eatkinola

In AOStyles, look for: <SolidColorBrush x:Key="AODecoFontColor" Color="#22FFFFFF" /> The color code includes as the first two characters an opacity hex code 22. You can increase this part of the color code to make it brighter, for example "77FFFFFF" (brighter), "FFFFFFFF" (100% opacity the brightest). If you take away the first few characters and leave "FFFFFF", it will be white with 100% opacity -- probably will be too bright. Play around with this string to see what works best for you. It will change the color of other parts of the theme that use this font, e.g., game year and title in the Games Wheel 2 view, game title in Wheel 3 view, etc. And it's no problem at all -- I need to improve the documentation and make it easier to change some of the settings.

Yeah that's totally messed up. Not sure off hand why it's doing that. Are you using LaunchBox version 7 or higher? I'm running on Windows 7 at 1920x1080. Resolution alone shouldn't be the issue. Minimal-AO uses some xaml from the Default theme. Have you made any changes to the Default theme? Does this happen with other themes?

Hi Dan. Download Minimal-AO-v3.0-CORE.zip and unpack, copy the Minimal-AO folder into the LaunchBox Themes directory, then in BigBox go to Options > Views and select Minimal-AO as the theme.

Yes, you can decrease the Opacity of the scanlines and vignetting. It's probably the vignetting (meant to help give a CRT look) you want to turn down. Look in AOStyles. I hope to make this easier to set w/the next update.

Should be in the corresponding view file. I recommend asking advice from the theme's author.

Welcome, sanicsip. From my perspective, there's always interest here. I encourage you to look around and see some of the video themes peeps like @Nyny77, @BakerMan, @viking, @skainlurmis, and @vice350z are working on. Sorry if I missed anyone, there are a lot of talented contributors in these forums. Got any retro vids like SNES, Atari, etc?

It depends on the goals of your work. If you made videos akin to viking's set, your videos could be used in any number of themes. Your video set would itself be a theme. Not sure if that's what you really want to do, but I think it'd be cool and would reach a wide audience. Whatever you decide, I say keep it up with the retro idea -- very nice.

picture viking's platform themes but with your cool retro bedroom style

That config option is planned for the next theme update. For now, you could look towards the bottom of AOStyles for a <Style> defined for the scanline image. To that <Style>, add a <Setter> which will look something like <Setter Property="Visibility" Value="Collapsed" />. That'll hide scanlines for all views. In the next version, I'll add a setting to hide scanlines and vignetting in the platform vs games view (or both). Or, you could just set the Opacity property value (in that <Style>) to 0. A third way is you could replace the scanline.png image with a blank (transparent) PNG image.

Yeah, realize now it wasn't clear. It looks like you have the platform video playing within the TV of your background (?). What I mean is, could you make a video from this composite of background + "stock" platform video, so that you produce a retro bedroom-themed platform video. I realize that's probably not what you're after ... just wanted to throw it out there (wishful thinking on my part). I really like your concept, great design. Looking forward to seeing more.

Yes, look in AOStyles.xaml -- all the config options are there in the top section. Not at home to verify, but I think the setting you're looking for is AOAccentTintyOpacity (something like that). Opacity can be a decimal from 0 to 1. The value which works best will depend on the background you choose. Note you can also change the color of the accents, which includes the text you mentioned, logo at top left, etc. Careful when editing AOStyles.xaml, it's finicky. Hopefully, I can make it easier to configure with a future update. I can certainly add some documentation.

@vice350z: I agree with @MatticusFinch1820. It'd be great if you could collaborate with @skainlurmis to create a unified retro theme. You both have some very cool ideas. Would y'all also be willing to render your backgrounds as videos: 4:3 versions with the right bit (where the wheel resides) chopped off, and/or 16:9 versions with the table, tv, and console centered? Your work would then also accommodate other themes which use these formats for platform videos -- could be the start of a great new platform video pack.

Great idea, and that area you outlined in yellow is the perfect size for 4:3 art. I agree the theme should support settings in LB/BB whenever possible. I'm almost certain I can implement your request. Working on a theme update this week and will include your idea. What if I blur the fanart or add tinting to tone it down a bit, so the game details will still be easy to read?

Very nice, @vice350z -- even thought to include Raphael. Brings back memories, and my kids would love that. Where can I get me one of those TVs with room for my socks,@CTRL-ALT-DEFEAT; that is one hardy piece of furniture.

@skainlurmis: Yes, they would need to be placed in a folder whose name is managed by LaunchBox. So, of a user changed the name of the 'Nintendo Entertainment System' platform to 'NES', for example, your code would still be able to find the background. I'm not sure if subfolders within a theme are renamed by LaunchBox in this manner. You might want to confer with@Jason Carr.

@Porl Hendy: What about this for widescreen platform vids? The view is pretty much done, but I'll need to render the panel skins with a larger 16:9 cutout. I made the video transparent for this screenshot so you can see how much larger the cutout will be for 16:9 vs 4:3 video. I managed to still fit the release year and platform notes along with recent games. This could be the Platform Wheel 4 view.

@skainlurmis: Try something like this, <TextBlock x:Name="FileName" Visibility="Collapsed" Text="{Binding SelectedGame.Platform, StringFormat='pack://siteoforigin:,,,/Themes/New Retro Big Box/Images/Game wheel {0}.png'}" /> <Image Source="{Binding Text, ElementName=FileName}" Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="0" RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="HighQuality" Panel.ZIndex="5" Grid.RowSpan="7" Grid.ColumnSpan="8"/> ...where {0} will be filled in with SelectedGame.Platform. You'd have to have a corresponding image named ".../Game wheel NES.png" or however your platforms are named. Because peeps can name their platform whatever they want, you're probably better off doing something along these lines: <TextBlock x:Name="FileName" Visibility="Collapsed" Text="{Binding SelectedGame.Platform, StringFormat='pack://siteoforigin:,,,/Themes/New Retro Big Box/Images/{0}/Game wheel.png'}" /> <Image Source="{Binding Text, ElementName=FileName}" Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="0" RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="HighQuality" Panel.ZIndex="5" Grid.RowSpan="7" Grid.ColumnSpan="8"/> If you take the second approach which I recommend, the trick will be to locate your platform-specific theme images in a folder that will automatically get renamed by LaunchBox when the user changes their platform name: e.g., ...\LaunchBox\Images\Platforms\Nintendo NES, etc. ...though this would require users to install your images outside your theme folder. At this time, I don't have another solution for where to best locate these image files. Maybe someone else can weigh in?

Glad y'all like it! Great suggestions, @Porl Hendy. 1. Look in AOStyles (styles subfolder), change AOSkin to name of the folder (see the images/panels folder) with the skin you want. 2. Yes. I'll look into options for this. 3. Yes. I might be able to make this a config option via AOStyles. Sorry for the brevity, on a mobile.

Sure, feel free to peruse the code and use anything you find helpful. Note it draws heavily on AOStyles (styles subfolder) to facilitate ease of maintenance and customization. When you see Static or DynamicResource, it's pulling from AOStyles.

Yeah, that text block element is just used to dynamically figure out the image path based on platform name; it's not displayed. If you want, send me the code snippet for how you currently load your image, and I'll send you back how it might be modified to choose an image path based on platform. There might be more than one way to do this, but it works for me.

@skainlurmis: Yes, this is possible. I'm not at home now to cut and paste the code, but consider looking at the XAML for my Minimal-AO theme. The Games Wheel 2 and 3 pages use SelectedGame.PlatformName to find and load the platform clear logo. You should be able to do something very similar to change the background image based on platform.

Theme updated, version 3.0 -- SUPPORTS MULTIPLE RESOLUTIONS (scales automatically though still best at 16:9 ratio), SIMPLER SKINNING, and MORE CUSTOMIZATION. The skins are UHD, and the theme should scale up to 4K nicely -- haven't tried b/c I don't have 4K, but it scales well from what I can test. It's almost to the point where one could apply customizations (font and skin changes) from within BigBox itself, but that might require code-behind and I was hoping to do everything in XAML with my trusty text editor 8D. Please see download page for details. http://forums.launchbox-app.com/files/file/131-minimal-ao/

@shro2016: You can use a MediaElement to display your animated gif. However, it does not loop the gif indefinitely -- the gif freezes up about 10 seconds after loading. It's possibly a problem with the gif I'm loading, but just keep that in mind. <MediaElement Source="PATH TO YOUR ANIMATED GIF" LoadedBehavior="Play" />

@wallmachine: Try putting the TransitionPresenter (which itself contains the horizontal list of boxes) within a container of a specific size. I did something similar for the Recent Games box list in one of my views, and it's working well. Here's an excerpt from one of my views to show the idea. I've been using Grid controls to layout my views in a way that scales according to the monitor resolution. You'd need to adjust the column and row definitions according to the layout you're trying to achieve. <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="30*" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="10*" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="2000*"/> <ColumnDefinition Width="840*" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="10*" /> <RowDefinition Height="90*" /> <RowDefinition Height="60*" /> <RowDefinition Height="385*"/> <RowDefinition Height="55*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> ... other controls arranged in the grid <transitions:TransitionPresenter Grid.Column="1" Grid.ColumnSpan="3" Grid.Row="3" TransitionSelector="{Binding BottomBoxesTransitionSelector}" Content="{Binding BottomBoxesView}"/> </Grid>

Not at my computer now to double-check, but try SelectedGame.Genres (note the pleural) or SelectedGame.GenresString. You can check the Documentation PDF in the Themes folder.