Jason Carr

Speaking of themeing the startup screens, I should clarify a few things as to how the new startup screen themes work, as they do work a tad bit differently than Big Box themes. In the LaunchBox\StartupThemes folder, you'll find a Default folder that represents the default startup theme. As with the Big Box themes, you can simply copy and rename this Default folder to create a new startup theme. What's different though is how the XAML files work in the theme folder. The startup themes can easily have separate themes depending on the selected platform, category, or playlist, and/or depending on the platform of the game being run. These files currently exist in the default startup theme folder: Default.xaml Nintendo GameCube.xaml Nintendo Wii.xaml Sony Playstation 2.xaml Sony Playstation.xaml This means that Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation 2, and Sony Playstation all have custom startup screens, and the rest of the platforms will use the Default.xaml view. Currently, the custom platform files are only there in order to add spinning discs for those particular platforms, but each one can be tweaked however is needed. It's also worth noting that if no specific view is found in the file system for a particular category or playlist, the startup screens will then look for a file that matches the parent platform. You can certainly add a separate view for each child playlist though, such as a separate startup screen for Nintendo Wii Strategy, or each available genre for a platform, etc.

A single static image would be a pretty boring way to start games, and it would be missing the progress bar, so I'm not sure that that's really worth implementing on its own. Right now the default startup theme just uses the game's fanart background, but it would be easy to tweak the theme to display any image type you want in the background. So long as you can get the images into LaunchBox, it should be fairly easy to use them as startup screens with a simple theme tweak.

Thank you all. Once we get emulator-specific and game-specific settings in place for the startup screens, we'll be able to tweak all the little issues. Also, mouse cursors are not being hidden at all from within LaunchBox right now, so that's something that just hasn't been tackled yet. Next week I'll start on the emulator-specific settings, and we'll start perfecting the startup screens.

@alnyden I have plans to change the theme system to better support different themes and views for each platform. For example, for Unified Refried, I plan on adding an option for @RetroHumanoid to be able to use one theme instead of so many. Stay tuned for that. Regardless, an easy workaround is to simply back up your LaunchBox\Data folder before experimenting. It's small and easy to back up.

After closer look, they're doing it with brightness (such as in the CriticalZone theme), but not with opacity. So it looks like that would indeed require coding on my part. Yes, I do need to update the documentation in a number of places.

Closing this thread as the first 9.2 beta is out now here:

Thank you all. I have the first 9.2 beta out with the beginnings of the startup screens feature: I am closing this thread now in order to move discussions over there. Please be sure to read the known issues and the planned features sections of the first post before posting. Thanks all.

Hey all, the first 9.2 beta is out now with the beginnings of the next major feature: startup screens. Startup screens are enabled by default with this new beta, and can be turned off under Game Startup in the LaunchBox and Big Box options. Please keep in mind that this new feature is a work in progress, and not everything will be smooth at this point. You may even have to disable it in order for some emulators to work properly. That said, for the vast majority of emulators it seems to be working great so far. Here are the current known issues with the startup screens: The startup screens currently do not work properly with emulators or games that do not use fullscreen exclusive mode (such as Project64). For most of these emulators, the startup screen overlaps the emulator and never shows the game. Pressing Escape should close the emulator and the startup screen to get out of this state. Fixes are coming in the next beta. If the game is closed too quickly (currently less than five seconds after it's started), then the startup screen will flash while exiting the game. There's currently no way to abort the game loading process (during file extraction, etc.). Key/button presses (spamming) can still hijack focus on game startup and cause the game not to be displayed or focused properly. And here are some additional features that I plan on adding in future 9.2 betas: Better window hiding for some emulators (window hiding is already in place and works for most emulators already, including Dolphin) Emulator-specific and game-specific settings to allow you to turn certain game startup features on or off for certain emulators or certain games Game shut down themes instead of just a black screen on game shutdown Let me clarify that these are only the plans for the 9.2 release of the startup screens. I've heard all the requests in the "Startup Screens, Pause Screens, and Bezels Discussions" thread and many of them will be implemented, just not for the first official release. Let me know how testing goes.

This was changed quite a few versions ago. I'm not sure exactly when, but it should be in the change log. I don't think it should do this with the popup views though (but maybe it does either way any time you change the main, non-platform-specific theme).

This is by design. When you change the main theme in the Big Box options, it resets the platform-specific themes. I know this could be more clear, though.

I'm guessing there was some other kind of weird input issue going on with the system, most likely some kind of input conflict. If a reboot fixes it, that's most likely the case. If it happens again, try looking at what programs you have running in Task Manager.

I can add this to my list, but I don't think there's a way to do it currently without me adding something to the code. I know that some themes do it with the wheels already, but I doubt that solution would work for CoverFlow. I'll add it to my list.

Can you explain exactly what you mean by this? We did have an issue at one point for users who use the betas, so I'm guessing this is a relic of a bug we had with a previous beta release.

This does seem to somehow be video card driver specific, so do try updating your video drivers. I am aware of this issue though on some machines and I'll be coming back to address it here soon.

Check your Big Box keyboard mapping options. Nothing has changed with that code recently and I haven't heard this reported anywhere else, so I'm guessing it's not an issue with the new versions.

Setting box sizes for each platform is planned. However, this is not part of what's in the works currently (will be a separate thing), and true separate themes for each platform in LaunchBox is not planned as it kind of flies in the face of a desktop-type interface.

I don't believe the ~ character causes any problems.

How/why does the theme change seem buggy? I'm not aware of any bugs with that feature and no issues have been reported on that in quite a long time. The settings for theme and view are all in the platform and playlist XML files in the LaunchBox\Data folder.

That's odd. I'll look into that. I've never seen it out of alphabetical order, but maybe it's a system setting that causes it. I think I should be able to override it anyways. By the way @RetroHumanoid @CriticalCid I'm planning to make some themeing adjustments here very soon to add better support for platform-specific themes/views.

Yeah, @CDBlue's advice is accurate and well said. Redux is also more streamlined, while Refried is a tad more flashy and contains more character art for each platform.

You can download them directly through LaunchBox, while you download game media. The EmuMovies "Video - Theme" option downloads the Hyperspin themes. The "Video - Gameplay" videos are the standard gameplay videos from EmuMovies.

The game details screen has been a known issue with the Unified themes for a while now; it is on my list to tackle.

This is correct and also mostly by design for the Unified Redux theme. Those genres were originally made for the arcade playlists, and thus most of them are relatively arcade-specific. For that reason, loading up an NES genre, for example, will simply use the NES theme media. If you'd like though, you can always add platform genre-specific media, or copy some of the existing media. For example, the new files would be called "Nintendo Entertainment System Strategy.png" for strategy NES games.

@azzajess I should indeed update the site. 8.1 is an automatic update to 8, so I doubt drivers would be an issue, but I know it is a major release. Unfortunately there's no way to install 4.7 without upgrading to 8.1, at least not that I know about.

For arcade, it's much recommended to use Tools > Create Missing MAME/Arcade playlists instead. Those genre playlists are much better suited for arcade.