LaunchBox 13.13 - Beta Thread

[Clutz450]

7 hours ago, faeran said:

The issue of importing ROMs that are already imported should be fixed in beta 7. Are you able to confirm you are seeing this fixed on your end?

Yes, it seems fixed.  I did everything exactly the same how I did in my video and only the Zelda beta was added and it didn't combine all my other ROMs.  However, it didn't just add the Beta ROM.  It merged it into one of the existing Legend of Zelda games.  For my use case, I prefer to have all my games separate and not merged.  Is there a way to add additional settings to the Automated Imports section of the Options to specify how we want new found ROMs to be added?  Thank you.

 

[C-Beats]

16 hours ago, cheguewara said:

I don't know if the Problem is Beta related.

When hitting update retroarch in manage emulators, launchbox doesn't update the already installed retroarch-install. (I have all my emulators and roms outside the launchbox directory, and prefer it that way)

Instead it creates a folder within launchbox and fresh-installs retroarch, also the path to the exe is replaced with the wrongly installed retroarch

Was able to confirm and it'll be corrected before release.

[50chan]

the video previews are no longer matching title of name? i have to manually select the video rather than have the name of video and rom the same name.

[Clutz450]

Is it still appropriate to be posting bug reports here now that 13.13 is out of Beta?  if so, I think I found another bug.  I was starting to do an import of my NES folder and while it was thinking, I decided to click off the window to check something on Discord.  When I clicked back on the LaunchBox Window, it acted as though I clicked a button.  I did this numerous times and each time the same thing happened.  Here is a quick video to show what I did and what happened.  Let me know if there is anything else you need.  Thank you.

 

Edited May 15 by Clutz450

[Ava2507]

Updated 13.13 and now each time i try to open a playstation 2 pcxs2 game i have a missing dependency files message, i have to find new bios?? Or just dont show this again?

[Clutz450]

11 hours ago, sundogak said:

I guess I misread this earlier as "no harm" was coming to our setups so assumed it would be fixed/commit to prior behavior. However, for 13.13 (release) this continues to break a bunch of matching of media that formerly worked in 13.12 (just reverted to check).  For example:

• Demon Attack (USA) (Rev 1).a26 (rom name) now no longer matches with media with a matched LB ID and name of "Demon Attack".  Prior behaviour was anything parenthesis was ignored but appears that the extra "rev" in the name is causing issues.  <<<this makes no sense in the bug discussion above as should be matching both "old" and "new" way.
• Dodge 'Em ~ Dodger Cars (USA).a26 (rom name) no longer matches with media with matched LB ID and name of "Dodge 'Em".  The fuzzy matching would pick it up prior.  This is No-Intro naming convention which worked fine up until current release. 

I didn't check others but suspect there are more examples.  I understand fixing the bug but also then breaking correct naming matching that has been in place for many many versions back seems pretty major in my mind. Users then have to go back and manually rematch on systems that were formerly matched correctly.  Recommending in-app media tools doesn't really help if media packs are named and used outside of LB which is primary way to get uniform media vs adhoc varied quality in LB DB.  Most are named in fashion such as No-Intro. 

Can we get a toggle to revert to prior behavior? 

 

I can confirm.  I had imported my entire NES collection and I had noticed there were many games with the wrong Title Names and Media.  Most notably was "The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Space Mutants".  There is a homebrew game called "Space Mutants" that isn't in the Games Database and those games were associated with "The Simpsons: Bart vs The Space Mutants".  Since the 13.13 update (and because it was too much for me to go and manually change all the titles that were wrong) I decided to delete all the games from that platform and reimport them hoping that the issue was fixed.  I verified that the importer was selecting the correct Game Title for them (as shown in the attached picture), but when I look through the platform in LaunchBox, it shows all those games as "The Simpsons: Bart vs The Space Mutants" still.  And there is no entry for just the title "Space Mutants.  I'm going to try again on a brand new install of LaunchBox in case there is some left over files from when I first imported that is causing this issue.  Thank you.

 

Another example is another Homebrew game called "The Cell" is being associated with "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure".

 

 

There are more examples but I think this gets the point across. 

 

EDIT:  I just tested this again on a brand new LaunchBox install and only imported the offending games I listed above and still getting the same results.  If I verify during the import that the ROMs I am importing title's are named correctly, then why is LaunchBox changing them?

Edited May 15 by Clutz450

[CriticalCid]

I used the new dependency checker to verify all of my BIOS files and found some issues with RetroArch.

- Commodore 128/64: LaunchBox can’t find any of the files even when I’m 100% sure that they are there and correctly named. When I try to manually point to them, I get the following message:

I used the tool LockHunter to double-check if any other program is locking the file, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Rebooting the PC or deactivating Windows Defender also didn't help. I don’t really know what’s going on there.

EDIT: It looks like the error appears because the file is already in the correct folder and LaunchBox tries to overwrite the file with itself or something. It works when I move the file to a different folder and point to it. Unfortunately, the initial issue is still there and LaunchBox says it can’t find the files.

 

- SNK Neo Geo CD: It looks like that you’ve accidentally added the SHA-1 hash values instead of MD5 for that system, so the checker won't be able to ever verify the correct files.

Additionally, I also get the exact same issue as with the Commodore files with the file ‘ng-lo.rom’ (Y-ZOOM ROM). All other files aren’t affected by that.

 

- Sony PlayStation 2: LaunchBox can't find the bios folder even if it’s there. I also can’t manually point to it because it wants me to pick a file and not a folder.

 

- Sony PSP: That’s more of an issue with the libretro documentation. The stated hash value of the ‘ppge_atlas.zim’ file within the core info (and the dependency checker) is referring to a tremendously outdated version. When I searched for the file on the PPSSPP github page I had to go back 11 years(!) to find the version with the referred hash value.

It looks like the core itself is just checking if the file exists and doesn’t do any hash checks. My guess is that they either overlooked or just never bothered to update the hash value to the newest version.

Edited May 15 by CriticalCid

[Clutz450]

6 minutes ago, CriticalCid said:

It looks like the core itself is just checking if the file exists and doesn’t do any hash checks. My guess is that they either overlooked or just never bothered to update the hash value to the newest version.

I've been through this before with RetroArch.  The hashes that they give are just for the end user to know what file they are looking for.  RetroArch does not use those hashes.  It only checks to see if the file is named correctly.  So you could (and I tested this) take a blank text file and rename and RetroArch will say you have the correct file.  That is until you try to use it and it doesn't work.

[bbweiners]

Hi,

I've noticed a bug with 13.13 that started in the beta and is in the release version as well.

I've tested multiple themes and it happens in all of them.

The issue is CoverFlow (The Wheel) is not drawing an image for every game that it should be when you first launch BigBox. Some games will be missing their image. If you back out of the games menu and go to platforms, then back to games, all the game images will then populate.

The other issue is the game images are not always correct. In my instance the game image for multiple games is actually the platform image, not the game image.

Thanks!

[Galaxian]

There is still a massive BB slowdown after exiting ‘options’.

[mamcocob64]

Hi, I just bought big box today. can you guys visually walk me through how to fix these dependency issues regarding PCSX2? The message appears when I launch a title in the ps2 section. I'm a more visual learner so please include some screenshots

[faeran]

On 5/13/2024 at 11:25 PM, 50chan said:

the video previews are no longer matching title of name? i have to manually select the video rather than have the name of video and rom the same name.

The standard way media file matching has worked is by matching the title of the game and switching special characters to underscores and adding numbers at the end. So Bonk's Adventure would turn into Bonk_s Adventure-01.mp4 and if you had a second video for that game it would be Bonk_s Adventure-02.mp4. Whenever in doubt, it's always recommended to use our in-app tools to associate your media files, like through the Edit Game window.

We also have fallback logic where you can match it to your ROM filename. So if your ROM file is Bonk's Adventure (Europe).zip, then you could have your video file named Bonk's Adventure (Europe).mp4. It's a bit less performant but does the job.

We fixed a bug that was being overly aggressive, more so than its original intent (which was file name matching), which was causing media to associate with games it shouldn't have been. The side-effect of that was for people that might have been loose with their naming of their media, there was a possibility you saw a benefit of media also matching with the correct game (when it shouldn't have based on the logic).

We are evaluating if there's a 3rd step that we could add that would help in these situations that would hopefully not re-introduce false matches.

In saying that, it is highly recommended to use our in-app tools to rename your media to our standard if you can, as it provides the best association with the best performance. The Edit Game window or the Image Pack importer are good ways to do this.

On 5/14/2024 at 8:58 PM, Clutz450 said:

Is it still appropriate to be posting bug reports here now that 13.13 is out of Beta?  if so, I think I found another bug.  I was starting to do an import of my NES folder and while it was thinking, I decided to click off the window to check something on Discord.  When I clicked back on the LaunchBox Window, it acted as though I clicked a button.  I did this numerous times and each time the same thing happened.  Here is a quick video to show what I did and what happened.  Let me know if there is anything else you need.  Thank you.

 

Thanks., We were able to reproduce this, and should hopefully have a fix in the next update.

On 5/15/2024 at 8:09 AM, Clutz450 said:

I can confirm.  I had imported my entire NES collection and I had noticed there were many games with the wrong Title Names and Media.  Most notably was "The Simpsons: Bart vs. The Space Mutants".  There is a homebrew game called "Space Mutants" that isn't in the Games Database and those games were associated with "The Simpsons: Bart vs The Space Mutants".  Since the 13.13 update (and because it was too much for me to go and manually change all the titles that were wrong) I decided to delete all the games from that platform and reimport them hoping that the issue was fixed.  I verified that the importer was selecting the correct Game Title for them (as shown in the attached picture), but when I look through the platform in LaunchBox, it shows all those games as "The Simpsons: Bart vs The Space Mutants" still.  And there is no entry for just the title "Space Mutants.  I'm going to try again on a brand new install of LaunchBox in case there is some left over files from when I first imported that is causing this issue.  Thank you.

 

Another example is another Homebrew game called "The Cell" is being associated with "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure".

 

 

There are more examples but I think this gets the point across. 

 

EDIT:  I just tested this again on a brand new LaunchBox install and only imported the offending games I listed above and still getting the same results.  If I verify during the import that the ROMs I am importing title's are named correctly, then why is LaunchBox changing them?

Basically what you are seeing is how the matching system works. There are homebrew games coming out all the time (one of the ones you mentioned is from 2023), which eventually makes their way to ROM sets, but haven't quite made their way to our database. Once they are in the database, and the metadata file gets updated to include them, they will end up matching better.

On 5/15/2024 at 6:27 AM, Ava2507 said:

Updated 13.13 and now each time i try to open a playstation 2 pcxs2 game i have a missing dependency files message, i have to find new bios?? Or just dont show this again?

We found a potential issue that I think you may have fallen into, which deals with specifically configured PCSX2's when using our updater. This will be fixed in the next update.

On 5/15/2024 at 8:30 AM, CriticalCid said:

I used the new dependency checker to verify all of my BIOS files and found some issues with RetroArch.

- Commodore 128/64: LaunchBox can’t find any of the files even when I’m 100% sure that they are there and correctly named. When I try to manually point to them, I get the following message:

I used the tool LockHunter to double-check if any other program is locking the file, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Rebooting the PC or deactivating Windows Defender also didn't help. I don’t really know what’s going on there.

EDIT: It looks like the error appears because the file is already in the correct folder and LaunchBox tries to overwrite the file with itself or something. It works when I move the file to a different folder and point to it. Unfortunately, the initial issue is still there and LaunchBox says it can’t find the files.

 

- SNK Neo Geo CD: It looks like that you’ve accidentally added the SHA-1 hash values instead of MD5 for that system, so the checker won't be able to ever verify the correct files.

Additionally, I also get the exact same issue as with the Commodore files with the file ‘ng-lo.rom’ (Y-ZOOM ROM). All other files aren’t affected by that.

 

- Sony PlayStation 2: LaunchBox can't find the bios folder even if it’s there. I also can’t manually point to it because it wants me to pick a file and not a folder.

 

- Sony PSP: That’s more of an issue with the libretro documentation. The stated hash value of the ‘ppge_atlas.zim’ file within the core info (and the dependency checker) is referring to a tremendously outdated version. When I searched for the file on the PPSSPP github page I had to go back 11 years(!) to find the version with the referred hash value.

It looks like the core itself is just checking if the file exists and doesn’t do any hash checks. My guess is that they either overlooked or just never bothered to update the hash value to the newest version.

Thanks. We fixed all the parts that we could. A lot of what we started with was RetroArch's information, and then built on top of that to try and fill in the gaps that they were missing. The good news is that since we did that (instead of just parsing RetroArch's data), it was easy for us to correct a lot of these, which will be included in the next update.

On 5/15/2024 at 9:53 AM, bbweiners said:

Hi,

I've noticed a bug with 13.13 that started in the beta and is in the release version as well.

I've tested multiple themes and it happens in all of them.

The issue is CoverFlow (The Wheel) is not drawing an image for every game that it should be when you first launch BigBox. Some games will be missing their image. If you back out of the games menu and go to platforms, then back to games, all the game images will then populate.

The other issue is the game images are not always correct. In my instance the game image for multiple games is actually the platform image, not the game image.

Thanks!

17 hours ago, Galaxian said:

There is still a massive BB slowdown after exiting ‘options’.

11 hours ago, mamcocob64 said:

Hi, I just bought big box today. can you guys visually walk me through how to fix these dependency issues regarding PCSX2? The message appears when I launch a title in the ps2 section. I'm a more visual learner so please include some screenshots

At first glace, these potentially look like user configuration type issues. I would open new threads for troubleshooting.

[skizzosjt]

9 hours ago, faeran said:

We are evaluating if there's a 3rd step that we could add that would help in these situations that would hopefully not re-introduce false matches.

this comment is somewhat encouraging. please take the hint from the community and make this better for us because the new/current media naming situation is unacceptable. think of us like government. once you give us something, it's really hard to take that away! we want our looser media name matching back

[mamcocob64]

18 hours ago, faeran said:

The standard way media file matching has worked is by matching the title of the game and switching special characters to underscores and adding numbers at the end. So Bonk's Adventure would turn into Bonk_s Adventure-01.mp4 and if you had a second video for that game it would be Bonk_s Adventure-02.mp4. Whenever in doubt, it's always recommended to use our in-app tools to associate your media files, like through the Edit Game window.

We also have fallback logic where you can match it to your ROM filename. So if your ROM file is Bonk's Adventure (Europe).zip, then you could have your video file named Bonk's Adventure (Europe).mp4. It's a bit less performant but does the job.

We fixed a bug that was being overly aggressive, more so than its original intent (which was file name matching), which was causing media to associate with games it shouldn't have been. The side-effect of that was for people that might have been loose with their naming of their media, there was a possibility you saw a benefit of media also matching with the correct game (when it shouldn't have based on the logic).

We are evaluating if there's a 3rd step that we could add that would help in these situations that would hopefully not re-introduce false matches.

In saying that, it is highly recommended to use our in-app tools to rename your media to our standard if you can, as it provides the best association with the best performance. The Edit Game window or the Image Pack importer are good ways to do this.

Thanks., We were able to reproduce this, and should hopefully have a fix in the next update.

Basically what you are seeing is how the matching system works. There are homebrew games coming out all the time (one of the ones you mentioned is from 2023), which eventually makes their way to ROM sets, but haven't quite made their way to our database. Once they are in the database, and the metadata file gets updated to include them, they will end up matching better.

We found a potential issue that I think you may have fallen into, which deals with specifically configured PCSX2's when using our updater. This will be fixed in the next update.

Thanks. We fixed all the parts that we could. A lot of what we started with was RetroArch's information, and then built on top of that to try and fill in the gaps that they were missing. The good news is that since we did that (instead of just parsing RetroArch's data), it was easy for us to correct a lot of these, which will be included in the next update.

At first glace, these potentially look like user configuration type issues. I would open new threads for troubleshooting.

i appreciate your consideration.

[nomisholman]

Fantastic work on 13.14 features.
I was using the new dependancy files feature but found a small bug:
For Retroarch Pico core it is getting the wrong MD5 hash for the "bios_CD_E.bin" file.

Launchbox is saying it should be this hash "2efd74e3232ff260e371b99f84024f7f"
However in picodrive_libretro.info it lists this hash for "bios_CD_U.bin"
"bios_CD_E.bin" should be e66fa1dc5820d254611fdcdba0662372

notes = "(!) bios_CD_U.bin (md5): 2efd74e3232ff260e371b99f84024f7f|(!) bios_CD_E.bin (md5): e66fa1dc5820d254611fdcdba0662372|(!) bios_CD_J.bin (md5): 278a9397d192149e84e820ac621a8edd"

[Baggio]

I'm also missing a lot of images and videos now the logic has changed.

With the title Heavy Fire: Afghanistan and the image/video named Heavy Fire - Afghanistan it used to be picked up now it isn't.  Just like Ford Racing: Full Blown with files named as Ford Racing Full Blown and AAAHH!!! Real Monsters named as Aaahh Real Monsters

Renaming them properly with Heavy Fire_ Afghanistan and Ford Racing_ Full Blown obviously picks them up but it would be a massive headache trying to find ones that are named incorrectly 😂

Can't we just have it just to ignore special characters in the title when file matching or would that cause more problems?

Edited May 18 by Baggio

[Rlad]

2 hours ago, Baggio said:

I'm also missing a lot of images and videos now the logic has changed.

With the title Heavy Fire: Afghanistan and the image/video named Heavy Fire - Afghanistan it used to be picked up now it isn't.  Just like Ford Racing: Full Blown with files named as Ford Racing Full Blown and AAAHH!!! Real Monsters named as Aaahh Real Monsters

Renaming them properly with Heavy Fire_ Afghanistan and Ford Racing_ Full Blown obviously picks them up but it would be a massive headache trying to find ones that are named incorrectly 😂

Can't we just have it just to ignore special characters in the title when file matching or would that cause more problems?

You can use the clean up media option to at least see what files aren't associated. Then 'move files to folder' button, rename and/or re-add from there.

Edited May 18 by Rlad

[Baggio]

14 hours ago, Rlad said:

You can use the clean up media option to at least see what files aren't associated. Then 'move files to folder' button, rename and/or re-add from there.

Not a bad idea but i also have a problem with the clean up media.  For some reason, it picks up all the images i have in the arcade - controls information saying they are not in use but they are and I'm not sure why.  Thinking about it actually, it may be because they are used in a pause screen.

[Lucoshi]

[Rlad]

Error when cancelling clean up media scan.