[CoverBox]

1 hour ago, CDBlue said:

 

@faeran It seems like the default view/fallback for platforms that are not themed yet, doesn't seem to play videos when you have VLC media player set as your default player.  If you use Windows Media Player it does seem to play videos though.  Thought I'd let you know.  Other than that, great them as usual

Thanks @CDBlue. Makes sense, I was able to fix it up in 4.01.

This was a huge conversion, so if there's any other oddities, let me know.

[CoverBox]

CoverBox has now been updated to version 4.0, and it's a big one.

• The theme has been completely ported to the COMMUNITY Theme Creator (a year in the making). This means you can now load up the Theme Creator files into the CTC and make any changes you would like.
• 9 Brand New systems have been added (most are thanks to phelix01 for his initial designs). This brings the total number of supported systems to 46:
  • Microsoft Xbox
  • Nintendo Switch
  • SNK Neo Geo Pocket
  • SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color
  • GCE Vectrex
  • 3DO Interactive Multiplayer
  • WonderSwan
  • WonderSwan Color
• Revamped Platform Wheel 1
• Brand New Text Filters View
• Overhauled Text Games View (this is the fallback for when there's no platform specific view)

Images of the new platforms:

Spoiler

 

[DOS Matrix - [Theme Workshop]]

On 1/5/2022 at 4:49 AM, Newlander said:

Is it possible for a 4:3 version of this? would be perfect for a crt monitor

I'll add it to the list of themes to do. This one would definitely require a whole new set of theme graphics that I'd have to recreate to fit 4:3, but it's doable.

[Neptune]

Thanks @Kylus12.

1 hour ago, CathMowr said:

- The control bar and the displayed items seem to overlap, both in portrait and landscape mode. Did i setup something wrong? When i change the vertical spacing LB adjusts the space between the boxes but not the one between top and first row. Is it possible to adjust this?

This is a design choice. It wouldn't be easily changeable without editing the theme files. It allows for the most vertical space on any size screen.

1 hour ago, CathMowr said:

- Is it possible to hide this status bar? It bugs from day one that I have to see this in every theme with every sort option except "title".

This is not possible. Like you noticed, some "Arrange by" options sort the games (like title), and in those circumstances, they don't have those separators because they are not needed. However, most are groupings, and if you remove the grouping title, you wouldn't know when one grouping ends and the other begins. Without that context, the grouping wouldn't actually make much sense.

1 hour ago, CathMowr said:

- I know this seems to be a bit nitpicky, but why not rename the "Retro Achievements" tab into "Achievements"? So that tab would be valid for everyone, collecting retro or modern games..

This is a good idea, I'll add it to the next update.

[The POC - A Nice View of the New Walls]

28 minutes ago, bradbradbrad said:

So I'm new to Bigbox. How do I switch to the 2nd view shown here?

In Big Box Options, go to either Keyboard Mappings or Controller Mappings and set a Switch View button. Then navigate to a game view and press that button to cycle through all available views.

[The POC - A Nice View of the New Walls]

20 hours ago, KaaMoS said:

Yes, sure, in those modified files we were able to add a video and/or platform image for background.

Alright, give these a shot. You'll need the newest version of the theme I just posted.

TextFiltersView.xaml - Platform background image

TextFiltersView.xaml - Platform background video

[The POC - A Nice View of the New Walls]

On 11/11/2021 at 5:47 PM, KaaMoS said:

First of all, many, many thanks for your work, faeran.
I love the results! 

I'd like to know if were possible to you to update these alternatives to latest version. it seems to be that they don't work anymore.
My BB version is 11.10, which is possible too new for these variants, whch are also old your the current version of your theme.

If not possible, no problem
Many thanks in advance!
 

Hi @KaaMoS. Tbh, I'm not entirely sure what were in those versions. Do you remember what the changes were?

[Platform Voice Packs - 190-200 Platforms in Each Pack]

22 minutes ago, garrett521 said:

Thanks faeran.  I am under the impression that the theme would have needed to be created using CTC, otherwise incorporating these would be a no-go.  Is that correct?

That would be correct, or at least that would make things easier. 

[CityHunter]

8 minutes ago, jevansoh said:

Thank you for this.  Are they all in the same directory?  How many are there?  I could do a simple find and replace with notepad but I want to make sure I don't miss any files.  Thanks for your help!

I'm not really sure. Most likely they are all within the Theme's View folder.

[Platform Voice Packs - 190-200 Platforms in Each Pack]

2 hours ago, garrett521 said:

Very cool.  Is there a way to add these to an existing them, such as Unified, or is the Community Theme Creator needed to incorporate?  Thanks.

You would require the CTC to make it work with themes.

[CityHunter]

16 hours ago, jevansoh said:

I love this theme, all except the main red fancy font. Is it possible to change the font to something more easily readable?  How would I go about that?  Thanks.

To accomplish this, you would have to open up all the xaml files and replace all instances of the following line with a different font:

<FontFamily x:Key="FontHead">/CityHunter.Resources;Component/Fonts/#Streamster</FontFamily> 

Here's an example if I wanted to change it to Arial:

<FontFamily x:Key="FontHead">Arial</FontFamily> 

 

[Retrotastic [Theme Stream]]

On 11/5/2021 at 3:14 PM, benmoot said:

is it possible to have an updated version for the community files? i'd like to make some changes like adding completion checks to the game selection menu, but some of the wheels are obsolete as are some of the graphics.

I've updated the project files to the most recent version. Let me know if you run into any issues with loading it into the COMMUNITY Theme Creator.

[Retrotastic [Theme Stream]]

1 hour ago, benmoot said:

is it possible to have an updated version for the community files? i'd like to make some changes like adding completion checks to the game selection menu, but some of the wheels are obsolete as are some of the graphics.

Yeah, this version is getting old, so will probably require an older version of the COMMUNITY Theme Creator to work properly. I'll see what I can do about updating the project files.

[Video Arcade Marquee Files V.1.1]

3 hours ago, Johnny T said:

@philbobaggins I tried your video marquees at the weekend. Unfortunately, due to the my marquee screen being a stretched LCD they don't sit quite right.

It's such a shame as I absolutely love them!

My stretched LCD has a 16:3 ratio (I think it's 1366x256 pixels). On the 'image' marquees they can be 'stretched' to fill the screen via the xaml file in the Views folder (GameMarqueeView.xaml) but, I don't think this can be done with video.

So, I thought about maybe tackling a project like this myself but creating the videos in 16:3 aspect ratio. I wondered if it was possible to understand how you are going about it and then I could maybe use your technique but 'tweak it' for different types of screen?

Are you using software to do it? Or are you curating each video yourself somehow? 

It might be beyond my ability to do what you're doing but I thought that if I could find out "how" you were doing it, and manage myself I could have a go then maybe upload them to your GDrive to go as a torrent for a different marquee screen?

Any help/advice would be great. (Even if it doesn't fit, I still like looking at the waves on the 1943 one in between credits!!!) 🙂

Stretching videos should be possible. Inside your GameMarqueeView.xaml file add the StretchVideo="True" to the video marquee flow video code, which looks like this:

<coverFlow:FlowVideo x:Name="MarqueeVideo" VideoType="Marquee" DataContext="{Binding SelectedGame}" PlayVideo="True" PlayAudio="False" FallbackToDefault="False" StretchVideo="True">
 

[Dark and Gloomy - [Theme Workshop] - A Halloween Theme]

On 10/30/2021 at 1:58 PM, JoeViking245 said:

Not sure if this was by design or a glitch in the Matrix, but this was awesome when chasing Gollum through the swamp in LEGO L.O.T.R. and the 'background ambiance' was still playing through!  Love it!!

That's funny. Definitely good for Halloween. The plugin used doesn't have the ability to pause its sounds when a game is launched, which is why the ambience just continues.

[RetroMags - [Theme Workshop]]

4 hours ago, Flipbug said:

Was very excited to try this but unfortunately it doesn't work properly at 3840x1080. The elements spread across the screen in the wrong positions. Most other themes handle this by displaying at 1920x1080 and having black bars on the left and right instead, which I don't mind. Hoping this is something that is easy to fix for my super niche resolution

 

This should be easy enough to fix. I would just need to click on the button that will force a 16:9 screen ratio. I'm guessing the theme itself is set to stretch instead of forced.

If you don't want to wait for my update, then you can go into the theme's folder: \\LaunchBox\Themes\RetroMags

Find the file called: ThemeSettings.XML, open up in a text editor and change this line to "true".

<Force16X9AspectRatio>false</Force16X9AspectRatio>

<Force16X9AspectRatio>false</Force16X9AspectRatio>

 

[GenesisMini - [Theme Workshop]]

Just now, Mr. RetroLust said:

Great theme once again! How did you resolve the font problem?

It was some kind of issue with the font itself, which is what I was theorizing on the stream.

I loaded it into FontForge again and played around with more of the settings and generated a new font that actually worked.

[Neptune]

Thanks for the comments!

21 hours ago, Retrofrogg said:

Trying this out now @faeran. First impressions:

There seems to be a tiny amount of change to the background when a game is selected; does an image load in the background but just very dark or with maximum transparency? I think it would be nice to have this effect a bit more visible.

There's actually a couple things going on here. There is a color that goes overtop the main background image. The change you see is the game's background image (if you have this turned on in the options). There's a blur effect that a user would also control for this image within the options as well. The only thing the user cannot control here is the color that goes overtop this image. This can be adjusted within the theme files itself.

21 hours ago, Retrofrogg said:

In the game images view, is the box art faded a little? When you hover the mouse cursor over a game it brightens. I'm not keen on having the artwork faded - would rather show it properly.

This is the same effect as in the default theme. When you see it "brighten" it's a white color that goes overtop the image to make your mouse over selection stand out a bit more. There may also be a Black color over the rest of the images to dim them out a little, but if there is, it would be very slight, and just for a little bit of color control.

21 hours ago, Retrofrogg said:

I like the way that the selected platform is clearly highlighted in the platform tree. Would it be posslbe to also highlight any parent platforms/categories for the selected platform? This way the user can quickly see which platform category, platform and playlists is being selected.

This is a tough one. Remember that any parent item can also be independently selected from its child. Therefore, how do you tell exactly which item you are selected if multiple items look the same? There's a possibility here for some changes, but would have to think on how to best handle that.

21 hours ago, Retrofrogg said:

In terms of the game details pane, I love the tabs. Much better than scrolling through one big list. It would be great to have 3 tabs however - for game description, info and images. Currently the game description and game info are grouped together in the same tab, necessitating the game info to be in a much smaller font and in a different colour text - and still necessitating scrolling in some cases. A separate tab would allow the game info to be displayed properly in all its glory. I note that for MAME, the MAME high scores is in a separate tab, which is nice.

Good idea, although I probably won't be including this in the main version of the theme. I'd be glad to help you out with doing this in PM.

21 hours ago, Retrofrogg said:

I'm not a big fan of the top half of the front box image being displayed in a slightly faded fashion at the top of the game details pane - especially when the game video plays over the top of it. It's a bit distracting, cluttered looking and also likely a duplication of media as most users would probably be browsing by front box art anyway (though 3D boxes probably come a close second). Faded fanart or screenshot might serve better here. The video itself could probably be made a bit bigger.

This should be controlled by a user's image priority setting and not theme specific. The theme itself is just telling it to put a background image in that spot. Go into Options > Background Priorities and deselect anything you don't want to see, like any of the box images. I usually try and put all the different Background images and a Screenshot - Gameplay image in there.

The video will scale to the size of the window, with a max height, so it doesn't overtake the rest of the content. That max height can be adjusted in the theme files.

21 hours ago, Retrofrogg said:

Something else - in the image tab, thumbnails are shown, which is great. However, some are incorrectly labelled (despite being correctly labelled in Launchbox, according to the game edit window) and some images are missing altogether. See the Bomberman II image tab for NES below:

The theme would not actually be controlling this. My guess is that either your Screenshot image priorities includes Cart images, or that the Cart image is mislabeled as a screenshot. A little investigation should clear that up for ya.

 

Send me a PM and I can do my best to guide you through adding a new Tab in Game Details.

[Boxed In]

Looks great, thanks for sharing!

[BannerBox]

11 minutes ago, Nizer said:

Awesome theme!

Is there any wall view for it?

Thanks @Nizer. The way this theme is built doesn't really lend itself well to a wall-type view. But never say never.

[DefaultDroid - [Theme Workshop]]

4 minutes ago, soqueroeu said:

Hey @faeran, will these workshop themes have long life, support and updates like the traditional themes we have in the community? If I like one, should I expect an updated version of it?

Hi @soqueroeu, the real goal is to spread the power around, so anyone can load up the COMMUNITY Theme Creator and make any changes they would want.

However, if you are wanting a change to any of the themes, let me know and I'll do my best to accommodate, either in an update, or a specific version for you.

[Simply Gray]

Looks great, thanks for sharing. Can't wait to see what you come up with next.

[LB Galaxy]

Love seeing new LaunchBox Themes. Looks great!

I was also in the middle of building one, I may borrow a couple of ideas if that's okay.

[RetroFresh Detailed - [Theme Workshop]]

4 hours ago, zugswang said:

Excellent theme, thanks for the share.

Is there a way to use background art with this theme ?

Hi @zugswang. This theme should already use background art through the use of the background transition presenter. Make sure to set your background media priorities in the LaunchBox options.

You also have the option of downloading the theme creator project files and changing anything you would like with it.

[The POC - A Nice View of the New Walls]

13 hours ago, Smellbringer said:

Hey, I'm trying to use this theme but it's stuck in list view, I can't use the new wall view.

Did you try and set up a "Switch View" hotkey in Big Box? Then in the text list view, you press your hotkey and it will cycle through all the different game views available.