How to keep the start-up screen on untill a game launches

[Kefka2b]

So that might be a bit of an easy one I guess, so I have my start-up screen (Slipstream) to be on for 3.5 seconds which is the time the loading bar takes to fill and is a great value for all emulators I have.

For Steam games however, often this is not enough and screen goes back to launchbox or Bigbox until the game starts. Is there a way to set a maximum time value, detect when the game has launched and switch automatically?

Edited Thursday at 10:38 AM by Kefka2b

[JoeViking245]

For games that don't use a [traditional] emulator such as Steam, you can override the startup time on a per game basis or Bulk Edit the games and set them all at once.

To bulk edit them, select all your Steam games (e.g. in the Windows platform, click one then press Ctrl+A) then press Ctrl+E to start the Bulk Edit Wizard. 

For the Field select Startup Screen - Enabled and check the box.  When prompted for more changes, select Yes, I would like to make more changes.  For the Field, select Startup Screen - Load Delay. Then adjust the value accordingly.

[Kefka2b]

Thanks, I actually tested but it's not easy to implement as each game will be very different so I bulk disabled the start-up theme (and pause theme) for all Steam games, a bit cumbersome to remember to do it each time you add a new game though, hopefully we can get the same options soon as we have for emulators. But most useful would be simply to have start-up option that allows you to select a minimum displayed value and then launchbox auto-detects when a game has started and switches to it if more time is needed. 

Edited Thursday at 12:36 PM by Kefka2b

[JoeViking245]

3 minutes ago, Kefka2b said:

simply to have start-up option that allows you to select a minimum displayed value and then launchbox auto-detects when a game has started and switches to it if more time is needed. 

With Steam games (and others that use a 'launcher' for the game) you run into a nigh impossible situation.  Here, LaunchBox is launching Steam which it (LB) sees it as "the game".  Steam then launches the "actual game" and [the launcher] goes away.  As far as LaunchBox knows, the "game" has exited when the launcher does go away.

For this same reason, you'll never see the Shutdown Screen for games using a launcher (unless you exit the actual game right after it opened).

 

35 minutes ago, Kefka2b said:

it's not easy to implement as each game will be very different so I bulk disabled the start-up theme

If you're ok with no Startup Themes, that's fine.  Myself, I'd go with a happy medium value.  If the games ready to play but I have to wait another 2-4 seconds to "see" it because other games take longer to load, whatever.  If you have one game in particular that takes a lot longer than most, well... that's what the manual override is there for.  

[Kefka2b]

5 minutes ago, JoeViking245 said:

With Steam games (and others that use a 'launcher' for the game) you run into a nigh impossible situation.  Here, LaunchBox is launching Steam which it (LB) sees it as "the game".  Steam then launches the "actual game" and [the launcher] goes away.  As far as LaunchBox knows, the "game" has exited when the launcher does go away.

For this same reason, you'll never see the Shutdown Screen for games using a launcher (unless you exit the actual game right after it opened).

 

If you're ok with no Startup Themes, that's fine.  Myself, I'd go with a happy medium value.  If the games ready to play but I have to wait another 2-4 seconds to "see" it because other games take longer to load, whatever.  If you have one game in particular that takes a lot longer than most, well... that's what the manual override is there for.  

Makes sense, thanks for the feedback.

[Kefka2b]

@JoeViking245 while I have you here

Do you have a quick explanation on how the emulator start-up delay and start-up screen minimum time work together?

[JoeViking245]

33 minutes ago, Kefka2b said:

Do you have a quick explanation on how the emulator start-up delay and start-up screen minimum time work together?

I don't do "quick" explanations.   If someone's going to ask, I'm goin' to do what I can to 'learn ya'. 😎

However, in this case, the answer is, no.

 

But if I had to take a guess, the Minimum Start Screen Display Time (found under Tools - Options) is your catch-all for 'how long to show the Startup Screen'.  This (I'd presume) would be for games that don't have an emulator [as listed under Manage - Emulators].  e.g. Steam

For emulators, the Startup Load Delay is for setting 'how long to show the Startup Screen' for that emulator.

Same thing for games when you check Override... and click Customize.

 

To surmise Load Delay (and if my guess is correct, Minimum Display time) as taken from the UI:

Quote

[...] generally defines how long the emulator takes to load before the game is playing. This is ultimately how
long Launch Box will wait after launching the emulator's [or game's?] EXE file before showing the game, if possible.

[Kefka2b]

1 hour ago, JoeViking245 said:

I don't do "quick" explanations.   If someone's going to ask, I'm goin' to do what I can to 'learn ya'. 😎

However, in this case, the answer is, no.

 

But if I had to take a guess, the Minimum Start Screen Display Time (found under Tools - Options) is your catch-all for 'how long to show the Startup Screen'.  This (I'd presume) would be for games that don't have an emulator [as listed under Manage - Emulators].  e.g. Steam

For emulators, the Startup Load Delay is for setting 'how long to show the Startup Screen' for that emulator.

Same thing for games when you check Override... and click Customize.

 

To surmise Load Delay (and if my guess is correct, Minimum Display time) as taken from the UI:

Thanks 🙏 

[Kefka2b]

@JoeViking245 hey I did a bit of experimenting.

So strangely enough it seems that both settings time values actually add up when using both which I don't think is supposed to happen.

However setting minimum start-up screen time to 0 and only using emulators startup delay time works well, but not on all emulators, for example the model 2 emulator doesn't respect the value selected and opens after less than a second making the loading screen almost useless.

I also noticed for Dolphin as an example that using both settings together allows for a cleaner startup as it hides the quick Dolphin windows that flashes when starting a game. When not using minimum startup time it flashes on top of the startup screen.

[JoeViking245]

1 hour ago, Kefka2b said:

for example the model 2 emulator doesn't respect the value selected and opens after less than a second making the loading screen almost useless.

This is [most likely] covered in the next part of the quote from the UI...

Quote

Please note that if the emulator uses exclusive fullscreen mode, then there is nothing that LaunchBox can do to delay
displaying the game, due to Windows restrictions. In this case, the game will display immediately once the emulator switches to
exclusive fullscreen mode, ignoring the Startup Load Delay setting.

 

 

1 hour ago, Kefka2b said:

I also noticed for Dolphin as an example that using both settings together allows for a cleaner startup as it hides the quick Dolphin windows that flashes when starting a game. When not using minimum startup time it flashes on top of the startup screen.

So.... sounds like my guess was wrong. It happens.    There's other possible factors that could come into play here also.  Like in Edit Emulator, Attempt to hide console window on startup/shutdown.  And/or in its Startup Screen section, Hide All Windows that are not in Exclusive Fullscreen Mode.  

But hey, sounds like you're getting things dialed in.  

[skizzosjt]

1 hour ago, Kefka2b said:

@JoeViking245 hey I did a bit of experimenting.

So strangely enough it seems that both settings time values actually add up when using both which I don't think is supposed to happen.

However setting minimum start-up screen time to 0 and only using emulators startup delay time works well, but not on all emulators, for example the model 2 emulator doesn't respect the value selected and opens after less than a second making the loading screen almost useless.

I also noticed for Dolphin as an example that using both settings together allows for a cleaner startup as it hides the quick Dolphin windows that flashes when starting a game. When not using minimum startup time it flashes on top of the startup screen.

 

Dolphin shouldn't flash any other window at boot of a game. maybe missing some launch param. are you using "-b" for batch? that would launch the game without the actual Dolphin interface window with your list of games and such. it would only launch the actual game window with that param

[Kefka2b]

16 hours ago, skizzosjt said:

 

Dolphin shouldn't flash any other window at boot of a game. maybe missing some launch param. are you using "-b" for batch? that would launch the game without the actual Dolphin interface window with your list of games and such. it would only launch the actual game window with that param

Looks like it's already there but thanks anyways.