theme CriticalZone / CriticalZone - BlueBox

[CriticalCid]

19 hours ago, igotdvds said:

I worked up a vertical wheel view that pops out and then hides to the left revealing fullscreen videos, and that is all. Very clean and makes great use of the game video recordings from hyperspin.

Thanks for the suggestion but a view like that is already included for platforms and in my opinion there’s no need for a games view like that. The vertical wheel view with the 4:3 fullscreen video on the right was specially designed for HyperSpin video themes. Sure it’s not perfect for 16:9 videos but it still works fine for them and considering that games and especially themes in that format are in a huge minority is that fact even more negligible. Also is stretching 4:3 videos in to an wrong aspect ratio just for the sake of filling the whole screen with them not feasible by any means, at least in my eyes.

[LogicalEgo]

13 hours ago, CriticalCid said:

Thanks for the suggestion but a view like that is already included for platforms and in my opinion there’s no need for a games view like that. The vertical wheel view with the 4:3 fullscreen video on the right was specially designed for HyperSpin video themes. Sure it’s not perfect for 16:9 videos but it still works fine for them and considering that games and especially themes in that format are in a huge minority is that fact even more negligible. Also is stretching 4:3 videos in to an wrong aspect ratio just for the sake of filling the whole screen with them not feasible by any means, at least in my eyes.

This

[igotdvds]

2 hours ago, keltoigael said:

This

I use a 4:3 monitor so most views being designed dont look very nice in that mode. I was suggesting a 4:3 view (which I know everyone avoids like the plague) hence why I did my own.

[CriticalCid]

Oh sure! Now it makes sense. Would have been easier if you had said that right in the beginning

Unfortunately is CriticalZone widescreen only (optimized for 16:9 but I do my best to make it also look nice with 16:10) and I don’t have any plans to change that any time soon. I would have to rework the whole theme and maintain both versions separately and that’s too much work. I already have to keep the Fanart background version and CityHunter up-to-date as well every time I change something; and adding a single 4:3 view in an otherwise complete widescreen theme is not gonna happen for various reasons. Sorry for that; but I still appreciate your input! I hope I don’t sound too harsh.

And why most theme creators don’t do 4:3 themes is pretty easy to answer. I guess they personally don’t own a cab with a 4:3 display and therefor it’s really hard to motivate and inspire yourself to work many hours on a theme that you can’t properly use for yourself.

[LogicalEgo]

4 hours ago, CriticalCid said:

Oh sure! Now it makes sense. Would have been easier if you had said that right in the beginning

 

Unfortunately is CriticalZone widescreen only (optimized for 16:9 but I do my best to make it also look nice with 16:10) and I don’t have any plans to change that any time soon. I would have to rework the whole theme and maintain both versions separately and that’s too much work. I already have to keep the Fanart background version and CityHunter up-to-date as well every time I change something; and adding a single 4:3 view in an otherwise complete widescreen theme is not gonna happen for various reasons. Sorry for that; but I still appreciate your input! I hope I don’t sound too harsh.

And why most theme creators don’t do 4:3 themes is pretty easy to answer. I guess they personally don’t own a cab with a 4:3 display and therefor it’s really hard to motivate and inspire yourself to work many hours on a theme that you can’t properly use for yourself.

 

He doesn't have to update CityHunter, he is just nice to me  

[Omen]

Thank you @CriticalCid for this insane theme! I love the new view with the cartridge image. I was wondering how I would go about making the description box smaller and the cartridge art larger? I tried editing HorizontalWheel3GamesView.xaml but cant figure out where the height for description and cart are.

 

EDIT: Here's an example of what I'm trying to do:

Edited March 24, 2017 by OmenBoy

[Omen]

I figured out how to enlarge the cartridge art by editing line 71: <RowDefinition Height="27*" /> but it also enlarges the MSRB/Favorites icons. I am guessing there's no way to avoid this as the size is dependent on the row height. It's too bad because it looks clean with larger carts:

[CriticalCid]

Hey man, sorry for not responding sooner. It’s definitely possible to enlarge the cartridge without doing the same with the icons but unfortunately that’s not an easy fix you could do by just changing some values. You would have to change the whole Row structure of the view and edit every element that is related to that.

I get what you mean with the small carts but you probably should know that one of the basic concepts of the view is that all columns in the whole middle part are symmetrical to each other (the sizes of the elements in the column in the middle are just reversed). While creating it I also played around a bit by only making the carts larger but I came to the conclusion that it looked terrible and certainly not clean at all when you destroy the symmetry between the columns.

[Omen]

I see what you're saying, it would be a lot of work, and totally kill the symmetry, definitely not worth it.  Even with small carts it's the best view in any theme, I was afraid I was gonna have to make a theme to get a view with cart and box art. Thanks again man

[zetec-s-joe]

Still waiting on Jason to fix the DPI scaling would fix issues for alot of people with Theme scaling on Big Screen TVs

[BadServo]

Really enjoy this theme, but the one issue for me is that when in the horizontal lists view, pressing down brings up an opaque bar where the alphabet should be to jump to a particular letter/number, but no letters or numbers appear.  Is this a glitch in the current version or something odd about my installation?  I've replicated the bug on 2 machines.  Any help is appreciated.  And my apologies if this has been addressed already in a previous post and I missed it.

[CriticalCid]

Hey BadServo, do you mean on the platforms or games views? The platforms views don’t support the alpha-numeric bar and it works perfectly fine for me on all game views.

-Cid

[BadServo]

This is in a game view.  Specifically the "All Games" list.  Not sure how I'm screwing this up.  Here's a link to a video of what I'm seeing on my machines:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_oV92HlhVlHdVc3Z2dJQWh3MzQ/view?usp=sharing

[CriticalCid]

That’s weird. It works fine for me on my end, even under „All Games“.

Does it only appear in this particular view when you are in “All Games” or does it also appear in other views and/or other filter types like a single platform?

Does this bug only appear in CriticalZone or in any other Themes as well?

[BadServo]

Ok, here's some more info.  If I navigate into the view from the platform list, it behaves as expected.  If I start Big Box in "All Games" view, and then switch views, or use another list, then go back to "All Games" it works as intended.  But starting in the "All Games" list on launch breaks it.  This appears to happen with every theme I've tried (including the default) when set to "Horizontal 1" view, so I suppose it's a Big Box bug.

[CriticalCid]

That’s really odd. I booted up BigBox directly into „All Games“ with  Horizontal Wheel View 1 as active View and I’m still not be able to reproduce your issue. But when all themes are affected by it than it’s definitely BigBox itself or BigBox in combination with your system.

I also know that “All Games” is kinda buggy anyway. For example the media and metadata of the first selected game is always from a completely different game or the fact that you can change the image type of the wheel which is something that shouldn’t be possible.

You say that you can replicate that behavior on two different machines. Are you using the same LB setup on both of them or have you set them up individually? Could you please zip up your "Data" folder and send it to me per PM? I just want to make sure that there isn't something weird going on with your setup itself.

[BadServo]

I honestly don't recall if I set these up separately or ported one of the installs.  I'll wipe one machine's LB installation and reinstall/setup for a control.  In the meantime, I'm about to PM you the data folder.  I'll report back in a bit.

[CriticalCid]

Alright. I just tested it with your Data folder and I could instantly replicate the issue. So the problem lies definitely there.

 

I’ll let @Jason Carr know about that and send him your Data folder. Maybe he can find out what’s going on with your setup.

[BadServo]

Yep, I did a clean install of LB 7.9, imported my ROMS and did a minimal metadata scrape, and everything worked fine, even when launching directly into "All Games" list.  So yeah, something definitely got gummed up on my system somewhere along the line.  Thanks for all the troubleshooting help.  A full reconfigure is a bit tedious, but it's good to know I can fall back on this if all else fails.

[BadServo]

I know it's been awhile since my previous comment, but I have some new information that seems to suggest that it isn't something unique to my data folder after all.

I recently replaced the PC used for my LB Cabinet, and so I setup LB from scratch.  What I discovered is that on a clean LB installation with a single emu/platform (in my case MAME), the letter/numbers display correctly, whether choosing or launching directly into the platform or "All Games".  However, if you add an additional EMU/Platform (in my case Daphne), then it breaks.  Starting BB directly into "All Games" fails to show the navigation letters/numbers.  However, going into a platform view succeeds.  Weirdly, this only seems to be the case if you launch directly into "All Games".  Launching to any other view by default, and then going into "All Games" works.

I expect this is still a BB bug, but I thought you might be curious.