Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 (edited) I have been backing up this project for years, payed 4 full licences... and after all these years I had to deal with the fact that Launchbox / BigBox has been forgetting about it's roots and is not CRT friendly anymore (big box is, but launchbox is not)... each "update" is a testament that this is true... on each new version something that was working on low resolutions does not work anymore and it gets impossible to work with a CRT monitor/TV. Everytime I have to download new themes, videos, images, clean cache, or manage my big collection in anyway...even installing new versions or anything is a BIG NIGHTMARE... Launchbox menues look great and they fit perfectly on a 640x480i resolution... but god forbid you to click on any kind of menu...it will open up a window SO big and imposible to resize or even to try to move it...that it will render whatever you were trying to do futile. You end up pressing tab, enter and hoping that you "guess" what you are doing... Please tell me WHY the best arcade front end has forsaken CRT users with 15khz resolutions? WHY? PS: Sorry about my bad english. Martin. Edited January 16, 2023 by Soulchip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 Just my opinion and certainly not the official opinion of Jason or any other staff but CRT users are a small percentage of users when it comes to emulation. Setting it up is a pain and finding good condition CRTs are getting more difficult with each passing day (I am glad I have the 2 I do have). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter10h Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 My friend, there's no need for anger. Can you post pictures of your issue? I use Launchbox and BigBox on a CRT myself. I've made a couple of BigBox themes for 4:3 screens and even a startup video. There are other themes for 4:3 screens out there. https://forums.launchbox-app.com/profile/66263-walter10h/content/?type=downloads_file Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 18 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said: Just my opinion and certainly not the official opinion of Jason or any other staff but CRT users are a small percentage of users when it comes to emulation. Setting it up is a pain and finding good condition CRTs are getting more difficult with each passing day (I am glad I have the 2 I do have). No it's not a pain, you can simply use an old video card with TV out and use 640x480i, it works right away with no issues and it takes 1 minute to set up... so no, it's not a pain at all... even if it were...there is no excuse to keep breaking the experience for crt users more and more. If big box supports 4:3 screens and low resolutions...why do they keep breaking the menues and windows on launchbox?. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 20 minutes ago, walter10h said: My friend, there's no need for anger. Can you post pictures of your issue? I use Launchbox and BigBox on a CRT myself. I've made a couple of BigBox themes for 4:3 screens and even a startup video. There are other themes for 4:3 screens out there. https://forums.launchbox-app.com/profile/66263-walter10h/content/?type=downloads_file Big bot works pretty well... no issues there, the problem is launchbox, windows and pop ups are huge and most of them cannot be resized or moved around on 640x480i... you simple can't see what you are doing...even in the most important and basic options like... importing your roms, setting up emulators or downloading videos/images/themes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 Just look at this... why is this SO big? there is no necessity to be this big... you can't even resize it or move it... I don't even need to take pictures of the rest because ALL windows are like this... adding a new emulator? clearing your media? adding videos or images? all the same...big windows with a lot of dead space and imposible to see what you are doing... this was not broken on old versions... they started to break it in newer ones... Please stop breaking the experience for us. This is an Arcade front end...it should be compatible with arcade resolutions / tv monitors / 15khz screens... j Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter10h Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 Are you using window's scaling at all? Have you disabled high dpi for the application? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 (edited) 5 hours ago, walter10h said: Are you using window's scaling at all? Have you disabled high dpi for the application? all windows options are at 100% (you can't go less than that), high dpi disabled does nothing at all, I checked launchbox for any options... oh wait, I forgot... i can't Good look with that I guess.... Edited January 16, 2023 by Soulchip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 Also... this happens in ALL my 5 arcade machines ... in the vertical monitor one it's even WORST. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Headrush69 Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 6 hours ago, Soulchip said: . and after all these years I had to deal with the fact that Launchbox / BigBox devs hate CRT users... they truly hate us, they don't care about us and each "update" is a testament that this is true... Not to speak for Jason and the team, but it's likely just a tradeoff between designing and maintaining features for such a minority of users, not hate. Has the feature ever been submitted for the features poll? For a set up with a CRT, i would think that most of the time it's going to be using Big Box, and LB only used for configuration. As a work around would a running VNC server on the machine and using LB through VNC be a workable and more pleasant option? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 (edited) 25 minutes ago, Headrush69 said: Not to speak for Jason and the team, but it's likely just a tradeoff between designing and maintaining features for such a minority of users, not hate. Has the feature ever been submitted for the features poll? For a set up with a CRT, i would think that most of the time it's going to be using Big Box, and LB only used for configuration. As a work around would a running VNC server on the machine and using LB through VNC be a workable and more pleasant option? I work as a business analyst with frontend devs all the time, I know this can be fixed without any trade off for people using high resolutions. Using a VNC is not an option... why do that if I can just turn on the arcade and work everything very pleasantly? ... Bios, windows, dos, big box... everything works fine... launchbox is a complete disaster. Come on man... almost 75% of these windows have just dead space with nothing inside... is it really necessary to make them so big? why can't they just fit inside a 640x480 resolution... i'm not asking for the devs to make it compatible with 320x240... 640x480 is very reasonable... any windows application works fine on that resolution, why can't launchbox be friendly with crt users? Edited January 16, 2023 by Soulchip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro808 Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 2 minutes ago, Soulchip said: I work as a business analyst with frontend devs all the time, I know this can be fixed without any trade off for people using high resolutions. Using a VNC is not an option... why do that if I can just turn on the arcade and work everything very pleasantly? ... Bios, windows, dos, big box... everything works fine... launchbox is a complete disaster. I think I will cut this off right here before it slides anymore downhill. Your negativity is not needed. Constructive criticism is always helpful so do not mistake your posts with being constructive in your feedback. Have you even remotely thought the dev may not have a CRT to test having a proper view within LB? That might be one of many reasons our 2 devs have not refined this for CRT users. Doubtful “hate” is one of those reasons. If you are unhappy feel free to request a refund by emailing support@unbrokensoftware.com. I will leave the thread open barring the tone can change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 (edited) OK I can test whatever you may need, I can make the time to test everything and report it. I just want launchbox to be crt friendly again, this was not an issue in the past and Big Box does not have this problem... (well actually it does, but only in vertical monitors) PS: I edited my posts a little to tone down the anger heh Edited January 16, 2023 by Soulchip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C-Beats Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 We don't actively target such a low resolution because frankly a lot of the content just won't fit and be real legible on the majority of machines using that resolution. As many others have stated the amount of users touching resolutions THAT low are extremely small. As a business analyst I would expect you to be able to look at this objectively. We have a team of 3 and only one person actively developing LB/BB. The amount of time we can devote is a set number and any time spent on one item is time that can't be spent on others. To make the highest return on our time investment we have to take into consideration the amount of users affected by an issue as well as if there are feasible work arounds. This particular issue affects very few users, and there are several work arounds since the app is portable. I'd suggest you create a ticket on it so we can get a better understanding of how many users are affected by this issue, then can properly triage the issue from there. That being said you also have to take into consideration you're asking for development time on a hardware that is no longer in production (at least I'm unaware of any company still producing them) and will likely never be again, which alone is a pretty hard pill to swallow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 (edited) 7 minutes ago, C-Beats said: We don't actively target such a low resolution because frankly a lot of the content just won't fit and be real legible on the majority of machines using that resolution. As many others have stated the amount of users touching resolutions THAT low are extremely small. As a business analyst I would expect you to be able to look at this objectively. We have a team of 3 and only one person actively developing LB/BB. The amount of time we can devote is a set number and any time spent on one item is time that can't be spent on others. To make the highest return on our time investment we have to take into consideration the amount of users affected by an issue as well as if there are feasible work arounds. This particular issue affects very few users, and there are several work arounds since the app is portable. I'd suggest you create a ticket on it so we can get a better understanding of how many users are affected by this issue, then can properly triage the issue from there. That being said you also have to take into consideration you're asking for development time on a hardware that is no longer in production (at least I'm unaware of any company still producing them) and will likely never be again, which alone is a pretty hard pill to swallow. This is not true since there are themes for this resolution and aspect ratio and Big Box is fully compatible with that resolution and even lower. Production support for CRT has always been active and new hardware is been made every day to get real arcade/console resolutions on 15khz screens... transcoders, RGB mods etc. Launchbox works perfectly well on that resolution too until you open a menu pop up, so...you are telling me that you cannot fix a HUGE pop up with dead space?... have you seen the screenshots? really? There are no workarounds. BTW, you can even set that "low resolution" on windows 10 with almost any current card... you don't actually need a CRT to test this. Edited January 16, 2023 by Soulchip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C-Beats Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 CRT is a dying tech, which is why there are adapters being made... to help those refusing to quit it. 640x480 IS low resolution and has been for several decades. 4:3 is an aspect ratio (which is what themes target) not a resolution and IS supported just fine as you've stated. You have several ways of accessing your LB data on another computer or monitor to make it possible to configure your machine. I don't mind discussing the issue with you, but if you are going to be entirely unrealistic about the facts of the matter than it'd be in both of our best interest to just move on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter10h Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 I'm just trying to help out here, because I'm also interested in better CRT support. (Jason, if you read this, I'm willing to help test it, if you ever want to tackle it! I have some C# experience). Since you're using a 15Khz TV instead of a native monitor, I don't suppose you can bump the resolution to 800x600? I set my monitor to 640x480 and it indeed too huge. Looks perfect at 1024x768 but I imagine that's not an option for you. Any way you can use your gpu to downscale? See if you can run Launchbox rendering at 1024x768 but downscale to 640x680. I'm not positive it's doable for desktop applications. 10 hours ago, Soulchip said: Big bot works pretty well... no issues there, the problem is launchbox, windows and pop ups are huge and most of them cannot be resized or moved around on 640x480i... you simple can't see what you are doing...even in the most important and basic options like... importing your roms, setting up emulators or downloading videos/images/themes. 9 hours ago, Soulchip said: Just look at this... why is this SO big? there is no necessity to be this big... you can't even resize it or move it... I don't even need to take pictures of the rest because ALL windows are like this... adding a new emulator? clearing your media? adding videos or images? all the same...big windows with a lot of dead space and imposible to see what you are doing... this was not broken on old versions... they started to break it in newer ones... Please stop breaking the experience for us. This is an Arcade front end...it should be compatible with arcade resolutions / tv monitors / 15khz screens... j TV 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 21 minutes ago, C-Beats said: CRT is a dying tech, which is why there are adapters being made... to help those refusing to quit it. 640x480 IS low resolution and has been for several decades. 4:3 is an aspect ratio (which is what themes target) not a resolution and IS supported just fine as you've stated. You have several ways of accessing your LB data on another computer or monitor to make it possible to configure your machine. I don't mind discussing the issue with you, but if you are going to be entirely unrealistic about the facts of the matter than it'd be in both of our best interest to just move on. No i don't have other computer and i other monitor. You are not helping and not giving any useful tip. Thanks anyway, The only thing you are doing is making me realise I was right... you do hate CRT users... i'm not been unrealistic...unrealistic is thinking that you cannot fix a frontend issue on a programs pop ups that have huge blank spaces with nothing inside. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulchip Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 11 minutes ago, walter10h said: I'm just trying to help out here, because I'm also interested in better CRT support. (Jason, if you read this, I'm willing to help test it, if you ever want to tackle it! I have some C# experience). Since you're using a 15Khz TV instead of a native monitor, I don't suppose you can bump the resolution to 800x600? I set my monitor to 640x480 and it indeed too huge. Looks perfect at 1024x768 but I imagine that's not an option for you. Any way you can use your gpu to downscale? See if you can run Launchbox rendering at 1024x768 but downscale to 640x680. I'm not positive it's doable for desktop applications. TV No, sorry no options for anything above 640x480i, 640x480p is a 31khz resolution, 800x600 and 1024x768 are also 31khz resolutions. I cannot scale too. not an option on crtemudrivers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C-Beats Posted January 16, 2023 Share Posted January 16, 2023 As stated, open up a ticket and we'll see how widespread the issue is. I am locking the thread as it's clear you have no interested in having a civil level-headed conversation about this issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts