I use Launchbox for old DOS strategy games on my main Windows 10 computer with a LCD monitor + mouse, and it is great for that, but find it too "boxy" for CRT/joystick setup. The layouts I see are all much like a file manager, with too many windows and options. I've seen plenty of tutorials/vids about Launchbox/BigBox, and maybe I'm missing something, but seems that you need a higher res monitor and a mouse to get the best out of it.
I find it interesting (though not surprising) that the Launchbox devs created their software for organising old DOS games, but then have a "don't care" attitude about people wanting to use "old tech" like CRTs to play them authentically. Even writing off the CRT users as a "minority" and having no interest in something as simple as resizing options popup windows. I get that developers always want to be working with current tech, but we are talking about retrogaming on CRTs here. Sure, they aren't being made anymore, but there will still be plenty for decades to come. Expecting you to use VNC or attach another monitor just to change settings is unrealistic (esp considering they won't be bothered to test on CRT themselves). Fair enough, they claim to not have many CRT users, now you know why. One understands but it is still a frustratingly narrow viewpoint. Anyway, all you can do is politely ask, make your case, getting angry about it won't help.
C-beats summarised it well here: "We don't actively target such a low resolution because frankly a lot of the content just won't fit and be real legible on the majority of machines using that resolution.", which is why I don't use LB with CRTs, too little fine control over content shown. Then they go on to say "As many others have stated the amount of users touching resolutions THAT low are extremely small.", this is clearly an exaggeration, and only true because CRT users needs are not being met. So it is a snake-eating-tail kind of thing, a self-fulfilling prophesy, a trap professional developers *should* be aware of but so often fall into with eyes wide open while complaining about limited time and needing to service their primary user base.
It is what it is and we are grateful for that. So move on.
For my windows 7 arcade PCs, which are all setup for CRT + arcade cab + joysticks/buttons, I use Attract-Mode instead. It is free and easy to setup, and the default layouts provided automatically scale and work fine in 640x480i and similar resolutions (I use 720x480i mostly). Menus are legible and navigable in low-res with joys/buttons. Simple to setup, but also potentially very powerful if you want to spend the time on it.
One drawback with AM is that there is no built-in GUI layout designer. This makes tweaking layouts for CRTs painful. There is an online GUI designer tool ("AM Builder") which is great but not portable and doesn't work well in 640x480i anyway, so to test I have to download from my main Windows PC, copy to USB and walk it over to my arcade PC as they are "air gapped", not connected to internet. It is often easier to just edit the layout files directly in Notepad (I use Notepad++, which is free and much like Notepad just better).
Am interested in learning more about people's experience with Hyperspin for 15khz CRTs if anyone wants to talk about that. Pics. Layouts. That kind of thing. Also Interested in FEEL, a few people say it is like Mala/MameWAH which I'm familiar with.
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Topic: arcade front end (Read 6347 times)
