JaysArcade

I intentionally put the controller for each system there so that no matter what the console the person was playing at the time, they could easily reference the controls originally used on that system. The bezels were built with the intention of them being used with a vertically oriented monitor in an arcade cabinet using arcade controls. Being able to reference the original controller layout was a major focus of the design. Sorry it disagrees with you. You are always free to make your own and share.

The settings menu is the only thing the Community Theme Creator can't edit. All that has to be done manually. It might be possible to delete those files and use the default BigBox settings menu. The only reason this theme has themed settings menu at all is because older versions of Bigbox didn't display the settings very well on a vertical screen. The menu is actually a hack of the settings menu from @faeran's Vertigo theme. So to answer your question, no, I'm not actively working on this theme, but if you put together a good idea (I need specifics), I might entertain the idea of making an update. If you want to try to delete those files and use the default Bigbox settings views, I believe it is the Options views you would need to delete. They are in the ..\Themes\Vertical Aspirations\Views folder. Back them up first so you can restore if needed.

One of the downloads has the Community Theme Creator files. You can download that and edit the theme to your heart's content with the Community Theme Creator. The download has CTC in the file name.

Hey it came out nice Jason. Congrats on finishing it up.

Looks good Jason. For your side pieces - an easy way to get two identical matching pieces, cut your first side, then with your second side, cut it slightly larger. Clamp the two pieces together and run a flush cut router bit around them and you will end up with two identical pieces. Yeah it's an extra bit you'll need, but once you learn this trick, you'll probably find yourself using that bit more than you'd think. I was wondering what your 11th and 12th buttons were for. Mine doesn't have the volume buttons.

Sorry I deleted my post earlier in an attempt to appear like I wasn't trying to steal your thunder. If I could do mine again, I would move the 4 way over to the right a bit more. You're correct that the spinner and 4 way are kind of on top of one another. I think the mag sticks are a good compromise. They're built well and will give many years of service if you stick with them. I've had them on my other cab since 2006 or so. I refreshed the switches in them a couple years ago but that's about it.

Yep, I was a Hyperspin user before I came to BigBox too. And GameEx before that. Been doing this awhile, LOL. Glad you like the theme.

It's user friendly if you want it all built for you already. If you want to do anything yourself, its a big pain in the ass. CoinOps btw is just a RetroFE theme. RetroFE does have the advantage over BigBox that when scrolling between games in a given platform, it is not bound by the video size and orientation. I don't think the community theme creator is yet able to let us change the video size on each game displayed when scrolling which is what it will take to do what that theme does.

It the cabinets are identical in shape, then yes, that would be possible. If the cabinets have different screen sizes and orientations then I'd say no. The position and orientation of the screen has to be constant when scrolling through the wheel. Even if your game specific bezels are identical in shape, it would probably require a whole new theme.

Weird. Well I'm glad one of you got it to work. I checked my system and I don't have NEO GEO AES or the arcade NEO GEO set up. I know I did at one point but it must have been a loooong time ago before I rebuilt my system.

I'll need to fire up my arcade cabinet and see how I did it in the past (I "think" I have NEO GEO set up on there). I "think" I'm using one of the final burn cores for AES and vanilla Neo Geo. I'm going off of memory because I haven't messed with this stuff much lately. You'll probably need to set up individual Retroarch configs for each system, even though they share the same resources. This post kind of shows how to set NEO GEO into AES mode using the fbalpha_libretro core (assuming the core hasn't been renamed something else in the last few years). https://forums.libretro.com/t/how-to-run-neo-geo-in-aes-mode-fbalpha-libretro/8693 You'll need to make sure you are running the correct NEO Geo BIOS that works with this core. I think if you can get away from trying to use the MAME core for Neo Geo, you'll have a lot more success getting the bezel/overlay to work. Going through retroarch AND Mame just adds a bunch of un-necessary complexity in my opinion. I'll try to take a look tonight at my configuration when I get home from work and let you know how mine is set up.

You might need to open your cfg file and make sure it is pointing to the correct png and that it is spelled exactly like the png. What exactly do you need done with this bezel? Do you just want a generic black and white one like the AES bezel but says SNK NEO GEO instead of AES? Not sure I understand exactly what you're asking for.

Are there plans to finish the rest of the options pages? When you go into, say Options - Manage Themes, the back end menu changes to the old default look. It would be nice if the whole backend menu was consistent. Especially for Vertical Themes where the text flows off the edge of the screen. Improvement: All Big Box popups and options pages have been overhauled

Oh, yeah. I guess I should have mentioned that. It's an autohotkey script/exe. If you want to compile it yourself, here is the code. Run it at your own risk. Someone here might say its not the correct way to close Bigbox, but I've had it on this system since well before the pandemic started and I've had zero issues. 🤷‍♂️ SetTitleMatchMode, 2 KillProcessTimer: Process, Close, BigBox.exe SetTimer, KillProcessTimer, -10000 return Exitapp I guess I lied. I have it set for 8 am not 9 am. Kill. Not sure why I set it for Windows vista but it works. I might have just been experimenting. Start. This one is set for windows 10.

Pretty sure that most people don't let their bigbox run constantly, so they're probably not seeing it. Time of the day? Do you sleep? I could be wrong but I bet there's a good chance there is a time of the day you never play games. I run my scheduled tasks around 9 am. I'm usually not home at that time of the day and if I am I'm probably sleeping in, not playing games. Plus this time of day guarantees that Bigbox was started earlier that day so its probably not about ready to crash from being open too long. Also, try superrob's advice above about switching to wmp. I still saw random crashes with wmp but not nearly as often. Still though - running a scheduled kill and startup has fixed my issues of walking into my garage to a frozen, unresponsive Bigbox on my arcade cabinet.

I run 2 scheduled tasks every day. The first task kills any Launchbox/Bigbox executables. The second task opens Bigbox 5 minutes after closing it. If I don't do this, Bigbox will eventually freeze up after a day or so. It's always been like this for me. I have the schedule set to run during a time I'm not around so I don't even notice it. This is the only way I've ever been able to just leave my arcade running all the time without manually fiddling around with it everyday restarting Bigbox.

Jay's Arcade - Animated Marquee Mod - for any theme View File For lack of a better place to put this, I guess I'll settle for this Third Party apps category since it doesn't really fit anywhere else. What is it: The Marquee Mod will add animated marquee support to your theme. I created this marquee style with the Community Theme Creator. Unfortunately it's not currently possible to use a Marquee created for one theme and use it in another unless you have all the source Community Theme Creator files from both the Marquee and theme you wish to patch. The files here will allow you to use the marquees I created for my Vertical Aspirations theme in any other theme. Everything you'll need is included in this one zip file. If you don't have a second monitor in use for marquees, this mod won't do you any good. Instructions: After downloading the zip file, right click the zip, select properties and check the unblock box and click ok. Open the zip and extract the folder onto your desktop or other directory you wish to work in. Inside the folder, run the Edit Game Marquee View.exe first. If you have autohotkey installed on your PC, you can alternatively run the Edit Game Marquee View.ahk When the search dialog opens, type "Marquee Views" without the quotes. Make sure you capitalize it and you type it plural with the s at the end. When the replace dialog opens, type the name of the theme you will be importing this into. Example: Unified Refried. Make sure you spell the name of the theme correctly and use CAPS where needed or this mod won't work. Next, run the Edit Platform Marquee View.exe. If you have autohotkey installed on your PC, you can alternatively run the Edit Platform Marquee View.ahk When the search dialog opens, type "Marquee Views" without the quotes. Make sure you capitalize and you type it plural with the s. When the replace dialog opens, type the name of the theme you will be importing this into. Example: Unified Refried. Make sure you spell the name of the theme correctly and use CAPS where needed or this mod won't work. To confirm the rename worked, open the views folder and open the GameMarqueeView.xaml file and the PlatformMarqueeView.xaml files in a text editor (they may have already opened automatically in the previous step). Verify at the top of the text in the author block that the new name is present there. An example (assuming you used Unified Refried in the replace field), the author block should look like... <!-- COMMUNITY Theme Creator for BigBox - Version 2.3 Theme: Unified Refried Aspect Ratio: Stretch Developed by: Marquee Mod by Jay's Arcade Published: Saturday 05, February 2022 @ 10:43 AM BigBox Version: 12.7-beta-4 or later --> Finish: If all looks well, close both files. Now, copy the Views, Media and Plugin folders into your theme. Open Bigbox and switch to the theme you added support to if it's not already selected. If something is not right, it's likely that something got misspelled. Delete the directory and re-extract from the zip and try again. Please report if you have any issues. Mascot files and animations in this mod were directly stolen from Faerans excellent RetroMags theme. How the marquee views work: The views are not too much different from the default marquee views that come with BigBox. They do offer better support however (in my humble opinion) for Platform Marquees since they defeat the ugly default Banners that come with Bigbox. They also have some animations that run on either side of the logo. The animations are subtle. Platform Marquees will have a default background image, a logo (pulled from your clear logos folder), and animated "mascot" images on either side of the logo. Games Marquees will use a video marquee if available. If a video is not available, it will use an arcade marquee image if available. If an arcade marquee image is not available, it will default to the platform marquee. Games View 2022-01-08 19-05-17.mp4 Platform View 2022-01-08 19-01-42.mp4 Options: Inside the Media folder there is a Platform Marquees folder that has a file named Platform Marquee Background.png. This is the file to change out if your prefer a different background. There are a limited number of mascots in the 2 mascots folders. Faeran's RetroMags theme has a ton of these images if you need to fill in some blank spots that this mod doesn't cover. How to remove: If you find you don't want to use this with your theme anymore, simply go into the theme folder and delete the GamesMarqueeView.xaml and the PlatformMarqueeView.xaml Submitter JaysArcade Submitted 02/05/2022 Category Third-party Apps and Plugins  

Or this?

I've Added a drop in mod to add new secondary display marquee support with animated marquees. Games View - The theme searches for a Marquee Video in ..\LaunchBox\Videos\{Platform Name}\Marquee folder. If it can't find a marquee video, it looks for an Arcade-Marquee image. If it can't find an Arcade-Marquee image, it defaults to the Platform Marquee View. Look on the forum for Video Arcade Marquee Files by philbobaggins for a good selection of Video Marquees. Platform View - The theme uses a generic background image (supplied) with a clear logo that breathes (very slight animation) and a *mascot* on each side of the logo that also move. You can replace the generic background with your own if you like. You'll find it in the ..\Vertical Aspirations\Media\Platform Marquees folder called Platform Marquee Background.png. If you want to add your own "Mascots", simply name them the same as the platform and drop them in the ..\Vertical Aspirations\Media\Platform Mascots (2) folders. https://forums.launchbox-app.com/files/file/2593-vertical-aspirations-a-vertically-oriented-cabinet-theme-marquee-mod-added/ Platform Marquee View 2022-01-08 19-01-42.mp4 Games Marquee View 2022-01-08 19-05-17.mp4 I may release this mod as an alternative to the default marquee views that any theme can use if there is any interest. There is a bit of user set up involved in doing this but nothing too difficult. This mod is only compatible with Vertical Aspirations 1.3.

Just curious. What are the dimensions of your arcade marquee screen? Screen resolution?