Eclipse 0.0.018

@Kinglifer i've released version 0.0.6.  If you want to give it a try, it should load much faster.  Game images will load in the background after the lists are created.  I haven't done extensive testing on this version yet, there could be some bugs but so far it's loading much faster than before.  

 

@launchbox_saropa, I made a change so that when holding left, it won't open the settings.  You  have to tap left to open settings now.

 

@anyone who is using this plug-in, this is a bit embarrassing but I found a bug in the (very long and annoying) image scaling process which was actually scaling images to the wrong size so we were not getting the benefits of the image cache because images were still having to be re-scaled as they are loaded into memory.  I've tweaked things so that the images in the cache will be created with the correct size.  However, this will only occur if you delete your current image cache and have the plug-in rebuild it for you.  To delete and recreate the image cache, go to ..\LaunchBox\Plugins\Eclipse\Media and delete the folder that has your monitor's resolution (like 1920x1080).  Then reload BigBox with the plug-in enabled and it will go through that long annoying caching process.  I know this is annoying and will continue working on further improvements so that the image caching occurs asynchronously the same way lists are loaded.  But for now, I recommend this because the performance of the theme is greatly improved when images are scaled to the proper sizes.  

Alrighty, I've released version 0.0.7.  This significantly reduces the boot up time of the plug-in by generating lists and updating the image cache in the background while the theme is in use.  I would highly recommend anyone who is using this theme to update to this version and delete your image cache so that it can be regenerated.  The image cache is located at ..\LaunchBox\Plugins\Eclipse\Media\(WxH)*

*where (WxH) is your monitor's resolution so somethiing like: (1920x1080), (2560x1440), (3840x2160), etc...

Delete that folder and the next time you startup big box, it will be recreated with images of the appropriate size.  Images will pop in as they are loaded so you will see something like this as as the images are scaled and cached in the plugin folder: 

 

Installed the latest build. I can confirm the loading times have reduced significantly. And the creation of images does not really bother to me. Once everything is loaded and you start BigBox again, then you don't notice ever that any other cover is updated in the background. I like it how this theme handles the images generation in the background ...
Well done Fry!  👍😎

4 hours ago, GRKNZNGN said:

Installed the latest build. I can confirm the loading times have reduced significantly. And the creation of images does not really bother to me. Once everything is loaded and you start BigBox again, then you don't notice ever that any other cover is updated in the background. I like it how this theme handles the images generation in the background ...
Well done Fry!  👍😎

Thanks man, I'm glad you are liking it. 

 

On 2/6/2022 at 1:15 PM, Fry said:

@launchbox_saropa, I made a change so that when holding left, it won't open the settings.  You  have to tap left to open settings now.

 

Thanks Fry, I still seem to be able to trigger the settings pretty easily. But will keep trying. Definitely not a show-stopper!

 

By the way 006 crashed on startup and I could not get it to work, but 007 is SUPER fast. Thank you !

 

Just brilliant work  

20 minutes ago, launchbox_saropa said:

Thanks Fry, I still seem to be able to trigger the settings pretty easily

You have to press left when on the first game (as opposed to holding left). So if you’re in the middle of a list and hold left it will cycle back to the first game but won’t open up the settings wheel until you hit left again. 
 

22 minutes ago, launchbox_saropa said:

By the way 006 crashed on startup and I could not get it to work

Yeah sorry about that. I was able to get that and a few other bugs fixed in 007. I am seeing a few more minor bugs around how the games are loaded up asynchronously so I’m hoping to get those fixed up soon. 

 

28 minutes ago, launchbox_saropa said:Just brilliant work  

Thanks man, it’s getting there. I feel it still has a long way to go. I will look at adding some of those configurations you mentioned like enable/disable voice recognition and adding the recent editions list, top rated lists, etc 

Version 0.0.8 out with a minor fix related to the background loading of images.  In the prior version, if you were idling on a game that is showing the default box front for a game not yet loaded, once the game files were loaded the box front would automatically refresh but the clear logo, game details, and preview video would not refresh automatically.  Now, if you are idling on a game that hasn't yet loaded, once the game files load, the clear logo and video preview will pop in.

@Fry Is it possible to set "Series" as default view?  My idea is to create custom series like "Super Mario Games", "Sonic Games", "Donkey Kong Games", "Party Games", "8-Bit Era", "16-Bit Era", etc. - so that I can scroll through my collection by this way ...
If I'm right, in Eclipse theme currently only "Platform" view is the default at start(?) Any way to set it to other category?

3 minutes ago, GRKNZNGN said:

@Fry Is it possible to set "Series" as default view?  My idea is to create custom series like "Super Mario Games", "Sonic Games", "Donkey Kong Games", "Party Games", "8-Bit Era", "16-Bit Era", etc. - so that I can scroll through my collection by this way ...
If I'm right, in Eclipse theme currently only "Platform" view is the default at start(?) Any way to set it to other category?

You’re right. At this time the default is hard coded to platform and there’s no way to change that via user configuration. My plan for the next update would give you this control to (a) define your own lists and list sets, (b) specify default list set and list. This will probably be some time before I can get this out. In the meantime, it would be super easy to do a minor code change and release a special version that defaults to series. However it almost sounds like what you’re trying to achieve would be better off as playlists. Super Mario and Sonic would be valid series but I would think Party games are more of a genre. 8-bit era and 16-bit era is more of a general categorization. Since you’re mixing the metadata fields that are grouping and filtering games, I think playlist is more applicable. Let me know if you would like a one-off build with either series or playlist set as the default and I’ll be happy to throw it out there. 

28 minutes ago, Fry said:

You’re right. At this time the default is hard coded to platform and there’s no way to change that via user configuration. My plan for the next update would give you this control to (a) define your own lists and list sets, (b) specify default list set and list. This will probably be some time before I can get this out. In the meantime, it would be super easy to do a minor code change and release a special version that defaults to series. However it almost sounds like what you’re trying to achieve would be better off as playlists. Super Mario and Sonic would be valid series but I would think Party games are more of a genre. 8-bit era and 16-bit era is more of a general categorization. Since you’re mixing the metadata fields that are grouping and filtering games, I think playlist is more applicable. Let me know if you would like a one-off build with either series or playlist set as the default and I’ll be happy to throw it out there. 

 

I meant by "Party Games" games - where several players play against each other in front of the TV sitting on the couch. This is just my pronunciation and probably not the correct term ... 😄

Let me post some screenshots to make it easier to understand ...

Custom Series "Sonic Games" - but for this game I defined also a custom series called "16-Bit Era":

Custom series "Super Mario Games", "Donkey Kong Games":


Custom series "Party Games" including  "Super Mario Party" - but also includes "Super Mario Games":




 

So you helped me with a hard codes separate Eclipse release - where "Series" is the default view ... Many thanks in advance Fry! 😄 

 

Edited February 14, 2022 by GRKNZNGN

48 minutes ago, grki said:

Let me post some screenshots to make it easier to understand ...

 

This makes total sense.  I spaced out and forgot you can have multiple series for a game.  Here's a one-off build that will default to showing games by series.  Series does not (by default) show favorites or history.  Did you want to include the history or favorites list in your series list set?  It would be another tiny code change to include history or favorites lists if you'd like them with series.  Let me know and I can re-release a one-off build with those included.  I'm excited to fix this issue so that it's totally configurable so people can set up their lists however they like.  

1187005192_Eclipsev0.0.8a-SeriesDefault.zip

36 minutes ago, Fry said:

This makes total sense.  I spaced out and forgot you can have multiple series for a game.  Here's a one-off build that will default to showing games by series.  Series does not (by default) show favorites or history.  Did you want to include the history or favorites list in your series list set?  It would be another tiny code change to include history or favorites lists if you'd like them with series.  Let me know and I can re-release a one-off build with those included.  I'm excited to fix this issue so that it's totally configurable so people can set up their lists however they like.  

1187005192_Eclipsev0.0.8a-SeriesDefault.zip 11.86 MB · 1 download

Great! Thanks a lot - You made my day Fry! 👍

Favorites make sense for my case. But I don't really use the history. I know - it sounds strange - but I like to slide/scroll trough my game collection (by a PS4 controller) each time, when I start BigBox in front of the TV. It gives me a "Netflix" like feeling such "hmm what could we play today evening ..." 😄

I'm going to test and let you know with screenshot of my Eclipse theme styled "Netflixish" BigBox GUI 🕹️🎮😎

It makes sense man, everyone has different wants/needs for their lists which is why making that all configurable will be really nice.  Here's another one-off build that has series as default list set and includes the favorites list in the series list set

42435430_Eclipsev0.0.8b-SeriesDefaultIncludeFavorites.zip

Love the updates Fry - thank you!

I think I’ve found a bug in the latest version when you idle in the attract mode for a long period, at some point the video previews stop working. I haven’t been able to identify yet exactly the conditions for this issue as I’ve had it running the attract mode for several hours and come back to picking games and everything is fine but the last two times I left my cabinet on overnight, I’ve come back to find the video previews not playing. Moving around in the theme and selecting games, everything else seems fine it just seems the videos aren’t playing. I’ll add some additional logging and exception handlers and turn on the native launch box logging to see if I can figure out what I’ve changed to cause this problem and get it fixed. 

Hi Fry, quick question. I noticed a lot of games that I have marked as 'broken' or 'hidden' in Launchbox still appear in Eclipse. Do you think this is this a problem at my end?

 

Thanks as always for the great work!

Edited February 26, 2022 by launchbox_saropa

1 minute ago, launchbox_saropa said:

Hi Fry, quick question. I noticed a lot of games that I have marked as 'broken' or 'hidden' in Launchbox still appear in Eclipse. Do you think this is this a problem at my end?

 

Thanks as always for the great work!

Bigbox has its own broken/hidden options in its options.

I wonder if I broke this in the recent update. I thought I was filtering out hidden and broken games. Eclipse does not look at that BigBox setting. I will see if I can read those settings from the plugin API to determine whether to display broken/hidden games. 

@launchbox_saropa I've uploaded version 009 that will not include games marked broken or hidden.  

 

FYI - I'm doing some proof of concept with new approaches to building/loading the lists of games that should greatly improve the performance.  It will probably be some time before I can incorporate that stuff into the theme and get a release out but I'm still slowly working on it as time permits. 

Thanks @Fry - so fast! Speaking of fast, I don't have performance issue as I tend to stick to a few hundred games.

 

And @neil9000 I will check it out the settings too. Appreciate it.

 

Nice I’m glad it’s performing well for you. It performs great for me with 5k games too when I have game images on SSD. For another machine that uses old hard drives, loading all those images from spinning disks is slow and makes it feel sluggish. 
 

The setting in BigBox to show hidden games and show broken games will work fine for any theme other than this one. Since this theme doesn’t use the standard theming engine, those settings don’t impact this theme. I checked the plugin API and there doesn’t appear to be a way to get those settings so if I want to add support for them, I will have to read the BigBox config file. I try to avoid reading the config files as much as possible because those types of things can easily break when an updated version of LaunchBox is released. For now, I’m content to just keep broken and hidden games out and there’s really no configuration for it. One of these days when I solve all the other problems, I will add a setting for this so you can control whether or not to show broken or hidden games on demand. 

Cool theme but missing the option to jump to another letter is really a problem especially with mame.

It would be pretty handy if launchbox implements a keybind for this to jump to to the next or previous letter.

1 hour ago, jvlk said:

Cool theme but missing the option to jump to another letter is really a problem especially with mame.

It would be pretty handy if launchbox implements a keybind for this to jump to to the next or previous letter.

not to derail this thread, but a mapping already exists. It's called "Open Index"

I agree, I would like to add that functionality to jump to next/previous letter. I have been thinking about it and adding it either as a double tap left/right or by adding a configuration that would let you choose what you want under page up and page down so if you don’t care about the random game or the voice search function we could use page up/down to jump left/right. Ideally we could get more key bind options for plug-ins. I requested it here a while back. Go vote for it if you are so inclined: 

https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/5624/expose-additional-button-events-bindings
 

@faeran regarding open index, is that an API you’re suggesting to help with implementing a jump to next letter feature or are you saying there’s already a feature like that built into launchbox?  I’m not familiar with it.  

7 minutes ago, Fry said:

I agree, I would like to add that functionality to jump to next/previous letter. I have been thinking about it and adding it either as a double tap left/right or by adding a configuration that would let you choose what you want under page up and page down so if you don’t care about the random game or the voice search function we could use page up/down to jump left/right. Ideally we could get more key bind options for plug-ins. I requested it here a while back. Go vote for it if you are so inclined: 

https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/5624/expose-additional-button-events-bindings
 

@faeran regarding open index, is that an API you’re suggesting to help with implementing a jump to next letter feature or are you saying there’s already a feature like that built into launchbox?  I’m not familiar with it.  

It's already a feature in Big Box.