Lambda beta 1.1.2

On 5/9/2020 at 4:25 PM, shadowfire said:

I have found a workaround for the VLC video aspect issue which enforces a 16:9 video container. So 16:9 letterboxing is removed but  instead 4:3 are now pillarboxed. Maybe that's more acceptable?

I'm kind of interested in feedback on this, particularity if anyone cares about the left/right margin of 4:3 videos (pillarboxing) as a consequence. Also since I've moved code around and I don't have many (4:3) videos (and WMP) maybe someone wants to volunteer as a tester before I do before an update to the release?

I will keep the WMP selected with no black bars (horizontal or vertical) with the xaml tweak from previous posts.

If I had to decide between bars, I would rather have the horizontal ones over the pillars.

I can test your revised theme if you want.

5 hours ago, shadowfire said:

I'm kind of interested in feedback on this, particularity if anyone cares about the left/right margin of 4:3 videos (pillarboxing) as a consequence. Also since I've moved code around and I don't have many (4:3) videos (and WMP) maybe someone wants to volunteer as a tester before I do before an update to the release?

Since I'm using WMP, I don't have any issues with 4:3 and 16:9 videos. I did, however, run into something interesting with vertically-oriented videos. The video ends up taking almost all the real estate in the game details screen, probably because I deleted the height properties in the appropriate xaml file. I don't hate it, but there's so much I can't see when a vertical video snap is playing. This is a tricky one.

27 minutes ago, tycho1974 said:

Since I'm using WMP, I don't have any issues with 4:3 and 16:9 videos. I did, however, run into something interesting with vertically-oriented videos. The video ends up taking almost all the real estate in the game details screen, probably because I deleted the height properties in the appropriate xaml file. I don't hate it, but there's so much I can't see when a vertical video snap is playing. This is a tricky one.

The xaml could have an additional height property that maxes it at a certain value, so for vertical videos it would not take all the sidebar. 

14 hours ago, Kondorito said:

The xaml could have an additional height property that maxes it at a certain value, so for vertical videos it would not take all the sidebar. 

( @tycho1974 ) I would recommend using the MaxHeight property since that would not mess with scaling when you want to to reduce the width of the Details panel. Set it either on the video control or one of it's containers should do the trick.

Note that my workaround will apply to both VLC and WMP since the theme is not aware which back-end is used.

Btw. can someone provide me with a vertically-oriented video so I can test this? I don't have an EmuMovies account...

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by shadowfire

5 hours ago, shadowfire said:

( @tycho1974 ) I would recommend using the MaxHeight property since that would not mess with scaling when you want to to reduce the width of the Details panel. Set it either on the video control or one of it's containers should do the trick.

I would love to try that, but the entirety of my coding knowledge tops out at a "deleting stuff line by line and testing until it works and hope it doesn't break anything" sort of reverse engineering. If anyone here could post a code snippet, I'd be more than happy to test it out.

Here are a couple vertical videos for you:

6 hours ago, tycho1974 said:

I would love to try that, but the entirety of my coding knowledge tops out at a "deleting stuff line by line and testing until it works and hope it doesn't break anything" sort of reverse engineering. If anyone here could post a code snippet, I'd be more than happy to test it out.

Not 100% sure if this will also work with WMP (as I mentioned mine is broken so I can only test VLC for now) but you can try adding MaxHeight to your already modified VideoControls line in GameDetails.xaml like this: 

<controls:VideoControl x:Name="VideoControl" Background="{StaticResource LD_VideoBackgroundBrush}" Visibility="{Binding VideoVisibility}" MaxHeight="500" Margin="0,-10,0,5"/>

The value of 500 is just a suggestion, you may want to tweak it depending on your preferred window size. Also this will most likely pillarbox your vertical videos anyway because reducing height also means reducing width.

Quote

Here are a couple vertical videos for you

Thanks, appreciated  Note that the workaround I'm working on will have a fixed aspect ratio but I'll make it relatively easy to change the default to another one (e.g. 16:9, 4:3 or 3:4 vertical) 

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by shadowfire

4 hours ago, shadowfire said:

Not 100% sure if this will also work with WMP (as I mentioned mine is broken so I can only test VLC for now) but you can try adding MaxHeight to your already modified VideoControls line in GameDetails.xaml like this: 

<controls:VideoControl x:Name="VideoControl" Background="{StaticResource LD_VideoBackgroundBrush}" Visibility="{Binding VideoVisibility}" MaxHeight="500" Margin="0,-10,0,5"/>

The value of 500 is just a suggestion, you may want to tweak it depending on your preferred window size. Also this will most likely pillarbox your vertical videos anyway because reducing height also means reducing width.

Thanks, appreciated  Note that the workaround I'm working on will have a fixed aspect ratio but I'll make it relatively easy to change the default to another one (e.g. 16:9, 4:3 or 3:4 vertical) 

 

Thanks, this worked like a charm. I set my max height to 400, and now the vertical snaps don't take up the whole are, and I can now access the middle frame of the game details window. 16:9 and 4:3 snaps also play "full frame", so to speak. Thanks!

@shadowfireBeautiful theme, simple and clean and lost of room for Background and Screenshot art to shine Is there a way to change the thickness and fill of the selection brush and hover background brush?  To have just a thin rectangle line around selected box art? thanks

On 5/21/2020 at 3:16 AM, Tony Birt said:

@shadowfireBeautiful theme, simple and clean and lost of room for Background and Screenshot art to shine Is there a way to change the thickness and fill of the selection brush and hover background brush?  To have just a thin rectangle line around selected box art? thanks

I'm sorry, but there are various reasons why this particular style was chosen. In an earlier version I experiment with various box selection style and the reason why the bordered style didn't make it was because it made it difficult to see which box is selected when you have a lot of box art on screen. E.g. when you use a keyboard shortcut to jump ahead in the list or use the "choose random game option".

Eventually the current style was the style that was chosen because of it's visibility, simplicity and consistency with other UI elements.

(And keeping the other options around made the code complex to maintain.)

The only thing you can do without hacking the code (which I wouldn't recommend) is - if you're boxes have the same aspect ratio - minimise the padding and tweak the aspect ratio in Launchbox' Boxes settings.

Great theme.

I'm curious if you have any idea how to accomplish something- so I'm really enjoying the fanart background implementation at the top of the details sidebar like so.

Spoiler

However, if I have video for the game, this goes away:

Spoiler

Is there a way to prevent this / relocate the video's position? Think if I can do that and me darkening the background of the sidebar, this'll wind up my permanent layout. I appreciate it if you have any ideas.

 

Edit / Actually wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be on the video part. Seems elegant enough for my tastes.

 

Spoiler

Did some rough tweaking here and there, looking solid. Thanks again!

 

Spoiler

 

Edited May 25, 2020 by Haelstrom

1.1 is a great update. Thanks for the time you put into the changes - I love the fanart as bezel for the video snaps. That is some *chef's kiss* work.

Update #1:  I noticed some odd behavior with some video snaps, consistent with the particular files. For example, my Descent video, which is 640x480, displays in the 4:3 ratio, and I can see the fan art underneath. My snap for Descent II, which is 640x480, also displays in 4:3, but shows black bars on the sides. Upon further inspection, this seems to happen with games that do not have any images classified as "fanart - background". Every game that has such an image displays videos properly, and without any black bars.

Update #2: I can confirm that manually adding or defining an image as "fanart - background" fixes the issue, and allows proper video display. Not a big deal, as the completionist portion of my brain is now demanding I make sure every game in my collection has a proper wallpaper now...

Edited June 3, 2020 by tycho1974

18 hours ago, tycho1974 said:

Update #1:  I noticed some odd behavior with some video snaps, consistent with the particular files. For example, my Descent video, which is 640x480, displays in the 4:3 ratio, and I can see the fan art underneath. My snap for Descent II, which is 640x480, also displays in 4:3, but shows black bars on the sides. Upon further inspection, this seems to happen with games that do not have any images classified as "fanart - background". Every game that has such an image displays videos properly, and without any black bars.

Yes, that's intended behavior. The background of videos is darkened when there's no FanArt in case someone has "Auto-Play Video" turned off  to hint the area where the video player is. (Otherwise it would just show a large play icon which can be confused with meaning "play game" or something.)

But if you prefer to have it transparent you can override it by removing the comment tags in line 55 of Lambda beta 1.1/Views/Settings.xaml so it reads like this:

<SolidColorBrush x:Key="LD_VideoBackgroundBrush" Color="Transparent"/>

(You may have to restart Launchbox for it to take effect.)

On 6/3/2020 at 11:37 AM, shadowfire said:

Yes, that's intended behavior. The background of videos is darkened when there's no FanArt in case someone has "Auto-Play Video" turned off  to hint the area where the video player is. (Otherwise it would just show a large play icon which can be confused with meaning "play game" or something.)

But if you prefer to have it transparent you can override it by removing the comment tags in line 55 of Lambda beta 1.1/Views/Settings.xaml so it reads like this:

<SolidColorBrush x:Key="LD_VideoBackgroundBrush" Color="Transparent"/>

(You may have to restart Launchbox for it to take effect.)

I see, thanks for clarifying that. I think that, given my own personal proclivities, I am more likely to flesh out my backgrounds collection; that being said, I'll try this out later tonight and see it for myself.

Thanks again for this theme, it is everything I never knew I wanted for LB presentation and visuals.

UPDATE: I added about fifty more backgrounds, then looked at the prospect of finding backgrounds for around 6,000 more games, and decided to go with this method of making the placeholder transparent. Works great!

Edited June 5, 2020 by tycho1974

Loved the original release and these refinements look even better! I can't help myself but tinker with it though for a few personal preferences.

One thing I'm curious about and haven't stumbled upon yet is pointing the GameDetailsView header image from 'FanartImages' to the box art. I don't know if it's actually possible since the box art could be in several different places (front cover, back cover, 3D, reconstructed, etc). Any suggestions appreciated... even if I ditch it in favor of fanart in the end  Thanks!

On 6/5/2020 at 9:50 PM, ShawnS said:

One thing I'm curious about and haven't stumbled upon yet is pointing the GameDetailsView header image from 'FanartImages' to the box art. I don't know if it's actually possible since the box art could be in several different places (front cover, back cover, 3D, reconstructed, etc). Any suggestions appreciated... even if I ditch it in favor of fanart in the end  Thanks!

That's what I originally wanted as well but unfortunately I couldn't find a way to make that work. It's seems that Launchbox restricts image types allowed in the Details panel to FanArt and Screenshots. That's why I decided to use FanArt with the title overlayed as sort of a banner representation of the game.

Edited June 11, 2020 by shadowfire

4 hours ago, shadowfire said:

That's what I originally wanted as well but unfortunately I couldn't find a way to make that work. It's seems that Launchbox restricts image types allowed in the Details panel to FanArt and Screenshots. That's why I decided to use FanArt with the title overlayed as sort of a banner representation of the game.

Hey hey, I think I figured out *a* solution! I had this idea the other day but haven't had time to check until now. It would be on a per-platform basis but right click a platform > Edit > Folders > and then change the path for 'Fanart - Background' to anything else. I changed mine to 'Cover - Front' but I know there are some covers that only exist in 'Fanart - Reconstructed' so I'd have to move some things around but this accomplishes what I was looking for: not having to fill up my limited HDD with extra images. ?

The only complaint now is that the text loads first at the top of the sidebar, then the cover image loads and the text jumps down the screen. I know this is sorta beyond your theme but any ideas if you can slow down the sidebar text loading speed so it all appears at the same time?

18 hours ago, ShawnS said:

Hey hey, I think I figured out *a* solution! I had this idea the other day but haven't had time to check until now. It would be on a per-platform basis but right click a platform > Edit > Folders > and then change the path for 'Fanart - Background' to anything else. I changed mine to 'Cover - Front' but I know there are some covers that only exist in 'Fanart - Reconstructed' so I'd have to move some things around but this accomplishes what I was looking for: not having to fill up my limited HDD with extra images. ?

The only complaint now is that the text loads first at the top of the sidebar, then the cover image loads and the text jumps down the screen. I know this is sorta beyond your theme but any ideas if you can slow down the sidebar text loading speed so it all appears at the same time?

Interesting 'solution' ?

No sorry, I don't know which part of the application handles loading and rendering. But I've noticed a few per game factors that can lag rendering on my system: 4K images, lots of screenshots (and maybe FanArt; the theme uses a workaround to display only one of them) and blur ratio of the main background image. You can rule out drop shadows since this theme doesn't use any.

Edited June 12, 2020 by shadowfire

It's worked out so far for all my platforms. I just edited the alignment so the box art is aligned at the top instead of centered (attachment 2) 

Thought I'd also share a couple screenshots of what else I've done. Please forgive ? Mostly I wanted to increase text size for couch-distance. I moved the screenshots up to the top just yesterday, kinda digging it. The only other big change was rearranging the rating/favorites/info for myself. I wanted the stars but never needed the community rating info or genres so I pared it down to just a few details.

Thanks for suggestions on the loading. I'm going to blame my slow USB HDD for most of it. That's why I already had the full screen backgrounds turned off and wanted to go this route to bypass loading fanart as well.

40 minutes ago, ShawnS said:

Mostly I wanted to increase text size for couch-distance. I moved the screenshots up to the top just yesterday, kinda digging it. The only other big change was rearranging the rating/favorites/info for myself. I wanted the stars but never needed the community rating info or genres so I pared it down to just a few details.

Thanks for suggestions on the loading. I'm going to blame my slow USB HDD for most of it. That's why I already had the full screen backgrounds turned off and wanted to go this route to bypass loading fanart as well.

Just in case you didn't know: you can turn off most of the info details and FanArt in Lauchbox's Game Details options (no need to hack the code) and the font settings are based on Windows' font settings. So if you increase Windows' font size to couch-distance it should apply to the theme as well.

I did that in the settings at first but iirc it turned off the stars along with the 'your star rating', 'community star rating', and 'total ratings'. I just wanted to keep the stars and heart.

I had read that about the fonts in your theme description but I'm oddly fine with Windows font settings in general but in LB it just felt like it needed to be bigger for my eyes.

This is the theme that I am looking for? and I will not use any other. I am very excited about update 1.2 release of this theme because ver.1.1 makes Windows games close suddenly after a few hours of play ..

Edited August 11, 2020 by Eyssa

I'm a huge fan of this theme but since the last update, I experienced freeze and crash when browsing too fast games compatible with retroachievements. Launchbox is having difficulties loading achievements and after browsing few games, it  freezes approximately 30 seconds. And if I continues browsing after that, it crash.

I hope you'll find a quick fix for that bug.

Thanks for your work 

On 10/23/2020 at 5:51 PM, Mumut said:

I'm a huge fan of this theme but since the last update, I experienced freeze and crash when browsing too fast games compatible with retroachievements. Launchbox is having difficulties loading achievements and after browsing few games, it  freezes approximately 30 seconds. And if I continues browsing after that, it crash.

I hope you'll find a quick fix for that bug.

Thanks for your work 

I don't have retroachievements myself so it's sort of an unsupported feature (the code is copy/paste from a different theme) but according to the Changelog the latest version of LaunchBox seems to have a fix for that.

On 8/7/2020 at 6:09 AM, Eyssa said:

This is the theme that I am looking for? and I will not use any other. I am very excited about update 1.2 release of this theme because ver.1.1 makes Windows games close suddenly after a few hours of play ..

Sorry, I could not reproduce that issue so I'm unable to help you with that...

Edited October 29, 2020 by shadowfire