X-bEnCH - The Amiga Game Launcher (Whdload, exe, ..) and more official topic.

[mahen]

Also, I was wondering why there is a 2-3 seconds delay when selecting a game, during which the XBench screen freezes, then the loading animation appears and afterwards the whdload popup. Just wondering if that's meant to be this way. (seemed I only felt this third part with TinyLauncher)
(my setup : MiST, Minimig AGA)

[JimNeray]

Originally Posted by torturedutopian

Hi Jim ! I finally settled with XBench for my Amiga arcade cabinet :-) I'm pretty happy with it. Screenshots are a very very nice addition !

Happy to know this

Originally Posted by torturedutopian

1) when I start XBench from the WB and close it, it frequently crashes the whole system (blank screen), is that normal ?

Absolutely not. Are you using the last release of xb installed as a clean new installation ? In the setup where do you ask xb to go after exiting ? "Nowhere" is the best option in your case.

Originally Posted by torturedutopian

2) as you suggested a few years ago on this very thread, I started it from the startup sequence by replacing the LoadWB command by X-Bench. But is it possible to start it earlier in the Startup-sequence to make things faster ?

You can probably remove some lines in your startup-sequence but this will not really make things faster. I'll give a look to add a perfect lighted as possible startup-sequence for a next release.

Originally Posted by torturedutopian

Also, I was wondering why there is a 2-3 seconds delay when selecting a game, during which the XBench screen freezes, then the loading animation appears and afterwards the whdload popup. Just wondering if that's meant to be this way. (seemed I only felt this third part with TinyLauncher)
(my setup : MiST, Minimig AGA)

I am actually working on all this speed issue and slowness with xb. Xb do a lot of things at the time you describe after launching a game (editing the last games started list, checking if this game is allready in the top list if not adding it else increment the number of time this game was started, trying to find all the tooltypes of the slave that you've jut launched and creating the as possible perfect command line to start your game, writing a lot of things in temp files like where you was before launching your game to come back at the same point after leaving the game, etc etc).

From yesterday to today i've tried to make something as complete as i want it so i've added a lot of features and options to be ok for the most people that can use it. Today xb is not perfect but it has enough functions and cool things included to be ok for a 1.x release. So i've released the 1.00 X-Mas prerelease. At this point i'm rewriting all that i can rewrite to get the best performance possible. I'll make many internals releases for registered users first (and then to public when stability will be confirmed) to fix all slowness in X-bEnCh and add some hundreds of games pictures (screenshots) and probably some minors new features to finally release what i think X-bEnCh 1.xx must be.

And when X-bEnCh 1.xx will be as perfect as i want it ... eyh ... Maybe there will be time to work on xb 2.xx. Yes i like never ending project

edit : Just updated the first post of this thread.

[mahen]

Very nice, thanks for your complete & kind reply :-)

As for the crash, I'll investigate. Meanwhile I moved it to my startup-sequence (and chose "exit to wb").

BTW, is it safe to turn off the Amiga when XB is running ? (are there some files open in write mode)

I remember I had some partitions corruptions in Tiny Launcher when some games crashed before getting back to the launcher...

Thanks for the nice work :-) I'm pretty sure I'll settle with XB in the long run now !

BTW I just figured out I registered a few years ago but I never used it until now

[mahen]

Oh, by the way, there are a few English mistakes in the software. Like "entrys" instead of "entries" Adds to the charm !

[mahen]

@Jim : I managed to crash XB when starting a game that was on a device that was not mounted (but it was still in a playlist). I got a blue screen then it hanged

[JimNeray]

Originally Posted by torturedutopian

BTW, is it safe to turn off the Amiga when XB is running ? (are there some files open in write mode)

You can switch off the migy when xb is doing nothing. For example when the launcher is displayed on the screen but you're not doing anything since some seconds.

Originally Posted by torturedutopian

@Jim : I managed to crash XB when starting a game that was on a device that was not mounted (but it was still in a playlist). I got a blue screen then it hanged

Thanx for this return. I'll give a look at this point.

Originally Posted by torturedutopian

Oh, by the way, there are a few English mistakes in the software. Like "entrys" instead of "entries" Adds to the charm !

I must admit that my english skill is really really ... limited ...

[JimNeray]

Originally Posted by rsn8887

But it won't merge the lists?

The format of the list files allows to merge lists but the function has not yet been officially implemented. While waiting for an official solution integrated to xbench you have a cool tool developed by Daniel Müssener (Thanx Dude ^^) on Aminet which will allow you to create merged lists for xbench and who's working faster than the xbench scan feature: http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/xbenchlist

[Greenman]

Hi, I have a stock Amiga 1200, no accelerators. I have installed Xbench 1.00 and created the GetMouseInput script in place of my Startup-sequence (so that if I hold right mouse button it loads Xbench, if I don't it loads the CWB version of the Startup-sequence now called workbench). That all seems to work well, it loads CWB if I don't press anything and if I hold right mouse button it loads xinit.exe and I get the nag screen and then the main Xbench menu. I initially tried going straight to launchers and it just went to loading and then back to just the main menu. I then went to setup and created some WHDload game lists by scanning my drives (CF card in and IDE converter). It found some games (although I think only on 1 of the drives) and now when I go to Launchers it loads and then goes to the red and black "Software failure - press left mouse button" screen. What am I doing wrong do you think? I'm sure it's definitely user error but if you can point me in the right direction that would be great.

Thanks!

[Greenman]

Ok small bit of progress! I turns out when I scanned my second partition with the majority of my games on it it returned 0 results (maybe it was too big a list?). Anyway it left a reference to this second list in the launchers file but it didn't create a file for the list it was referencing. So I disabled the second list and was then able to get to the Launchers screen. I selected Shadow Warriors randomly from the list, it went to loading shadow warriors, then to the HDLoad splash screen and then a black screen and nothing more. The floppy continued to click but no HDD led and eventually I turned it off and tried again. Now when I go to Launchers even after scanning a new directory and having it find more games the only game that shows in the list is Shadow Warriors (and it still doesn't load). If someone could offer some assistance that would be very much appreciated.

[JimNeray]

Hello Greenman.

The first time that you use the launcher it's going back to the menu because there is no game lists. This is what happen when you try to use the launcher before scanning your hd.

For your actual issue:

Maybe i'm wrong but i think that you only have one game in your list because if you haven't change this in the setup, xbench launcher start with the top list. So if you've only launched one game this is the only one that will be in your toplist. You can switch listings using Function keys or Tabulation.

If you see the whdload splash screen your issue seem to not come from xbench. Does this game is ok from workbench ? After a small time xbench switch the screen palette to black and if a requester opened after to ask you about some file or issue you will not see it. Check if thats ok from workbench and if shadow warriors can be started from workbench tell me back. We will find where is the problem

[apex]

Hello Jim,
there is still no option for the WHDLoad Splashscreen were you can change options. Does it will come?

[JimNeray]

Originally Posted by apex

Hello Jim,
there is still no option for the WHDLoad Splashscreen were you can change options. Does it will come?

I does'nt forget that .. This is in the todo list and i will try to fix that for the 1.1 release

[apex]

Happy to read this. Hopefully 1.1 will not come December 2017.

[JimNeray]

yuh .... mmm ...

hope too ...

[Greenman]

Hi Jim,

I've since bought an accelerator card as I was hoping I could get away with just running on stock hardware with your loader as I was thinking that would mean that there wasn't so much memory being burned by workbench. I think WHDload still takes as much memory this way though so an accelerator is the way to go. So now all the games work ok straight from workbench by it still just goes to a black screen with the harddisk light lit after the loading screen on Xbench?

*** Update ***
Ok I think my CF card may have been corrupted as the games now aren't loading in WB either. I'll give up for a bit and just start again sticking to CWB now I have the accelerator!

[RichMK]

Small bug, took me a long time to find the problem :-)

Cannot have a directory called " # ". causes a guru when scanning launchers in the setup panel..

I had my games in folders like this:

#
A
B
C
..etc.......

Looking forward to next version

[Amiga1992]

"#" is part of the wildcard denomination (#?) in Amiga DOS, you shouldn't name anything # just in case, I am not surprised you have problems.
See what happens when I make a filename called "#"


Name that folder "0-9" and be done with it.

[RichMK]

Originally Posted by Akira

"#" is part of the wildcard denomination (#?) in Amiga DOS, you shouldn't name anything # just in case, I am not surprised you have problems.
See what happens when I make a filename called "#"


Name that folder "0-9" and be done with it.

Yep, I didn't realise it was that causing the issue. I thought I had too many files/directories or something causing the guru. As above though, I did rename it to a number and all was good

[Amiga1992]

Hi everyone, is this project dead? Hasn't been updated in forever.

Anyway, I just tried it out, and am running into problems.

Everything was working fine, until I scanned and added my WHDLoad collection to it.

Does it have a limit? One folder had like 1700 (!) games, another had like 600, something like that.

Now it guru's after loading the nag screen (I set it to load LAUNCHERS first so that must be crashing), and I found no solution (I even erased the list files) other than erasing everything and re-installing the thing.

[Amiga1992]

Well that is shitty, after I get that error, nothing I tried, even copying the original archive prefs files over to my installation, helps it get fixed. I have to reinstall the whole thing again or it gurus after the nag screen.

Also this time I only added a 800+ games directory and it still failed. So there has to be some sort of limit that this program is shitting on. What is it? And why is there a limit? WHDLoad collection is well over 3000 games and demos, we should be able to have them all there.

It's weird because there's this:

Originally Posted by JimNeray

- Now the subdirectorys level scan is unlimited.
- Now listings are of real unlimited size.

Was it really tested that unlimited work? Or what issue could I be running into?