LaunchBox 13.12 - Beta Thread

[BiRaitBec]

I would also love a way to disable the scan, it acts weird and i wanna have control over it.

When i exit games usually it starts loading and says save games. Then it says 1 game imported, don't even know which, but does it everytime i quit a game.

Then it also scans during gameplay, making the usual sound notification that could be everything, even a windows sound for something.

Definitely want a turn off completely feature, everything that is automatic should be given the option to be disabled

 

[BiRaitBec]

I found out that the scanner considers importing even screenshots as applications. Screenshots made with Retroarch. Needs fixing. That's why when you alt tab from retroarch after a screenshot, it saves it as a game and the scanner says 1 game imported.

[Tempest]

@faeran

I checked the xml of the new imported games and this is what I've found in each game: <RetroAchievementsHash>COULDNTFILEHASH</RetroAchievementsHash>

Thus, I wondered if maybe the problem lies in the new version of the RAHasher.

So, I replaced the RAHasher exe in the beta 2 folder with the older one from 13.11. Tested it by importing new games, and it's hashing correctly now.

For now, I'll use this old version of RAHasher, and wait for a new update that hopefully will fix it.

P.S. One other thing I've noticed by poking around with the "broken" RA hashing import is that after adding a new game, the hash is created at that moment, meaning that refreshing and/or rescanning for achievements will never update the hash; the same thing happens if you just replace the rom in the games folder with another rom with the same name but different hash. You always need to delete the game and import it again. Would it be possible to add a "force hash rescan" option in order to prevent this in the future?

[faeran]

On 2/24/2024 at 11:30 PM, BiRaitBec said:

I found out that the scanner considers importing even screenshots as applications. Screenshots made with Retroarch. Needs fixing. That's why when you alt tab from retroarch after a screenshot, it saves it as a game and the scanner says 1 game imported.

This would indicate that you have files saving into your games folder that aren't games. RetroArch hasn't saved files in there by default for a while, but I do know at one point a long time ago they did.

We will try and make this a little better for the next beta update.

You can disable the auto-scan feature under Tools > Options > General > Automated Imports

On 2/23/2024 at 2:59 PM, Tempest said:

Followed your advice and repaired all Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable installs. Imported more games and the problem remains.

Started a fresh install of 13.12 beta 2 and imported the games. The problem continues.

Started a fresh install of 13.11 and imported the games. In this version it works just fine, achievements are hashing correctly.

Any thoughts?

We found out that the new 64-bit version of RAHasher 1.7 that we used has a systemic issue with the way it was built, and therefore requires dependency files that most users won't have on their computer, and are not necessary to run the app. Apparently the 32-bit version doesn't have this issue, so the next beta update we'll be using that instead.

On 2/23/2024 at 3:02 PM, Retrofrogg said:

The auto-import feature sounds like a "watched" folder. Will it also remove games from Launchbox that have been removed from that folder?

Not for this phase. We have a plan to eventually get to this but since deleting game entries is more destructive than adding them, we want to make sure that what we have in mind is solid enough that we won't start deleting user's games just because access to their files disappears for a short time (eg. network drives or external hard drives).

[BiRaitBec]

Can you eventually remove the image extensions? why a .png or .jpg should be considered an application to run.


Thanks!

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, BiRaitBec said:

why a .png or .jpg should be considered an application to run.

The pico8 emulators' ROM files are .png files. 

[faeran]

1 hour ago, BiRaitBec said:

Can you eventually remove the image extensions? why a .png or .jpg should be considered an application to run.


Thanks!

32 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

The pico8 emulators' ROM files are .png files. 

This is true. There's also other use cases where people are importing these types of files into LaunchBox. Either way, we should have a solution that hopefully will work for you. It should be out very soon.

[faeran]

Beta 3 is out with the following:

• Improvement: Added logic to improve the ability to import SNES MSU-1 ROMs
• Improvement: A limited file extension blacklist was added to the auto-scan process to help with some common file types
• Improvement: The auto-scan ROM import notification now includes an action button that directly opens a window displaying the list of imported ROMs. Additionally, imported ROMs are saved within your log files (if enabled).
• Fixed: Potential issue with adding new platforms to LaunchBox using the ROM auto-import feature
• Fixed: Problem where Image Types weren't downloaded when removed from all Image Groups while the Media Limit option was enabled
• Fixed: RAHasher 1.7 has been replaced with its x86 counterpart to remove debug dependencies that the x64 version incorrectly included
• Fixed: Javascript error that some users encountered during the Epic Games login process

 

This update fixes a number of issues people were reporting with the auto-scan feature, as well as ones we caught internally. If you were previously having an issue with the auto-scan feature, now would be a good time to see if this update solves it for you.

[christhed]

I'm not sure if it's intentional but shortcut file (.lnk) are not being imported, at least not for the Windows platform.

Good job on the frequent fixes btw! I love the new auto-scan feature

[faeran]

29 minutes ago, christhed said:

I'm not sure if it's intentional but shortcut file (.lnk) are not being imported, at least not for the Windows platform.

If you are referring to the ROM auto-import feature, the Windows platform is currently excluded from this feature for now. We may provide some limited support for the Windows platform in future updates, but it's not in scope for this one.

[Retrofrogg]

18 hours ago, faeran said:

Not for this phase. We have a plan to eventually get to this but since deleting game entries is more destructive than adding them, we want to make sure that what we have in mind is solid enough that we won't start deleting user's games just because access to their files disappears for a short time (eg. network drives or external hard drives).

@faeran, this would be an excellent feature if the team could pull it off. I get your point about accidental deletions. Could this be mitigated by making it a user-initiated function, rather than automatic? So the user could manually refresh, and Launchbox would at that point add any new roms/games and remove any missing ones?

[bbweiners]

Hi All,

I know the search feature has been updated recently, so I'm not sure if this is by design or not, but here's the issue I'm seeing.

When I'm in Bigbox, if I use the index search option and type in something, I can search game titles and Bigbox will populate the way you would expect. However, if I try to search other data (genre, release, esrb, etc...) I receive no results. This seems to have changed recently, since I used to be able to type anything into the index search, and if it was part of the games metadata it would populate.

Is that how it's supposed to be now? If so, why?

Thanks!

[C-Beats]

19 hours ago, bbweiners said:

Is that how it's supposed to be now? If so, why?

If the new search feature is on, yes. If you want to search for something that isn't a title or alt title you need to enter the tag first. So if you were wanting adventure games you'd search "genre:adventure" (without quotes). Partial strings DO work so you could have typed "genre:adv" (without quotes) to get the list as well.

As to why, because we've been asked for years to make search be a title search only. We felt like it was a bit limiting before, but now that we have the ability to insert tags like that we felt we could add enough functionality to warrant the change. If you prefer the old search syntax/functionality you can enable it in LaunchBox by going to Tools > Options > Search and disabling the advanced syntax.

[bbweiners]

Thanks Christian!

 

[The Papaw]

With the new Auto feature, is there a way for a user to blacklist games from being added? I.E. In my RPCS3 I have a pkg installed that is not a game, but LB is finding and adding it. I would like to turn it off somehow so it doesn't scan it in. Anyway to do this or can it be added. So it adds it, I could right click on the game and tell it to exclude from the auto feature or something???

Edited March 2 by The Papaw

[Retro808]

52 minutes ago, The Papaw said:

With the new Auto feature, is there a way for a user to blacklist games from being added? I.E. In my RPCS3 I have a pkg installed that is not a game, but LB is finding and adding it. I would like to turn it off somehow so it doesn't scan it in. Anyway to do this or can it be added. So it adds it, I could right click on the game and tell it to exclude from the auto feature or something???

No. There are currently no additional settings in the menus for this. 

[The Papaw]

1 minute ago, Retro808 said:

No. There are currently no additional settings in the menus for this. 

maybe it is something that might get looked into thx @Retro808

[Retro808]

1 minute ago, The Papaw said:

maybe it is something that might get looked into thx @Retro808

I am sure the devs will. They have made some quick updates to the new feature. So users just need to make sure to keep testing and providing feedback.

I agree it would be nice to have an option to choose the blackilst of file types. Similar to how we can choose types of images to include/exclude. 

[Wild Siren]

On 2/29/2024 at 3:10 PM, C-Beats said:

but now that we have the ability to insert tags like that we felt we could add enough functionality to warrant the change.

Do you also plan to add functionality to search custom fields and/or description text?

[C-Beats]

2 hours ago, Wild Siren said:

Do you also plan to add functionality to search custom fields and/or description text?

I just put the features in I'm told to. As of right now I don't believe that was on the roadmap, but you could submit a feature request and the team could evaluate it and make a decision on whether they think adding it makes sense.