosjt]

On 9/23/2022 at 6:00 PM, Jason Carr said:

Improvement: The shutdown screen has been disabled for Steam games, which generally results in a smoother experience

can you please elaborate? what parameter/value is triggering the game to be detected as a Steam game? Source "Imported from Steam" maybe? Is the shutdown screen permanently disabled for a game identified as a Steam game or do you mean it's unchecked by default and users can enable it manually should they choose to?

My interest in this stems from I use a script so all games in my Windows platform have both startup AND shutdown screens working. This includes Steam games and any other launchers that use similar URL launch methods like Uplay or Epic, as well as games launching through an exe or a separate script. Every Windows platform game I own has startup AND shutdown screens working in my case due to the effort I put into making it happen. With that said, please tell me you did not just remove my ability to use shutdown screens on a large handful of my games that are already working for me?

[Jason Carr]

55 minutes ago, skizzosjt said:

can you please elaborate? what parameter/value is triggering the game to be detected as a Steam game? Source "Imported from Steam" maybe? Is the shutdown screen permanently disabled for a game identified as a Steam game or do you mean it's unchecked by default and users can enable it manually should they choose to?

My interest in this stems from I use a script so all games in my Windows platform have both startup AND shutdown screens working. This includes Steam games and any other launchers that use similar URL launch methods like Uplay or Epic, as well as games launching through an exe or a separate script. Every Windows platform game I own has startup AND shutdown screens working in my case due to the effort I put into making it happen. With that said, please tell me you did not just remove my ability to use shutdown screens on a large handful of my games that are already working for me?

If the application path starts with steam://, then yes, we completely disable the shutdown screen. Shutdown screens never worked properly in this scenario, for any games, at least as far as we are aware. However, if you use a script in that application path field, then those games should not be affected or changed.

[C-Beats]

1 hour ago, skizzosjt said:

can you please elaborate? what parameter/value is triggering the game to be detected as a Steam game? Source "Imported from Steam" maybe? Is the shutdown screen permanently disabled for a game identified as a Steam game or do you mean it's unchecked by default and users can enable it manually should they choose to?

My interest in this stems from I use a script so all games in my Windows platform have both startup AND shutdown screens working. This includes Steam games and any other launchers that use similar URL launch methods like Uplay or Epic, as well as games launching through an exe or a separate script. Every Windows platform game I own has startup AND shutdown screens working in my case due to the effort I put into making it happen. With that said, please tell me you did not just remove my ability to use shutdown screens on a large handful of my games that are already working for me?

Concerns like this are WHY we have the Beta release. If you're concerned about something like this drastically affecting your everyday use case, please upgrade to Beta and let us know for sure so it can be properly addressed before an official release. As with the official version updates, you can downgrade after you have tested your concerns if you don't wish to remain on that version.

[hoderer]

53 minutes ago, C-Beats said:

As with the official version updates, you can downgrade after you have tested your concerns if you don't wish to remain on that version.

A little off-topic (hope it's ok), but IF I have serious trouble with an official (not beta) LB-version how could I possibly downgrade to an older official version? As far as I know I'll find just the latest official version in the download-section (after entering my email-address). Is there a way? Just curious. Thanks for clarifying!

[neil9000]

4 minutes ago, hoderer said:

A little off-topic (hope it's ok), but IF I have serious trouble with an official (not beta) LB-version how could I possibly downgrade to an older official version? As far as I know I'll find just the latest official version in the download-section (after entering my email-address). Is there a way? Just curious. Thanks for clarifying!

All the older versions you have used are still in your Launchbox/Updates folder, you can re-run one whenever you like over the top of your install.

[skizzosjt]

4 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

If the application path starts with steam://, then yes, we completely disable the shutdown screen. Shutdown screens never worked properly in this scenario, for any games, at least as far as we are aware. However, if you use a script in that application path field, then those games should not be affected or changed.

 

4 hours ago, C-Beats said:

Concerns like this are WHY we have the Beta release. If you're concerned about something like this drastically affecting your everyday use case, please upgrade to Beta and let us know for sure so it can be properly addressed before an official release. As with the official version updates, you can downgrade after you have tested your concerns if you don't wish to remain on that version.

First off, thank you both for the prompt responses! I would fall into that category of having application path start with the steam URL launch prefix. All the application paths are what they default to, the "steam://gameidhere" format. I normally do update right away but I hadn't been on 12.15 yet, it was the reason I was reading this thread to see if there was any reason I'd want to avoid it and this topic caught my attention.

 

So taking a moment this evening to look at this further, I reconfirmed my system was working as expected on 12.14 and updated to 12.15 beta 6 without making any further adjustments. Games launched via Windows Platforms still have both startup and shutdown screens working.....excited it still works, but also scratching my head on why it is not broken. I qualify for the problem to a T if the sole contributor to the enable/disable value is looking for the prefix "steam://" in the application path. I still use the expected URL launch paths in the application path field or what also gets labeled as the ROM file when emulation is enabled....but with a few other settings I need to use to make the whole plan work. I'm thinking something must be overriding the disable option if it still works for me. One out of the norm things being done here is using an "emulator" that has AHK's exe as the application, and that has a script getting launched via the "emulators" default command line parameters. Any chance that is the reason I am skirting around the built in disabling, using the pseudo emulator which is really a script?  I know Jason mentioned a script could avoid the change, but it's not what is in the application path so I'm not sure if this bit of info matters.

 

[Jason Carr]

12 hours ago, skizzosjt said:

 

First off, thank you both for the prompt responses! I would fall into that category of having application path start with the steam URL launch prefix. All the application paths are what they default to, the "steam://gameidhere" format. I normally do update right away but I hadn't been on 12.15 yet, it was the reason I was reading this thread to see if there was any reason I'd want to avoid it and this topic caught my attention.

 

So taking a moment this evening to look at this further, I reconfirmed my system was working as expected on 12.14 and updated to 12.15 beta 6 without making any further adjustments. Games launched via Windows Platforms still have both startup and shutdown screens working.....excited it still works, but also scratching my head on why it is not broken. I qualify for the problem to a T if the sole contributor to the enable/disable value is looking for the prefix "steam://" in the application path. I still use the expected URL launch paths in the application path field or what also gets labeled as the ROM file when emulation is enabled....but with a few other settings I need to use to make the whole plan work. I'm thinking something must be overriding the disable option if it still works for me. One out of the norm things being done here is using an "emulator" that has AHK's exe as the application, and that has a script getting launched via the "emulators" default command line parameters. Any chance that is the reason I am skirting around the built in disabling, using the pseudo emulator which is really a script?  I know Jason mentioned a script could avoid the change, but it's not what is in the application path so I'm not sure if this bit of info matters.

 

Yes, if you're using emulation, then the changes won't apply.

[skizzosjt]

10 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Yes, if you're using emulation, then the changes won't apply.

great, I'm in the clear! 👍

I think the platform videos not playing problem is solved for me now too on the beta.

Sorry false alarm. I still have this problem. I cannot always recreate it but the constants are for me this only impacts platform videos and it only happens if I boot into a game and then back out to the platform view after exiting the game. What I see is a black screen instead of the video and no audio either. If I select another platform the video plays as normal and I can switch back to the one that was a black screen and it will also play OK at this point.

Edited September 28, 2022 by skizzosjt