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thimolor

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Posts posted by thimolor

    BestDays Theme Development

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    18 hours ago, bundangdon said:

    Does this mean that you'll be developing themes for Pegasus also? I've tried it myself and wasn't all that impressed, although could certainly see some potential. My biggest gripes are that Pegasus is very user-unfriendly and the themes I've seen for it all look like duplicates of AttractMode and EmulationStation themes. As for "Minimis", isn't that only an Android-based theme?

    I think all the themes work on every platform including Minimis. I'm using it on Windows. Pegasus has few options and it even feels too simple, but I found out that I don't really need a feature creep frontend. I love Launchbox for keeping my data up to date, but I'm not fan of BigBox. For me it's too sluggish and I really hate xaml 🙂

    BestDays Theme Development

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    Decided to start a new theme for my bartop build that I have been building lately. Trying to find ways to make the wheels work better for arcade games. Found faeran's great BannerBox and made few changes for the wheel.  I have already made a working prototype and it feels fresh and nice to scroll through the games. Design aspect ratio is 4:3 (my bartop has 4:3 lcd monitor), but I think this will scale quite fine for 16:9 also when it's finished.

     

    229843134_BestDaysArcadeHorizontalWheel.thumb.jpg.6f1dbc883da0195a3c911b0f53d9e196.jpg

    • Like 3
    • Game On 1

    Slipstream Theme

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted · Edited by Juketsu

    31 minutes ago, vzc said:

    Great work with this theme - did you make this using the theme creator? Trying to play around with it, can this be imported in to the theme creator? I'm trying to get a wall view with 7 games showing across but i can only get 5 and also when you hover over a game i cant figure out how to highlight around the game without some crazy weird magnification occurring - would be great to see how you got around a few of the issues I'm facing hence asking regarding the import in to the creator.

    Thanks. Yes I did. You can't edit the wall view wheels in CTC. You must do that in text editor. You can do the changes while BigBox is running. I did the wall view layouts in CTC. "You can download the CTC-files from here: 

     

    Pulse

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    9 hours ago, soqueroeu said:

    Well I appreciate you. But I expected your longer answer.  😀

    Just wanted to make sure the points I mentioned, because I really got lost with Pulse for the first few hours.
    I love Pulse and want to keep using it anyway. I have no intention of changing the theme. Honestly, Sleepstream is less beautiful in small details. However, I need some help from the community and from you, to understand what might be causing performance problems in arcade playlists.

    This does not happen with older themes. But I noticed that some of the new themes have the same problem. Pulse and also Sleepstream suffer from the same ailment. I just can't quickly browse arcade game playlists. I take about 3 switching between games. 😲

    My games are installed on the same SSD as the BigBox. Everything works fine for other platforms and I browse through their lists without any slowdowns or stutters.

    Could you please help me with this?

    "Honestly, Sleepstream is less beautiful" ...ouch. I cant help you with technical issues. I'm only a designer who used CTC software to make a theme. BUT, what you describe could be a bug in CTC or Launchbox, who knows. I know this, that Pulse uses a lot more animations and that is why it performs worse than Slipstream. You should try to tweak the theme with CTC yourself.

    Pulse

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    @soqueroeu in short, if you want to change the theme you will need to download the Community Theme Creator and CTC-files for Pulse and do the changes/fixes yourself. You could also try my new theme to see if it works better for you. It's like Pulse, only faster and better.

     

    New BigBox themes vs Arcade Games poor performance!

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    On 3/12/2022 at 8:19 PM, soqueroeu said:

    I think there is some performance issue with these new BigBox themes and any arcade games lists. The problem is that switching between games takes about 3 seconds.
    I have no problems with old themes. It works just fine with BigCouch, CityHunter 2, Colorful and Defaut BigBox. Among the new ones I tested, the performance is poor with Pulse, Slipstream and Play Box 6. They all have the same problem navigating through arcade lists.

    Anyone else with this problem? Is there anything to do?

    Can you provide your machine specs and video of the performance problem. I tried my best to make Slipstream perform better, but there are some asset problems that I can't help. Some assets are just too big in size like fan art. Some of the images are png and over 2 mb. Loading these images can make the theme feel slow. In Slipstream there are few views that use fewer assets(no fan art), so you could try those.

    Pulse

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    19 hours ago, mtib said:

    Great work, thanks. Is it possible to increase the platform´s font size on the Details List View? Or even better, replace with the platform´s clear logo? If so, how?

     

    Inked20220311_113028_LI.jpg

    Short answer is to download the CTC files for Pulse and CTC tool. Faeran has made tutorials how to use it to modify themes.

    • Thanks 1

    Slipstream Theme

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    Slipstream Theme

    View File

    Slipstream was designed to be modern, dark, responsive, clean and easy to use theme for BigBox. Performance was also one of the priorities.

    Views in the theme:

    • TextGamesView
    • HorizontalWheel1GamesView
    • HorizontalWheel2GamesView
    • WheelGamesView
    • Wheel2GamesView
    • WallGamesView
    • Wall2GamesView
    • Wall3GamesView
    • TextFiltersView
    • PlatformWheel1FiltersView
    • PlatformWheel2FiltersView
    • PlatformWheel3FiltersView

    Recommended assets for views:

    • Gameplay Screenshot 1 (this is critical because there is no fallback)
    • Selected Item Video
    • Box Art Front
    • Clear Logo
    • Fan Art
    • Device
    • Banner

    Platform images:

    I have included a set of images, BUT if you have a huge collection you will most likely need to update and add some images. Should be easy though, because theme does not use any custom made images.

    Additional themes for Slipstream

    Thanks:

    • y2guru (CTA)
    • Viking (platform videos and snapshots)
    • LaunchBox Community (assets for games and platforms and support)
    • LaunchBox Team (for the best FE for gaming)

    Special:

    This theme is dedicated to the brave men and women of Ukraine

    Support:

     

     

     

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 2
    • Unusual Gem 1

    Slipstream

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted · Edited by Juketsu

    Slipstream-cover.thumb.jpg.4c9c005891a1e92c50bda61187bc08c0.jpg

    Preparing to upload my new theme Slipstream this weekend previously known as "Lucidity" or "The Keep".

    Done:

    Tried my best to bug hunt. Hopefully not too many slipped in to the first version.

    • Like 9
    • Thanks 1
    • Unusual Gem 1

    Lucidity

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    1 hour ago, C-Beats said:

    CTC to my knowledge only loads raw images for it's previews as opposed to cached images. Most image types at this point can be cached, though I believe there are a few that are not (like backgrounds). If you want to use a cached image you can use the FlowImage control and if that image group caches it will use it by default which can speed up load times. I'd be nice to get a theme dev controlled cache item for items/groups you know aren't changing but that isn't in the works just yet.

    Thanks for the info. I might try my luck with the FlowImage. Then again, I have already made the changes to get things run better.

    • Like 1

    Lucidity

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted · Edited by Juketsu

    3 hours ago, neil9000 said:

    Launchbox/Bigbox do already do this on the fly the first time a theme is used, this is what the LB-Cache and BB-Cache in the images folder are, resized images, resized to the size the in use theme requires.

    Nice, didn't know how the caching actually worked. So even with image optimizations turned on it's a struggle to use assets as you wish. Animating and using box shadows kills the performance completely. Well, I just need to find ways to have visual impact without too much candy.

    I think the image caching only affects wheel items. If there was a way to load these with the CTC to use as background etc. it could solve many of my problems. It looks like when making themes with CTC it uses only the original assets.

    Lucidity

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted · Edited by Juketsu

    7 hours ago, Madcore said:

    That's why in other launchers I try to have all my media converted taking in account some limits, like no more than 1920px width size and 1080px vertical size, only PNG for logos and wheels, and more optimizations steps. It's not only for crunch the size of multimedia library, but to make everything more fluid.
     

    I know a lot of people will not like to convert their multimedia library, because they use 2k or 4k displays, or want the maximun detail on boxes and adverts to zoom in. But in term of performance, light files are better.

    Anyway, hope you can fulfill your vision on this theme. The preview images are awesome and gives me hope to test this theme someday.

    I think image optimizer could be a feature in LaunchBox. It could even make smaller file versions from the originals. And like you said Launchbox should only accept png for logos. No need to download png fan art at all.

    Lucidity

    in Big Box Custom Themes

    Posted

    The Keep will not happen. After doing extensive testing I'm not satisfied with the performance when using default game assets. For example many of the fan art and box art images are over 3 mb in size. They slow the wheels so much that you will encounter stuttering no matter how good pc you have. So going to go back to drawing board and make the much needed changes to get this theme behaving smoothly.

    • Like 2
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