Madhead
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Posts posted by Madhead
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On 6/13/2023 at 9:03 PM, BMovieBen said:
Thanks! I had to bug y2guru a bunch on the split video trick. If you use the community theme editor he made and download the project files I posted you'll see how it's done. I have the original game video taking up real estate on the top screen, with a mask on it that crops it to *just* the top screen. The bottom screen uses what's referred to as a mirror video. It's supposed to duplicate the original game video, just without sound. So that's being used along with a different mask to crop it to *just* the bottom screen. it's totally dependent on the game videos being built this specific ways, with the videos placed on top of each other like that.
Fun fact, the original intent behind the "mirror video" function was to be used to show reflections on an arcade machine. So I'm leveraging it for a completely different use here. There is unfortunately a performance hit the overall theme takes in BigBox the more mirror videos you use, and you'll see that manifest in a delay between top and bottom videos rendering or between audio and video playing. I'm using the mirror video effect not just in NDS/3DS but also for Virtual Boy and Vectrex I believe, which has an overlay that's difficult recreate in emulation.Sorry for the late reply mate. I have since learned how to use the theme creator and have used the video mirror to do my own DS and 3DS themes for Coverbox. All is well apart from what you mentioned, the performance hit is quite heavy using the mirror. There are other animations in the theme so the performance dip becomes noticable as they are choppy when the video is playing. I dunno if this will be optimised in future versions of Theme Creator, or if there is some xmal edit you can make to speed things up, but as of now it's asthetically pleasing albeit the video screens are out of sync.
I have a fairly old laptop with quad core 4 thread intel, I wonder if a powerful PC would power through that issue or if it's inherent in the programs code and no matter how fast your PC, those performance issues will still be present, know what I mean? Any way, thanks for telling me this. Because of you I now know how to use the theme editor, and I love it.
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I've learned how to use the theme creator over the last week and found it to be a very powerful and intuitive program. Already got my own designs from my head into reality with it. But there are some features that cost more performance than others such as the video mirror tool. I've got it working with the DS video snaps to split the top and bottom screens and all is well apart from the performance cost which seems very sharp. I'm not sure if this feature is going to be more feasible in the future, or if there's a more efficient way of doing this already, but video mirror is going to be good for many implementations when performance is sorted. Not only do the top and bottom videos not sync correctly, but other animations and transitions are heavily affected. I have an example here.
It's a custom config for CoverBox btw, and I know it doesn't necessarily follow the box art theme but then It's just for my own use tastes. All is well with it apart from these performance costs for the video mirror. The stuttering you see in this video is exactly how it is without recording. Though interestingly the preview through the theme creator is much smoother.
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It's really good mate. I'm just wondering how did you manage to split the DS and 3DS video snaps up and put them in each screen of the DS? Really good idea that I thought about at one point but didn't know if it was even possible. Brilliant theme!
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6 hours ago, Retro808 said:
You would have to manually edit the theme's code.
That would be the TextGamesView.xaml yeah? I can't see what lines to edit, would you have any idea mate? Thanks.
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Just wondering if you can increase the size of the game list font in Unified Refried? And the width of the transparent bar the games list is inside of too? as I've disabled the box images to make room for it. It's a bit narrow as is. Thanks in advance.
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17 minutes ago, skizzosjt said:
well you're def not in the right spot to ask this question, it doesn't pertain to this thread
that said, I'll still throw you a bone. you need to use Tools > Download > Platform/Playlist/Category Theme Videos from the LaunchBox Menu. there are multiple videos available, 3 of them specifically are Colorful themed, for a category/platform/playlist titled "Playlist" including one that is meant for "Favorites"
Ta for the bone mate. Sorted out the favorites video. Yeah It's not always easy finding the right thread to ask questions, and sometimes when you do it's in a thread that isn't active and you don't get a reply. Just that I've created a few platforms that aren't normally in LaunchBox such as "Operating Systems". Which include stuff like Amiga Workbench, Windows 95, and Linux Distros on Virtual Box. I'm no video editor so I was suggesting ideas for platform videos to others who knew what they were doing. But yeah, probably the wrong thread for that. My bad.
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I'd test it out for sure. One thing I want to be fixed is videos loading in a small corner in the game details panel at times, and ghosted out game details when it hasn't loaded in properly (Default plus theme only bug?). Also the videos showing a black screen despite playing sound when you click on a recommended game. Same goes for when viewing videos in fullscreen on BigBox, sometimes it's just black and you have to load it again. Some of these problems have persisted for a few years and maybe it's simply not an easy fix? Just some little bugs i've noticed in my 4 years of using the program.
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This is just a shot in the dark but, i've made a playlist for my overall favorite games and I was wondering if anyone has made a playlist video for this in the colourful style yet? Also a one for Xbox Live Arcade games? Would be much appreciated if anyone knew where to find them, thanks.
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1 minute ago, C-Beats said:
There a reason you're wanting them in search instead of using the quick-filter?
Just like if you have a big library, you can search for terms like in a search engine and you get results. All the other fields show up when searched so for uniformity I think custom fields should be also. Quick filter is great but then so is the search bar.
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2 hours ago, C-Beats said:
Just so you are aware @Madhead there is both a side bar filter AND a quick filter for custom tags and so you can use either when trying to navigate to games with a specific tag
Yeah I use the side bar filters in general. It all works perfectly even for custom fields. I just wish you could search for custom field values too.
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6 hours ago, faeran said:
Definitely a cool idea.
Another way you can currently implement this is to create subgenres instead of tags. Within the genre field you would put a forward slash in-between a genre and subgenre (genre / subgenre).
LaunchBox would then recognize the second genre as a sub genre and would help with things like the related games feature and it would display accurately inside of the on-the-fly filter button (This is similar to how a MAME fullset would be handled when importing it into LaunchBox).
Official support for this stuff on the LaunchBox Games Database would be nice, and is definitely somethin we've internally discussed many times. No idea when something like this would eventually make it into the database (it's on more of a very, very long term internal roadmap), but it would be cool to see and just know that it's on our radar.
Yeah I get the whole sub-genre thing. But I actually merged all the sub-genres of mame into one genre for example "Shooter / Vertical scrolling" and Horizontal are all under one genre called "shoot em up", then tagged them with the type of shooter they are. It works just the same as sub-genres without bloating the genre category. Cos thing is tags can be very specific and you can potentially end up having hundreds of them if your collection is big enough.
If the custom field data becomes searchable in the near future with an update then everything youd need to create this setup will be there. Of course will be better when the entire community can contribute to it, but for now I'm glad the custom fields gives you that option albeit they don't show up in search bar.
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This has been a bit of an undertaking, but I think it's worth it. I wanted to add tags to games so they can be more easily found both in the similar games section and search bar. I recently wisened up and found that using custom fields and calling one 'Tags' would create a whole new field across the database, and it works!
It's pretty good so far and it's quite remarkable how the related games accuracy gets improved when enough tags are present. It stands to reason that this feature would only get better as more tags are added to the database over time. Not only that but they act as kind of sub-genres, ones you wouldn't normally bother creating a whole genre for but can justify adding as a tag.
I've only done racing games so far, so now when looking for similar games to OutRun for example, you'd get Lotus II on Amiga, or Chase HQ, not some random PC racing sim that really isn't similar at all except that they are both technically in the racing genre. And Instead of Need for Speed Underground 2 being similar to Pole Position, you'd get PitStop II for the C64.. you get the idea.
Problem is though, at the moment it's just my own custom field so it's all on me to add potentially hundreds of different tags to my collection. That, and you can't search any of these tags in the search bar. They don't show up. Yet they are recognised as seperate value entry's via a semi-colon like other fields, and show up on the side bar as you can see from the images. So then my suggestion is to add an actual tag field to the LaunchBox edit section where the community can contribute to it, and where they can be searchable. In the meantime I'd hope for you to add the ability to search for custom field values as their use is limited without that option.
It seems like a bit of a project, but hopefully those images show you how they can make collections more cohesive. I can already see the benefits with the few tags i've already added myself. I hope you agree, Thanks.
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On 5/3/2023 at 1:13 PM, skizzosjt said:
I also have another problem with an emulator in the pause menu. You know A7800? It's a fork of MAME for Atari 7800 games and I would have thought it used the same F7 and F8 as load/save keys, but it's F6 and F7 instead. Sounds like an easy fix but it doesn't do anything when I select the option in the pause menu. Seems some emulators don't recognise the same scripts, even when one is the fork of the other. Would you have any idea of the solution? Thanks again.
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8 hours ago, skizzosjt said:
could be because you used a generic "Ctrl" key instead of specifying which one. Try using the same script but use "LCtrl" instead. Also do not capitalize "C" due to it would imply sending a capitalized C which requires also hitting the shift key. So I believe what your script is actually sending is more like "Ctrl, SHIFT, C" and that alone might make the Citra hotkey not work.
AHK is weird here, it doesn't matter if the letter is capital or not if it's a hotkey. ie if you make two hotkeys like so, both of these would work the same, exiting the script
A::ExitApp
a::ExitApp
Both of those hotkeys would trigger with the "a" or "A" key press, as in whether or not you hold the shift key. So using "a" or "A" is interchangeable in the context of a hotkey. Lowercase/uppercase doesn't matter
But when a letter is in the send command it is case sensitive as I described above.
That did it, thank you! Had no idea it was case sensitive.
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I was wondering if anyone knew how to set the save and load states for Citra in the pause menu? By default it's Ctrl+V and Ctrl+C to load and save games on that emulator so I thought this would work:
QuoteSend {Ctrl down}
Sleep 50
Send {C down}
Sleep 50
Send {C up}
Sleep 50
Send {Ctrl up}
Sleep 50Cos thats how it works for Snes9x but it's Shift+F1 instead of Ctrl+C. But I'm honestly clueless how it works and it's clear that not all emulators pick up the same AHK commands.
Does anyone know how I would add load and save states to the pause menu for citra games?
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@neil9000 Yeah I knew you could do that but it slows the setup down too much for me. Things stutter more and take longer to load. I know you can also view the game count of each platform in the game details screen when you first click on it, but the most intuitive way of viewing it is the display on the button bar. Obviously it's not important, and I don't demand you move the game count away from the button bar or anything, but I'm just asking if there's any way theoretically to make it like that image? Perhaps copying and pasting a certain section from one xml to another? If so do you know any way it could be done? Thanks for your help mate.
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I'm just wondering because I don't really use the button bar and prefer asthetically for it to be off, but of course then I can't view the game count. It's purely cosmetic, but it would be nice if I could have the game count on the top of the screen next to the game title like the image. If there's something I could edit in the xml files, i'd appreciate some guidence. Thanks.
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In Launchbox I have R2 and L2 mapped as the zoom in and out buttons for viewing manuals and stuff. Only problem there is that those button mappings also change the box sizes in Launchbox which is annoying cos it's easy to catch it accidentally. Especially when someone else is using the setup and they randomly press buttons, when I come back to it the box art looks all effed up. I disabled L1 and R1 toggling the side bar and game details panels for the same reason.
So far it seems the only solution is to unmap the zoom in buttons altogether, but then I can't properly navigate the manuals or whatever else may require a zoom feature in Launchbox. Is there a way to disable zoom in and out maps from affecting the box art sizes without affecting everything else? It's a small issue but a noticable one. Thanks in advance.
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1 minute ago, C-Beats said:
Probably an issue with the KeyboardView.xaml file in your theme. Navigate to \\LaunchBox\Themes\{Theme name you're using}\Views and delete the KeyboardView.xaml in there and restart Big Box and you should be able to use it properly
Yeah mate I'm pretty sure it's that i'm using old Colourful cos I prefer the animations. I like the new games lists better but the platform catogories I prefer on the old colourful. Is there any way to mix and match? Thanks.
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Never mind, I know why. I'm using the old version of coluorful theme which hasn't integrated the new on screen keyboard.
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Whenever I try to search for a game a glitchy keyboard fills the screen with tiny letters and you can't navigate it. Think it might be broken?
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Hi, I've changed harddrives recently and in the process I managed to lose a few files along the way. One of them was a Mega Drive platform theme video like this one, except it had a remix of the Flying Battery Zone music from Sonic & Knuckles, I've looked all over for it but I can't seem to find it. Does anyone still have it on their setup? If so do you think you could link it to me somehow? It would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
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8 minutes ago, neil9000 said:
lol, could you please supply said error? That would absolutely be the best way to troubleshoot any issues, but i will note i haven't seen anyone else with this issue, so it's likely system specific, and hopefully the error will help to pinpoint the issue.
I reinstalled Launchbox and it works now. But if it happens again I'll be sure to screenshot the error log and report it. I'm thinking it's a virus of some sort. If so do you think I can still salvage my metadata and media if I reinstall windows?
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All of a sudden the pause menu in LaunchBox and BigBox has stopped functioning properly. It actually launches when I press the PS button (what I've mapped as pause button), but none of the options work. It doesn't exit nor does it load or save a state on any emulator. And when in BigBox it crashes the app and brings up an error message.
Also curiously enough my exit game mapping I have on my controller now doesn't work either. I mapped it as 'Share button + Triangle' on Dualshock 4 and now it doesn't exit the emulator. Worked without issue before. Its like Launchbox has stopped recognising hotkeys altogether. Also it doesn't crash LaunchBox (just nothing happens), but it crashes BigBox.
A few anomalies have been happening with LaunchBox recently. Like a few xml files in the Data folder were corrupted for seemingly no reason at all. I had to re set up the settings.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
How do you add 3D model to your theme in CTC?
in Big Box Custom Themes
Posted
Just wondering since there seems not to be an option to do so in the program. Do you have to use xaml code? If so does anyone know what strings to put and where? Thank you.