LaunchBox 13.28 Beta Thread

[izzishor]

8 hours ago, Drybonz said:

Beta 3... I'm getting a message when I start LB that another instance is running.  I check the task manager and there is, in fact, a LaunchBox task that has been stuck open probably for hours since I closed it this morning.

Yes, it's the Bug i was referring too, when holding B and pressing A, it launches another instance, or invokes your instance of LB, or BB, for some reason.

So if I close BB or LB and I hold B and A, it will relaunch it, and if it's minimized, it will call it to foreground and place it above my emulator.

Couldn't fix it by changing controls so I had to revert to Beta 1.

[skizzosjt]

So I farted around with LB a bit and the scrolling does seem smoother. But then there is a worse part, badges are taking longer to load. The box images are loading fine. But all badge images "pop in" after the fact, especially when scrolling quickly. 

There is some funky business with Big Box like a couple others mentioned (Rlad and izzshor). I didn't get into super detail to try and figure out if it's the exact same trigger for the button(s) causing it because I'm having a hard time getting the frontend to even launch (noted further below).....when I am playing a game windows are seemingly, randomly changing focus to other ones. I play with a controller. I'm sure it's related to same complaints as others. I actually was able to launch a game, play it for maybe 90secs before I randomly get thrown back to Big Box and launch the same game again and start up a new startup. I tried it a handful of times and was playing fighter games so lots of fast inputs going on and each time the same issue occurred.

 

LB loading/launching is as worse as it has ever been. I tried to launch LB 32 times and only TWO of those times did the program actually load and not get stuck on "loading interface". this is unusable! 

 

I was able to do the media engine plugin update. But I noticed no improvements to any issues I previously commented on....so just refer to my previous post. All the same issues exist for me. *With exception I couldn't verify if the extra Big Box animations are still occurring due to the above issue about windows randomly changing focus as playing a game. Said issue makes it impossible to judge that problem with extra animations reoccurring since it's tied to exiting the game and returning to Big Box in a normal way.

 

 

[Drybonz]

4 hours ago, izzishor said:

Yes, it's the Bug i was referring too, when holding B and pressing A, it launches another instance

I wasn't using a controller at the time, so it may be something similar but not exactly the problem you were having.

[MysterNybble]

13 hours ago, Jabb3rJaw said:

Here’s a video of what’s happening. Sometimes it shows the video as a still image?

IMG_1508.mov

Thanks for the video. If you had debug logging enabled, can you share those files (there should be 3 per run) as well? If not, can you turn it on and recreate a short session similar to your video, showing that the videos aren't loading in, then wait on one of them to see how long it takes to load, and then go back to just navigating around (but try to do all this in 30s so the logs don't get too confusing)? At least do this with the VLC video engine selected, and if you have time, repeat the same test (closing and reopening between each test so we can get clean logs). Doing WMP as well might be useful as well, but please close/open Big Box between the tests to create separate log files.

Thanks for helping us out!

[QuirkyKirkTech]

So,,,I was having the duplication/alt tabbing issue with Beta 3, so I downgraded to Beta 2, but now whenever I launch a game via emulator and try to press a button on the controller, I get the following error:

 

App:     Big Box
Version: 13.28-beta-2
Theme:   COLORFUL - Dark
Type:    System.InvalidOperationException
Site:    Void <VerifyAccess>g__ThrowVerifyAccess|7_0()
Source:  WindowsBase

   at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.<VerifyAccess>g__ThrowVerifyAccess|7_0()
   at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.get_DataContext()
   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Windows.Views.MainStartupView.RequestAbort()
   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Windows.BigBox.ViewModels.MainViewModel.LinkCustomDriver(Guid instance)
   at RandomProxyList.SortEditableAllocator(Object, Guid instance, RandomProxyList)
   at Unbroken.LaunchBox.Windows.BigBox.ViewModels.MainViewModel.<>c__DisplayClass267_1.DistributeAttachedState()
   at System.Threading.Thread.StartHelper.Callback(Object state)
   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
--- End of stack trace from previous location ---
   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)

Recent Log:

   4:38:13 PM Exception

I can't downgrade any further than beta 2, otherwise I get a bunch of bad .dll errors on booting.  Any advice at this point would be appreciated, I'm basically unable to use the software right now.

[QuirkyKirkTech]

On 7/1/2026 at 11:19 AM, izzishor said:

Beta 3 is Very snappy, and nice, only problem I'm having is when I press A+B at the same time it brings BB over my Retroarch, and I have no idea why, with Beta 1 and 2 I didn't have this issue? Will downgrade, test and see, but it's weird.

Otherwise thanks for all the work.

Im having the same issue if I press the B button in game for any emulator.

[skizzosjt]

gave another quick bit of testing tonight to see if I could create the returning to Big Box focus issue when using a controller using same triggers that others mentioned. so it is very close for me but not exactly the same as mentioned by izzishor and rlad. I can simply press B twice and it occurs on the 2nd press! 

I am using Startup/Shutdown screens and I am using VLC media engine.....let's see if same thing happens with the other two....yup....doesn't matter what media engine the user selects. Big Box is stealing focus from the game window which makes the Startup Screen window close at the same time. Note I don't actually ever get to see the Shutdown window when this issue occurs

"ONLY" took four attempts to get LB to launch and NOT get stuck on "Loading interface" tonight....that's still three too many! But at least I could do some testing without spending 30+ mins just trying to launch the frontend. However when I tried to get back to LB for a 2nd time tonight it took 5 attempts to get it to load. this is total facepalm kinda territory, the program is really unusable like this! needing to force close it and try again so often is not a good experience. 

So with that said I can confirm there are still animations that are getting triggered that should not be when exiting a game and returning to Big Box in a normal fashion. ie exiting the game as intended and having the Shutdown Screen come up and return to Big Box. I have stuff like box images, cart images, disc images and the short animate (change position) that should only happen upon entering the view, but now they occur again. yet several other animations do not trigger

Please note the extra animations that are occurring. The obvious ones are the box and cart image are doing their animation when they should not be.....but there is one harder to see. For games that have a 5 star rating I have given some elements animations where they change color. My idea here was I wanted 5 star games to have the stars "flash" so they are supposed to turn white before fading back to gold/yellow. That animation is wrongly happening when returning to Big Box as well!

 

 

 

[skizzosjt]

2 minutes ago, QuirkyKirkTech said:

Im having the same issue if I press the B button in game for any emulator.

to clarify further what I tested with different emulators and storefront (Steam) games. the issue can occur for any game from what I can tell. it's not just emulator/ROM dependent. 

[QuirkyKirkTech]

3 minutes ago, skizzosjt said:

to clarify further what I tested with different emulators and storefront (Steam) games. the issue can occur for any game from what I can tell. it's not just emulator/ROM dependent. 

 

5 minutes ago, skizzosjt said:

gave another quick bit of testing tonight to see if I could create the returning to Big Box focus issue when using a controller using same triggers that others mentioned. so it is very close for me but not exactly the same as mentioned by izzishor and rlad. I can simply press B twice and it occurs on the 2nd press! 

I am using Startup/Shutdown screens and I am using VLC media engine.....let's see if same thing happens with the other two....yup....doesn't matter what media engine the user selects. Big Box is stealing focus from the game window which makes the Startup Screen window close at the same time. Note I don't actually ever get to see the Shutdown window when this issue occurs

"ONLY" took four attempts to get LB to launch and NOT get stuck on "Loading interface" tonight....that's still three too many! But at least I could do some testing without spending 30+ mins just trying to launch the frontend. However when I tried to get back to LB for a 2nd time tonight it took 5 attempts to get it to load. this is total facepalm kinda territory, the program is really unusable like this! needing to force close it and try again so often is not a good experience. 

So with that said I can confirm there are still animations that are getting triggered that should not be when exiting a game and returning to Big Box in a normal fashion. ie exiting the game as intended and having the Shutdown Screen come up and return to Big Box. I have stuff like box images, cart images, disc images and the short animate (change position) that should only happen upon entering the view, but now they occur again. yet several other animations do not trigger

Please note the extra animations that are occurring. The obvious ones are the box and cart image are doing their animation when they should not be.....but there is one harder to see. For games that have a 5 star rating I have given some elements animations where they change color. My idea here was I wanted 5 star games to have the stars "flash" so they are supposed to turn white before fading back to gold/yellow. That animation is wrongly happening when returning to Big Box as well!

 

 

 

Can confirm, does the same on steam games for me as well, and just like you its a second B press that triggers it.  Been a rough go of it for bigbox recently for me between crashes and now this lol

[skizzosjt]

51 minutes ago, QuirkyKirkTech said:

I can't downgrade any further than beta 2, otherwise I get a bunch of bad .dll errors on booting.  Any advice at this point would be appreciated, I'm basically unable to use the software right now.

you should still have the latest stable release 13.27 in your "updates" directory. I believe the update sequence works in a way that forces users to download the latest stable release before they download a beta to prevent exact what you describe.

or is there any chance the .dlls you speak are plugin related? they included some new plugins in the beta and when I tried to downgrade to 13.27 I got errors at launch regarding them and had to get rid of said new plugins to get LB to boot. if this is the case for you and you have custom plugins then copy your plugin directory somewhere safe like your desktop. then nuke the plugin folder in the LaunchBox directory. it will be rebuilt on launch and you can then add back any of your custom plugins from the one you saved onto your desktop

[QuirkyKirkTech]

I am able to prevent the loss of focus on beta 3 by disabling the startup screen entirely.  For now this will do.