theme Unified 1.2

10 minutes ago, FlightRisk said:

I just used VLC at at the 6 second mark of the video I recorded, I took a snapshot. It looks like about 3 or 4 frames of the art sliding down. You can see that the background had faded to black and is starting to return.

OK fair enough, others say they can see it also, I honestly can not. The still above proves it, but as I say in motion I honestly can not see it myself.

The issue is there for 4 frames of animation, it appears that the "transition mask" doesn't fully extend to the top and bottom of the screen so when the game box slides in you see the little bit at the top that isn't covered by the dark mask.

One way to get rid of it would be to force the background to my monitor resolution. Do you know if there is a setting for that?

Well, this isn't a solution, but does confirm the issue. My monitor's native resolution aspect ratio is 1.65:1, so I see letterboxing in BigBox. I don't know how to fix that. I temporarily set my monitor 2 resolutions down (1600x900) which is th 1.77:1 aspect ratio of 1080p. So now EVERYTHING is letterboxed on my monitor, but applications run in that window as if it was my full monitor. When I run BigBox, it doesn't do it anymore. No artifact at the top because my monitor cuts it off.

So the resolution of the fade and background is different from the area used by the routine that drops the boxes in from the top. There must be a setting where the box animation is set to use the 1680x1050 of my monitor, but Bigbox is using 1920x1080. Not sure if I have that in the right order, but it definitely is a mismatch in screen resolution to image resolution.

Ah I see, yeah I know exactly why that happens and you guys already have figured out a lot of the details yourselves.

Big Box always loads the default artwork first before it recognizes the platform name and changes the artwork according to it. So I’ve added a custom fade transition to each View to hide the small time frame where the default artwork gets displayed.

The problem is that the fade only affects the actual theme and not the additional letterboxes that get added when Big Box is forced to 16:9 on a different aspect ratio. Basically what you’re seeing is the box falling from outside the theme/screen into, or rather behind, the fade animation.

Thanks for letting me know that this is an issue. I’ve just the delayed the box art animation a bit, so let me know if that solves it or if I have to delay it even more:

 

 

TextGamesView.xaml

 

 

You can also disable the forced 16:9 ratio by opening the ThemeSettings.xml file inside the Unified folder and change the value of

<Force16X9AspectRatio>true</Force16X9AspectRatio>

from true to false. But that will also break the video borders so you probably don’t want to do that.

@CriticalCid, I think it is perfect now. I can see the 2 sections you adjusted so could play with it myself and report back to you, but now it comes out of the fade and only then the box drops in. So it actually looks kinda cool on a non 16:9 monitor if you can catch it. I looks like it drops in from outside the monitor  It actually enhances the 3D effect. But now it is "above" the background layer for the whole time.

Not that it is very noticeable, but the fade out on the the screens are more abrupt than the fade-ins. Maybe it is even by design. So I am on a platform screen and select it. The transition to black is almost instant. Then it fades in to the game screen. Select that game and it snaps to black and fades in on the details screen. Back out and the fade outs and fade ins are smooth.

What are these themes? They look like a type of XAML app in Visual Studio C#? I will have to look at the API and learn something new.   Where are the docs?

57 minutes ago, FlightRisk said:

@CriticalCid, I think it is perfect now. I can see the 2 sections you adjusted so could play with it myself and report back to you, but now it comes out of the fade and only then the box drops in. So it actually looks kinda cool on a non 16:9 monitor if you can catch it. I looks like it drops in from outside the monitor  It actually enhances the 3D effect. But now it is "above" the background layer for the whole time.

 

What do you mean with always above the background layer? I literally changed absolutely nothing on that regard.

58 minutes ago, FlightRisk said:

Not that it is very noticeable, but the fade out on the the screens are more abrupt than the fade-ins. Maybe it is even by design. So I am on a platform screen and select it. The transition to black is almost instant. Then it fades in to the game screen. Select that game and it snaps to black and fades in on the details screen. Back out and the fade outs and fade ins are smooth.

What are these themes? They look like a type of XAML app in Visual Studio C#? I will have to look at the API and learn something new.   Where are the docs?

That's because there is no custom fade out, only the standard LaunchBox fade out for View changes and there's technically no way for me to add one.

59 minutes ago, FlightRisk said:

What are these themes? They look like a type of XAML app in Visual Studio C#? I will have to look at the API and learn something new.   Where are the docs?

There's a documentation.pdf file in the Themes folder and Jason's tutorials on YouTube

The rest is learning from the code of other themes and Google

@CriticalCidWhat do you mean with always above the background layer? I literally changed absolutely nothing on that regard.

Meaning that now, the screen is fully unfaded when the box starts to drop. So it comes from out of frame at the top, goes over the BigBox logo and settles where it does. The mask was during the fade in, so the box came in from the top, disappeared because the fade was still dark, then made its final bounce when the screen was fully drawn.

Well that was the whole point of my fix lol.

The alternative would be to delay the fade so that the box is already on its place when it starts to fade in. There’s no other way to solve this due to technical limitations. The box will always fall through the letterbox and the fade will always only cover the 16:9 theme section.

Yep, I get it. and either way works. I tend to like it dropping. The only comment I have, and it isn't a complaint, is that 2 screens seems repetitive. The platform screen when you are stopped on a game in the wheel and the game screen when you click on the wheel item are identical other than the menu on the right and a 1 line info bar at the bottom instead of a 2 line scrolling one (and the broken logo). Seems like either the game info screen should be different, or if not, be more efficient to just change the wheel menu for the game menu (play, launch with, etc.) I suppose the fades could be turned off and do just that. Maybe the fade is important to see a transition between the screens.

Well you forget that the Text List View isn’t only used for the Game Info screen. In fact I mainly created it to get used as alternative for the Wheel Views as that was requested by a bunch of people. Also most people skip the Game Info screen anyways.

And like I said I can't turn off the fade as every View needs some time get the specific platform artwork loaded when you open it.

Hi, I would have to ask some questions, I followed step by step the guide of the theme, on how to install it on BIGBOX, the theme is enabled, but some things are missing, which in the video I noticed:
1. the APPLE II platform is all black;
2. in the video each platform, when selected, shows in the background, the image of the console and in a small box (console monitor) preview videos of some game, to me instead shows full screen only the preview video of game without other details.
How can I solve?

41 minutes ago, CapJS said:

Hi, I would have to ask some questions, I followed step by step the guide of the theme, on how to install it on BIGBOX, the theme is enabled, but some things are missing, which in the video I noticed:
1. the APPLE II platform is all black;
2. in the video each platform, when selected, shows in the background, the image of the console and in a small box (console monitor) preview videos of some game, to me instead shows full screen only the preview video of game without other details.
How can I solve?

1. There is APPLE 2 art in the theme folder, so maybe you have yours named differently.

2. Sounds like you don't have any platform videos, they can be downloaded from within Launchbox under the tools menu. There is a checkbox in the bigbox options to fall back to game videos when no platform videos are found, so im guessing that is checked also.

Il 1/4/2018 alle 21:22, CriticalCid ha dichiarato:

Nessun aggiornamento del tema, ho appena sostituito uno screenshot nella descrizione. Scusa se hai ricevuto una notifica di aggiornamento a causa di ciò.

Ho risolto, non avevo scaricato i video delle piattaforme da launchbox, grazie mille.

Love this theme, Amazing work!
Would love it if you got the flip-feature working ?

I can't seem to get the platform artwork to show up on the main platform selection screen. It just shows full screen videos of random games from that platform. I have read over the tips and still have not found a solution. Does anyone have any suggestions? 

 

Thanks

 

1 minute ago, mjh686 said:

I can't seem to get the platform artwork to show up on the main platform selection screen. It just shows full screen videos of random games from that platform. I have read over the tips and still have not found a solution. Does anyone have any suggestions? 

 

Thanks

 

Sounds like you don't have any platform videos, it is videos that show there not artwork and there is a option to default to random videos if you don't have any platform ones. Just go into tools/download platform/playlist videos in Launchbox to grab some.

It may have already been mentioned but there are a lot of posts so I may have missed it. Is there any way to stop the wheel from fading out?

40 minutes ago, spectral said:

It may have already been mentioned but there are a lot of posts so I may have missed it. Is there any way to stop the wheel from fading out?

You will need to edit the "WheelGamesView" files in the theme views directory. Comment out the 'fading wheel' sections.

Hello, great job!
It seems it is only 16:9 mode: is there a way to set the theme in 4:3 screen mode?

 

EDIT: "This theme was designed for 16:9 screens and display resolutions only"
I think it's sad ... and not very logic since most retro games are 4:3...!
I won't use the theme so (but it's still a very good one  )

Edited August 23, 2018 by unik314r

@Jeanvion

Ill put this here as i cant comment on reviews. The platform videos are actually available directly in Launchbox, and will be named correctly already if downloaded from the program.

2 hours ago, neil9000 said:

@Jeanvion

Ill put this here as i cant comment on reviews. The platform videos are actually available directly in Launchbox, and will be named correctly already if downloaded from the program.

@neil9000 I couldn't find any platform video's after launchbox and Unified theme installation. Perhaps I overlooked something?

It was unclear to me, so I'm assuming others have experienced the same.
The advantage of downloading them through emumovies is that you have multiple video choices per platform.

edit: I just read your older comment referencing the Tools option, that would indeed work as well.

Edited October 14, 2018 by Jeanvion

2 minutes ago, Jeanvion said:

@neil9000 I couldn't find any platform video's after launchbox and Unified theme installation. Perhaps I overlooked something?

It was unclear to me, so I'm assuming others have experienced the same.
The advantage of downloading them through emumovies is that you have multiple video choices per platform.

Just go to tools/download platform/playlist videos and every platform has a dropdown with multiple choices of video including the unified ones. You can also use the dropdown at the bottom of the window to prioritize a video type.

That's a great feature! This should be pinned to the original content post.

Is there a way to remove the weather notice?

ahh...I see this has been done in the update.

Edited March 12, 2019 by Nicodemus