AMA With The LaunchBox Team

[kingcricket]

Hello!

I still don't see things like true "current Xbox game pass offerings" integration or ways to add owned console games (PSN / Nintendo) without things like manual shortcuts or work-arounds; LaunchBox feels like a "local game launcher" and less like a "Game collection Launcher" vs. things like Playnite that has more plugins for other stores (Blizzard, Humble etc)

Question:
Are you considering expanding official plugin offerings for more stores and services? Or what is the LaunchBox focus going forward? (Auto Configuration? Downloading emulators? 3rd Party Store integration? etc)

I think Launchbox on my Arcade or Nvidia Shield is one type of install - local and ready to play, the BigBox experience (and perhaps where the companies vision is), but Launchbox on my Desktop is a different scenario where I can see everything I own. A LaunchBox that is plugged into many different stores and my full gaming front-end, it could be the front end for all the stores and launchers to unify under and not just "What we currently have installed" 

Anyway, many thanks for an awesome program, looking forward to anything new you have planned for it!

[Fr33Ki77]

Is there a way to easily export a png of the 3D box model with LaunchBox to use as 3D box art?

[SubRetro]

A Couple of questions.

 

1. Any future MAME integration with updating the MAME version as well as maybe uploading the new MAME version dat files to handle updating your romset without doing it all outside of LB/BB?

2. LInux support? Would be nice to see that since Linux gaming is in a much better spot than it ever has been. 

 

Loving the streams.

[AndrewSpec]

What do you think about a initiative for synchronizing emulator saves. On Windows you can use syncthing and choose any emulator directory. On android you just can' t choose a directory inside Android/data because of permissions. If you have a rooted device it's easy. So the main goal is to force emulator developers to create a more sync friendly emulator where the user can change save data directory. On Duckstation you can only export and imoprt save data so with syncthing on Windows it syncs correctly but on Android it need to be synced to a shared directory and then in Duckstation you need to import it manually. You have many users, you have resources to start this initiative. What do you think?

Edited August 28 by AndrewSpec

[Dan Patrick]

How much hard drive space does that Database take up? Is that why there's no videos added directly to the database? 

[PiperCalls]

It's been on feature request for awhile but can we get "true" analog control for wheel navigation? This is for properly/smoothly navigating the wheel with a trackball (or other analog input) with a sensitivity setting to dial it in. Hyperspin had this & it is the only thing I miss. It's been just an annoyance up until now but there are some recent things in the emulation scene that really needs this.

Thx & love me some LB!

[Retrofrogg]

Hi, further to our Discord chat @AstroBob, I'd be keen on having Launchbox be able to add custom fields to platforms, just like you curently can for games. I'd be keen to add "generation" and "region" fields to platforms, for example. I would also add some details about the romset and the emulator, for easy reference.

I have a top feature requests thread in the features section of the forum, but my other big requests would be rom manager functionality (the ability to read DATs and compare to your roms) and the ability to add more info in the platform tree when viewing in platform or platform category mode (for example, to show the release year of the console there, and maybe the ability to sort by release year). Small requests would include adding more 3D models (cassette primarily), adding support for all 4 spine images, adding a horizontal lock for the rotating 3D box (so it will only rotate in the horizontal plane), and adding more image types for platforms (e.g. box, controller, etc).

A number of these issues are on the Github though I'd be grateful for any further consideration of them!

[AstroBob]

Hi Folks,

The AMA post is now closed—thank you all for the fantastic questions! We plan to cover as many as possible during our closing stream. For those who can’t attend, don’t worry—we’ll be writing up answers and posting a recap here. The thread will be temporarily locked, but we’ll reopen it once the recap is posted.

While we may not be able to respond individually to everyone, and some topics may be grouped together due to overlap, we’ll do our best to address everything you’ve asked. The recap will likely be up late next week.

Hope to catch some of you on the closing stream! Otherwise, we’ll post an update soon.

Cheers,

[AstroBob]

Hi Folks,

Please check the original post, it has now been updated with a recap of answers to your questions. I have tagged the original poster in each question, and you can check out our closing stream where we discuss most of these questions in a lot more detail.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this event, we hope we were able to provide some insightful insight and really appreciate your comments and feedback 🙇

[bundangdon]

@AstroBob, thanks a lot for posting the answers and appreciate all of the information. Just wondering, what happened with the LaunchBox giveaway drawing? On the website, it says that it's happening between Sep 3 and Sep 6 yet I haven't seen anything posted or mentioned anywhere

Edited September 6 by bundangdon

[AstroBob]

2 hours ago, bundangdon said:

@AstroBob, thanks a lot for posting the answers and appreciate all of the information. Just wondering, what happened with the LaunchBox giveaway drawing? On the website, it says that it's happening between Sep 3 and Sep 6 yet I haven't seen anything posted or mentioned anywhere

We know you're all eagerly awaiting the prize announcements 😄 The winners for all giveaways have been selected, and we’ll be reaching out to them over the coming week.

- For the grand giveaway (hardware + licenses), winners will be contacted via email.
- For the forum events and Steam Key giveaways, winners will be contacted through DM on their forum account.

Please bear with us as we work through contacting everyone (there are a lot of awesome prizes to work through 😉). We will announce once all winners have been contacted. 

[numaluma]

Thank you for taking time to address all the questions, very much appreciated (^_^)

[Arthurcoutinho600]

Hello AstroBob

I have 4 questions

1: Any plans to a new addition of scrappers in Launchbox like IGDB, MobyGames, GiantBomb, ScreenScrapper etc.?

2: Any plans to a multimedia features (movies, series, comics, music etc.) for Launchbox?

3: Any plans to a "Playlist Database"? Because scrapping playlist things like videos on Launchbox is very hard

4: Any plans to more image fields like Fanart - Clear Logo or Fanart - Box 3D for Launchbox Games Database?

 

Thanks for your response!

Edited October 1 by Arthurcoutinho600

[SiriusVI]

I really absolutely love Launchbox for all the features and tweakability it offers. I have sunk countless hours setting it up to my specific liking. I couldn't do that with any other frontend. It's become a really fun hobby of mine.

So I hope people don't take it the wrong way, when I say that the performance and the user experience in Launchbox and BigBox is very bad. My collection is huge and I know LaunchBox struggles with that, but I also have a very high end PC, capable of running just about anything. I've tried all the optimizations suggested, I have read every thread, I have tried it on three different systems over the years. It's safe to say, the problem is not on my end (if you don't count having a huge collection as a problem, that is).

Navigating the GUI in Launchbox, every click, every edit, everything is sluggish. It takes forever (3 seconds when trying to edit one game up to over a minute for some bulk edits) for Launchbox to respond to anything I do. BigBox also has issues, such as the very slow booting process.

I believe this is not what most people expect from software nowadays. It should respond instantly to what the user does. Ideally, it should open instantly, and every click should have an immediate response.I can tolerate a bit of laggyness and I'm at an age where I have learned to be patient. But still, LaunchBox drives me crazy sometimes.

To make a long story short. I really love Launchbox and BigBox, but please oh please try to fix ther performance. This should be your top priority.

Anyway, I hope you didn't take this the wrong way. I'm still glad I paid for Launchbox/BigBox and I'd gladly do so again.

Edited October 15 by SiriusVI

[Buccaneer]

2 hours ago, SiriusVI said:

I really absolutely love Launchbox for all the features and tweakability it offers. I have sunk countless hours setting it up to my specific liking. I couldn't do that with any other frontend. It's become a really fun hobby of mine.

So I hope people don't take it the wrong way, when I say that the performance and the user experience in Launchbox and BigBox is very bad. May collection is huge and I know LaunchBox struggles with that, but I also have a very high end PC, capable of running just about anything. I've tried all the optimizations suggested, I have read every thread, I have tried it on three different systems over the years. It's safe to say, the problem is not on my end (if you don't count having a huge collection as problem, that is).

Navigating the GUI in Launchbox, every click, every edit, everything is sluggish. It takes forever (3 seconds when trying to edit one game up to over a minute for some bulk edits) for Launchbox to respond to anything I do. BigBox also has issues, such as the very slow booting process.

I believe this is not what most people expect from software nowadays. It should respond instantly to what the user does. Ideally, it should open instantly, and every click should have an immediate response.I can tolerate a bit of laggyness and I'm at an age where I have learned to be patient. But still, LaunchBox drives me crazy sometimes.

To make a long story short. I really love Launchbox and BigBox, but please oh please try to fix ther performance. This should be your top priority.

Anyway, I hope you didn't take this the wrong way. I'm still glad I paid for Launchbox/BigBox and I'd gladly do so again.

I second this. Even with the fastet m2 SSD, fast CPU and 64 GB RAM and the cache files residing on a RAM Disk the performance is not optimal. 

 

To get background information for this topic: How is the %-ratio of lifetime to regular license users of launchbox?

 

Edited October 15 by Buccaneer

[AstroBob]

On 10/1/2024 at 7:27 PM, Arthurcoutinho600 said:

1: Any plans to a new addition of scrappers in Launchbox like IGDB, MobyGames, GiantBomb, ScreenScrapper etc.?

2: Any plans to a multimedia features (movies, series, comics, music etc.) for Launchbox?

3: Any plans to a "Playlist Database"? Because scrapping playlist things like videos on Launchbox is very hard

4: Any plans to more image fields like Fanart - Clear Logo or Fanart - Box 3D for Launchbox Games Database?

@Arthurcoutinho600 sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Please find my responses below

    1.    We don’t have immediate plans to officially integrate additional scrapers. However, with the new plugin framework we’ve introduced, it’s possible for someone to create a plugin for this. While it’s technically doable now, the new framework will make it much easier to manage. We’re also considering something similar for storefronts (allowing users to pick their preferred storefront as plugins), so scrapers could follow a similar approach. But for now, there are no concrete plans to officially add more scrapers.

    2.    We’ve heard this request a lot, and I agree it would be a great addition. We already support a few of those media types (like music and movies), but I assume you’re referring to additional categories like soundtracks or other movie types (e.g., commercials). This is definitely something we’re considering. We also touched on this during our AMA in response to a question about adding encyclopedic features, so please refer to our answer there for more detail.

    3.    I’d love to hear more about how you envision this feature. If you could elaborate on your idea, I’d really appreciate it.

    4.    We're continuously considering adding useful metadata to the database. We also touch on this in the 2 questions relating to adding new platforms and ESRB ratings, but the concept still applies to metadata and image types as well. The short answer is that we have to think carefully about what we add and make it useful for the majority of users. We realise that may leave out some use cases that are particularly important to some people, but it's a fine line to balance to stop the database from becoming bloated.

 

I hope this helps clarify your questions! Feel free to reach out if you need further clarification or have more questions. 😊

[AstroBob]

@Buccaneer @SiriusVI thanks for the honest feedback. We really appreciate the insight here so will never be taken the wrong way 😊

I'll refer back to our AMA where we touched on performance, but to reiterate: we hear you loud and clear regarding performance concerns. While it can sometimes be subjective, if a user feels that LaunchBox is sluggish, that’s absolutely not the experience we want to deliver.

As we continue to research what parts of the app might need reworking, rest assured that performance is very much at the top of our list, to ensure areas where we might have been blocked by technical debt can be resolved. That's not to say we can't do anything in the meantime, we will continue to work within the current framework to make improvements where we can.

Internally, we’re also focused on finding short-term solutions. This includes how we can better support users who are experiencing performance issues, which can often be context-dependent. Some initial ideas include creating more detailed performance tuning guides, documentation, and FAQs to help users troubleshoot, as well as offering workflow recommendations to get the most out of LaunchBox. We’re also considering new ways to better diagnose performance issues in collaboration with users experiencing them.

I realise this doesn’t resolve the issue as of today, but I hope it provides some insight into our short- and long-term strategies to tackle the problem. At the end of the day, we want you to enjoy your collections without the perception of performance getting in the way.

Feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss anything further. 😊

[Arthurcoutinho600]

Hello AstroBob

Thanks a lot for your response!

But i have now 3 questions

1. Any plans to more fields to Database like Series, Sub-Series, Spin-off, Ports, Remake, Reboot, Expansion Pack or Franchise? Or create your own custom field to the database?

Example: I will like to see the Non-Games field like Game Boy Advance Video, 3DO Video and PSP Movies

2. Any Plans to Alternative Names to Platforms in database?

Example: Nintendo Entertainment System is the Original Name, the alternative names would be Phantom System, Turbo Game, PolyStation etc.

3. Any Plans to Keywords, Tags, More Genres and possibly Sub-Genres to the Database?

Example: 2D Platform, Keyword for Super Mario World Hacks etc.

Thanks again for your response!

Edited October 17 by Arthurcoutinho600

[AstroBob]

@Arthurcoutinho600 

Thank you for your additional questions. Although the topics you mentioned relate to different types of metadata, they all fall under the broader category of additions to the Games Database. Our approach to adding anything to the database remains the same as I outlined in my previous response and in the AMA: nothing is off the table, but we aim to strike a balance between adding useful content for the majority of users without overloading the database. While I can’t provide a specific ETA on specific fields or media types, we’re always considering what could be added to enhance the community’s experience.

That said, custom fields for the Games Database specifically are highly unlikely, as they go against its original purpose. The database is intended to serve as a centrally structured resource from which users can pull consistent data. For any needs outside of that scope, we recommend using LaunchBox’s custom fields category, which allows you to add metadata specific to your personal setup. Custom image types for your specific builds could be an option in the future, but this wouldn't be at the games database level.

We’re also exploring better ways to aggregate and prioritize which metadata and media types are most requested by the community. We realise that our current feature request process has is far from perfect, particularly when it comes to database additions, and we’re aiming to improve this workflow in the future.

[Buccaneer]

Will it someday be possible to update the metadata for all games just for a selected field? At the moment you have to mass delete the content of the field and do an update over all fields afterwards. For the media it is allready possible so it is not logic to not do it this way for the metadata as well.

Edited October 19 by Buccaneer