LaunchBox 13.28 Beta Thread

[salofan]

1 hour ago, crusadeRGP said:

I also had a significant slowdown after the latest beta update but switching back to windows media player from the new vlc did improve my navigation. 

Can confirm this helps slightly on my end as well but LB still moving extremely slowly and I'm still getting that "Not enough quota is available to process this command" error.

[Vader]

Just upgraded to beta 13.28 beta 2, and I am having controller issues. When using big box, and I connect a xbox one controller  big box goes wonky. It works initially, but then when I enter a game and then exit, the controller stops working. If i use the critical zone theme, the game wheels will start to scroll uncontrollably and inputs from the controller won;t work, in unified lives, the controller will just stop working. When I exit big box and the controller is connected, I do get an error, but I am not able to get a snip of it because it dissapears as soon as big box is completly shut down.

Also I noticed that the folder structure for SNES games seems to have changed as I lost all my covers. They were in a folder called "front" and "back", but after the update those files are no longer being found.  However, If I put files in the box-front folder, then the images are recognized. This platform seems to be the only one effected.

Edited yesterday at 03:00 AM by Vader

[thoraiden]

With the new Beta 2 for 28 I had 2 crashes when I first launched a couple of times but I found the problem being that my video playback settings were on FFMPEG. I had to switch to either WMP or the old/new VLC for the crashes to stop. The crash would occur when going to a game list for a given platform if the background video didnt load on FFMPEG. However Im having a persisting issue with no audio on both VLC and WMP as of right now. I have volume settings where they should be and BB is telling me that a song is playing for my background music but no sound. I may get brief sound to play going in between menus but it cuts off after a few seconds. I am also experiencing slight controller lag while scrolling menus or input.  

[chickenracer]

Here are the details you requested

The program you are referring to that you have tested:

• LaunchBox only so far.

Your hardware specs and OS:

• OS: Windows 11, version 25H2 (Build 26200.8655)

Specs:

• CPU    AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core Processor (4.20 GHz)
• RAM    32,0 GB
• Graphic Card: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (16 GB)
• Onboard: AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics (486 MB)

What exactly you were doing in the app and how you were doing it:

• Nothing special, I am mostly idle and browsing games.

Specific testing of the same scenario using all 3 video playback engines in the program you are testing in, and your performance results in whether it made a difference

• "Use Windows Meida Player for video playback": Works best with "13.28-beta-2", it plays video with sound, but takes longer to load.
• "Use VLC for video playback (recommended): This is my default video playback option. Video playback is not working properly, it's slow and stutters.
• "Use ffmpeg": Video playback is not working properly, it's slow and stutters.

Which theme you used during testing while you were testing all 3 video playback engines, bonus points for testing multiple themes with all 3 video playback engine scenarios

• I am currently using "Default Plus"

 

The input you were using during your testing: controller, keyboard, or mouse

• Keyboard and mouse.

 

List all community plugins that you have installed:

If you had any crashes we'll need the whole crash report. If you had a hard crash to the desktop, we'll need the event logs (a lot of times it's multiple logs related to the same crash)
Your LaunchBox and/or Big Box logs

• No crashes so far, just performance issues. Shutting down Launchbox I don't see progress pop-up window. I attached the debug log files.

Debug 2026-06-20 08-40-18 AM.log MediaEngine 2026-06-20 08-40-37 AM.worker.log

[darreldearth]

As others have said, vlc and ffmpeg almost completely freeze launchbox maybe 2fps. while Windows media player makes it "Sorta Useable" but still running very slow (about a 2-5 second delay when clicking a game before it appears in the details pane). Beta 1 was snappy comparatively  

 

The plugin manager fails to update things like the gamesDB over and over but eventually updates. screenshots below. 

 

Launchbox doesnt show the closing launchbox window anymore when i close launchbox, it just closes and still runs in the background for a few seconds before the process terminates

 

Maybe it's due to the lag but the background images take like 20 seconds to change if they change at all.

 

Also maybe due to the lag the 3d models don't spin smoothly with the mouse. they just stutter really badly when trying to spin them. 

 

 

 

Big Box still shows the closing window unlike LB, but when closing the opening moving/video by clicking a key i just see a black screen for maybe 15 seconds now rather than it jumping straight into big box. also when backing out of certain playlists like "Favorites" the game wheel is hidden until i move up or down, but it still works normally when exiting out of Consoles, Handhelds, Arcade, Computers etc. 

 

 

Edited 19 hours ago by darreldearth

[skizzosjt]

I am not experiencing any slowdown in Big Box and I use a modified Colorful theme that has even more animations in it that the official version that I would think would be prime candidate for testing for slowdown scenarios when for ex just holding down on the wheel and very fast scrolling through the wheel. 

FFMPEG is a step backwards. Issues with audio not playing. And Big Box crashed eventually each time I had this one selected. So, if you are in a PLATFORM WHEEL  (ie selecting SNES or NES or Arcade or Genesis etc) and then quickly move to another selection and back to the one you were just on (before allowing the next selections video to actually start), now said video will play WITH AUDIO. Note when in a GAME WHEEL video's audio plays OK. When I back out to a platform wheel from a game wheel, the platform video does not play audio still. User must do some quick back and forth movement in order to get audio to play for videos in a platform wheel. 

WMP is a step backdwards. Issues with videos not playing at all, just a GRAY screen like it doesn't know how the handle the video format. However, if you quickly move to another selection and back to the one you were just on, now said video will play. Also you can go into the next wheel, say going from platform to game wheel, and then go back to the platform wheel, now said platform video will play ok. So there is some pattern where they do not play upon initial attempt but if the user does some navigation inputs....now they will play OK. This quirk is only happening to me in PLATFORM WHEELS. when in a GAME WHEEL all the videos are playing fine without any funny business needed from the user. 

 

VLC RETURNS!!!!

Honestly this is the one that is working GOOD for me! Video actually plays, audio is OK, and did not crash Big Box like FFMPEG did. So with that said, in it's current state, v13.28 Beta 2 VLC is the winner for me!

 

Again, zero "slow down" with any of the media engine options. I'm on an i9-9900k. a big CPU for it's gen, but is past it's prime. 

Windows 10

RX 6900 XT

32GB 3200MHZ RAM

 

 

 

 

 

When using VLC (didn't test launching games with other video settings) the startup screen and shutdown screen seem to be working OK. 

 

 

 

There is a RETURNING ISSUE with stuff doing EXTRA ANIMATIONS when you exit a game and return to Big Box. I brought this up a few versions back and it was fixed but it is happening again. Old post for reference. *NOTE* this time around the game's video is not getting reset when returning to Big Box, just certain animations are happening when they shouldn't be. 

I tried turning off "Force LB or BB back into focus when the shutdown screen closes" as well as "Automatically close the startup screen when the game window appears" options but this extra animation behavior persists. 

 

 

 

 

STARTUP VIDEOS are still working completely fine for me!

 

 

 

Getting stuck on "Loading Interface..." is  a new/old issue. This WAS happening to me for a while but got much better I believe in the 13.26 and 13.27 range. But this is back to being random, but common occurrence again.  It seems to only do it when either opening LB or going from BB to LB. I've never once had this happen when booting directly into BB or going for LB to BB.

 

 

 

I ran into a situation where my xinput controller (OEM Microsoft One Controller) would no longer work in Big Box after exiting a game. But this seems pretty random and I think there was a BB error that would close BB when this issue did occur. 

 

 

edit: forgot to add that downgrading back to 13.27 is problematic as there are a handful of plugin errors being created by ones being auto created when launching 13.28 beta. so users must delete the plugin folder prior to running 13.27, and add back any custom plugins manually

Edited 13 hours ago by skizzosjt
plugin downgrade issue

[benclau10]

16 hours ago, Vader said:

Just upgraded to beta 13.28 beta 2, and I am having controller issues. When using big box, and I connect a xbox one controller  big box goes wonky. It works initially, but then when I enter a game and then exit, the controller stops working. If i use the critical zone theme, the game wheels will start to scroll uncontrollably and inputs from the controller won;t work, in unified lives, the controller will just stop working. When I exit big box and the controller is connected, I do get an error, but I am not able to get a snip of it because it dissapears as soon as big box is completly shut down.

Also I noticed that the folder structure for SNES games seems to have changed as I lost all my covers. They were in a folder called "front" and "back", but after the update those files are no longer being found.  However, If I put files in the box-front folder, then the images are recognized. This platform seems to be the only one effected.

Same controller problem here.

 

[NMD]

I've downloaded the new beta 2 earlier today, and it's been a bit of a struggle. While I haven't interacted with the videos at all, I've noticed that it takes a lot longer for Launchbox on it's own to load up the box-art/steam banners for games.  Clicking on a different playlist seems to take a little bit to show as well.  Clicking on a game may make it's information appear on the side rather quickly, or it could take minutes or even not work at all.  I wasn't able to pinpoint if there was a trigger that was causing that. I was thinking about rolling back to a previous version, but reading the Plugin Downgrade Issue mentioned by skizzosjt two post above this one, I may try to hold out a little longer for some other fix. 

[TheNewClassics]

Is the new Startup/Shutdown screen also work with BB? It seems like I'm only seeing the new one in LB. It's awesome btw, love the fade out. Very nicely done.

Not a total beta question, but when there is a crash/error, the pop-up in LB that shows the crash log says LB devs are notified of the error. Is that accurate? 

[Rlad]

Have the controller stopping working issue when exiting a game that @Vader mentioned.

Also cant map any buttons in BB settings.

[AstroBob]

Hi Folks, thanks for all the reports, we're digging in to the issues reported with beta-2 and apologies for the issues here.

In addition to @faeran 's request for those experiencing performance issues, one of the biggest things that will help when it comes to reported sluggish performance would be a screen recording of the issue should the impacted performance (even better if you have downgraded, to show how it compares to the previous beta or 13.27).

If you aren't comfortable sharing screen recordings here, feel free to ping a DM to me (@AstroBob) & @faeran.

Thanks all for helping to test these, we're working to get out beta-3 which addresses some of these immediate issues.