Switching between BigBox builds (possible Feature request)

[earthprime]

This might be a feature request (which I can submit) but is there functionality to seamlessly move between BigBox deployments?  For example, if someone has separate Launchbox builds for "Sinden Lightgun", "DOS", and "Retro Home Consoles" - it would be awesome (when BigBox loads) to present you with a custom-screen that asks which deployment you want to load.  Use Case:  some of us have Launchbox builds that are too complicated to merge together - or are on separate drives (D: M: Q:).  This feature (when enabled) would let you pick which drive to load on BigBox startup and then seamlessly switch between them, all while staying within the BigBox UI.

The closest I think I can get to this today is with a BAT script - and adding (for example) "Sinden" as a Platform in BigBox, with the BAT script as a game named "Load Siden Drive".  The script kills the current running BigBox process, waits 5 seconds, and then loads BigBox from the other "Sinden" drive.  I appreciate any advise if there's an easier way to do this, or if the functionality might already exist.

Here's the BAT script I use, if anyone is interested.  Just change "M:\LaunchBox" path to the location of your other BigBox drive.  Save this script as .bat file.  Add the .bat as a game (named something like "Access other Drive") somewhere in LaunchBox so you can access it via BigBox:

@echo off
taskkill /f /im BigBox.exe > NUL
timeout 3 > NUL
start M:\LaunchBox\BigBox.exe

Edited November 24 by earthprime

[AstroBob]

Hi @earthprime thanks for the suggestion here. Currently, there is no functionality to switch between Big Box instances within the same UI, as it's been designed very much with the intention that people are running off a single build.

That said, I can totally understand use cases such as yours where you've had to maintain a separate build. Because each instance of Big Box is its own application, the route you seem to be going down does appear to be the most sensible, whereby you have some sort of custom integration that points to which Big Box instance you want, and I imagine you want to keep that all within the Big Box interface. I realise it's not the ideal solution, but it certainly seems like it could work for you.

We don't currently have any plans to add something like this officially, but I'd love to hear from others in the community about whether this would be something they'd like to see. While I realise there are plenty of valid use cases for it, I am curious why you've chosen to maintain 2 builds (space, access from different locations?), just in case it's a side effect of something that we can address, that would allow you to work off a single build since it certainly would be easily to maintain in the long run.

I'm going to move this to the Features section of the forum now to get some more eyes on it.

Cheers,

[earthprime]

Greetings @AstroBob!  I actually decided to go with three separate builds:  Home Console, PC, and Sinden Lightgun.  I didn't originally plan for this, but BigBox is an awesome product - and with a lot of work, I was able to create a "Home Console" build of Launchbox that's 100% portable and can be easily played on a TV like a real console.  The challenge came when integrating PC games, since a lot of these can't be played from a couch and need keyboard/mouse.  I found it was too disruptive when someone was using my "Home Console" setup and they came across entries for "Windows PC", but they could only play by moving from the couch to a desk with a new setup.  The solution was to create a dedicated PC-build which was meant to only be used at a desk.  Later my brother created his own Sinden Lightgun drive.  It would take me a week to reverse-engineer his setup (to integrate it into my Home Console drive), so instead I just include his build as an additional HDD and map to it  within BigBox.

My feature request would unify all of these experiences.  I would be able to run my gaming PC with three HDDs - and BigBox would prompt for what experience I want to have (Console, PC, Sinden) - and then load that HDD's primary setup.  My examples are probably an edge use-case and scripts seem to do the job.  But I appreciate the consideration and maybe community interest will grow for this feature request.

[AstroBob]

Thanks for the update and elaborating on the use case there. It certainly may seem edge-casey, but we understand that there’s no right or wrong workflow, it’s whatever works for you 😊

I apologise that there isn’t a better workaround for this at the moment, and it’s certainly not a use-case we’ve heard too much about, but glad to hear scripts seem to be a reasonable stop-gap and would love to hear if others in the community have similar issues.

All this talk of Sinden light guns makes me really want to go and pick one of those up now 😊 I’ve heard very good things about them