Hi Guys,
Started using LaunchBox a few weeks ago, and after setting it up and playing around with it I realized I couldn't find a theme for Big Box that I wanted to use, so I decided to try my hand at making my own. The only problem was that I didn't know that XAML existed until last week, so it took some learning to get a grasp of it, but I think I managed to learn enough to get the desired theme that I was looking for.
I thought I'd share my work, just in case someone else may find the theme useful as well. The theme itself is inspired by a UI I once saw in a Simply Austin video about a year ago, however I took a different approach while creating it.
The theme was designed to add as little overhead as possible, while giving a clean and simplistic view of the content. To do this I decided on not adding any images at all to the theme, and instead used XAML to build all the elements. When zipped, the entire theme comes out under 300KB.
Download Theme
Click here to download RetroFresh from the download's section
Installation Instructions
Extract RetroFresh.zip into the LaunchBox/Themes folder.
Go into the RetroFresh/Fonts folder and install the 'SF Atarian System.ttf' font
Open Big Box, go to Options/Views, select the RetroFresh theme.
The views I made are as follows:
Platform Wheel View
This platform view was designed to get out of the way of the full screen platform videos made by all the wonderful people contributing to LaunchBox. The platform videos are the focus here, as the wheel's transparent background let's the video through.
Game Vertical Wheel View 1
This game view let's the box art and game video take center stage, while the blurred background image allows for the transparent UI elements to take on its color property.
Game Vertical Wheel View 2
This game view is the same as the first, except the wheel is on the right.
Game List View
This game view substitutes the wheel for a text list. This view will help on lower end systems, while the essence of theme remains intact.
Video Demonstration
If anyone finds any issues, please let me know.
RetroFresh.zip