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BigBox > Steam big picture mode help


kev25b

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8 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

Like I said just add Big Box as your non-steam application and launch it from Big Picture. Once you're done playing a game it should take you back to Big Box and once you close Big Box it should take you back to Big Picture.

Thanks dude it worked.

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Band aid how? What's the problem? If you want to use Big Picture in combination with Big Box, that's the order to do it.

I'm not entirely sure why you would want to use Big Picture itself in combination with Big Box unless they were in that order anyway (and the only reason I do it is because of Steam Link streaming which requires Big Picture usage). If you're just wanting to play Steam games through LB/BB, Big Picture is in no way required (and relatively redundant, since it's basically a frontend itself).

Is there some particular reason why you just have to have access to Big Picture for something? If not, I'd just remove it from the equation entirely.

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It is a band aid because i dont want to have to launch big picture, to launch big box, to launch a steam game, that just seems silly. And the reason i use big picture is because i game on the couch (the whole reason for using big box) The notifications are displayed bigger (achievements ect) and if i get a message of a friend i dont have to jump for a keyboard and mouse, i can just use a pad. @Jason Carr Fair enough buddy.

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19 minutes ago, kev25b said:

It is a band aid because i dont want to have to launch big picture, to launch big box, to launch a steam game, that just seems silly.

Right but that's what I'm saying. You don't have to use Big Picture at all just to launch a Steam game through Big Box. A normal Steam launch ID will run it through LB/BB just fine (and drop you back to LB/BB afterwards).

I don't think there's anything you're going to be able to do about this short of maybe creating a batch to run Big Picture and then automatically launch Big Box in a single shortcut. Big Picture is definitely an attention hog. You'll basically always be dropped back into Big Picture once you're done playing whatever it is you've launched through it. This is why the Big Picture -> Big Box method works, because it sees you as "playing" Big Box. So as long as you're still doing/launching things through Big Box via that method, it'll drop you back to Big Box. If you launch something else from Big Picture, it's going to take you back to Big Picture once you're "done".

19 minutes ago, kev25b said:

And the reason i use big picture is because i game on the couch (the whole reason for using big box) The notifications are displayed bigger (achievements ect) and if i get a message of a friend i dont have to jump for a keyboard and mouse, i can just use a pad.

I feel like there's a way to resize the notifications in Steam... Not sure if there's a way around the keyboard thing though.

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2 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

Right but that's what I'm saying. You don't have to use Big Picture at all just to launch a Steam game through Big Box. A normal Steam launch ID will run it through LB/BB just fine (and drop you back to LB/BB afterwards).

I don't think there's anything you're going to be able to do about this short of maybe creating a batch to run Big Picture and then automatically launch Big Box in a single shortcut. Big Picture is definitely an attention hog. You'll basically always be dropped back into Big Picture once you're done playing whatever it is you've launched through it. This is why the Big Picture -> Big Box method works, because it sees you as "playing" Big Box. So as long as you're still doing/launching things through Big Box via that method, it'll drop you back to Big Box. If you launch something else from Big Picture, it's going to take you back to Big Picture once you're "done".

I feel like there's a way to resize the notifications in Steam... Not sure if there's a way around the keyboard thing though.

Fair enough i will just keep using it through bp, thanks for your help buddy.

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Alt-F4 does close big picture if that helps any.

Using a middle-ware like RocketLauncher that bounces focus back to the front end might work, so long as it triggers after Big Picture takes over.

I've tried to run Big Picture in the background myself so I can build a sort of Front End - Front End that lets me cycle between it and Big Box and other things, but I've had no luck getting it to actually hide away.

I've been working on a program that lets me launch anything through Steam via a proxy application but it's a little fiddly still as I've only just gotten it working reliably on my system this week.  It's in the third party tools section here but probably isn't what you're after, at least not with it's current feature set.  I'm farming for suggestions though as I work on it.

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1 hour ago, Nielk1 said:

Alt-F4 does close big picture if that helps any.

Using a middle-ware like RocketLauncher that bounces focus back to the front end might work, so long as it triggers after Big Picture takes over.

I've tried to run Big Picture in the background myself so I can build a sort of Front End - Front End that lets me cycle between it and Big Box and other things, but I've had no luck getting it to actually hide away.

I've been working on a program that lets me launch anything through Steam via a proxy application but it's a little fiddly still as I've only just gotten it working reliably on my system this week.  It's in the third party tools section here but probably isn't what you're after, at least not with it's current feature set.  I'm farming for suggestions though as I work on it.

Good point, i will have to try that out.

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@imdavid555

Oh, you can't force Big Picture if it's not already open with RocketLauncher, no.  My point was that RocketLauncher will return focus to the front end that triggered a launch through it when it determines the program terminated.  It might be slow enough that if Steam was used as big picture in the background, it would push LaunchBox/BigBox to the front anyway.

For switching Steam into Big Picture when starting a game you need to do a bit more work.  I wrote a program that forces Big Picture and then launches a program, and then when it's closed tries to find the Big Picture window and send it Alt-F4 which closes big picture and switches Steam back to desktop mode.  I've not configured that program to work for Steam games yet, just third party launches in Steam.

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  • 1 month later...

This is the exact same issue I've been struggling with since buying a Big Box license. I wanted to use LaunchBox together with Steam Link so I could play emulated games on my TV via Steam Link. I can start BB just fine, and load any game, which plays wonderfully. The issue is that when I exit the game, I see the BB interface for a few seconds, and then I'm kicked back into Steam's Big Picture Mode, which doesn't seem to think that BB is still running. 

The only way to fix it is to run up a couple flights of stairs to my computer, alt-tab to BB, close it, and then open it again with the Steam Link.

Has anyone else run into this? I haven't been able to find any solution.

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