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Unified Lives! 4.4

   (1 review)

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About This File

 This theme is my re-take on the excellent Unified-Refried theme and I called it 'Unified Lives!'.  The goal is to present more information to the user during game selection as well as using more graphic assets to complement the display experience.  I hope you like it!  

- An informative game card that shows many details of the currently selected game.

- 6 Game wheel views.  2 vertical, 3 horizontal and 1 text. 

- 4 Platform/playlist views

-  Single views for game and platform text views (these are necessary views)

- Marquee, box 3d, disc, cd, 3d cart and front flyer images are all used.  Visibility rules determine how they appear, depending on platform and also file availability.

- Supports different aspect ratios.  If it doesn't look right on yours please let me know!  

- Wheel Badges for Favorite, Completed and Broken games. 

- Created with Community Theme Creator 2.5

- Dynamically changing theme images based upon current platform/playlist. just like Refried.  

** Rename 'background' folder to enable fanart.

** Rename the 'Devices' folder to always show a random game screenshot in platform/playlist views.

** Place your choice of fanart in 'fanart fallback' folder when game or platform fanart does not exist, a random image is chosen

** ESRB icons.  If you don't want them, delete or rename the icons.  The 'Not Rated' icon is renamed due to the number of titles without rating.  Remove the exclamation from the filename to see it.

*** Do not overwrite previous versions of the theme, replace the folder.  Folder and file structure can change between versions! 

Edited by Rob_G


What's New in Version 4.4   See changelog

Released

- Reworked platform views some more.  Vertical platform/playlist views have a refreshed layout.  I think this one is good.  
- Tweaked options page
- Tweaked game views slightly (info grid spacing on vertical views)
- Fixed text list selected item transparent background
*** Platform\playlist views will show a random game screenshot (with rating) if there is no device image present.  If you don't want to see device images and prefer the random screenshot for everything, just rename the Devices folder.  You can always add more device images if anything is missing.

 I am pretty much happy with where it is now...

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Looks great! My only gripes are that the font used for text looks kinda default and bland, and the text for game descriptions should be bigger. Also a part that shows the game's age rating would be neat.

Edited by Mr. Skerpentine
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20 hours ago, Mr. Skerpentine said:

Looks great! My only gripes are that the font used for text looks kinda default and bland, and the text for game descriptions should be bigger. Also a part that shows the game's age rating would be neat.

 I will look at increasing the game description font size.  

 I had planned on ESRB, but it didn't make the cut for this version.  I didn't know if people really paid attention to that or not.  I just need to find (borrow) the icons and I can easily add them.  

 As for the main font... I just used one of the windows bold fonts that wasn't too crazy looking.  

 

Thanks for the feedback, always appreciated.

 

Rob

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As I put in the review: great effort Rob. I like it!

Would you be willing to share the Community Creator files so I could make a few small tweaks for personal preference?

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Hi, love the new look. One niggle I got, is there anyway to stop it displaying 2 boxes? I'm presuming it happens when I'm missing a flyer in the arcade instance or missing a disk image regarding the Amiga. It does the same on other systems too, I have lots of games with missing flyers, disc/cart images so is there a option so I only see one box or is it a oversight? Cheers, great work! :)

Screenshot (175).png

Screenshot (176).png

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1 hour ago, Lukeyboy67 said:

Hi, love the new look. One niggle I got, is there anyway to stop it displaying 2 boxes? I'm presuming it happens when I'm missing a flyer in the arcade instance or missing a disk image regarding the Amiga. It does the same on other systems too, I have lots of games with missing flyers, disc/cart images so is there a option so I only see one box or is it a oversight? Cheers, great work! :)

 

 

 

 Make sure your 3d cart priorities are set to only show 3d cart.

image.thumb.png.1d980d0961f89e1b12918bc6fb079e42.png

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5 hours ago, soqueroeu said:

Themes with this assets look very nice. My only sadness is not finding all images for all games. Does it use the default image?

 The images used are 

 Front Flyer, 3d box, 3d cart, disc (floppy/cd) and marquee.

 These can all be downloaded within Launchbox and/or emumovies.  I know it takes a while to download images, but the time is well worth it.

Rob

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On 11/14/2021 at 3:16 PM, Pawrock said:

As I put in the review: great effort Rob. I like it!

Would you be willing to share the Community Creator files so I could make a few small tweaks for personal preference?

 I'm not quite %100 done yet, so not at this time.  I have a new version I am working on, but I'm running into limitations as to what the theme creator can currently do.  I'd really like the gamecount to still show on the gamewheelview for example.    

Rob

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 Update released....

 I may do something different with the ESRB icon.  It is placed where it is because there's guaranteed no overlap from other text.  So many games are 'Not Rated' and no arcade games are.  If you don't like it, just rename or delete the ESRB folder.  It won't hurt anything.

 Given that I have no way of knowing what your platform names are, you may need to create copies of existing images in pointers, backgrounds, and videoborder if there's nothing there to match.  For example, I created a platform 'Mame 2003 Plus' and copied all the 'Arcade.png' to 'Mame 2003 Plus.png'.  Since Mame is in the platform name, the marquee images will show if available.  The reason I have a separate platform is for Netplay compatability.  The standard mame core isn't really compatible with that.

 

 I used notepad to edit the xaml files to add lastplayeddate.  Ugh, it was horrible! :)  I don't know how user source works in community theme creator and if it could be used for this case.  I assume maybe the next release of that will include this property.

 

Rob

image.png

Edited by Rob_G
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One thing I noticed that in the BigBox Options menu I do not see the reboot, exit and shutdown options when I scroll down past the sleep options. They appear to be there but I cannot see them them and are covered up by the bezel. Could be because I am on a 1440P monitor.

Untitled.png

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5 hours ago, kmoney said:

One thing I noticed that in the BigBox Options menu I do not see the reboot, exit and shutdown options when I scroll down past the sleep options. They appear to be there but I cannot see them them and are covered up by the bezel. Could be because I am on a 1440P monitor.

 

 You're right, something isn't right. 

Update 1.6.2 is now posted.

 Thank you for letting me know.

Rob

 

Edited by Rob_G
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7 hours ago, Rob_G said:

 You're right, something isn't right. 

Update 1.6.2 is now posted.

 Thank you for letting me know.

Rob

 

Sure, no problem. I just tried out the update that you posted and the issue is fixed.

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Hey Rob I love the theme 
you did awesome work
i just cant seem to change the where from straight up and down to a curved wheel

Dakota

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5 hours ago, Dakota76 said:

Hey Rob I love the theme 
you did awesome work
i just cant seem to change the where from straight up and down to a curved wheel

Dakota

 Depending on your bigbox settings if you have it 'locked' you might not be able to change views without unlocking first.  If that's not the case, go into the options and keyboard mappings and make sure a key is mapped to view change.  I use the V key for that.  

image.thumb.png.9d062822e581f6f77158b577eac557d1.png

Rob

Edited by Rob_G
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 We're at version 1.7 now with a significant update to the favorites/broken/completed icons.  Two new additional platform/playlist views as well which are both full screen video.  I used a little trick with an opacity animation on the icons to help them disappear instantly when you begin to change navigation. 

 I've been having some anxiety issues lately so working on this has helped me focus on something fun to do.

Rob     

Edited by Rob_G
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Hey Rob Great work

But im trying to add clear logos and cant seem to get the ones i add to work

ive named them correctly i believe, ive tried adding them to the launchbox image/platform/clear logos folder
ive also tried adding them to the appropriate folder under the theme itself

any help if im doing it wrong id very much appreciate it

 

Thanks Dakota

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On 11/20/2021 at 9:34 AM, Dakota76 said:

Hey Rob Great work

But im trying to add clear logos and cant seem to get the ones i add to work

ive named them correctly i believe, ive tried adding them to the launchbox image/platform/clear logos folder
ive also tried adding them to the appropriate folder under the theme itself

any help if im doing it wrong id very much appreciate it

 

Thanks Dakota

 I would recommend letting Launchbox download clear logos (or any other graphics) for you.  This way they are named correctly and in the correct folder.  Start with a few to see how it works.  Then update more/all of your games.  Let it run overnight if need be.

Rob

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 I am wondering if anyone uses coverflow, wall, marquee etc views in other themes?  I thought maybe coverflow might be worthwhile adding.  But,  I wasn't happy with the wheel view that CTC comes up with so I didn't pursue it too far.

 

Rob

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 I am waiting for CTC 2.4 to be available so I can more easily do the wall view(s) I wanted to do for some time now.  I did add a coverflow, but videos don't play and that seems to be a BB limitation?  I don't know why that is.  It kind of makes coverflow not worth the effort.  Shrugs.

 

Rob

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4 minutes ago, Rob_G said:

 I am waiting for CTC 2.4 to be available so I can more easily do the wall view(s) I wanted to do for some time now.  I did add a coverflow, but videos don't play and that seems to be a BB limitation?  I don't know why that is.  It kind of makes coverflow not worth the effort.  Shrugs.

 

Rob

The default theme has two coverflow views, one of which shows videos, so it is possible.

image.png.18f05f02da9262751833096134388ca7.thumb.png.086ecd8d26d0f22304868920d398d5de.png

 

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13 minutes ago, Rob_G said:

 I'm not sure what the issue is.  @y2guru said a while back it was a big box limitation?

 

Rob

That would depend on what exactly with videos in WallView you are trying to do. As @neil9000 pointed out videos in a WallView works so maybe providing some details of what you are trying to do exactly (possibly even post the xml file for the view) you can get better clarification of what is possible.

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