thimolor

TextGamesViews overall look nice, but what happens when the game title is really long? Do you trim the the title or scale down? I have always struggled to preserve space to the longer titles. It look bad with short title, but also I don't personally like when the text sizes vary or the title gets cut. There is also the text scroller, that might solve the problem. You now have the button (Press A to Play). I'm not fan of this. I use DS4 and that does not have A button. Also you are hiding a lot of the menu items. If you can't remember the correct order then finding a particular menu item would be tedious. How about the gamers that use this view for finding games. In a perfect world there could be a sliding menu somewhere or we could have horizontal menu bar... just dreaming. I think you are giving up too much space for the box art. It seems to be now 50/50. HorizontalWheel2GamesView, I really like this one. Could you try to switch the alignment? Big boxart to the right? My eyes are drawn to the right, so it feels like I'm not looking what I'm supposed to. Maybe it's just me and my eyes

Don't worry. I'm not removing the Community Creator Files, just the themes.

Adding more screenshots to my developer diary. Few changes. These are the current views for console games. I will do one view with wheel aligned to the left also + the wall views. Made simpler animations, so it will be way more easier to do changes to the layouts if someone wants to. Box Art Wheel with 5 items visible. Screenshot during selection. Video loaded when item selected. Box Art Wheel with 7 items visible. Screenshot during selection. Video loaded when item selected. Only Box Art. Large Box Art fades in when wheel item selected. Video background, fallback to screenshot. Box Art. Fan Art Background, fallback to screenshot. Small video.

I used to think less is more. Now I'm doing all the available views for my new theme. Here are few new views that are still in testing phase (hard to get those big videos and screenshots looking good). Still using default assets and no custom banners/images. This uses gameplay screenshot that fades in when game selected. This works quite well already. Focus on background video. Not quite happy with this yet Focus in on the box art here. Using also background video. This still needs some adjustments. One more platform view that uses video/fan art.

Thanks to you Dan! I'm still doing little tweaking and cleaning the views. Also decided to do all the views because this might be my last theme for BigBox. Building my ultimate htpc setup in Lazer3d CG7 case and when that is finished I'm all done.

It seems the option for wheel easing is not working in v. 11.10 anymore. The wheel behaves the same if option checked/unchecked.

During some intensive testing I found out that horizontal wheels are choppy when loading big images like box art (these can be 3 mb in size). Default theme works fine and does not use horizontal wheels, so this might be a performance issue in the Community Theme Creator Tool @y2guru? Vertical wheels worked fine in all themes when loading big images after wheel selection, so it's a bit confusing. I did some more testing between LB versions 11.9 and 11.10, and there is literally no difference in performance. 11.9 seems to perform a little better, but I don't know if it's just the smoother wheel transitions in the 11.9 version. Tested with dirtyOld, CityHunter 2 and my upcoming new theme Pulse. FINAL UPDATE Ok, I did clean install on LauchBox on a bigger drive with more space. No more slowdown. Problem solved.

I'm afraid I have to report back here and confirm that the performance is worse in the new LB version. I just did a clean windows 10 install and tested with both 11.9 and 11.10. 11.9 was better and the wheel action was a lot smoother. 11.10 was choppy for my system at least (Ryzen 3700x, 16 gb ram, Radeon Vega 64) I will upload comparison videos tomorrow.

I like this: PlatformWheel4FiltersView. It has nice contrast and those platform images are really nice. I'm not sure about the small platform images in the wheel. They might get too small to identify the different systems from each other. Use logos, simpler custom banners or text instead? HorizontalWheel2GamesView looks now tighter. For me the previous version was better without the borders. I like your take on the wall views. There is more room to breath and doesn't look cramped. Like paintings on the wall. Easy on the eye and I really like these. TextGamesView I know the feeling when you can't align that video to left or right Looks promising, for me the gap between box art and video is too tight? Try to add some more space between the elements like in your other views? All and all looks nice!

No. The slowdowns happen mostly in wheels that use box art or custom images. The wheel animation is different than before. I think in the older version there was more easing? UPDATE, I just experienced slowdown with the older LB version also, so there might be issue with my system. Need to do some spring cleaning.

Ok, just tested with 11.9. and the wheel action was a lot smoother even when additional images where loaded during selection. So there might be a performance issue in the new version or the themes made with Community Theme Creator Tool are broken somehow? Strange that nobody else is experiencing this.

Hi, I'm experiencing slow and choppy wheel animations with the new BigBox Version 11.10. Does anyone else have this problem? Tested with multiple themes. Where can I download older LB versions to test if this problem is caused by the new version or not?

I will leave them for now I'm not sure why it's happening for you @Dan Patrick Are the assets in the theme folder? Did you try to open the assets, if they are corrupted or something. Are you using Windows? I could share the Community creator Files with you, so you can compile it yourself.

I like how you use color. Looks fresh. PlatformWheel3FiltersView Great concept. What if you removed the shadow from the right, that is over the platform wheel? Put a thin line there or nothing? I like the HorizontalWheel2GamesView. Really clean, almost like game boxes on a table. The only thing that concerns me is the game title in a box. What happens when the game title is really long? Maybe put that title above the notes? Align the paltform title with the notes. I think this view could be a winner for those that like box art. For arcade games this won't work though. TextGamesView This could be tweaked to be a good view. Full screen videos don't work nicely Aspect ratios vary so much, There's going to be black borders almost always. You could use screenshot with uniform to fill. The box art is not always the same size, what happens when you put Snes box or Saturn in there, does it look balanced then?

No, I don't want to use my time adding stuff to those anymore. Actually I would like to remove them completely after I finish Pulse. I know you didn't want to hear this, but I just don't want to revisit my old work because it looks bad now

Some progress. Added few views and tweaked the overall look. Waitin for the new Creator Tool to do the new wall views also.

It seems you have the wrong font (should be barlow, see the theme folder/fonts), no icons and no background images, no glow.. this is why you don't see the gradients. Something wrong with your setup. Are the assets in the theme folder (media/Theme Assets/)? The text list cannot be centered when doing responsive theme. It will cut the bottom list item, and it just looks broken, when the list is not aligned to bottom. Only way to change this, is to make the list height 100% (this is something I will try out.)

Thanks, no more testers needed.

Who wants to to test this theme?

I promise I won't overhaul the theme anymore. Some tweaking and testing with different aspect ratios. Thanks for the logos again.

This is slowly becoming my never ending story. Making a lot of little tweaking everywhere and adding better support for custom playlists (no custom banners or logos needed, theme still looks fine and not broken). Making sure, that you can use what ever art you choose to. If you don't want to use device images, you can use fan art instead. No need for photoshop templates.

Thanks, The lines are the same gray (#292929). I just added some pulsating animation in sync with the glow, so they get dimmer.

I know my name. It's going to be called: Pulse

Nice icons! I will use these. I agree with the broken robot, it was bad. I think I will make the circles gray. They pop too much now. Making other minor adjustments also. I will put the info closer to the title also there is now 48 px. I will try 32-40 px space there.