LaunchBox 13.20 - Beta Thread

[l.strain]

On 3/15/2025 at 8:49 PM, launchretrogirl2562 said:

are there any further progress updates on version 13.20?
I'm now kinda withholding from installing it after reading about these issues.
 

Totally agree, They knew that last update before it got pushed out as "stable" had severe issues and went ahead.... Shocking dev management! 👎

[faeran]

On 3/15/2025 at 4:49 PM, launchretrogirl2562 said:

are there any further progress updates on version 13.20?
I'm now kinda withholding from installing it after reading about these issues.
 

13.20 went out on February 27 with a ton of fixes that we worked as quickly as possible to fix up and really needed to be out as quickly as possible. If you are on 13.19, you should definitely be upgrading to 13.20.

Since then, we've been heavily working on a lot of things, including any remaining fixes, which the list for is fairly small.

A lot of endless hours has been put into figuring out why VLC seems to be randomly freezing Big Box ( @MysterNybble is carrying around the emotional battle scars for this one 😋). We've noted that the simple workaround is to switch the video playback engine to WMP and the freezes stop. The freeze itself seems systemic to a low level VLC issue that we don't entirely have access to, so we are looking at short term and long term solutions, with the short term solution being available in beta 1. However, like mentioned, switching the video playback engine to WMP across all of our test devices removes this particular issue.

There's also a few smaller issues we're tracking that should be available in 13.21 beta 1, which should come out sometime this week.

At this time, if anyone is experiencing a particular issue with a released version, and you are unable to find help using the Noob or Troubleshooting section of the forums, it's best to click on the Help & Support option in the top header and clicking on Report a Bug.

[Drybonz]

3 hours ago, faeran said:

A lot of endless hours has been put into figuring out why VLC seems to be randomly freezing Big Box

I know a lot of the talk about the freezing is related to the video players, but I wanted to mention that there have also been some reports, including myself (I added it on the "report a bug" page) that it was happening with LB, with no video player and included not closing properly.  I'm only mentioning this again in case it was overlooked and is somehow related and would help solve the problem.  It seems to have started at about the same time.  I understand it may not be related, but I figured I would give it a chance and bring it up again.

[faeran]

21 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

I know a lot of the talk about the freezing is related to the video players, but I wanted to mention that there have also been some reports, including myself (I added it on the "report a bug" page) that it was happening with LB, with no video player and included not closing properly.  I'm only mentioning this again in case it was overlooked and is somehow related and would help solve the problem.  It seems to have started at about the same time.  I understand it may not be related, but I figured I would give it a chance and bring it up again.

Thanks yes. This seems to be a much smaller issue that a lot less people seem to be having, but if you submitted it into our system it's been tracked

 

[gmonsoon]

Has anyone else been having problems with Steam Storefront auto-importing? It worked well for months, and within the past week, it has not imported new games that I purchased during the recent Steam sale that were not installed.  I have reconnected the storefront with a new API key and custom URL and set it to import all games. I want to see if anyone else is having this issue.

 

 

UPDATE: This was all me. I had an extra forward slash at the end of my Steam URL.

Edited March 19 by gmonsoon

[Jabb3rJaw]

On 3/17/2025 at 11:56 AM, faeran said:

13.20 went out on February 27 with a ton of fixes that we worked as quickly as possible to fix up and really needed to be out as quickly as possible. If you are on 13.19, you should definitely be upgrading to 13.20.

Since then, we've been heavily working on a lot of things, including any remaining fixes, which the list for is fairly small.

A lot of endless hours has been put into figuring out why VLC seems to be randomly freezing Big Box ( @MysterNybble is carrying around the emotional battle scars for this one 😋). We've noted that the simple workaround is to switch the video playback engine to WMP and the freezes stop. The freeze itself seems systemic to a low level VLC issue that we don't entirely have access to, so we are looking at short term and long term solutions, with the short term solution being available in beta 1. However, like mentioned, switching the video playback engine to WMP across all of our test devices removes this particular issue.

There's also a few smaller issues we're tracking that should be available in 13.21 beta 1, which should come out sometime this week.

At this time, if anyone is experiencing a particular issue with a released version, and you are unable to find help using the Noob or Troubleshooting section of the forums, it's best to click on the Help & Support option in the top header and clicking on Report a Bug.

While Bigbox freezes a lot quicker using VLC it will still freeze after a while using WMP. My system never used to freeze. Also want to note I randomly get an error now about being out of memory when I am able to exit clean. 

[xX-Delirium-Xx]

any one else finding games taking way to long to launch after your first boot up? i been playing a ps2 game a lot lately and i noticed it always takes a long time befor it boots the game up on the emulator then its just find and any other game booted after launches normaly

[Raw64life]

On 3/17/2025 at 3:54 PM, Drybonz said:

I know a lot of the talk about the freezing is related to the video players, but I wanted to mention that there have also been some reports, including myself (I added it on the "report a bug" page) that it was happening with LB, with no video player and included not closing properly.  I'm only mentioning this again in case it was overlooked and is somehow related and would help solve the problem.  It seems to have started at about the same time.  I understand it may not be related, but I figured I would give it a chance and bring it up again.

Count me among them. I'm hoping that whatever fixes the BigBox VLC issue will also somehow fix the LaunchBox VLC issue. But honestly WMP has been working fine for me since I switched.

[Drybonz]

10 hours ago, xX-Delirium-Xx said:

any one else finding games taking way to long to launch after your first boot up? i been playing a ps2 game a lot lately and i noticed it always takes a long time befor it boots the game up on the emulator then its just find and any other game booted after launches normaly

It's probably unpacking the disc into memory.  The emulators that unpack whole discs of info before launching take longer.  Sometimes there is an option not to pre-load it, but it is better to let it.