LaunchBox 13.24 Beta Thread

[stigzler]

Just a quick note to say well done, chaps. You're wrangling this majestic beast like it's a simple house cat. 👍

(Especially after this recent update! To make an omelette, you gotta break a few eggs, right?)

[The Papaw]

On 9/19/2025 at 8:08 AM, C-Beats said:

Spoke too soon @The Papaw, your issue resolved in beta 3 which I believe is coming out pretty early today.

@C-Beats @faeranI can confirm this is working correct for me, as well as when running the Wizard and un-checking all media, it is no longer downloading Clear Logo's

[faeran]

On 9/19/2025 at 5:09 PM, SqHd said:

I've noticed BigBox is not respecting the badge settings via Launchbox media packs. I have LB set to nostalgic and BB set to white filled. But BB is showing nostalgic. (On beta 2 and 3)
Also, minor request: would it be possible to add recent games for "Platform Categories" default theme "Hybrid 2" view? Thx!

Thanks. This should be fixed up before the hotfix comes out.

I forget what Hybrid 2 is. If it's the horizontal one, I'm not sure where that would go other than needing to replace an element to fit another one in there. The good news is that there's always theming.

[ffingers]

Wanted to let you know of an issue I identifed with beta 3. I recently did a whole new LB build moving to a new computer. As a result I had to redo all the controls etc. (this will matter in a second).

I had done all the mapping using a gamepad and a virtual joystick (vjoy) all was fine. Realized I need to go back in and tweak the order of the controllers and whatnot. When I went into change things, LB and BB refused to recognize any controller input when remapping. I thought I had done something when moving controllers around, but everything worked in all the emulators, in windows, etc. Just LB and BB refused to register inputs for remapping and most input just for navigation (if any mappinges still existed).

I racked my brain trying multiple different things. I tried an old install in a different directory and the controllers worked as intended. I figured it was a bad install, something got corrupted. I did a reinstall of beta 3 over the top of the existing LB and it still didn't work. I tried a rollback to beta 1 and all of sudden, all controllers and inputs were recognized. 

All this to say, there is something definitely wonky with beta 3 and USB game controllers and mapping.

For reference I'm running Windows 11 and the game controllers were a GP-Wiz from GroovyGamer and also a virtual stick using vJoy.

[faeran]

3 hours ago, ffingers said:

Wanted to let you know of an issue I identifed with beta 3. I recently did a whole new LB build moving to a new computer. As a result I had to redo all the controls etc. (this will matter in a second).

I had done all the mapping using a gamepad and a virtual joystick (vjoy) all was fine. Realized I need to go back in and tweak the order of the controllers and whatnot. When I went into change things, LB and BB refused to recognize any controller input when remapping. I thought I had done something when moving controllers around, but everything worked in all the emulators, in windows, etc. Just LB and BB refused to register inputs for remapping and most input just for navigation (if any mappinges still existed).

I racked my brain trying multiple different things. I tried an old install in a different directory and the controllers worked as intended. I figured it was a bad install, something got corrupted. I did a reinstall of beta 3 over the top of the existing LB and it still didn't work. I tried a rollback to beta 1 and all of sudden, all controllers and inputs were recognized. 

All this to say, there is something definitely wonky with beta 3 and USB game controllers and mapping.

For reference I'm running Windows 11 and the game controllers were a GP-Wiz from GroovyGamer and also a virtual stick using vJoy.

Interesting. Thanks for the report. I was unable to recreate this with all of my controllers, although I do not have a GP-Wiz and I don't use vJoy. If you have time, are you willing to troubleshoot with me in a PM?

[ffingers]

Yeah happy to. I did reinstall beta 1 so its working now, but happy to throw another install on to troubleshoot the issue. Also just so you know, I used a generic USB controller as well thinking maybe it was the GP-Wiz or vJoy but it happened with a generic controller as well. It was not willing to recognize any USB controller. 

I'll throw on a fresh version of beta 3 and check if the same thing happens and I'll let you know.

[Joe35car]

OK so I was doing some testing and when I tried to do a clean import of my full set of Teknoparrot games it only wants to import 6 games

. Only reason I discovered this was I wanted to import the newly added games that support Namco System 357 & 369.

20250924_024208.zip

Edited Wednesday at 09:04 AM by Joe35car

[Joe35car]

And yes the games are unzipped to their own folders in case you were wondering. 

[faeran]

On 9/24/2025 at 3:48 AM, Joe35car said:

OK so I was doing some testing and when I tried to do a clean import of my full set of Teknoparrot games it only wants to import 6 games

. Only reason I discovered this was I wanted to import the newly added games that support Namco System 357 & 369.

20250924_024208.zip 5.56 MB · 1 download

From what I remember. Teknoparrot doesn't really have anything special, as far as import options. It's possible it might be looking for the game's xml files. Do you have them sitting in the Teknoparrot's UserProfile folder? What happens if you drag and drop your mew game's xml files into LaunchBox?

[Fursphere]

8 minutes ago, faeran said:

From what I remember. Teknoparrot doesn't really have anything special, as far as import options. It's possible it might be looking for the game's xml files. Do you have them sitting in the Teknoparrot's UserProfile folder? What happens if you drag and drop your mew game's xml files into LaunchBox?

Why would you want to drag the XML files out of Teknoparrot's /userprofile/ directly and into launchbox's?

Can't you just point launchbox at the /userprofile/ folder directly, so when you add a new game (using Teknoparrot's UI) LB will autoscan and pick it up?

[faeran]

17 minutes ago, Fursphere said:

Why would you want to drag the XML files out of Teknoparrot's /userprofile/ directly and into launchbox's?

Can't you just point launchbox at the /userprofile/ folder directly, so when you add a new game (using Teknoparrot's UI) LB will autoscan and pick it up?

Sorry, Not drag into a LaunchBox folder, but drag and drop into LaunchBox itself to start the ROM Import wizard. It's just one of the 7-ish different ways you can start an import in LaunchBox. Yes, you can also start a Single ROM import and select the files from there as well.

[Fursphere]

I had no idea you could just drag files into the LB window to start the import process.  Neat!  

[C-Beats]

1 hour ago, Fursphere said:

I had no idea you could just drag files into the LB window to start the import process.  Neat!  

Can drag images to the Edit Game/Platform window (when on that page/tab) to import them as well.

[Joe35car]

Doesn't work. Have you tested on your side? I tried the xml and also the exe itself and none work properly. Also the new games added that use eboot.bin won't import. Something not right in this beta. The official build works fine.

Edited Thursday at 05:49 PM by Joe35car

[Joe35car]

5 hours ago, faeran said:

From what I remember. Teknoparrot doesn't really have anything special, as far as import options. It's possible it might be looking for the game's xml files. Do you have them sitting in the Teknoparrot's UserProfile folder? What happens if you drag and drop your mew game's xml files into LaunchBox?

Yes I have them sitting in the UserProfile. Like I said before I already a complete setup in Launchbox. But the new eboot games won't import. So I tried to do a fresh install for TP and now it only wants to import like 6 games. I attached a file in post above. Drop and drag doesn't work. Red circle with line shows. I used that option for pc games before and works. Something not right with beta.

[Joe35car]

I tried importing the game XML in the userprofile. I tried the old way pointing to the main game file like exe and then editing the profile in LB --profile=game.xml. Nothing works importing TP games in beta. I even checked the force import duplicate games and still nothing. Same old 6 games it wants to import only and none are the ones I need.

Edited Thursday at 06:15 PM by Joe35car

[Joe35car]

OK so the only way anyone can import Teknoparrot games is to go back to 13.23. Works how it should. Something in these beta versions broke something. I imported the games and updated back to the current beta.  . Hopefully you guys fix this before you release an official build.

Edited Friday at 09:29 AM by Joe35car

[faeran]

6 hours ago, Joe35car said:

OK so the only way anyone can import Teknoparrot games is to go back to 13.23. Works how it should. Something in these beta versions broke something. I imported the games and updated back to the current beta.  . Hopefully you guys fix this before you release an official build.

Thanks for the thorough reports here.

It does look like there was a change that was unintended that essentially forces the MAME parsing logic when using Arcade as the scrape as value. We'll have to fixed up before the hotfix.

A workaround for people that don't want to wait would be to not select Arcade as the scrape as value during an import, then set it after the fact, and run a download metadata and media import.

[skizzosjt]

FFMPEG problems still exist....

Big Box AND LaunchBox (previously I only tested this for Big Box, but it occurs on both!) can still freeze up when some videos loop

webm videos with vorbis audio codec still have audio distortion/artifacts

all videos have their contents slightly stretched out in width compared to VLC (same problem exists with WMP too)

 

new problem, not sure when it started but I notice in latest beta.

Progress tracking is not working so great. I have lots of games getting stuck on "Active In Progress" when they should be falling back in an automated fashion to "Active Paused" after not being launched for 30 days. Even manually adjusting last played date through the edit game window isn't changing this. Some games will update only if you load LaunchBox and click on that game entry. Others will  not update even if you do that. It's really inconsistent, problem spans across different platforms and game types, ie actual ROM files, exe files, scripts. Don't see a pattern going on here. It needs improvement so the automatic changing works better and more consistent. User should be able to boot LB or BB and have that stuff update at launch. Users shouldn't be forced to boot LB and click on entries for it to force a scan for progress status to update accordingly (but again, this only works for some games). It goes from Not Played to Active In Progress fine or Active Paused to Active In Progress fine. It's the reverse trend that isn't working well. Going from Active In Progress to Active Paused being the problem specifically for what I am witnessing. 

 

confirming fix. extra animations and videos restarting don't happen at game exit anymore.