theme CriticalZone / CriticalZone - BlueBox

[CriticalCid]

CriticalZone / CriticalZone - BlueBox

View File

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Here you can download alternative versions of the CriticalZoneV2 theme that comes bundled with every LaunchBox installation.

CriticalZone is a BigBox theme designed for the usage of widescreen platform videos and utilizes videos as backgrounds.

This theme was designed for widescreen displays with 16:9 aspect ratios and optimized for a display resolution of 1920x1080. It will also work with other widescreen resolutions and 16:10 aspect ratios but it may not look as polished.

 

Available Versions:

- CritcalZoneV2 - BlueBox: A blue color variant of CriticalZoneV2. It features blue texts instead of green and has a different Default background created by @SentaiBrad

- BackgroundVideoOnly: All Views, except the TextList Views, will only use video loops as backgrounds. Also available as BlueBox version.

- BackgroundFanartOnly: All Views will only use Fanart images as backgrounds. Also available as BlueBox version. -> Use this version if you have performance problems!

- 1.8: The original and now old version of CriticalZone. It's officially EOL and won't get supported by me in any way. It's just still here for archiving reasons.

There’s also a red 80’s/Cyberpunk themed version of CriticalZone called “CityHunter”. It’s maintained by @keltoigael and can be found here:

 

How to install:

Just download the version of choice and extract the archive into:

“..\LaunchBox\Themes\”

Open the Options menu in BigBox -> go to “Views” and change the Theme to the version you just have installed.

 

IMPORTANT: CriticalZone V2 requires LaunchBox v7.11 or higher!

 

Known issues:

- The description texts in all Platform Views and CoverFlowWithDetails Games View won’t fill the whole space of the descriptions box when you use CriticalZone with a higher DPI setting than 100% or a lower display resolution than 1902x1080. It gets progressively worse the higher the DPI settings and/or lower the resolution is.

 

Thanks & Credits:

 

Thanks to @SentaiBrad for creating the new Default background video for the BlueBox variant.

 

Background video of the standard version: In The Deep - FREE Video Background Loop HD 1080p by NIZ.co (http://niz.co/wp/)

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• Submitter
  CriticalCid
• Submitted
  11/03/2016
• Category
  Big Box Custom Themes

 

[CriticalCid]

Some of you folks may have seen the little sneak peak of the theme in yesterday’s LB development livestream. Now it’s finally here for everyone! Hope you guys like it.

[Nyny77]

Amazing ! very very great job !

Respect

[Guest Kirsten Marie]

AMAZING! <3

[Guest Kirsten Marie]

9 minutes ago, BakerMan said:

Really lovely isn't it? Brings everything together nicely!

Definitely agree.

[ALIE]

Amazing now I know what I'm spending my day tomorrow looking at. 

[shadowblind]

That fullscreen video view with an icon in the upper left is a thing of beauty for menu minimalists. Is that view shared by the games menu as well?

Edited November 3, 2016 by shadowblind

[BlackSol]

Excellent. Looks more natural with Kodi than themes with vertical wheels. Can't wait to add in @nyny77's videos.

[Maddoc1007]

@CriticalCid A lovely beautiful theme i must admit, tried it on a 5:4 monitor and it just works.  I love how you have shown us all how to add a background looping video.  Can we use this code snippet on our own themes if i may be so bold to ask?   Once again thank you for showing us something new BIG KUDOS.

[Rincewind]

Awesome work @CriticalCid very inspiring , thank you very much

[CriticalCid]

Thank you all for your kind words. I'm really happy that you guys like it that much

 

@shadowblind Platform views and games views are completely separated, so no.

But I’ve created an alternative version of the theme for you which has the games wheel view replaced with the simple one form the platforms. It was just a simple copy and paste task to accomplish this, so no biggie.

Here you go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6XLOBnGwlUU3NXa2Q5UTkyUnc

 

@Maddoc1007 Sure, go ahead. I wouldn’t even have come that far with this theme without copying and learning stuff from other themes

Just be aware that this method has an ugly bug (which is known by Microsoft since years, but they don’t seem to care to fix it…). When the background video starts again from the beginning than you will see some kind of a black border around your other video. I solved that by simply fading out my background video to hide that effect. Just test it yourself and you will see what I mean.

 

[kmoney]

Awesome theme @CriticalCid!!! Great job as I am really enjoying it!

[Maddoc1007]

@CriticalCid Thank you very much it is very much appreciated a BIG BIG KUDOS TO YOU!

 

I just replaced in my theme

<transitions:TransitionPresenter TransitionSelector="{Binding BackgroundTransitionSelector}" Content="{Binding BackgroundView}" Height="{Binding ElementName=Canvas, Path=ActualHeight}" Width="{Binding ElementName=Canvas, Path=ActualWidth}" IsContentVideo="true" />

With your code

<Grid>
            <MediaElement Name="BackgroundVideo" Height="{Binding ElementName=Canvas, Path=ActualHeight}" Width="{Binding ElementName=Canvas, Path=ActualWidth}" Stretch="Fill">
                <MediaElement.Triggers>
                    <EventTrigger RoutedEvent="MediaElement.Loaded">
                        <EventTrigger.Actions>
                            <BeginStoryboard>
                                <Storyboard>
                                    <MediaTimeline Source="pack://siteoforigin:,,,/Themes/Glass/Videos/BackgroundVideo/Platforms.mp4" Storyboard.TargetName="BackgroundVideo" RepeatBehavior="Forever"/>
                                </Storyboard>
                            </BeginStoryboard>
                        </EventTrigger.Actions>
                    </EventTrigger>
                </MediaElement.Triggers>
            </MediaElement>
        </Grid>

And put your background video in my theme video folder loaded up BigBox let it loop through a few times but didn't see any black border showing on the video.  Again thank you very much your a gentleman.  KUDOS AGAIN EXCELLENT WORK.

[imdavid555]

This is awesome. Great work and thank you for sharing Cid. The looping video in the background is amazing.

I also remember seeing a sneak peek of your theme a long time ago in one of Jason's live streams. Looks so different now!

[djwar]

Im new to this, first of all thank you for such a great job

second, do we get the music and preview clips with your download, same as the video you uploaded ?

[CriticalCid]

@Maddoc1007 Like I said, you can’t see it with my background video as the video fades to black at the end of the video. Here’s the unedited version of the video without the fading for you to try: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_6XLOBnGwlULXY3SmppNDJwWkU

 

@djwar No they aren’t included.

The videos similar to the MAME and N64 ones will hopefully be available soon (can’t tell you when though, as other people are involved in that process as well)

 

NES, Mega Drive and PSP are from @BakerMan. If you are using the latest LB beta than you can get them directly through LaunchBox itself. (Tools -> Download Platform Theme Videos)

 

SNES and PC are from @nyny77. You have to download them manually and replace them with your current platform videos in “..\LaunchBox\Videos\Platforms”. You can find them here:

 

[CriticalCid]

Quote

This is a fantastic theme! I do have a couple of issues that I wanted to point out. First, in the main menu (shown below) the video seems to be off-centered. Is there any way to fix this? Also, I'm not sure if it's just me but in this same particular menu, the wheel has some rather noticeable lag when scrolling from side to side. Hopefully this can be worked out, or it may be an issue with bigbox itself?

@bundangdonI can't answer you directly in the review section, so I have to do it here.

The off-center issue with 4:3 videos is a bug with the VLC engine that I can’t fix, unfortunately. You have to use platform videos in 16:9 aspect ratio to have the videos centered, sorry for that. @Jason Carr already knows about it, but I don't know when he can come around to fix this.

Regarding the lagging issue. What Video engine are you using? VLC works with my theme way faster on the transitions than WMP, so if you are using WMP than try to switch it to VLC. If that doesn’t help try to play around with the transitions.

EDIT: Maybe you're interested in some technical info as well. The lagging issues with WMP occur because the background video will always be played through WMP (can't change that fact) and the engine seems to have problems playing 2 videos simultaneously

[shadowblind]

12 hours ago, CriticalCid said:

Thank you all for your kind words. I'm really happy that you guys like it that much

 

@shadowblind Platform views and games views are completely separated, so no.

But I’ve created an alternative version of the theme for you which has the games wheel view replaced with the simple one form the platforms. It was just a simple copy and paste task to accomplish this, so no biggie.

Here you go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_6XLOBnGwlUU3NXa2Q5UTkyUnc

 

 

Woo! Thank you, excellent customer service, sir 

[andyco47]

my background video plays ok and at the end it stops and does not play again it wont loop. is there a setting i need to do?. brill theme tho matey. and also on my other machine i have LB version 6.9 and the background video wont play at all even when i change the setting like u say to do.

Edited November 4, 2016 by andyco47

[CriticalCid]

The loop is hardcoded in the theme itself, so it doesn’t require any settings on your end. The video background works through the Windows Media Player engine though, so that could may be a codec issue.

Have you installed any codec packs on your PC?