JaysArcade

Hi @terryy Correct, I have some extra files that need to be dropped into the theme for those back end views to display correctly. Its one spot I wish the devs would fix for vertical users, as the backend is practically un-usable with the default settings. Either that or ask @y2guru to issue a module in the theme creator that addresses this. He is very busy keeping up with the other BigBox stuff so I can't fault him for not doing anything with it. Open the zip here (unblock it first) and drop the files into the root of the Vertical Aspirations theme. Keep in mind, you'll need to do this each time you publish with the theme creator as it over-writes the whole folder each time it publishes the theme. Another option is to download @C-Beats TrueVert theme and pull out the nessessary backend views from that and use those if you want something different. His looks like the default backend stuff but text is centered and fits on the screen. I'll send you a seperate note about the 2 screen mod. Vertical Aspirations - Theme Extras.zip

Sorry, I don't mean to hijack the thread with my stuff. I'm just excited for marquees!

Can be done in the community theme creator already. The problem with banners though is there is no standard size, where marquees are mostly all in a similar size/ratio. Not a huge problem if you grab the right media. On the flip side, there are no platform marquee images. This requires platform banners to be used as platform marquees. Not a deal breaker, but it does make theme creation with platform marquees interesting. Below are a few marquee views I've been working on. Platform Marquees 2022-01-08 19-01-42.mp4 Games View Marquees with Video marquees, image marquees, and Platform Banner/marquee fallback if neither image or video exists 2022-01-08 19-05-17.mp4

Nice to see Marquees getting some love!

@mobius006 check your inbox for the modded theme. If anyone else wants to try it out, let me know. It uses banners where the marquees usually go on the primary screen and includes a marquee platform and games view for the secondary display if using a marquee monitor. Nothing groundbreaking, but definitely new to this theme.

I can certainly add a custom marquee view for that resolution or whatever that screen ratio equates to. As for the banner image ratios/resolutions, that is a big problem with that image type as there is no standard size or ratio for banners. Its actually an issue for my theme as Platforms do not have Marquees so I had to use Banner Images. I had to create a bunch of suitably sized images for the platforms/playlists and include them in the theme. If there is a banner that is square shaped, depending on how the default marquee view is programmed, it will probably shrink down to fit the narrow monitor as I assume the image is not being stretched to fit (which would look weird too). Try using stretch instead of fill in the default marquee view you edited. At any rate, knowing that banners are all shaped weird, your best bet is probably to source your own banner images that are more arcade marquee shaped (or create your own like you did with the marquees). Marquee Priority is a relatively new thing that came out two or three months ago. What that does is if the theme calls for a marquee, it will look at the marquee priority and will send a marquee to the screen. If there is no marquee, the next image type in the marquee priority will be sent. I'm at work so I can't see my Launchbox to know for sure, but I think the next default is banner images - I could be wrong about that though. Previously, Marquee image type was buried in the box front image priorities. This made theming anything with a marquee difficult, as box front images would be displayed unless everything in box front priorities except for Arcade Marquee was turned off. What I foresee being a problem is marquee priorities taking over anything I try to do in regards to adding banners in a second area of the theme as marquee priorities will take over. This might require some creative stuff on my part to get it to work the way you want. From a theme development point of view, image priorities can be a major headache sometimes. With the marquees showing in two places and sometimes randomly, I'm willing to bet they were marquee images that you had a multiple quantity - like Super Mario, Super Mario-01, Super Mario-02. If you have multiple different images named the same like that, BigBox will randomly select from those and display whichever one it picks. In order for you to have a banner on the primary screen and a marquee on the second screen will require the theme to be programmed that way. I think you just got lucky with a few of those in that you had multiple different versions of that image named that way. Maybe tonight when I get home if I have some free time, I will try to bang out a version for you that uses a banner on the bottom and a marquee view for the secondary display.

I'm glad you like it! You want to be able to use the banners pulled from the \Launchbox\Images\(platform)\Banner folder instead of \Launchbox\Images\(platform)\Arcade - Marquee folder? So a banner would be at the top of the primary screen instead of the marquee when displaying games? I'm curious, how are you displaying a marquee on a second screen? I never programmed a marquee view into the the theme. OR - are you saying you want nothing at all displayed at the top of the primary screen and you don't currently have anything (marquee view) displayed on a second monitor but would like to? If this is the case, what would go at the top of the primary screen where the marquee currently is? A blank space? If we're talking about the whole screen being moved up to fill the gap left behind from the marquee no longer being at the top of the primary screen, that would require practically making a whole new theme altogether. I've been hesitant to create a dedicated (second screen) marquee view because there is no standard size marquee screen out there. In my mind, it should be a thin horizontal monitor to more closely mimic a real arcade marquee. Unfortunately these are pretty hard to come by. I'm kind of at a loss as to how to create a decent marquee view that is suitable for everyone. Luckily, the Marquee View (on a second screen) is pretty simple to do. I could create several different sizes and add them as a separate download. You pick the one you want and just drop the .xaml file into the theme and go. This would probably be pretty easy to do and I am willing to do it, but I don't want to chase my tail trying to do something custom not knowing exactly how you need it set up. Give me some more details as to what you're looking for and I'll see what I can do.

Wow, this is pretty nice. I've built a few cabinets in my time but this is next level stuff. Looks great!

Excellent update! Just for fun I tried creating a cocktail theme a few months back but obviously I didn't get very far. This will expand the usefulness of BigBox to a whole new subset of power users and theme creators.

Nice! I've used PBX recorder in the past. I think he had a FP recorder as well if I remember correctly. It will be nice to have this plugin directly within LaunchBox so I don't have to manually go through each table, although, at this point I've pretty much got all my videos created except for new tables that I install occasionally. Thanks for this!

I was able to update RetroArch and associated cores last night. I tested a few systems and everything seemed to be in good working order. Good update so far. I like the new menu organization, but it might take a bit to get used to it.

Spot on.

Vertical Basic - Startup Theme View File This is a very basic startup (and shutdown) theme intended for vertical monitor setups. This theme was heavily influenced by the Big Logo startup theme by @Suhrvivor. The main difference being the background image is front box art instead of fan art, since fan art doesn't always fit real well on a vertical monitor. This theme is semi-awesome for vert setups, but the one place it kinda sucks is with Super Nintendo since it looks kind of ugly with the sideways boxart being smooshed. Because of this, I created a seperate Super Nintendo View that displays the fan art. If you prefer that look, you could rename that file to default.xaml and all your systems will open with fan art instead of the box art which would be very similar to the Big Logo theme at that point. To install, open the zip and drop the Vertical Basic folder into the Startup Themes folder found in your LaunchBox folder. In Launchbox, click tools then Options and scroll down to Gameplay/Game Startup. Once there, select the Vertical Basic theme. Theme should scale to any vertical ratios. 9:16 and 3:4 ratios shown here. Submitter JaysArcade Submitted 10/09/2021 Category Startup Themes  

Vertical Basic Pause Theme View File Vertical Basic 1.0 The Vertical Basic Pause Theme is a bare bones vertical theme. The theme is basically a modified version of @faeran's PausePie theme edited to fit better in a vertical orientation. Other changes from his original theme that I made are the font, font colors, changed the background image from fan art (I think thats what it was) to Gameplay Screenshot and added a clear logo to the top of the list. Vertical Basic is a really nice lightweight theme that should scale well no matter what aspect ratio your vertical monitor is running. Thanks to Faeran for his excellent PausePie theme, and to @Jason Carr, @C-Beats and almost all of the rest of the Launchbox team. Submitter JaysArcade Submitted 10/09/2021 Category Pause Themes  

Vertical Challenge Pause Theme View File Vertical Challenge 1.0 This theme is a heavily modified version of @faeran's PausePie theme. So heavily modified that there is really not much left of his code in here. This is the first pause theme I've created, so there are bound to be some issues in the xaml code that I missed. It works though, and is a good theme for vertical cabinets. The theme comes with 35 xbox one controller images for various platforms. If you wish to use your own images, simply replace the ones in the Game Controls folder found in the theme. You can add new platforms as well. The image must be named the same as the platform. I have an xbox controller on my system as well as arcade controls so the XBone controller is what I focused on. If someone would like to create a PS Dual Shock controller series of images and share with the community, that would be awesome. These controller images were heavily inspired by (and borrowed from) @Retro808s Game Controls FS Theme and @OhBoys controller layouts. More than those however, an old thread by @The IVI (https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/36435-request-show-controller-mappings-before-launching-game) was where I stole most of the ideas about the layout of the controllers. If someone wanted to create Dual Shock 4 mappings, this would be the place to start for how I invisioned those controllers to look in this theme. To install, open the zip and drop the Vertical Challenge folder into the Pause Themes folder found in your LaunchBox folder. In Launchbox, click Tools then Options and scroll down to Gameplay/Game Pause. Once there, select the Vertical Challenge theme. I've included the gimp template I created for use in making more controller images. Controller images included Arcade.png Atari 2600.png Atari 5200.png Atari 7800.png Atari Jaguar.png Bally Astrocade.png Colecovision.png Future Pinball.png GCE Vectrex.png Mattel Intellivision.png NEC TurboGrafx-16.png NEC TurboGrafx-CD.png Nintendo 3DS.png Nintendo 64.png Nintendo DS.png Nintendo Entertainment System.png Nintendo Gameboy Advance.png Nintendo Gameboy Color.png Nintendo Gameboy.png Nintendo Gamecube.png Nintendo Virtual Boy.png Pico-8.png Sega 32X.png Sega CD.png Sega Game Gear.png Sega Genesis.png Sega Master System.png Sega Saturn.png Sony Playstation 2.png Sony Playstation 3.png Sony Playstation Vita.png Sony Playstation.png Sony PSP.png Super Nintendo Entertainment System.png Visual Pinball.png Thanks goes to everyone I've mentioned in this post, and also to @Jason Carr, @C-Beats and almost all of the rest of the Launchbox team. Submitter JaysArcade Submitted 10/09/2021 Category Pause Themes  

Just the info I was looking for, thanks. I was editing Pause and startup themes in Notepad++ all weekend because I didn't understand how to do this, LOL.

I was messing around last night trying to edit a copy of Faeran's PausePie theme for my own use and I couldn't get any of the alternate image bindings to work either. Image Source ="{Binding BackgroundImagePath} works but the other image bindings I tried didn't seem to do anything. I chalked it up to me not really knowing what I was doing, but now I'm not so sure....

Good luck Dave. This is hard news to hear this morning. I hope you are able to raise the funds quickly. I have certainly got a lot of use out of the Community Theme Creator. It's a shame there is not a way for you to be compensated for your hard work on it. It's excellent software!

Version 1.3 has been released. Please report any problems you run across.