Jason Carr

:) Yeah, we will be providing some sort of theme options eventually, but honestly I think having a dark background will stick. You're sort of crazy if you want an in-your-face white and bright experience. I don't see the concept of light text on a dark background changing much. As for dimensions, I have been making them as big as I can, basically as big as the original image source allows. This way they can be used as backgrounds too, if desired, eventually. The aspect ratio works better though, of course, when they are wider than they are taller. I should also note that they should all be 24-bit transparent PNG images. Yes, the stroke is because, for example, the red of the SNES logo is too hard to read against the background. This is unfortunately common. Awesome to hear you're hopping on board, @bd00. Thanks a million.

BaunchLox the Unfortunate Hippo

Thanks guys. Yes, all these features are eventually planned. I do plan on allowing you to customize which images to use where and such. I really like your animated gif idea too, @AFaustini. :)

Here are the logos that I've done and included already:

@bd00, thanks for all your excellent work. Not to push you, but since @portachking is asking, the next thing that would be nice to have is clear logo images for all the platforms. You can take a look at the ones I've included for GameCube, NES, SNES, MS-DOS, Windows, Atari 2600, etc. They show up on the top of the games list when you load one of those platforms in Big Box Mode. They can be tricky to create, because some platform logos work great as-is, but some need some tweaking. I've found that in a lot of cases using a white Stroke effect in Photoshop really helps. We also want to make sure they're relatively big, 100% clean, and just look good in the app, which is part of the challenge. Any help there would certainly be appreciated. But of course, everyone does better work when they work on what *they* want to work on, so by no means should anyone feel like they need to do just that.

@bd00 lol, sorry to hear about that. Yes, I will add that as an option soon. I can't decide if I should put the configuration options for Big Box inside of Big Box itself, or if they should go in the desktop mode's Options menu. Any thoughts all? Per that error, ick. That one's gonna be hard to pinpoint; I'll see if I can figure it out. I may have a new version out tonight; I'm hoping so. I've been focusing on performance, so I'm hoping the next version will no longer have any performance issues...should be fully responsive.

Maddoc1007 said Hi Jason sorry havnt been on in few days reason of health. Just downloaded the latest beta 5-4 WOW tried this list emulators:- BlueMSX, Dolphin, DOSBOX, ePSXe, Fusion, Magic Engine, Multiple versions of Mame, Neo Pop, Nestopia, nullDC, PPSSPP, Project 64 version 2.2.0.3 (anyone downloading this version download a little program called Unchecky and install this will stop any thing else but the emulator installing), Scumm, Snes9x, Virtual Jaguar and Sega Model 2 thanks to BD000's script which works flawlessly i might add. All games i can report are opening (have them all set to fullscreen) and work superbly and might I add launch faster than they do in Launchbox itself. Also as a BONUS i have a previous version of LaunchBox installed (version 4.9) for media ie:- dvd drive, music player (Jaangle), Films and T.V. Series (set as shortcut in Platforms called 1. Media Players) and they all launch through BigBox. No errors of anykind so far i can report. What can i say Jason? its fast, fluid and very responsive. Thank you so much for such a suprise with this Beta, only thing im short off is platform images for ScummVM and Capcom, which would make images for everything (well for me anyway) Thank You Jason Carr i have to really commend you on such a fantastic Frontend it surpasses all my wildest expectations. Thank you Martin! All great to hear. I trust you're back up to par with your health?

Fluffo said I see a lot has happened since I was here the last time! Is it possible to change the keys for Big Box mode? I would like to use backspace instead of escape to go back. Hi Fluffo, this is coming, but not as of yet.

Sorry for my momentary absence guys, I had a fire to put out for my "real" work that kept me from LaunchBox. CliveBarker said I have a question, does LaunchBox have any type of "sound"? Like when scrolling and navigating your games or menus? I was scrolling my collection tonight and I thought about that, what about a "clicky" sound (more like a "tick" sound for every scroll or thing selected) when scrolling and navigating. Maybe these types of sounds are annoying for the people I don't know, but I think that it can give a little more feedback when navigating through and also can add more personality to the BigBox mode. Maybe this is inconvenient because it can cause performance issues or something so take this just as a thought, not a suggestion. Good idea, Clive. I'll add it to my list. :)

New beta is out. Should fix the issues with the Spanish language, the Steam banners, and the minimize on launch. We also have bd's updated graphics and AutoHotkey support so you can close your games again with a controller. :)

Great improvements bd! I have the Game Boy Color and the upgraded images ready for the beta tonight.

Hehehehehe. Welcome back, Duck! At least you have new toys.

Cool, I see. Yeah, something like this is planned.

Hopefully that should work...let me know. :)

Hi Kriven, by default users can't. I'll grant you permissions. :)

Awesome...rock on. I'm in business. :)

Awesome, got it. :) Any chance you could send me the same thing with the "Big Box" text underneath, as in the examples?

Wow, looks perfect, bd. You can send the .ai file to my email: jasondavidcarr@gmail.com. Can't wait to see it in the app. :)

Yeah, that should be fine. I'm not too concerned about it being stolen. I can remove the attachment once I download it.

Awesome. I'm not overly familiar with vector formats; ultimately I just need a vector format that I can open in Photoshop. I know there's at least one format that Illustrator will export that will allow me to open it in Photoshop and specify the size that I need. I *think* that's an EPS file.

CliveBarker said Jason Carr said @CliveBarker is it displaying in Spanish for you? Its displaying all in english man, I didn't said anything because I thought that this new mode needs new resource and string files to translate, so I was just waiting for you to send them to me once the project is more mature. I am trying the last beta and the Steam banners still aren't being displayed. I have the prefer steam banners option selected. Maybe its because I deleted all my steam front box images, mainly to save some space and because I hate those boxes with the Games For Windows logo thing showing. Okay, I'll look into both issues. For the languages, I'm going to use the same translations as the desktop version wherever possible, so it should be showing mostly Spanish. I have a hunch as to what's going on though; I'll look into it. :)

scree said Hi Jason. I updated to the new beta (5.0.0.3) and this time when I try to play a game in BBM nothing happens, no error message just no response. But any non-game Additional App (e.g. auto-run an XPadder game profile first) works ok. Out of curiosity I unticked the Minimise LaunchBox when launching games and Restore LaunchBox when exiting games and success at last. Games are now launching across all my platforms in BBM. On a separate note I notice in the Manage Platforms box that there is a folder associated with each platform, and all have the same path type Games\platform name. I can't find a folder called Games in my LaunchBox folder. I keep all my game platforms folders (emulators, games etc) in a folder in LaunchBox called Platforms. Do I need to do any editing of the folder paths ishown in Manage Platforms? Hi scree, that is really good to know that minimize on launch is causing errors; good find. I'll get that fixed. That could've been really hard to track down, so I really appreciate that lol. Per the folder, that is the default folder path that is used for each platform. This setting is new, so it makes sense that the folders don't exist. Basically, what it will be used for is when importing games, when it asks you if you want to "move or copy files", this is where it will put them. I haven't made that code change yet, though. For the future, it might be a good idea to change these to the proper folders, but as for right now, it has no effect. Eventually, I'd like to use this to automatically detect new ROMs, etc., as well, but that' not priority for the moment.

Cool. I did address a number of issues with the game controller code for Big Box Mode. But of course the desktop app uses the same code so it makes sense that it was affected. I'll look into fixing those issues in the desktop app.

Hi Manny, welcome. Did you mean in the desktop app in your original request? Or in the new Big Box Mode?

Wow, these look great, Kriven. That's a good point; if we can just generate the images beforehand, then it becomes a non-issue. Really need to get our new custom database going so that we can provide these things automatically.