LaunchBox Ambient Music Player

[JoeViking245]

LaunchBox Ambient Music Player

View File

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Listen to your favorite Arcade music playlist while admiring your LaunchBox collection.
Requires LaunchBox 13.3 or newer

Just add your own playlists and start listening when LaunchBox starts.  The music will pause when launching a game, and then resumes after exiting the game.

Setup:
Download and extract the contents of the zipped file into /LaunchBox/Plugins/

Quick Start:
With LaunchBox closed
    Copy a music playlist (i.e. MyPlaylist.m3u) into the Playlists subfolder
        i.e. /LaunchBox/Plugins/LBambient/Playlists/MyPlaylist.m3u
    Start LaunchBox

See Playlists below for playlist requirements.

About this plugin:
Place your music playlist(s) into /LBambient/Playlists/
    When you start LaunchBox, a random (if there're more than 1) playlist from that folder will be selected and start playing

Songs in the playlists will be played in a random order and will not repeat.

Songs will Pause when launching a game and then Resume when the game has exited.
    Fixed v1.2.0 Exception: It might not stay paused when launching Steam games and others using a launcher.

Once the player has gone through the entire playlist, that's it. No more music.
    So, if you plan to spend a lot of time looking at LaunchBox and not playing games, be sure to have a long playlist.

Options:
Go to Tools - LB Ambient Music

Adjust the player's volume slider (which is independent of LaunchBox's volume control) to your desired volume.
    Click Save Volume to save it in Settings for next time you start LaunchBox.

To manually select a specific playlist (or song) to load when LaunchBox starts
    Click Load to select a playlist (or song) and start playing it.
    The selection will be saved in Settings.
    Next time you start LaunchBox (and every time thereafter), the saved selection will be played.

To remove a playlist (or song) from Settings, click Clear Selection.
    This immediately stops the player and removes it from Settings.
    Next time you start LaunchBox, a random playlist (if any exists) will be selected from /LBambient/Playlists/ and automatically start playing.

Click Hide to close window.

Playlists:
Required: Playlists MUST have absolute paths to the song(s).
    Some players (i.e. VLC) will save the playlists using relative paths if it's saved within the players folder structure.

(new v1.1.0) Playlists can have absolute or relative paths to the songs.  Relative paths MUST be relative to the Playlists subfolder

Playlist formats tested are  .m3u, .m3u8 and .xspf
No other formats have been tested and will not work with this plugin.
If you have playlists saved in a different format that you'd prefer to use, let me know.

THIS HAS ONLY BEEN TESTED WITH LOCAL FILES.
If the files paths in the playlists are URL's (i.e. start with "http://"), things might break.  
    You can try it if you want. Let me know what you find.

As always, all comments and suggestions are graciously accepted and encouraged. 😎

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• Submitter
  JoeViking245
• Submitted
  07/03/2024
• Category
  Third-party Apps and Plugins

 

[RegularRegs]

This is great. I had the old arcadeambience app but this is so much more convenient. Just made a playlist of the arcadeambience mp3 tracks and now when I open launchbox i get the full effect. 

[Volikhar]

Im not sure if this is the correct place to put a support request for this plugin (My favorite plugin by the way) so apologies if this is the incorrect space.

I have installed the plugin and added a playlist etc, the track plays when i boot up launchbox, but despite the toggle being set to stop the music when lb is not in focus, it plays continually, in games, in and out of focus.

Is there any help I could get with this thank you

 

[JoeViking245]

2 hours ago, Volikhar said:

despite the toggle being set to stop the music when lb is not in focus, it plays continually, in games, in and out of focus.

Is this contrary to what your screenshot is showing? If so, I'll see if I can do some investigating.   Oops. Never mind.

In the meantime, can you share the log files (located in the \LBambient\Logs\ folder)?  Best to start setup, set the toggle to Not Play, get something playing, start a game, play for a minute or so (music still playing?), exit the game then share the most recent log file.

Also, what emulator is this happening with?  Steam games? Windows games? A platform using RetroArch?  Arcade/MAME?

 

Oh, and this is the support page for the plugin (which there's a link to this page from the Info window [clicking the i in the lower right corner of the plugin settings window]), so it's a perfect place.  

[JoeViking245]

4 hours ago, Volikhar said:

Is there any help I could get with this thank you

Try the attached beta update.  

Fixed (hopefully):  When Keep playing when LaunchBox is not in focus is set to False, player is not pausing until after the 1st song in the playlist is over (aka, after starting the 2nd song).  An adverse side-effect of the 2.0 update.

LBambient (v2.0.1-beta-1).7z

[Volikhar]

That beta Update fixed the issue perfectly! Thanks JoeViking! Do you still want my logs from before or are they not needed now?

Also do you still have your Kofi link! Il send you a Small thanks for your plugin and assistance!

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, Volikhar said:

That beta Update fixed the issue perfectly! Thanks JoeViking! Do you still want my logs from before or are they not needed now?

Also do you still have your Kofi link! Il send you a Small thanks for your plugin and assistance!

Whew! Glad it worked.  It appeared to be a simple oversight on my part, and thankfully that's all it was. A painless, non-drawn-out fix.   No further information (logs etc.) is needed.

If you wish to share your appreciation, in the plugin Settings, you can click the Info icon and then click the Viking Mickey  to navigate to my Ko-fi page. (He ain't there just for his good looks. )

From the immortal words of Bartles & Jaymes, "Thank you for your support."