About This File
For lack of a better place to put this, I guess I'll settle for this Third Party apps category since it doesn't really fit anywhere else.
What is it: The Marquee Mod will add animated marquee support to your theme. I created this marquee style with the Community Theme Creator. Unfortunately it's not currently possible to use a Marquee created for one theme and use it in another unless you have all the source Community Theme Creator files from both the Marquee and theme you wish to patch. The files here will allow you to use the marquees I created for my Vertical Aspirations theme in any other theme. Everything you'll need is included in this one zip file. If you don't have a second monitor in use for marquees, this mod won't do you any good.
Instructions: After downloading the zip file, right click the zip, select properties and check the unblock box and click ok.
Open the zip and extract the folder onto your desktop or other directory you wish to work in.
Inside the folder, run the Edit Game Marquee View.exe first. If you have autohotkey installed on your PC, you can alternatively run the Edit Game Marquee View.ahk
When the search dialog opens, type "Marquee Views" without the quotes. Make sure you capitalize it and you type it plural with the s at the end.
When the replace dialog opens, type the name of the theme you will be importing this into. Example: Unified Refried. Make sure you spell the name of the theme correctly and use CAPS where needed or this mod won't work.
Next, run the Edit Platform Marquee View.exe. If you have autohotkey installed on your PC, you can alternatively run the Edit Platform Marquee View.ahk
When the search dialog opens, type "Marquee Views" without the quotes. Make sure you capitalize and you type it plural with the s.
When the replace dialog opens, type the name of the theme you will be importing this into. Example: Unified Refried. Make sure you spell the name of the theme correctly and use CAPS where needed or this mod won't work.
To confirm the rename worked, open the views folder and open the GameMarqueeView.xaml file and the PlatformMarqueeView.xaml files in a text editor (they may have already opened automatically in the previous step). Verify at the top of the text in the author block that the new name is present there.
An example (assuming you used Unified Refried in the replace field), the author block should look like...
<!--
COMMUNITY Theme Creator for BigBox - Version 2.3
Theme: Unified Refried
Aspect Ratio: Stretch
Developed by: Marquee Mod by Jay's Arcade
Published: Saturday 05, February 2022 @ 10:43 AM
BigBox Version: 12.7-beta-4 or later
-->
Finish: If all looks well, close both files. Now, copy the Views, Media and Plugin folders into your theme. Open Bigbox and switch to the theme you added support to if it's not already selected.
If something is not right, it's likely that something got misspelled. Delete the directory and re-extract from the zip and try again.
Please report if you have any issues.
Mascot files and animations in this mod were directly stolen from Faerans excellent RetroMags theme.
How the marquee views work: The views are not too much different from the default marquee views that come with BigBox. They do offer better support however (in my humble opinion) for Platform Marquees since they defeat the ugly default Banners that come with Bigbox. They also have some animations that run on either side of the logo. The animations are subtle.
Platform Marquees will have a default background image, a logo (pulled from your clear logos folder), and animated "mascot" images on either side of the logo.
Games Marquees will use a video marquee if available. If a video is not available, it will use an arcade marquee image if available. If an arcade marquee image is not available, it will default to the platform marquee.
Games View
Platform View
Options: Inside the Media folder there is a Platform Marquees folder that has a file named Platform Marquee Background.png. This is the file to change out if your prefer a different background.
There are a limited number of mascots in the 2 mascots folders. Faeran's RetroMags theme has a ton of these images if you need to fill in some blank spots that this mod doesn't cover.
How to remove: If you find you don't want to use this with your theme anymore, simply go into the theme folder and delete the GamesMarqueeView.xaml and the PlatformMarqueeView.xaml
