LaunchBox 13.19 - Beta Thread

[SiriusVI]

On 1/31/2025 at 8:52 PM, 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.

 

5 hours ago, Raw64life said:

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.

I have also switched to WMP years ago, because VLC causes weird graphical issues for the first few seconds a video is playsing on three different PCs I tried. Have had no problems with WMP whatsoever and never went back to VLC to this day.

[bundangdon]

On 1/31/2025 at 1:34 AM, 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.

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.

Thanks for the report.

 

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.

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.

@faeran Thanks again for getting back to me on this error/issue. I tried out another theme, the newly released "Frogg" LB theme and haven't had any issues happen in the past few days of testing. So, it's probably safe to assume there's something in the latest beta code that's causing issues with the older custom themes?

Edited February 2 by bundangdon

[Fursphere]

I switched both of my cabinets to WMP this morning as well, and haven't had an issue with BigBox locking up since. 

[Fursphere]

Just a quick update -  I let one of my BigBox cabinets run for 24+ hours straight after switching to WMP.  Not a single freeze / lock up.

I can't be 100% sure, but it sure seems like a VLC issue at this point.

[HolyLegend]

Not related directly, but would be great to have the option added to use MPV as a player as well. MPV is the best player in my opinion, stopped using VLC a long time ago.

[faeran]

Beta 4 is out with the following changes:

• Improvement: This update replaced LaunchBox's legacy XML-based local game database with a high-performance SQLite database. Expect a noticeably faster startup time, lower memory usage, and a solid foundation for even more performance gains in upcoming releases
• Improvement: The included version of VLC has been updated to version 3.0.21, bringing performance improvements, bug fixes, and updated codec support
• Improvement: Platform Clear Logo and Icon for Bandai Super Vision 8000 is now included when importing this platform
• Fixed: The auto-import feature for Playstation Vita games using the Vita3k emulator is now working correctly
• Fixed: Resolved an error that occurred under specific conditions when using UNC paths
• Fixed: Badges and Star Rating graphics on the GameDetails view should now work as intended (introduced in beta 1)
• Fixed: Media Carousel alignment under certain conditions in specific custom themes
• Fixed: Included 3DO Interactive Multiplayer logo not showing up after platform import

This is a huge under-the-hood change, maybe larger than anything we've had. The main change being the switch over from one giant XML file to an SQLite database for your local games database metadata. This file is used for many, many things throughout the app, including all imports, metadata, media downloads, the related games feature, and more. We could make all of this go super fast by loading the xml file into memory, but as the database grew the memory footprint naturally also grew. SQLite allows us to keep the majority of the speediness of the old method without the need to load it into memory. From a user perspective, as the changelog entry states, users will notice faster startup times and a lower memory footprint.

[Fursphere]

SQL?!?!   Holy crap I never thought I'd see the day.

Does this mean we're getting SQL query based playlists? 

I'll switch back from WMP to VLC and see if the lockup issues return too. 

Edited February 5 by Fursphere

[faeran]

Looking to answer as many things as possible and clear up some misconceptions in this thread.

On 1/31/2025 at 2:52 PM, 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.

Thanks for testing this (and to fursphere for testing this). 

The good news is that it does look like .net 9 has somehow finally solved the extremely long standing issue of WMP's fairly bad long term memory leak issue that previous .net versions have always had. We are also seeing this in the short term (1-2 days) tests that we've done.

We also see the issue with VLC, we've updated VLC to their latest stable release and it's possible that it also solves the hanging issue with that as well. Ran some even shorter term tests and haven't had a hang yet, but if you guys want to try this as well, would be nice to confirm.

On 2/1/2025 at 10:20 AM, Raw64life said:

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.

  

On 2/1/2025 at 4:03 PM, SiriusVI said:

I have also switched to WMP years ago, because VLC causes weird graphical issues for the first few seconds a video is playsing on three different PCs I tried. Have had no problems with WMP whatsoever and never went back to VLC to this day.

 

I'm not sure about that thread, but just to put some actual clarity to this, Big Box has always had long term memory leak issues with WMP. If you aggressively run Attract Mode with the fastest settings memory would spike upwards and max out fairly quick (under 12 hours). We've heavily tested this for years, when we were on .NET Core 3.1, then again when we upgraded to .NET 6, and nothing seemed to make a difference. However, WMP always seemed to perform a little lighter than VLC in the short term, and if you don't use attract mode, or don't keep LaunchBox open for weeks, you wouldn't really run into this. The other disadvantage of WMP is the limited codec set it has, but that can be negated by not using video files it cannot handle, or installing a third party codec pack. I'm definitely glad that .net 9, in these early tests, have shown that WMP no longer has this issue.

On another note, we spent a good 4 or 5 months last year grinding in Big Box and got it to a point where we could run it for a month without any issues. We ended up finding that Big Box (under normal conditions and using VLC) didn't have memory leaks, but it did have a .net limitation where it wasn't clearing something called the ATOM table out, and when you hit that table's limit after a few days (under the fastest attract mode speed that may not actually be selectable in the options itself) Big Box's performance would severely drop.

On 2/1/2025 at 11:14 AM, XvXPhoenix said:

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.

This should be fixed in beta 4, let us know if you are seeing it fixed on your end as well. It was something to do with changes to .net 9 in how it decided to handle UNC paths.

 

[C-Beats]

15 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

SQL?!?!   Holy crap I never thought I'd see the day.

Does this mean we're getting SQL query based playlists? 

We had to change out a TON of stuff to get to the point the beta is in. Let's do my poor fingers a solid and wait a bit before we starting get too nuts with anymore sweeping data related changes? PLEASE!

[faeran]

On 2/2/2025 at 5:28 AM, bundangdon said:

@faeran Thanks again for getting back to me on this error/issue. I tried out another theme, the newly released "Frogg" LB theme and haven't had any issues happen in the past few days of testing. So, it's probably safe to assume there's something in the latest beta code that's causing issues with the older custom themes?

Good deal. Not sure exactly what the issue was. If it was with the theme itself everyone would be getting the error, but since I wasn't, I can only assume it was a combination of some theme code and another factor on your machine.

23 hours ago, HolyLegend said:

Not related directly, but would be great to have the option added to use MPV as a player as well. MPV is the best player in my opinion, stopped using VLC a long time ago.

I remember maybe 7 or 8  years ago this was brought up and of course you have the whole thing where it would be a huge undertaking, with sweeping systemic changes across both apps to achieve this, but MPV is simply build on top of ffmpeg, so if we were going to go through that hassle, we'd probably lean towards just using ffmpeg. I know @C-Beats would be super happy with another sweeping systemic change on his plate. I'm hearing that his fingers may need something to do.

 

[C-Beats]

3 minutes ago, faeran said:

I'm hearing that his fingers may need something to do.

Stretching them incase I need to ring some ones neck!

[Fursphere]

6 minutes ago, faeran said:

Good deal. Not sure exactly what the issue was. If it was with the theme itself everyone would be getting the error, but since I wasn't, I can only assume it was a combination of some theme code and another factor on your machine.

I remember maybe 7 or 8  years ago this was brought up and of course you have the whole thing where it would be a huge undertaking, with sweeping systemic changes across both apps to achieve this, but MPV is simply build on top of ffmpeg, so if we were going to go through that hassle, we'd probably lean towards just using ffmpeg. I know @C-Beats would be super happy with another sweeping systemic change on his plate. I'm hearing that his fingers may need something to do.

 

I think PinUp Popper uses (virtual pinball frontend) (or used to use?) ffmpeg,  And ran into serious performance issues with 4k videos.   (playfield recordings for example for frontend purposes).   I'll have to see if they dropped it for something else. 

[bundangdon]

18 minutes ago, faeran said:

Good deal. Not sure exactly what the issue was. If it was with the theme itself everyone would be getting the error, but since I wasn't, I can only assume it was a combination of some theme code and another factor on your machine.

 

@faeran Thanks again for the quick follow up. I did a little more observing and investigating recently. I may have found out exactly where and how it's crashing with this particular "LBPlex 2023" theme. Whenever I go to change the star-rating in the right hand side (games detail) panel, LaunchBox crashes immediately afterwards. However, it doesn't crash like this with other LB themes. I guess that might help clear things up a bit, as it's another issue related to the stars ratings and LB custom themes.

Edited February 5 by bundangdon

[faeran]

Just now, Fursphere said:

I think PinUp Popper uses (virtual pinball frontend) (or used to use?) ffmpeg,  And ran into serious performance issues with 4k videos.   (playfield recordings for example for frontend purposes).   I'll have to see if they dropped it for something else. 

And depending on how long ago that was, ffmpeg also gets their own updates, so you never know these days.

15 minutes ago, bundangdon said:

@faeran Thanks again for the quick follow up. I did a little more observing and investigating recently. I may have found out exactly where and how it's crashing with this particular "LBPlex 2023" theme. Whenever I go to change the star-rating in the right hand side (games detail) panel, LaunchBox crashes immediately afterwards. However, it doesn't crash like this with other LB themes. I guess that might help clear things up a bit, as it's another issue related to the stars ratings and LB custom themes.

Good observation. Are you still crashing in beta 4? I'm not crashing when using your theme but it brought up a good point that the old star rating elements (which were just text and didn't ever perform well), were replaced with new elements that play a lot nicer. Looks like the old element still needs the binding refresh treatment in order for them to properly show the correct user rating. We'll get that done before release.

[Drybonz]

1 hour ago, faeran said:

This is a huge under-the-hood change, maybe larger than anything we've had.

I really love seeing this.  I hope you guys can do more of these big fix and performance updates periodically.  New features are great, but having this running like a well-oiled machine is what I like.  Thanks for this.

As for the .xml changeover... are there any specific files we should back up (in case of something unforseen) before getting the update?

Edited February 6 by Drybonz

[faeran]

12 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

I really love seeing this.  I hope you guys can do more of these big fix and performance updates periodically.  New features are great, but having this running like a well-oiled machine is what I like.  Thanks for this.

As for the .xml changeover... are there any specific files we should back up (in case of something unforseen) before getting the update?

That's the plan. If you look over the changelog over the last year, a lot of updates tend to include performance improvements of some kind. This one is a bit different in that it's less of a performance update, and more of "let's change how the entire app works". 5000 lines of code changes later and here we are.

The SQLite database change is strictly contained to the local database that gets downloaded and used throughout the program. This is not a user's library data (those are still xml files). This is essentially the entirety of the games database in a file. As people add games into the database on the website, this file grows to include it.

No user data will be touched with this update, and so there's no concern there. In the future, if we ever do some systemic changes to user data, we'll be sure to make it a big deal and call it out as much as possible.

[Drybonz]

Thanks for the reply.  I just checked it out and it does launch faster and looks to me like flipping through platforms loads everything faster if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks to C-Beats as well for sacrificing those fingers for the greater good.

[HolyLegend]

1 hour ago, faeran said:

Good deal. Not sure exactly what the issue was. If it was with the theme itself everyone would be getting the error, but since I wasn't, I can only assume it was a combination of some theme code and another factor on your machine.

I remember maybe 7 or 8  years ago this was brought up and of course you have the whole thing where it would be a huge undertaking, with sweeping systemic changes across both apps to achieve this, but MPV is simply build on top of ffmpeg, so if we were going to go through that hassle, we'd probably lean towards just using ffmpeg. I know @C-Beats would be super happy with another sweeping systemic change on his plate. I'm hearing that his fingers may need something to do.

 

Sounds like a maybe to me  but yes MPV gets updated pretty frequently, as does ffmpeg, I have the portable version. Just need a .dll file and ffmpeg and good to go in theory? Let me stop hyping myself up

[bundangdon]

5 hours ago, faeran said:

And depending on how long ago that was, ffmpeg also gets their own updates, so you never know these days.

Good observation. Are you still crashing in beta 4? I'm not crashing when using your theme but it brought up a good point that the old star rating elements (which were just text and didn't ever perform well), were replaced with new elements that play a lot nicer. Looks like the old element still needs the binding refresh treatment in order for them to properly show the correct user rating. We'll get that done before release.

@faeran Yep, still having the same issue unfortunately with beta 4. It happens randomly after the 4th or 5th time I change a star rating in LaunchBox

[Mike Stewart]

Goodness - the startup time for LaunchBox is now night and day better for me since Beta 4. Well done!