LaunchBox 13.19 - Beta Thread

[Drybonz]

I'm noticing that when I launch a game through LaunchBox, the Windows status bar is partly obscured while this is happening.  Not a big deal in itself, but after I close the game and switch to pretty much any other Windows application that has a status bar at the bottom, the status bar is missing.  I can fix this by resetting the Explorer process with the task manager (status bars are visible again), but this repeats each time I launch a game with LB.  My Windows taskbar is not set to auto-hide if that makes any difference.  I'm not sure how recently this started.

[sundogak]

For some reason 13.19 betas breaks @superrob3000 plug-in whereas works find in 13.18:

 

[superrob3000]

2 minutes ago, sundogak said:

For some reason 13.19 betas breaks @superrob3000 plug-in whereas works find in 13.18:

 

It just needs to be updated to .NET 9. I've already done this for ThirdScreen and I'll get around to the others once 13.19 is released.

[Retrofrogg]

Previously the game controller icon would show in the top right of the game details pane. In the latest beta (13.19-beta-3) and maybe previous betas, this no longer shows. Would be great to have this fixed, thanks. Running on Windows 11.

[bundangdon]

@faeran @Jason Carr I've reported this error on bitbucket about a week ago, but with the latest beta, Launchbox is doing a lot of random crashing on me. I'm assuming it's an issue with the theme I'm using (LBPlex 2023), although I've never had any crashes like this before the recent betas were released. Also, there's a weird issue with the star ratings, as they're showing inaccurate/wrong stars on the screen - for example the game has a community rating of 4.3 but there are 2.5 stars there. My somewhat educated guess is that this custom theme was messed up by the recent changes in the latest beta? Hope you guys can help out somehow

[faeran]

On 1/26/2025 at 12:04 PM, Drybonz said:

I'm noticing that when I launch a game through LaunchBox, the Windows status bar is partly obscured while this is happening.  Not a big deal in itself, but after I close the game and switch to pretty much any other Windows application that has a status bar at the bottom, the status bar is missing.  I can fix this by resetting the Explorer process with the task manager (status bars are visible again), but this repeats each time I launch a game with LB.  My Windows taskbar is not set to auto-hide if that makes any difference.  I'm not sure how recently this started.

Did some testing, but not seeing this unfortunately. It could possibly be related to an additional app launching or a specific hardware configuration. Might be worth opening its own troubleshooting thread on it.

16 hours ago, Retrofrogg said:

Previously the game controller icon would show in the top right of the game details pane. In the latest beta (13.19-beta-3) and maybe previous betas, this no longer shows. Would be great to have this fixed, thanks. Running on Windows 11.

Thanks. This is a known issue with the beta and will be fixed before release.

14 hours ago, bundangdon said:

@faeran @Jason Carr I've reported this error on bitbucket about a week ago, but with the latest beta, Launchbox is doing a lot of random crashing on me. I'm assuming it's an issue with the theme I'm using (LBPlex 2023), although I've never had any crashes like this before the recent betas were released. Also, there's a weird issue with the star ratings, as they're showing inaccurate/wrong stars on the screen - for example the game has a community rating of 4.3 but there are 2.5 stars there. My somewhat educated guess is that this custom theme was messed up by the recent changes in the latest beta? Hope you guys can help out somehow

Star rating is a known issue with the beta and will be fixed before release.

It definitely could be an issue with your theme, although the entire crash report is being cut off. Do you have a special version of the theme that's not up on the forums?

[Drybonz]

4 hours ago, faeran said:

Did some testing, but not seeing this unfortunately. It could possibly be related to an additional app launching or a specific hardware configuration. Might be worth opening its own troubleshooting thread on it.

Thanks.  I did open a troubleshooting thread... but in my past experience this is where questions go to die.

[bundangdon]

On 1/29/2025 at 12:46 AM, faeran said:

Did some testing, but not seeing this unfortunately. It could possibly be related to an additional app launching or a specific hardware configuration. Might be worth opening its own troubleshooting thread on it.

Thanks. This is a known issue with the beta and will be fixed before release.

Star rating is a known issue with the beta and will be fixed before release.

It definitely could be an issue with your theme, although the entire crash report is being cut off. Do you have a special version of the theme that's not up on the forums?

Thanks a lot for the quick reply. This theme is available in the forums and can be found here:

@faeran I've been using this custom theme for the past 3 years or so, and this is the first time I've come across these frequent errors/crashes. My guess is that the latest changes caused some issues with some of the custom LB themes

Edited Thursday at 05:43 AM by bundangdon

[jezj]

Updated to 13.19 beta 3 from 13.18 and getting the below error when starting from another machine. Launching on the server works, but via network share fails. Reverting back to 13.18 fixes the problem. Did a clean install on a new network share and the same error appears. Any suggestions?

[Fursphere]

Beta 3 seems to have a memory leak or something.    After a few hours (5+ I'm guessing?) in attract mode, it freezes / locks up.   Any interaction after that just causes the program to crash / close. 

My cabinet is in my home office, so I usually just leave it running all day while I'm working. 

[The Papaw]

@C-Beats @faeran Any chance the Vita platform will be fixed in this round as far as scanning in the (eboot.bin) roms like was done with the PS3 a while back?

[faeran]

9 hours ago, Fursphere said:

Beta 3 seems to have a memory leak or something.    After a few hours (5+ I'm guessing?) in attract mode, it freezes / locks up.   Any interaction after that just causes the program to crash / close. 

My cabinet is in my home office, so I usually just leave it running all day while I'm working. 

Something you can do as a good way to test attract mode.

• Make sure you are using the default theme and mark down which platform and game views you are using
• Make sure you are using VLC as the playback engine (WMP has known long term memory leak issues)
• Make sure you aren't using any third party integrations that could impact the test, LEDBlinky and things like that

Test long term and see if you are seeing the same results. If you are:

• Remove both your Images and Videos folder

Test long term and see if you are seeing the same results. If not, bring back either the Images or Videos folder and test again. If you crash, then you know it's something in one of those folders.

After that, you can PM me your results, along with your system specs.

2 hours ago, The Papaw said:

@C-Beats @faeran Any chance the Vita platform will be fixed in this round as far as scanning in the (eboot.bin) roms like was done with the PS3 a while back?

The good news is that this has been a thing for a while. Remove your current games from the Vita platform, make sure Vita3k is configured and working and add it to LaunchBox. We scrape the emulator itself and import games directly from it during the auto-import process.

On 1/29/2025 at 8:47 AM, jezj said:

Updated to 13.19 beta 3 from 13.18 and getting the below error when starting from another machine. Launching on the server works, but via network share fails. Reverting back to 13.18 fixes the problem. Did a clean install on a new network share and the same error appears. Any suggestions?

Thanks for the report.

 

On 1/28/2025 at 11:02 PM, bundangdon said:

Thanks a lot for the quick reply. This theme is available in the forums and can be found here:

@faeran I've been using this custom theme for the past 3 years or so, and this is the first time I've come across these frequent errors/crashes. My guess is that the latest changes caused some issues with some of the custom LB themes

First guess is that this could be an unintended side-effect of the .NET 9 update. We will see what we uncover and see if there's anything we can do about it.

On 1/28/2025 at 11:02 PM, bundangdon said:

Thanks a lot for the quick reply. This theme is available in the forums and can be found here:

@faeran I've been using this custom theme for the past 3 years or so, and this is the first time I've come across these frequent errors/crashes. My guess is that the latest changes caused some issues with some of the custom LB themes

That's too bad. I downloaded your theme, but am not seeing what you are seeing, so it's probably not related to the theme itself. It could be related to your data files in some way. You could send me a PM of your data files and I may have some time to look into this later this week.

You can also test whether it's a theme specific issue just by changing your theme and seeing if that stops the crashing for you.

[Fursphere]

29 minutes ago, faeran said:

Something you can do as a good way to test attract mode.

• Make sure you are using the default theme and mark down which platform and game views you are using
• Make sure you are using VLC as the playback engine (WMP has known long term memory leak issues)
• Make sure you aren't using any third party integrations that could impact the test, LEDBlinky and things like that

Test long term and see if you are seeing the same results. If you are:

• Remove both your Images and Videos folder

Test long term and see if you are seeing the same results. If not, bring back either the Images or Videos folder and test again. If you crash, then you know it's something in one of those folders.

After that, you can PM me your results, along with your system specs.

 

Have you tried reproducing this in house?   Or is it so infrequent that its not on the current priority list?

[faeran]

7 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

Have you tried reproducing this in house?   Or is it so infrequent that its not on the current priority list?

There definitely some battle scares of many months of testing this non-stop, and as far as the last round went, all was well. 

When users report something like this we want to make sure they are testing in a way that produces as usable results as they can.

We will be in-house testing this most likely during the next release cycle, but until then your help is much appreciated.

[Fursphere]

Makes sense.  I'm happy to help.   It was just a little surprising to hear "remove all your images and videos".

[kmoney]

I am getting the same issue as well that @Fursphere mentioned about BigBox freezing/locking up while in attract mode in the 13.9 betas. I have not narrowed it down yet if it is theme specific or something involving the ThirdScreen marquee plugin. I did not have an issue before 13.9. I'm gonna try to do more testing however.

[The Papaw]

On 1/30/2025 at 10:34 AM, faeran said:

The good news is that this has been a thing for a while. Remove your current games from the Vita platform, make sure Vita3k is configured and working and add it to LaunchBox. We scrape the emulator itself and import games directly from it during the auto-import process

Not working for me when emulator and rom files are on NAS. I get nothing after adding the emulator other than LB adding emulator settings

[kmoney]

I have determined that my freezing/locking up issues while in attract mode is VLC. I know VLC is the recommended one to use but I have been using WMP for over 24 hours without any issues where as while using VLC BigBox would freeze within a couple of hours.

[Raw64life]

19 hours ago, kmoney said:

I have determined that my freezing/locking up issues while in attract mode is VLC. I know VLC is the recommended one to use but I have been using WMP for over 24 hours without any issues where as while using VLC BigBox would freeze within a couple of hours.

I switched from VLC to WMP a year or two ago due to this issue which AFAIK was never resolved, and it honestly works great. I've had no issues with WMP at all.

[XvXPhoenix]

On 1/29/2025 at 8:47 AM, jezj said:

Updated to 13.19 beta 3 from 13.18 and getting the below error when starting from another machine. Launching on the server works, but via network share fails. Reverting back to 13.18 fixes the problem. Did a clean install on a new network share and the same error appears. Any suggestions?

Having the same issue here.  Did a clean install of 13.18, unchecked the option to download beta versions however it was too late as it already snagged beta 3 so it updated automatically on me, clean install of 13.18 again and the beta opt out option appears to have stuck.  Hopefully this bug gets squashed before 13.19 goes full release.