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WoodPanels 4.1.0 alpha

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About This File

WoodPanels has the old school retro feel of playing games on an old TV in a room with bad, green carpeting, but golden wooden paneled walls.  The video game console or platform appears above or beside the television to match that look and feel.  It is paired with a set of 8-bit fonts to complete the experience.

  • Supports Ultrawide 21:9, Widescreen 16:9, and Fullscreen 4:3 aspect ratios.
  • Playlist support!  Watch the video frame and video size dynamically change to match the selected platform and game.
  • Unique views for 53 platforms with game videos, game 3D/2D box art, and game cart images.
  • Consoles are paired with a TV from the same decade they were released.  PCs likewise are paired with a monitor or setup from the same era.
  • "Wall View" for looking at game boxes on shelves is accompanied by the platform logo and image of the original console packaging.

Trailer:

Installation and Setup Instructions:

Spoiler

Unzip in LaunchBox/Themes/WoodPanels. In BigBox under Options>Views>Theme> choose "WoodPanels"
1. To ensure you're viewing the image of the console and TV alongside the game list, go into the BigBox Menu (hit Esc on your keyboard or back on your controller) and select "View Platforms".
2. To view the carousel of devices in your platform view, go into Options>Views>Platform List View> and select "Platform Wheel 1".
3. Lastly, to make sure you keep this view the next time you start BigBox, go into Options>Views>Default Startup View> and select "Platforms".
4. For N64, SNES, Jaguar, Genesis, Sega 32X, Atari 5200, and NeoGeo, you need to download the game cart images AND you need to set your LaunchBox settings so your fallback images are disabled for this, otherwise when you have a missing game cart image it will pull something else and look...bad.  LaunchBox Options>Media>Cart Front Priorities>Uncheck all but "Cart - Front"
5. To enable a the "Wall View", change BigBox Options>Views>Games List View>Wall View.  Switch it back to "Text List with Details" if you decide to go back.

To replace the background image (in case you don't literally want wood panels), just replace the png with your desired 1080p background image (png file) under the directory:
\LaunchBox\Themes\WoodPanels\Media\Background\

Startup Video:

Spoiler

This is a startup video I created for my theme.  It features a logo for "Nescade" which is what I call my multi-emulator PC, as it sits inside of an old Nintendo's shell.  I commissioned Rushjet1 a while back to compose an original piece of 8-bit music specifically for this video.  Hope you all enjoy it!

Instructions for use: Place video file in the LaunchBox folder under /Videos/Startup/

List of Supported Platforms:

Spoiler
  • 3DO Interactive Multiplayer
  • Arcade*
  • Atari 2600
  • Atari 5200
  • Atari 7800
  • Atari Jaguar (with cart images)
  • Atari Lynx
  • ColecoVision
  • Commodore 64
  • Commodore Amiga
  • GCE Vectrex
  • Magnavox Odyssey 2
  • Microsoft MSX
  • Microsoft MSX2
  • Microsoft Xbox
  • Microsoft Xbox 360
  • MS-DOS
  • NEC TurboGrafx-16
  • NeoGeo (with cart images)
  • Nintendo 3DS
  • Nintendo 64 (with cart images)
  • Nintendo DS
  • Nintendo Entertainment System
  • Nintendo Famicom Disk System*
  • Nintendo Game Boy
  • Nintendo Game Boy Advance
  • Nintendo Game Boy Color*
  • Nintendo GameCube
  • Nintendo Switch
  • Nintendo Virtual Boy
  • Nintendo Wii
  • Nintendo Wii U
  • Nokia N-Gage
  • OpenBOR*
  • Sega 32X (with cart images)
  • Sega CD
  • Sega Dreamcast
  • Sega Game Gear
  • Sega Genesis (with cart images)
  • Sega Master System
  • Sega Saturn
  • Sinclair ZX Spectrum
  • SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color
  • Sony Playstation
  • Sony Playstation 2
  • Sony Playstation 3
  • Sony Playstation 4
  • Sony Playstation Vita
  • Sony PSP
  • Super Nintendo Entertainment System (with cart images)
  • Windows
  • WonderSwan
  • WonderSwan Color

*upscaled/remastered in 4K

Theme was created using the COMMUNITY Theme Creator by @y2guru

Edited by BMovieBen
added support for ultrawide and fullscreen aspect ratios and increased number of supported platforms


What's New in Version 4.1.0 alpha   See changelog

Released

Remastered/replaced all the handheld system frames to 4K resolution:

  • Atari Lynx
  • Nintendo 3DS
  • Nintendo DS
  • Nintendo Switch
  • Nintendo Game Boy
  • Nintendo Game Boy Advance
  • Nintendo Game Boy Color
  • Nintendo Switch
  • Nintendo Virtual Boy
  • Nokia N-Gage
  • Sega Game Gear
  • SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color
  • Sony Playstation Vita
  • Sony PSP
  • WonderSwan
  • WonderSwan Color

Still working on remastering the images of the boxes and the devices in PlatformWheel2.
Got the new metadata area in a good place on TextGamesView.
Made some fixes to 21:9 Openbor and Arcade marquee placement.
Uploaded some new screenshots of the latest progress.

  • Like 17
  • Thanks 2
  • Game On 1

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2 hours ago, retrogamer459 said:

Excited for the version with additional info!  How close do you suspect you are to releasing it?  My project is coming along rather nicely and I think this will be the finishing touch to bring it all together.  3d printing a case to merge my external hdd with my mini pc now.

It's a lot of work to add that, believe it or not.  Can you give me a prioritized list of platforms/consoles?  I can get a version out faster if I don't have to do every single platform.

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3 hours ago, retrogamer459 said:

Excited for the version with additional info!  How close do you suspect you are to releasing it?  My project is coming along rather nicely and I think this will be the finishing touch to bring it all together.  3d printing a case to merge my external hdd with my mini pc now.

Is adding it to the game list view platform specific?

I have pretty much every system on my build. Most of them arent supported by the theme and show up as the nes.

 

Nes

Snes

N64

Gamecube

Gameboy

Wii

Playstation

Playstation 2

Sega genesis

 

Im not really in a rush. But if you decide that you dont want to work on it and care to share files maybe i can teach myself how to do the rest of the platforms

 

Thanks for putting so much effort into this!  I greatly appreciate it. This is my dream build finally getting away from sbc like rpi

Edited by retrogamer459
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On 1/25/2021 at 12:20 PM, retrogamer459 said:

Is adding it to the game list view platform specific?

Unfortunately the way I set it up, it is platform specific.  I treated each platform as special and unique so I could modify the width of the gameslist and size/placement of the box art and have more freedom overall with the look.  Making a universal change means making that change one at a time for every supported platform as a result (the tradeoff!)

You'll probably be ready to go before I get to this.  Attached to this post are the COMMUNITY creator project files for what I started (only modified the default gameslist view).  If you need any PSD source files for the TVs or Consoles let me know, I can send you a dropbox link.

WoodPanels Meta (in progress) COMMUNITY project files.zip

Update 2/25/2021: After looking into this some more, I have decided I will not be pursuing adding the metadata to the theme proper.  I'd have to add it one at a time to each platform, which is a lot of work, and it's not something I personally prefer with this theme.  You can still use the project files attached to extend the theme yourselves using the COMMUNITY theme editor, though!  Let me know if you have questions about the theme and I'll do my best to answer them.

Edited by BMovieBen
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I really enjoy this theme, it suits my lounge HTPC perfectly!

Will there be any further updates made to this theme post 3.3.0? Nintendo Switch emulation is getting better all the time, could we see a Switch theme added soon to this pack? :)

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15 hours ago, russticles said:

I really enjoy this theme, it suits my lounge HTPC perfectly!

Will there be any further updates made to this theme post 3.3.0? Nintendo Switch emulation is getting better all the time, could we see a Switch theme added soon to this pack? :)

Sure I can add the Switch. Give me a few days to get to it. Any other systems you need while I'm in there?

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4 hours ago, BMovieBen said:

Sure I can add the Switch. Give me a few days to get to it. Any other systems you need while I'm in there?

Wow, awesome!

No that's pretty much the only major system I can think of I'd like included. :)

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On 4/7/2021 at 7:30 PM, russticles said:

Wow, awesome!

No that's pretty much the only major system I can think of I'd like included. :)

Nintendo Switch has been added to the latest version, please take a look.  It will take some time before it makes its way into the the Big Box theme gallery.

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On 4/9/2021 at 12:40 PM, BMovieBen said:

Nintendo Switch has been added to the latest version, please take a look.  It will take some time before it makes its way into the the Big Box theme gallery.

Thank you so much!

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How about TurboGrafx-CD? I've been poking at things to get it added and have the console image showing up in the wheel and in the game list, but after selecting the platform it defaults to the NES images. I made a copy of the TG16 device view image and named it NEC TurboGrafx-CD.png, but I don't know how to get the TV to be a 90s TV (so my TG-16 image is floating an inch above the TV, heh). I was trying to find where it got the console information so it'd know it was a 90s console but I was lost looking at the XAML files trying to find that info.

Panasonic 3DO would be nice as well. Thanks for a great theme!

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9 minutes ago, midas said:

How about TurboGrafx-CD? I've been poking at things to get it added and have the console image showing up in the wheel and in the game list, but after selecting the platform it defaults to the NES images. I made a copy of the TG16 device view image and named it NEC TurboGrafx-CD.png, but I don't know how to get the TV to be a 90s TV (so my TG-16 image is floating an inch above the TV, heh). I was trying to find where it got the console information so it'd know it was a 90s console but I was lost looking at the XAML files trying to find that info.

Panasonic 3DO would be nice as well. Thanks for a great theme!

If you have a TurboGrafx CD system you can take a high quality photo of at that flat front view I'd be happy to add support for it in the theme. I just can't find any on the web and I don't own one myself. Took quite a bit of photoshopping just to get the TG16 image to work.

As for editing it, you should be able to copy the TG16 view over quite easily if you use the Community Theme Creator (link in the description for the theme up top).

And as far as the alternate image for the 3DO, I'll edit the image to fit if you can find a source, like above.

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48 minutes ago, BMovieBen said:

If you have a TurboGrafx CD system you can take a high quality photo of at that flat front view I'd be happy to add support for it in the theme. I just can't find any on the web and I don't own one myself. Took quite a bit of photoshopping just to get the TG16 image to work.

As for editing it, you should be able to copy the TG16 view over quite easily if you use the Community Theme Creator (link in the description for the theme up top).

And as far as the alternate image for the 3DO, I'll edit the image to fit if you can find a source, like above.

How do I copy the view over? That's what I was trying to do. I did download the theme creator and tried to open the Woodpanel theme, but nothing showed up. I think copying the view is the easiest, but I couldn't figure out what it was I needed to copy.

EDIT: I got it to load in the creator--I wasn't aware there was a different theme download for such things (I'd just copied it over from Launchbox), but I still don't see how to do what I want to do. If I make a change to a TV it makes it the default TV for all platforms, so I'd rather just copy/paste something in the config file if possible.

Edited by midas
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On 4/24/2022 at 10:43 AM, SeerOfChaos said:

Are you still supporting this theme anymore?  Any chance of adding NDS and 3DS?

Been busy lately but I haven't forgotten you. I will add those when I get some time. 

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3 minutes ago, BMovieBen said:

Been busy lately but I haven't forgotten you. I will add those when I get some time. 

Thanks!!!!  GREATLY Appreciated!!  Lol I love your theme so much I hid them both to make it look nicer xD.  So glad you'll do them!  Thank you thank you ^_^.

 

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Hi,

I am fairly new into using BigBox, but I have been planning on having a retro collection for a really long time and after checking a couple of themes, this one definitely has the best 80s-90s vibe, I really love it. 

I am just missing a couple of small stuff, I am not sure if they're just matter of settings or it's missing from the theme.

1. It would be really nice to see the platform specs in the platform choosing menu.

2. I would like to  be able to open game manuals at the game menu and maybe description of the game would be nice if I could add it.

 

Are these feasible somehow?

Otherwise, I'm sure I'm keeping this theme, it's the best one around. :) Thank you for designing it!

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On 5/23/2022 at 4:49 AM, Gulash said:

1. It would be really nice to see the platform specs in the platform choosing menu.

First - glad you like the theme, and thank you! 

On the platform "wheel" view, what kind of specs were you looking to see?  Where would you put them, out of curiosity? 

On 5/23/2022 at 4:49 AM, Gulash said:

2. I would like to  be able to open game manuals at the game menu and maybe description of the game would be nice if I could add it.

On the games list view, I purposefully kept it pretty clean, which meant dropping things like a description of the game.  I do not plan to add it to this theme.  As for the game manuals, I'm not sure if it's possible to view those through BigBox.

In general, if you use the Community theme creator, and use my project files, you can add/remove/change whatever you like or don't like about the theme.

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On 4/24/2022 at 10:43 AM, SeerOfChaos said:

Are you still supporting this theme anymore?  Any chance of adding NDS and 3DS?

As promised (yes I know I took over a month), I've added support for Nintendo DS and 3DS with version 3.7.0, which is downloadable here on the site.  I will publish it to BigBox proper at a later time.  Please let me know if you see issues; getting the dual screens working for the DSes was pretty tricky.

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40 minutes ago, BMovieBen said:

As promised (yes I know I took over a month), I've added support for Nintendo DS and 3DS with version 3.7.0, which is downloadable here on the site.  I will publish it to BigBox proper at a later time.  Please let me know if you see issues; getting the dual screens working for the DSes was pretty tricky.

!!! AWESOME YOU ARE THE BEST <3!!! Sorry really love your theme!  After you take a long deserved break could you do Wii U next! 

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I  don't know if you take suggestions, it might not even be possible.  But have you considered making the top right load Clear Logos, instead of enlarged text?  Then if the clear logo doesn't exist just load enlarged text instead.  Just an idea ^_^.  I apologize if I'm suggesting something that looked bad or isn't possible xD.

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No it's possible to do the clear logo. Not sure about the fallback to text though. It's a good idea, I just think I'm done making significant changes to WoodPanels at this point. It's a pain to make changes to every platform with the way I developed it. Maybe I'll try with a second theme!

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On 6/4/2022 at 11:33 PM, BMovieBen said:

No it's possible to do the clear logo. Not sure about the fallback to text though. It's a good idea, I just think I'm done making significant changes to WoodPanels at this point. It's a pain to make changes to every platform with the way I developed it. Maybe I'll try with a second theme!

Awwwl that's a shame, I rather love this theme ^_^.  

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I'm a noob and am using your theme to setup LaunchBox/BigBox for the first time. One thing I just realized was that each console has hundreds or thousands of games...which can be visually overwhelming.

By default, the WoodPanels installation displays the platform (with console graphics) - and then the full games listing (with television sets/cartridge graphics).

But I'd also like some way to display "short-listed" games (for example...sports, wrestling, racing, and general favorites).

I'm currently researching playlists and platform categories in LaunchBox.
But I'm not sure...is the WoodPanels theme actually compatible with these kinds of customizations?

I can imagine potential problems such as:
- If a "short-list" has games from different platforms...will they be displayed properly in a single listing?
- If a playlist is added to the startup platform view...how can I set the icon/graphic?

I'm hoping @BMovieBen can point me in the right direction - or offer his best method of displaying such "short lists" in the WoodPanels theme.

Again, I'm a noob and forgive me if I'm missing something obvious!

=======

EDIT 1 - UPDATE AFTER TESTING PLAYLIST IN WOODTHEMES:

I just tested creating a playlist with an N64 game.
I checked the option to "include this playlist with platforms".

The playlist appeared when the WoodPanels theme loaded, alongside the console wheel.
The problem is that when I enter the playlist, the television displayed is the one associated with NES - and the video preview does not work.

So I guess this means playlists are not easily compatible with WoodPanels?

Edited by FamShoppa
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5 hours ago, FamShoppa said:

The problem is that when I enter the playlist, the television displayed is the one associated with NES - and the video preview does not work.

So I guess this means playlists are not easily compatible with WoodPanels?

Hey there...so evidently some updates to BigBox caused my theme to break on the 'playlist' views.  I can look into it, but to be honest, I only included really basic support for Playlists because I had to in order to submit it for inclusion in BigBox.  The WoodPanels theme, the way it was built...is not dynamic.  That was done due to the limitations of the theme creator application at the time and in the interest of speed and performance in BigBox.

Here's what it used to look like before it broke.  I couldn't get the video to dynamically resize per platform, so it's just the 80s TV with no platform image.  If you're still interested I can try and get this working again.  That said, I have been working a while on a new theme that is basically a WoodPanels 2.0, and is dynamic and will do exactly what you're looking to achieve, but I'm again running into performance issues.  It's funny timing actually, I'm working with y2guru this week to try and get some help for that.  So you could wait for that if you want instead.  It looks a little different and doesn't use the wood panel background by default but I'll include it as an alternate just in case folks want it back.

image.thumb.jpeg.447a013453b42c6118c334292bd73389.jpeg

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