Jason Carr

How are you testing if the styles were merged? Generally, if the theme is working properly, then everything went as expected.

Most likely it's fine. If you do run into issues, let me know. It's never a good idea to run betas without backups, but in this case it should be a relatively easy fix if you've ended up with a broken theme.

I don't have any leads on that; I haven't seen or heard about LaunchBox crashing in a long while. Are these crashes new with the 9.4 betas?

Great to hear @faeran. Thank you so much for your work; can't wait to see what you can do with it.

Do you mean that it isn't updating for you? I just tested Unified Redux and it appears to be updating automatically just fine. The above line is replaced with this: <TextBlock Text="{Binding GamesCount}" FontFamily="{StaticResource FontBebasNeue}" FontSize="50" Foreground="White" DockPanel.Dock="Left" />

Awesome, thank you as always @RetroHumanoid. Have a safe and painless move and enjoy the new place.

That's a completely separate thing. Still on the list, but probably not for this release, unfortunately.

I just put out beta 7 to fix an issue with themes that use an existing <ResourceDictionary> tag inside of the <UserControl.Resources> tag in the views. Fundamental and Retrotastic (and possibly some others) were configured that way and it was breaking the upgrade process for those themes. All should be fixed now, but unfortunately if you had previously run beta 5 or beta 6 of Big Box with those themes included, they were upgraded improperly so you'll need to re-download them from the forums. Let me know if anyone sees any additional issues with any other themes.

Third time's the charm. Beta 7 is out with a fix for upgrading some themes that weren't upgrading properly (Fundamental and Retrotastic are the two that I'm aware of). Unfortunately, if you downloaded either beta 5 or 6 and started up Big Box, and are getting XAML errors with those themes, you may need to re-download them from here on the forums in order to get it fixed. Let me know if anyone sees any additional issues with any other themes.

I just figured out an issue with updating Fundamental that I'm about to fix. I'll check the retrotastic theme to see if it might be the same issue.

Beta 6 is out now to fix the above issue.

FYI, a new beta is uploading now to fix an issue that was just found in the beta testing thread. Edit: It's now available.

That is correct. It simply adds a UserControl.Resources section if necessary, and adds the relevant styles there.

Cheers!

I see; I am able to replicate. I'll get a fix out shortly.

Woot!

It shouldn't, but even if it does, it'll be easy to change.

Beta 5 is out now with some major Big Box theming changes/improvements, including new support for platform-specific games views, performance improvements, and bug fixes. See below for the details:

Hello theme developers! First off, thank you all so much for all the amazing Big Box themes you've created so far; I hope that these changes prove to be useful for you guys. Please know that none of these changes should break any existing themes. All themes should be upgraded automatically when starting up Big Box 9.4-beta-5 or later. I've worked hard to ensure that all themes, even back to the very first themes from 2016, will continue to work. In a nutshell, here are the theming changes for Big Box 9.4: Styles XAML files are no longer supported (they're automatically migrated to the Views files) Platform-specific XAML files are now supported (much like the new Startup themes) Due to a recently discovered performance issue, HelperControl:TotalGamesCount has been replaced with a new GamesCount property Styles XAML Files No Longer Supported In the past, the previous code allowed for occasional theme conflicts when switching between themes. If you've ever seen a particular styling from one theme end up in another, then you've noticed this in the past. This was caused by theme styles not getting fully reset to defaults before applying the new styles, which was a rare problem, but it did happen between particular themes. We've simplified themes going forward so that styles cannot be shared between themes, which should eliminate this as a problem as well as make things a little bit more straightforward for new theme developers. By Styles XAML files, we're referring to any files in the Styles subfolder of themes. Upon startup of Big Box 9.4-beta-5 or later, you'll notice that these Styles XAML files are removed and the contents of them are automatically migrated to the Views XAML files that use them. If you used any styles in your themes, you'll notice that the views that use them will have a new <UserControl.Resources> section near the top of the XAML. The entire <Style> elements are just copied over from the style XAML file into the view files that use them. The one disadvantage of this is of course duplicated code, but I believe the added simplicity and reduced confusion outweigh that disadvantage. Let me know if anyone finds any themes that do not migrate properly to this new model. Update (2019-02-05): This strategy has changed slightly. Please see here: Platform-Specific XAML Files This should prove to be an exciting addition, especially for themes like CoverBox or Unified Refried which currently require using a separate theme for each platform. Instead of requiring many different themes, these themes can now be combined into a single theme with different XAML for each platform. New folders can be created inside a theme's Views folder for each type of games view, with XAML files inside that are named to match a particular platform. For example, you could create a new file like this: LaunchBox\Themes\My Custom Theme\Views\WheelGamesView\Nintendo Entertainment System.xaml This new XAML file would then be used as the WheelGamesView for the Nintendo Entertainment System platform. If a custom platform file does not exist like the above, then of course Big Box will revert to the default WheelGamesView.xaml file directly in the Views folder. Let me know if anyone has any questions or runs into any issues with this new addition. HelperControl.TotalGamesCount Replaced It recently came to our attention that this particular piece of functionality in the HelperControl has been causing performance issues with the new nesting features, so instead I've added a new GamesCount property to the platform filters views. Upon startup of Big Box 9.4-beta-5 or later, themes will be upgraded to replace the <HelperControl:TotalGamesCount> elements with elements like this instead: <TextBlock Text="{Binding GamesCount}" /> All formatting and child properties from the previous <HelperControl:TotalGamesCount> element will be applied to the new TextBlock element, so everything should work exactly the same without introducing performance issues. Once again, thank you all and let me know if you have any questions or run into any issues with the new features. The Documentation.pdf file in the LaunchBox\Themes folder has been updated as well. @faeran @Mr. RetroLust @RetroHumanoid @wallmachine @eatkinola @bbweiners @keltoigael @Jack. @y2guru @whoozwah @SNAK3ATER @Rincewind @CriticalCid @shro2016 @broskiplays @Grila @NJDave71 @Hexxxer @PhillsDoodles @Zombeaver @Omen @Cookz718 @viking @OrochiMishima @nosh @ea4492 @Maddoc1007 @vsilvalopes @damageinc86 @walter10h @skainlurmis @Scottad @Nyny77 @Sithel @Akezhar @Thanos Reigns

Yes, mine works properly. I don't have that issue with my collection, but I am aware of it. I believe it has to do with having a lot of different themes for your various platforms. It's on my list to look into.

Thanks for the feedback on VLC guys. I ran Big Box in attract mode for the entire weekend (more than 48 hours) and had no issues. So I think we're good to go with the VLC upgrade, thankfully.

Possibly, but I'll have to experiment with it. I'm sure there's a solution but I'll have to play with it. I think this is a new request (haven't heard it before). It could be done with a custom theme, but might require a plugin. I'll add an item to my list to add a property to at least make it available to theme developers. If you put a video into LaunchBox's media folder and name it the name of the game, it will indeed be automatically picked up. This is by design. If you're "launching" videos, my recommendation would be to not put them in the LaunchBox media folders, and keep them somewhere else.

There is no memory leak; I know this because I can run it for days and days (just got done with a test running it for 3 days and the memory wasn't any higher than it should be). But yes, 4 GB is bare minimum for RAM, and may or may not be enough depending on the theme and views that you're using. CoverFlow is known to be very RAM-intensive due to the required caching of large images, for example. Regardless, all that RAM is recycled when leaving the view.

Yeah, I'd love if that existed as well. Even if it was just us and EmuMovies. It'd be a lot of work to implement though, of course, so you're probably right, wishful thinking. I think those search matches would probably be best reported to @circo.

If something isn't matching up with EmuMovies, it can help to change the title, if you can guess what EmuMovies is expecting.