[BigBox] Skins and custom splash on boot

[phly95]

I use bigbox on a dedicated gaming PC. One feature that would be awesome would be to use task scheduler to launch a custom BigBox Splash before logging in. This could mean adding something like the Xbox or Playstation boot sequence as soon instead of the login screen with auto-login (ofc not changing the boot animation except maybe making it all black like what I did in winaero tweaker, because that would cause too many problems). Then skinning it could allow the interface to look like a bootlegged NES or look like a game menu. I love the Bigbox design, but I would like to be able to customize it further to look like whatever console we like. I would love the PC to have as close to that seamless console boot as possible.

[phly95]

Actually, the splash screen is not as important, since it's pretty easy to just use sleep or hibernate instead of shutting down (duh, should have thought of that) but skins would be an awesome idea. Actually, splashscreens can actually work better with sleep mode/hibernate since BigBox can detect when the PC enters a suspended state and queue the splash screen for when it's woken up. That would make the true illusion of it being a console. I would say however that skinning would be the top priority though.

[Jason Carr]

Hi @phly95, skins are planned for Big Box, indeed. Per a splash screen, I'd probably want to leave that up to the community to create a different application of some sort to handle that.

[phly95]

I actually found a way to get splash screens when waking from sleep. You need to make an event in task scheduler "on an event" trigger with a custom XML event filter. The XML code is:

<QueryList> <Query Id="0" Path="System"> <Select Path="System">*[System[Provider[@Name='Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power'] and (Level=4 or Level=0) and (EventID=42)]]</Select> </Query> </QueryList>

Then use VLC after setting it to minimal view and disabling the cone and create a .bat file that opens the file with VLC. You may want to use an additional installation of VLC portable or something so you don't have to mess up your main video player if VLC is your player of choice. Then set task scheduler to use the .bat file you created (the .bat file is so that it shows up fullscreen) The .bat file should look something like

start "VLC" "C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" <path to video splash screen> exit

It would be cool to integrate this directly into BigBox, but right now, this workaround works well if you don't mind putting your PC on Sleep instead of powering off.

[Jason Carr]

That's pretty cool @phly95. Feel free to add a ticket to Bitbucket for the splash screens if you haven't already. :)