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shro2016

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Posts posted by shro2016

  1. NESiCAxLive Theme

    View File

    Click to view video of theme

    Introduction

    This theme was originally requested by @Evilmaster and is designed to mirror the interface of the NESiCAxLive system Taito use in their TypeX2 mutli-game cabinets. The theme has been completely rebuilt from the ground up in version 2.0 and should now scale correctly for all resolutions.

    The theme does include the ability to display publisher logos as well as game specific control layouts within the interface. The theme is also built around using steam-style banners - I have detailed the simplest way to set this up currently in Launchbox below as the wheel does not support steam banners as a games view currently without some tweaking of your library. It will however, now also work with standard game boxes but I highly recommend that you set the option to remember different views per platform so that you can use the view that works best for the given platform cover art / banners you are using.

    Installation

    Unzip the NESiCAxLive folder to your Launchbox /Themes directory into a subfolder called NESiCAxLive.

    Setting up Steam Banners

    In order to setup the steam banners you will need to download steam banners for your games manually as unfortunately Launchbox does not yet automatically download these particular files for anything other than Steam games. Some good resources I have used to get these images from are:

    http://consolegrid.com/

    http://steambanners.booru.org/index.php

    http://www.steamgriddb.com/

    (Thanks to @Evilmaster for pointing me in the direction of these)

    When you download the images and add them to your games make sure you set them as Steam Banners within the game options in Launchbox. Then for them to be used in the theme correctly set the priority of the boxes view to prioritise Steam Banners first - if you ever want to revert this it is then simply a case of lowering the priority of the steam banners in the boxes list rather than having to remove or reorganise images. To do this open Launchbox and go to Tools --> Options and in the window that appear select Box Front Properties in the Images section and use the Up button to move the Steam Banners to the top of the list.

    Setting up Control Layouts

    Open the theme directory and browse to Images/Controls - in here you will find a folder for most systems, if the system you want to add control layouts for is not listed create a new Folder in this directory ensuring the folder name matches the platform name in Launchbox exactly. In each platform directory you will find a minimum of two files; controller.png and buttons.png. Using your preferred PNG image editing program (Photoshop or GIMP are recommended) open both files as layers. You can then position the buttons over the controller image as you want. When done you can hide the controller layer and just save the new button layout into the directory to replace buttons.png. This file will then be loaded by the theme and the animation applied automatically to fade it in and out.

    Setting up Developer Logos

    By default Launchbox/BigBox does not grab Developer/Publisher logos. I have downloaded many of the most common ones already and included in the theme. If you find that the view you are using needs developer logos and the one you need is missing you can simply download from the internet - ensuring it is a PNG file with transparent background - and place the file in the images/company logos subfolder of the theme directory ensuring the file is named exactly the same as the developer of the game/system is listed in LaunchBox. 

    The Platform Views

    There are 4 Platform Views to select from shown below:

     5aca7d1c5d227_PlatformView1.png.762d520f Platform View 1 - Banner View with Recently Played Items Bar

    5aca7d214ab98_PlatformView2.png.9fd653fe Platform View 2 - Banner View with Favorites Items Bar

    5aca7d2386058_PlatformView3.png.db8f921a Platform View 3 - Banner View with no Bar

    5aca7d192e14a_PlatformTextView.png.c82a1 There is also the Text Only Platform View

    The Game Views

    5aca7cfee8afe_GameBannerView.png.14e3938 Horizontal Banner View *

    5aca7d03cd730_GameBoxesView.png.1f7611e2 Horizontal Boxes View

    5aca7cf78fdc7_CartCoverflow.png.49bcf761 Horizontal Carts/CD/DVD View

    5aca7d0af0aa3_GameScreenshotCoverflow.pn Horizontal Screenshots View

    Snapshot_2.png.9116496f33b4ef84adcfff288 Vertical Logos View

    5aca7d290b2c5_VerticalBannerView.png.f75 Vertical Banners View *

    5aca7d11a8af7_GameTextView.png.c5de072c7 Text List View

    5aca7cfad4787_CoverflowView.png.d18052e1 Small Banner View *

     

    * Requires Front Images configured with Steam Banner as the top priority and for Steam Banner images to be present in your library to display correctly.

     


     

    • Like 8
  2. NESiCAxLive Theme

    View File

    Introduction

    This theme was requested by @Evilmaster and is designed to mirror the interface of the NESiCAxLive system Taito use in their TypeX2 mutli-game cabinets. This is my first attempt at creating a theme so please be kind. The theme has been built for 1920x1080 resolution and is likely to look wrong in other resolutions currently. I may update the theme for other resolutions if there is sufficient interest for me to do so,

    The theme does include the ability to display publisher logos as well as game specific control layouts within the interface. The theme is also built around using steam-style banners - I have detailed the simplest way to set this up currently in Launchbox below as the wheel does not support steam banners as a games view currently without some tweaking of your library.

    The Views

    Platform Wheel 1 - Horizontal Banner View

    587512d17d7c2_PlatformWheel1.thumb.png.a183e01ddc0120b8e30e8bef9f099998.pngPlatform Wheel 2 - Horizontal Logo View

     


     

    • Like 1
  3. Thanks@dos76. I remember seeing it before but can't now find the theme in question or would have loaded it to see how they had done it. I know it's in launchbox itself when you go to manage platforms but just can't work out how to pull it through. Thanks for the suggestion though as I'll start looking through existing themes on here to see if any have done it.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  4. I am almost finished my first theme but would like to add the total number of games per platform before I release it but cannot see any details for how to add this. I have seen this used on some themes so guessing there is a binding available for it but it does not appear in the documentation PDF and I am struggling to get this info displayed.

     

    Any ideas?

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  5. My advice would be to check out the big box theme tutorials on YouTube. It talks you through using visual studio to amend the files. That coupled with the PDF documentation file in the root of the launch box themes folder should be all you need to get started. 

    Moving that text and reformatting is done by modifying the grid layout of the view, in this case the vertical wheel one so the tutorial on images and grids will be the one you need but I would advise starting at the beginning with the tutorials - there aren't that many and you'll get through them in a couple of hours. The most time consuming bit is actually installing visual studio community (which is free) as it takes a while to install. 

    Good luck 

    • Like 1
  6. @Maddoc1007 - I tried the file from the download and it generates an error both in visual studio and when used in the cabinet. The error is attributed to the transitions assembly. I also tried taking the lines for the gif animation directly out of the file and placing into the view I am working on (the xmlns line and the actual control) and get the same error as I did when taking these lines from the tutorial @Jason Carr created - which is in essence that the animatedsource is not a valid property.

    Any idea what I am missing/doing wrong?

  7. Thanks @Evilmaster, that seems to have most of the ones the other doesn't. I've also added my comment to the issue request for grid view so fingers crossed that will be in a future release. Just really need the animated gif feature working again now and also trying to work out how to get the users launchbox version number into a textblock, if anyone knows how to do this please let me know.

  8. Hi @Evilmaster, thanks for the like. The theme is progressing well and I have most views built. Animated gif code was broken in 7.4 but hoping this has been fixed in 7.5 so I can get that element added. Currently working on the steam banners for systems so thanks for the link as that is not one I was aware of.

    As you say the original theme that this is based on has two rows of banners. At present this is not something launchbox is capable of in its theme so trying workarounds for the minute to get the layout right until they add in a grid style wheel to launchbox which is what this really needs.

    I am currently adding dynamic control layouts to the side bars which can be changed by replacing the image files by the user. Hopefully won't be too much longer before I have a finished version to upload with video. 

    • Like 1
  9. Thanks @Jason Carr and no need to apologise, the effort you put into this app and the support from both yourself and the community is phenomenal and the best I have known for any application. there are bound to be certain bits that break when new features are put in place that is just par for the course with systems development. It's  just good to know that It's not something I was doing wrong. 

     

     

    • Like 2
  10. As promised here are some screenshots I have taken of the theme and the views created so far. Many are not fully finished yet but hopefully this gives an idea of where progress is currently at on this.

    As always feedback is welcome and any suggestions for improvement please let me know

    Platform view

    Platform Wheel 1.pngGame View - Banners

    (Only really works with Steam games and needs box to be set to Steam banner images in Launchbox)

    Game View 1 - Horizontal.pngGame View - Boxes

    Game View 1 - Vertical.pngCoverflow View

    Coverflow View.pngGame Text View

    Game View Text.pngGame Details View (Single Game View)

    Game Details.pngOptions Screen

    OptionsMenu.png

    • Like 3
  11. I have worked through the tutorials on YouTube for theme creation but cannot add an animated gif to the theme I am making. despite several attempts I cannot get the animated gif to work. I have added the required line to the user control section on the view. 

    With this line in place it will then accept and recognise the <image gif: tag. However, when I try putting image behavior after the tag it is not recognised as a valid property and neither is animated source. With these in place I get an error notification and the view does not load.

    Any ideas what I am doing wrong or what I have missed?

     

     

     

     

     

     

  12. @deanord I have just had a reply to my question around this on another thread from @Jason Carr. Apparently the game details page uses the textgamesview as its master. If you want to remove the images I think you would need to remove them on the textgamesview page and they would then not show in the games details page. However they will also not then show in the text view layout itself, which may or may not be an issue depending on the views you are using in your theme. 

    Hope this helps.

    .

     

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