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NESiCAxLive Theme 2.0.0

   (2 reviews)

14 Screenshots

About This File

Click to view video of theme

Introduction

This theme was originally requested by @Evilmaster and is designed to mirror the interface of the NESiCAxLive system Taito use in their TypeX2 mutli-game cabinets. The theme has been completely rebuilt from the ground up in version 2.0 and should now scale correctly for all resolutions.

The theme does include the ability to display publisher logos as well as game specific control layouts within the interface. The theme is also built around using steam-style banners - I have detailed the simplest way to set this up currently in Launchbox below as the wheel does not support steam banners as a games view currently without some tweaking of your library. It will however, now also work with standard game boxes but I highly recommend that you set the option to remember different views per platform so that you can use the view that works best for the given platform cover art / banners you are using.

Installation

Unzip the NESiCAxLive folder to your Launchbox /Themes directory into a subfolder called NESiCAxLive.

Setting up Steam Banners

In order to setup the steam banners you will need to download steam banners for your games manually as unfortunately Launchbox does not yet automatically download these particular files for anything other than Steam games. Some good resources I have used to get these images from are:

http://consolegrid.com/

http://steambanners.booru.org/index.php

http://www.steamgriddb.com/

(Thanks to @Evilmaster for pointing me in the direction of these)

When you download the images and add them to your games make sure you set them as Steam Banners within the game options in Launchbox. Then for them to be used in the theme correctly set the priority of the boxes view to prioritise Steam Banners first - if you ever want to revert this it is then simply a case of lowering the priority of the steam banners in the boxes list rather than having to remove or reorganise images. To do this open Launchbox and go to Tools --> Options and in the window that appear select Box Front Properties in the Images section and use the Up button to move the Steam Banners to the top of the list.

Setting up Control Layouts

Open the theme directory and browse to Images/Controls - in here you will find a folder for most systems, if the system you want to add control layouts for is not listed create a new Folder in this directory ensuring the folder name matches the platform name in Launchbox exactly. In each platform directory you will find a minimum of two files; controller.png and buttons.png. Using your preferred PNG image editing program (Photoshop or GIMP are recommended) open both files as layers. You can then position the buttons over the controller image as you want. When done you can hide the controller layer and just save the new button layout into the directory to replace buttons.png. This file will then be loaded by the theme and the animation applied automatically to fade it in and out.

Setting up Developer Logos

By default Launchbox/BigBox does not grab Developer/Publisher logos. I have downloaded many of the most common ones already and included in the theme. If you find that the view you are using needs developer logos and the one you need is missing you can simply download from the internet - ensuring it is a PNG file with transparent background - and place the file in the images/company logos subfolder of the theme directory ensuring the file is named exactly the same as the developer of the game/system is listed in LaunchBox. 

The Platform Views

There are 4 Platform Views to select from shown below:

 5aca7d1c5d227_PlatformView1.png.762d520f Platform View 1 - Banner View with Recently Played Items Bar

5aca7d214ab98_PlatformView2.png.9fd653fe Platform View 2 - Banner View with Favorites Items Bar

5aca7d2386058_PlatformView3.png.db8f921a Platform View 3 - Banner View with no Bar

5aca7d192e14a_PlatformTextView.png.c82a1 There is also the Text Only Platform View

The Game Views

5aca7cfee8afe_GameBannerView.png.14e3938 Horizontal Banner View *

5aca7d03cd730_GameBoxesView.png.1f7611e2 Horizontal Boxes View

5aca7cf78fdc7_CartCoverflow.png.49bcf761 Horizontal Carts/CD/DVD View

5aca7d0af0aa3_GameScreenshotCoverflow.pn Horizontal Screenshots View

Snapshot_2.png.9116496f33b4ef84adcfff288 Vertical Logos View

5aca7d290b2c5_VerticalBannerView.png.f75 Vertical Banners View *

5aca7d11a8af7_GameTextView.png.c5de072c7 Text List View

5aca7cfad4787_CoverflowView.png.d18052e1 Small Banner View *

 

* Requires Front Images configured with Steam Banner as the top priority and for Steam Banner images to be present in your library to display correctly.

 


What's New in Version 2.0.0   See changelog

Released

This is a complete re-working of the NESiCAxLive Theme from the ground up with a great many hours put into it, the file size is now 4x bigger than version 1! As before it is built for steam banner style cover images however, it does have views that will allow for standard type box images to be used. It is highly recommended that you set Launchbox so that platforms can have different views applied so you can find the ones that work best on your setup for each platform.

The theme will now correctly resize to different resolutions. All of the animation is now done within .Net rather than via animated gifs. This not only speeds up the running of this theme but also allows for better effects and smoother transitions. 

Thanks to everyone who has helped with this theme along the way, this community has been invaluable in getting me this far with my theme building and I still feel there is a long way to go. @necroticart has also provided me a sound pack which I have included as a separate download. Control schemes should be relatively straight forward for you to customise to your own layouts by amending the appropriate png file in the theme. These are no longer embedded into the controller images so changing them is much easier than before.

All shadowing, blur effects and animation are now automatically applied via code to the png theme elements so these will automatically be applied to your media.

I have also created a customised background image for the theme in the NESiCAxLive style but using BigBox logo/images. Should you prefer the full authentic NESiCA look the previous background file is also included within the theme images folder and just needs to be renamed to LogoBG.png to replace the existing file.

All feedback, as always, is welcome.

Next up is a new version of my Griddle theme and I also have two other themes nearing completion so watch this space!

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User Feedback

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DazStelfox79

  

beautiful theme & very clean. I really like the ability to use steam banners.  Would it be possible to remove the top left & right corner sections where logos are situated so I can have my videos in full view with16:9 aspect ratio

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Pyrometheous

  

I think this is officially my favorite theme. I couldn't get the videos to work on the Rincewind Theme, so I was hunting around for a new one. And this one is amazing. I love how clean it all looks, and the clear logos on the top right of the screen are a really nice touch. The "Free Play" blinking in the corners are cool, I don't have my HTPC setup as an arcade cab, but they still look really nice on my projector screen. Overall, I'm pretty in love with this theme, great work @shro2016!!

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