Starting The Game 1.1.4

Looks great! Many thanks!
Are you interested about building a Pause theme as well?

Nice ! 👍

2 hours ago, KaaMoS said:

Looks great! Many thanks!
Are you interested about building a Pause theme as well?

Thank you. Yes I plan on making a Pause theme in the same style as this. Hope to have some time to start working on it real soon

 

1 hour ago, viking said:

Nice ! 👍

Thank you

These are great, and easy enough to make new systems👍

Nice!

Hey @Hazuki, what about game images? Which group of images will the system use by default?

2 hours ago, soqueroeu said:

Nice!

Hey @Hazuki, what about game images? Which group of images will the system use by default?

Hi and Thanks. It uses the "Fanart - Background" and than adds the "Clear Logo" on top of it.

And the system logo on the left can be found in the folder "..\StartupThemes\StartingTheGame-Dark\Resources\SystemLogo".

3 hours ago, Rlad said:

These are great, and easy enough to make new systems👍

Thank you

Hey @Hazuki, this start theme looks really good. But thinking not everyone uses fanart images, would it be possible to disable clear logo to avoid certain redundancies?

 

And, why don't I have the platform name and the loading bar?

This theme doesn't work as expected for platforms without default names. That's right?

Edited September 10, 2021 by soqueroeu

Hi @soqueroeu

Yes I made this with fanart 16:9 in mind. I can upload a version without the clearlogo, no problem. I'll try to get it up later today.

The loadbar should be working, its based off of the Default startup theme. If you use the Default startup theme does the loadbar work?

Are your roms compressed or just plain roms? If compressed, can you start a bigger rom, say maybe a PlayStation game and see if it works.

What name are you using for your platform?

Hi @Hazuki

Thank you for your support. It will be great to have one without clear logo game version.

About the platform logo, I noticed it works when I have platform default names. In my test, the Nintendo Entertainment System platform was created as Nintendo NES, so it's loading screen shows default BigBox logo.

And, about the loading bar, I never see it. The message always appears in text only, even if I launch a PSX game or another ISO game:

I tested the default startup theme and what I have is text only and never a status bar. Tested with pure and compressed ISO. Nothing changes .

Edited September 10, 2021 by soqueroeu

 @soqueroeu here we go, a version with no logos

StartingTheGame-Dark-NoLogo.zip

@Hazuki, Nice!

Clear logo removal worked, ok. I still need to run more tests. But I realized it's not showing platform logos for Playlists. Is this intentional?
And, for those who don't use default names platforms, will there be any fixes?

Edited September 10, 2021 by soqueroeu

@soqueroeu @Hazuki The loading bar code from the default theme typically will only work if, for the emulator of choice, you have the option to "extract rom" on launch of a game. At least that is how Jason explained the option. I just tested this theme with a unzipped NES rom and a zipped rom through Retroarch. Without the "extract rom" option ticked the load bar does not show.

@soqueroeu So I tried renaming my Nintendo Entertainment System to Nintendo NES and this gave me the default startup, just like your screenshot.

In the "..\LaunchBox\Metadata\Platforms.xml" there's a lot of alternate platform names. I was under the impression that this solved all alternate names. Nintendo NES is in there but the startup will go to the default.

I'll look in to this and see if this can be solved for a future update.

As for Playlists, I don't have any at the moment. In this release its mainly consoles and handheld. In the next update I'll be adding the missing consoles, start adding arcade systems and looking in to playlists.

@Retro808, thanks, I was just trying that as well

12 minutes ago, Hazuki said:

@soqueroeu So I tried renaming my Nintendo Entertainment System to Nintendo NES and this gave me the default startup, just like your screenshot.

In the "..\LaunchBox\Metadata\Platforms.xml" there's a lot of alternate platform names. I was under the impression that this solved all alternate names. Nintendo NES is in there but the startup will go to the default.

I'll look in to this and see if this can be solved for a future update.

As for Playlists, I don't have any at the moment. In this release its mainly consoles and handheld. In the next update I'll be adding the missing consoles, start adding arcade systems and looking in to playlists.

@Retro808, thanks, I was just trying that as well

Someone more knowledgeable than me will have to chime in here as i dont know code, but i dont think the alternate system names in the metadata.xml do anything at all in themes. I believe themes can tap into the "scrape as" field though, so a platform could be named anything at all, but if its scraped as the correct name (which you would assume it would be otherwise the user would have no media for these platforms) it should still be able to show the correct theme/view. As i say though someone who actually knows this stuff would need to confirm.

@soqueroeu If you are using non-standard names for your platforms you should be able to change file and media names for it to work.

1. Copy the existing NES xaml and rename it Nintendo NES (Nintendo NES.xaml).

2. in the \Resources folders go into \SystemLog and \Loading folders and either rename the NES images to Nintendo NES or copy them and name the new ones Nintendo NES (Nintendo NES.png).

3. Edit the new Nintendo NES.xaml and change the image file names in lines 32 and 33 to be Nintendo NES.png.

Unfortunately since you are not using standard name you may have to do this with all platforms like that. It is hard for theme creators to accommodate the multitude of ways users might name platforms.

 

1 hour ago, neil9000 said:

Someone more knowledgeable than me will have to chime in here as i dont know code, but i dont think the alternate system names in the metadata.xml do anything at all in themes. I believe themes can tap into the "scrape as" field though, so a platform could be named anything at all, but if its scraped as the correct name (which you would assume it would be otherwise the user would have no media for these platforms) it should still be able to show the correct theme/view. As i say though someone who actually knows this stuff would need to confirm.


 

I think the same. I believe this is how the system should work completely. Otherwise, it would be necessary all addons for Launchbox do a search for files, to create compatibility with everything.

Edited September 10, 2021 by soqueroeu

2 hours ago, Retro808 said:

@soqueroeu If you are using non-standard names for your platforms you should be able to change file and media names for it to work.

1. Copy the existing NES xaml and rename it Nintendo NES (Nintendo NES.xaml).

2. in the \Resources folders go into \SystemLog and \Loading folders and either rename the NES images to Nintendo NES or copy them and name the new ones Nintendo NES (Nintendo NES.png).

3. Edit the new Nintendo NES.xaml and change the image file names in lines 32 and 33 to be Nintendo NES.png.

Unfortunately since you are not using standard name you may have to do this with all platforms like that. It is hard for theme creators to accommodate the multitude of ways users might name platforms.

Thanks @Retro808!
I haven't taken this test yet. But technically, changing the paths on lines 32 and 33 in axml wouldn't be necessary, as I can point to any file I want. I believe the startup theme is looking for the Nintendo Entertainment System value a step back as the only alternative.

Edited September 10, 2021 by soqueroeu

57 minutes ago, soqueroeu said:

Thanks @Retro808!
I haven't taken this test yet. But technically, changing the paths on lines 32 and 33 in axml wouldn't be necessary, as I can point to any file I want. I believe the startup theme is looking for the Nintendo Entertainment System value a step back as the only alternative.

Correct, technically you do not since the text value is not bound to ActiveGame.Platform it is bound directly to a path. Simply renaming the xaml to match the correct platform name would suffice. However, I have seen custom themes in BB have some hiccups so the recommendation to change was to unify the media & platform naming.

Hi guys, I did new tests by renaming filenames to match the platform name. This solved the problem. Rename files in LaunchBox\StartupThemes\StartingTheGame-Dark

For those with the same problem, just rename both files corresponding to each platform. Example:

Nintendo Entertainment System = Nintendo NES

Nintendo Entertainment System Shutdown = Nintendo NES Shutdown

All good now!

Hey @Hazuki, I think we need a white theme version now. What do you think?
We also need more platforms. I couldn't find NEC console files. 

Do you have source files to share?

Edited September 11, 2021 by soqueroeu

On 9/10/2021 at 8:11 PM, neil9000 said:

Someone more knowledgeable than me will have to chime in here as i dont know code, but i dont think the alternate system names in the metadata.xml do anything at all in themes. I believe themes can tap into the "scrape as" field though, so a platform could be named anything at all, but if its scraped as the correct name (which you would assume it would be otherwise the user would have no media for these platforms) it should still be able to show the correct theme/view. As i say though someone who actually knows this stuff would need to confirm.

The metadata.xml made naming all the files easier and as there was alt names in there, I just assumed that's what’s used. The "scrape as” sound like a good place to start and over at XAML Tips and Tricks there's tons of info and helpful people.

 

18 hours ago, soqueroeu said:

 

Hey @Hazuki, I think we need a white theme version now. What do you think?
We also need more platforms. I couldn't find NEC console files. 

Do you have source files to share?

I have re-drawn some of the logos from scratch and the NEC logos aren't done yet.

Source files are mainly a load of mock-ups and one psd with system logos once they are done. There’s a lode of WIP stuff in there now, so I can share them once I'm done.

As I've never used xaml before this, I'm looking in to if its possible to manipulate png colours or not from the xaml file. So before any other versions I want to get this done.

6 minutes ago, Hazuki said:

As I've never used xaml before this, I'm looking in to if its possible to manipulate png colours or not from the xaml file. So before any other versions I want to get this done.

Thanks!
Using color codes would be great. With just a few slides all systems would be covered, just like the main Colorful theme currently does. Go ahead my friend!

A new light version, what do you think? Any changes needed?

Edited September 13, 2021 by Hazuki

1 hour ago, Hazuki said:

A new light version, what do you think? Any changes needed?

It looks great, friend!
Well, perhaps it's the image, but I think you could use that blue area, at the top right to add some game info (right aligned, white text i.e.).
If not possible, I'll use it anyway  Is solid as gold.

15 hours ago, KaaMoS said:

It looks great, friend!
Well, perhaps it's the image, but I think you could use that blue area, at the top right to add some game info (right aligned, white text i.e.).
If not possible, I'll use it anyway  Is solid as gold.

Thanks, nice to hear that you like it.
What game info would you most like to see added?
Anything specific like Max Players, Rating?