CriticalCid

I must admit that I’m still a little skeptical about a theme creator tool for Big Box but this does look really interesting. It definitely looks like a good balance of easy to use while being powerful enough to not restrict creativity. Great job! I’m just torn apart of what the existence of such a tool implies. The download section will probably be flooded with a giant wave of themes of questionable quality while the really good ones will be harder to find and don’t get the attention they’ll probably deserve. But on the other hand your tool will allow the creation of awesome themes that otherwise would have not seen the light of day. Depending how much the upcoming theme downloader inside Big Box will be curated this might be a non-issue anyway, so I’m guessing I’ll just wait and see what the community will do with it. This is definitely not criticism about your tool itself, I still think it looks really promising. I will most likely stay to directly code my themes with my beloved Notepad++ but I’m surely will take your tool for a ride once it has been released. What I’ve noticed is that the code of the View that you’ve shown was kinda large considering the number of elements used in this View. So I’m curious how the themes which will be created with this tool will perform on lower end systems. Another thing to note. I saw that your tool included the HelperControl plugin when you created the actual theme. Its features are now natively integrated into Big Box itself and therefor you don’t need it anymore. It would probably be better to also remove/replace it in your theme designer going forward

I live nearby Stuttgart, Germany

Aeon MQ7 v0.3 released! The new version requires LaunchBox v9.4 or higher! This update is mainly focused on fixing/improving things for the new theming changes that came with LB v9.4 I want to say that I have not forgotten about this theme but I don’t know when I will come back to it and finish it. Sorry to everybody who is waiting for new big updates. Changelog: v0.3 - 02.13.2019 - requires LB v9.4 or higher - Removed: The weather plugin by @Grila was removed as it's being broken at the moment. It will get re-added once it has been fixed. - Removed: The HelperControl plugin was removed as its functions are now integrated in Big Box itself - Fixed: The games count in the Platform Views now handles smaller and bigger numbers better - Updated: The theme was updated and tested for the new theming engine changes in LB v9.4 - Updated: The community rating is now rounded up to two decimal places

No, they aren't the same and not all changes by Jason were incorporated. Especially his crazy fast disc spinning will never find a way into my version because I just don't like that at all (sorry Jason ) The wheel is definitely rounder now and looks much better than before.

Only the backgrounds were converted to JPEG, all the other artwork is sill using PNG (and this won't change as JPEG doesn't support transparency which is mandotory for them) Unfortunately the theme doesn't support various file types, so you have to convert all your backgrounds to JPEG. I know that a big change like this is annyoing but I could reduce the size of the theme by 2/3, so I'm certain that's a win in the long run,.

Unified 1.2 released! The new version requires LaunchBox v9.4 or higher! Please check the Changelog for everything that has changed. This update is mainly focused on fixing/improving things. Originally, I planned to only release a new version of Unified when I have something big to show like new Views. But due to all technical changes that happened in the past half year to LB I had to release this smaller update now to make sure that everything works fine going forward. I’m also sorry to let you guys hanging for so long but the two big projects I did last year (initial Unified release & recording over 1000 new HyperSpin MAME themes) + my new daily job drained me so much that I had absolutely no motivation to work on any projects or being very active in the forums. The good news is that working in this update got me excited about theming again. Of course I won’t promise anything. I took a lot of inspiration from the Unified versions/modifactions that @Jason Carr, @RetroHumanoid and @bmonomad did. I want to thank them big time for their work! Especially RetroHumanoid took the Unified concept with Refried to a whole new level and made it his own! Also a huge shoutout to @dragon57 for creating the new Unified logo. Sorry that it took me so long to actually add it to the theme. Changelog: v1.2 - 02.13.2019 - requires LB v9.4 or higher - General: The Add-on package was merged with the main theme. All media is now included in a single package - Removed: The weather plugin by @Grila was removed as it's being broken at the moment - Removed: The HelperControl plugin was removed as its functions are now integrated in Big Box itself - Updated: The theme was updated and tested for the new theming engine changes in LB v9.4 - Updated: All backgrounds were converted to maximum-quality JPEGs; reducing their size drastically (thanks @JasonCarr for the tip) If you have added and/or renamed some background images before you have to convert them to JPEG as well! Sorry for the inconvinience - Updated: Some backgrounds were replaced with new ones (the old ones were moved to the "Alt" folder) (thanks @RetroHumanoid) - Updated: The TextList Games View now uses the normal Game Boxes element, which means that you can now switch there between the Image Types (and probably have to if you want to use 3D Boxes) -Fixed: Due to the above change does the "Flip Box" function now work again in the Games Details screen if you have "2D Boxes" selected as your current Image Type - Updated: The Main Menu and Option Views now feature custom artwork + there is finally a logo for the theme (in the style of the HyperSpin logo). Thanks @dragon57 - Updated: The size and position of the wheel was changed a bit. It's now farther away from the pointer and therefore it's not overlapping it all the time. Also it fades away more smothly now. - Updated: All Clear Logos, Boxart, Carts and Discs now have a slight Drop Shadow (thanks @Jason Carr) - Updated: The sizes of the Box and Cart/Disc Art were slightly changed throughout all Views - Fixed: Top bar modified to prevent triangle corner overlap issues (thanks @JasonCarr) - Fixed: The TextList list is now over the Platform/Playlist logo and doesn't get covered from very wide logos anymore. - Fixed: The Cart and Disc art now appear in higher quality - Fixed: The theme didn’t show the proper artwork for playlists in some cases - Added: A bunch of new icons were added/replaced (thanks @ bmonomad) - Replaced the icon for favorite games - New icon for completed games - The rating was replaced with star icons - Added: Logos and backgrounds for 3 new playlists were added. (thanks @RetroHumanoid) - Ball & Paddle Games - Maze Games - Multigame

CriticalZone v2.3 released! This update is mainly focused on fixing/improving things for the new theming changes that come with LB v9.4 Unfortunately, I had to scrap the background video plugin as it wasn’t compatible with LB v9.4 anymore. You can now only set up a single background video throughout the whole theme. Sorry for the inconvenience. The Default version that is bundled with LaunchBox will get updated automatically but if you use one of the versions from the download section make sure to update them now as they won’t work under LB v9.4 anymore! I also updated my two other themes “Aeon MQ7” and “Unified”. They will get released once the stable version of LB v9.4 comes out as they will require it but the CriticalZone update should work fine with any previous LB versions. Changelog:

Go to your Big Box options -> Game Details -> make sure you don’t have „Game Notes” unchecked

That's weird, it works just fine for me. Does the description work in Horizontal 1 for you? Both Views are almost identical just with a different wheel size. The logo has to be dynamic in order to work with playlists which contain games from different systems. You are probably referring to a screenshot which shows the old 1.8 version. If you prefer that Just take the "HorizontalWheel3GamesView.xaml" file from the "Views" folder of 1.8 and replace the one in your V2 version with it

I'm sorry to tell you that my stance on this hasn’t changed and I don’t think it ever will. I barely find time or motivation to work on the long overdue update for Unified so working on a time-consuming rework of the theme is completely out of question for now and the foreseeable future for me. Of course, everybody should feel free convert the theme themselves. Unfortunately I dont have any templates I could share but you honestly don't really need any because they are as basic as it can get. Just use the arcade cab artwork or the video borders that are coming with the theme and place them in center of your video, the rest is just very basic moving of images and fading the video in and out. I have absolutely no clue about After Effects or video editing in general but it probably took me only 1 or 2 hours to teach myself everything I needed to create these. Don't forget to share your results

It’s incredible how quickly you have put those high quality videos out, I really really dig them. Nonetheless there are 2 videos that trigger my OCD. The character you’ve used for the Apple II videos is from the Prince of Persia reboot series which is something completely different than the original Prince of Persia game that was released on the Apple II. So it kinda feels wrong to me to see him representing this platform. Something similar goes for Sora that you’ve used for the PSP. Yes, there is a Kingdom Hearts game on this handheld but that’s also the only game in this series where Sora isn’t the main character and I’m not even sure if he does appear in it at all. With that said it would be great if you could pump out alternative version of these 2 platforms with different characters

I just found a minor issue with the descriptions. Your plugin apparently adds some characters as HTML code into the notes field.

Oh man, sorry to hear that. I hope it’s nothing serious

I just tested both games and it seems to work well now. Thank you very much Now I only have to figure out what’s the sweet spot when scraping multiple games as your plugin also stops working at some point when you select too many games at once. Any news on adding the Tags?

I’ve now tested your new version and the two issues that you’ve fixed seem to be solved! Unfortunately do weird store pages like the Back to the Future episodes still cause the plugin to stop. I’ve tested my collection even further (up to the letter D) and found other entries that cause the same problem: the Double Fine Adventure documentary series https://store.steampowered.com/app/402591/

The important part is to know that Custom Fields are Single Value fields, but you can assign multiple fields of the same name to a game at once. Basically that means that you have to add every Steam tag in a separate 'Tags' field. Regarding the .xml file are Custom Fields added at the end of the respective platform file. Field by field and game by game. For example it could look like this: <CustomField> <GameID>b9672d53-8441-4f4d-8182-be6d7ccc85cd</GameID> <Name>Tags</Name> <Value>Female Protagonist</Value> </CustomField> <CustomField> <GameID>b9672d53-8441-4f4d-8182-be6d7ccc85cd</GameID> <Name>Tags</Name> <Value>Arcade</Value> </CustomField> <CustomField> <GameID>b9672d53-8441-4f4d-8182-be6d7ccc85cd</GameID> <Name>Tags</Name> <Value>Bullet Hell</Value> </CustomField> <CustomField> <GameID>3f356fb4-a46a-457e-b71e-0d1879a64f92</GameID> <Name>Tags</Name> <Value>Bullet Hell</Value> </CustomField> <CustomField> <GameID>20efdc4d-5eab-45ef-b11f-e09c31d588d9</GameID> <Name>Tags</Name> <Value>Bullet Hell</Value> </CustomField> </LaunchBox> In this case you have 3 games were one game has 3 different Tags while the other two games only have a single tag.

Wow, that was fast! Good job. Ah, sure. I didn’t know that you only rely on the Steam API because as far as I understand does the term ‘scraping’ suggest to not need any and take the data the ‘rough’ way. And your tool is called ‘Steam Scraper’ after all I completely understand that you want to keep your plugin in completely legal terms and I’m sure that Jason is also appreciating it, so I would never ask you to do it otherwise. While I personally would really love to have the tags in LB (which would make your plugin perfect for me), I certainly don’t want to push you into a giant maintenance job by adding a second API, so I can completely understand if you would decide that it’s not worth it.

In your linked document is “Categories” the data that I meant with “Flags”. Regarding Tags I know that other tools are able to scrape it. For example Depressurizer: https://github.com/Depressurizer/Depressurizer I’m no developer but maybe its source code can help you figuring it out. Gotcha. Currently it's quite tedious because your plugin constantly stops when it hits a game with no (proper) steam store page but once you've fixed this issue it should be alright. A message when the scraping is finished or ran into a problem would be neat none the less

I found the issue for most of them. Your plugin does indeed download the media without any problems but LaunchBox can’t find it because they all have an apostrophe in the file name and LB doesn’t like that. If you replace the apostrophe in the file name with an underscore they show up just fine. Unfortunately I haven't figured out yet what's the problem with: //N.P.P.D. RUSH//- The milk of Ultraviolet EDIT: Also found the issue for N.P.P.D. RUSH. LB apparently wants a single underscore as substitute for multiple slashes instead of one for each slash

Your plugin is awesome! Thanks so much for it. I have almost 6000 games on Steam and hundreds, if not thousands, of these games are not in the LB database, so this is quite convenient. I gave your plugin a try and wanted to share my thoughts and results with you. My test setup was a complete new LB installation were I’ve imported my whole Steam library through LaunchBox’ own Steam importer and then started to scrape all the games with your plugin. So far I have tested it with all my games from # to B (745 games). I’ve noticed that when you scrape multiple games at once, your plugin just stops continuing when it hits a game where it has problems with; for example, when the game has no Steam store page (happens when the game was removed from Steam) or if the store page has almost nothing in it like the episodes of the Back to the Future game from Telltale (https://store.steampowered.com/app/94500/). It would be nice if your plugin could just skip those problematic games and continue with the rest of the selected games instead of just stop running. On the same note it would it be nice to have some feedback if your plugin is currently doing anything or not. Right now I have to check with the Task Manager if my internet bandwidth is currently used to see if your plugin is still running or if it has stopped. I also encountered a few games where your plugin does download metadata for them but not any media files. I’ve also tried to add these games manually with your plugin and got the same issue. The following games are affected by this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/270090/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/61510/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/689910/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/522890/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/15100/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/34900/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/257350/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/228280/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/57640/ And finally I have a feature request. It would be awesome if your plugin could also scrape Flags and Tags and add them to LaunchBox as Custom Fields. Especially for ridiculously large collections like mine it’s incredible useful to be able to filter the games by that. Thanks again for your time

That’s an odd issue and the first time I’ve heard about it being a problem with Unified, so I’m quite clueless about it as well. What version of LaunchBox / Big Box are you using? Unified may not work with LB versions prior 8.2 due to some changes of the video stretching options for theme developers.