Jump to content
LaunchBox Community Forums

[Feature Discussion] Make playing a game faster in BigBox


vsilvalopes

Recommended Posts

Hi everyone, I don't know if my title will be able to express some ideas that I have after using BigBox for almost a year.
First of all, I simply love Launchbox and BigBox, but for me that uses exclusively BigBox, I think that in one point it has to improve a lot.

Before LaunchBox, I used GameEx, and it has a nice feature, that I think most people will not even care.
When you start GameEx, the first screen that you see, are some common options, that make front ends more fast for constant gaming.

GameEx displays something like this :

- Last Played
- Most Played
- Favorites
- Games (This is the menu option, that takes you to all the platforms that the front end have)

I see in the fronted communities, a great focus on how to make the front end beautiful with tons of videos, boxes, sounds and so on.

But I see very few improvements on the usability side of the front ends.

Take Steam Big Picture for example.
As soon you start it, it presents you with some options (like I said to GameEx) and it's easy to continue the last game that you played.
Plus, Steam suggests some random game for you library to play. The other options are Online Friends related, that for now doesn't fit on LaunchBox/BigBox.

My point here is, I really miss the ability to see what I'm playing in BigBox.
Whenever I start it, I have to roll an entire list of Systems, just to reach Super Nintendo, and then resume my last session of Super Metroid.

I think BigBox should take some advantage on this matter, Giving us the option of more powerful filter options.

I tried to achieve the same usability that I had with GameEx, creating custom filters, so I tried to make three basic ones :

- Last 20 Played
- Favorites
- Most Played

And I only managed to pull the "Favorites" one.
The other two, I couldn't get to work.

I'm a heavy user of emulation, and I play a lot emulated games, and besides having a library full of systems, I would like this process to resume a game, to be more easy in BigBox.
For instance, I would like to see a simply main menu on BigBox, something like Steam Big Picture, with four or five links, like : Last Played , Most Played, Favorites, Library, Random Game.

And when you hit each one, what happens :


- Last Played : Show my 20, 30 last played games on order, from the newer to oldest
- Most Played : Show my all time most played games on BigBox
- Favorites : Simply as said, show all my favorites, independent of platform
- Library : This put us right on the Platform view, with all the platforms within the system.
- Random Game : Take me to the details page of a game.

I think with this BigBox will be more useful to a daily use scenario, like we have with Steam or Kodi.
The new version of Kodi, puts our media more acessible, showing what is new and what we are playing.

Personally, I love BigBox, but as others frontends, it does not make easy to pickup and continue a game.
Sure on the last update, BigBox now remembers the platform and last game, but for me it's just not enough.

People, please don't bring hate to this! I'm saying this with love, with the only purpose of improving our use of the system.

@Jason Carr if you can take a look on this, I will be glad! Again, I love your work on LaunchBox / BigBox!
 

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with the points you make here and you have backed it up with good usability suggestions as seen in other software. I do know that Jason will be looking into usability features like nested filters and so on, and some of the suggestions you have made kind of tie in with that too. 

I doubt anyone will be annoyed by your suggestions, in fact, the LaunchBox team welcomes feedback such as this. I for one would be interested in seeing similar features to the ones you have mentioned in a future release.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 28/01/2017 at 5:38 PM, lordmonkus said:

I like this idea a lot.

This along with better custom sub categories within platforms would be awesome to have.

Edit:
If you can submit a bitbucket feature request for this and post a link to that ticket here so we can vote for it that would be awesome.

https://bitbucket.org/jasondavidcarr/launchbox/issues/new

Thanks for the input!
I'm going to open a issue for it, as soon as possible!

I really like BigBox, and the new themes coming for it are just insane!
A few tweaks on the main menu interface, will make it a blast!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...