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Giant Titan - Big Box Theme (WIP)


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I decided to try my hand at designing a theme. I am not savvy in XML or the coding of a Big Box theme, so if there is anyone interested in getting involved on that end, that would be amazing.

Basically, I am trying to figure out ways to allow the user to easily navigate their collection. I've had some trouble on my own end where I spend more time scrolling through games then playing. Luckily Jason has added some really cool new features that I want to try and utilize with some UI flair.

This is my second version of the games page.

BigBox_Theme_v2.jpg

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On 7/4/2017 at 3:28 AM, GiantTitan said:

I decided to try my hand at designing a theme. I am not savvy in XML or the coding of a Big Box theme, so if there is anyone interested in getting involved on that end, that would be amazing.

Basically, I am trying to figure out ways to allow the user to easily navigate their collection. I've had some trouble on my own end where I spend more time scrolling through games then playing. Luckily Jason has added some really cool new features that I want to try and utilize with some UI flair.

This is my second version of the games page.

BigBox_Theme_v2.jpg

Looks good. Question on this view I can't tell do you navigate to the left using the images or down using the text? 

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1 hour ago, GiantTitan said:

Still working on ideas but here is a preview of the dashboard design. Not too sure how much I like it yet.

BigBox_Theme_Dashboard_v2.jpg

Bloody hell that looks awesome and completely different from anything done already. Please leave this in, in some shape or form. 

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1 minute ago, Codeman said:

When is the release? Somehow I'd like to combine this with CityHunter. Might have to make my own theme to do that. Will there be a background video?

I haven't coded a theme yet and no one has thrown their hat in to help so I am unsure of a release date. If I have to code it myself it might take some time because of the learning curve. The background video is going to be a slow hue transition. 

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On 4/12/2017 at 4:54 PM, GiantTitan said:

Still working on ideas but here is a preview of the dashboard design. Not too sure how much I like it yet.

BigBox_Theme_Dashboard_v2.jpg

I'm kinda dense, so it took me a little of studying to understand what you got going on here. Looks like the middle is the video? If so, it looks like you are using a youtube vid? If I may ask, do you know how to get my vids? Sorry, if that's a dumb question. 

Anyhow, looks absolutely beautiful. Would love to try that out for sure. As I know nothing about xaml as well, guess we'll have to wait on one of the themeing wizards to help you out. Also, your games view is wonderful. 

And I noticed you incorporated a RSS Feed. Is that for launchbox? 

Super creative.

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On 4/14/2017 at 1:13 AM, JamesBaker said:

I'm kinda dense, so it took me a little of studying to understand what you got going on here. Looks like the middle is the video? If so, it looks like you are using a youtube vid? If I may ask, do you know how to get my vids? Sorry, if that's a dumb question. 

Anyhow, looks absolutely beautiful. Would love to try that out for sure. As I know nothing about xaml as well, guess we'll have to wait on one of the themeing wizards to help you out. Also, your games view is wonderful. 

And I noticed you incorporated a RSS Feed. Is that for launchbox? 

Super creative.

 

The video is just a screen capture I grabbed from YouTube. It will be what ever the video is the default for the user. As for the RSS feed, right now I know that's not available but hopefully in the future Jason can implement so we can add that in.

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39 minutes ago, GiantTitan said:

... As for the RSS feed, right now I know that's not available but hopefully in the future Jason can implement so we can add that in.

Hey GiantTitan, I hate it to be the party breaker because your mockups are looking really great! :)

Unfortunately there are quite a few more things besides the RSS feed that are currently not possible to do with the theming engine.

 

Games View:

- You can only have one navigation element in a view. A mixture of a games list and the boxes at the top is not possible.

- You can only show the platform of the current selected game. LB doesn’t offer any cross-referencing for finding other versions of the same game on different platforms.

- Showing an icon for the number of players is possible if you have manually added these info’s to your own collection. The problem is that it won’t work for anybody else as long as LB and the games database don’t have an official data field for that.

 

Platforms view:

- LB can only show the metadata/media for the currently selected platform/game. The middle part with the selected platform should definitely work like in your mockup but unfortunately you won’t be able to show the Year, Games Count, Favorite/Recent games lists or any other information's for the platforms on the left and right side. 

 

I don’t know in which extent these problems can be solved once the BigBox plugin system is integrated but it would still need some extended programming knowledge to implement these features.

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3 hours ago, GiantTitan said:

The video is just a screen capture I grabbed from YouTube. It will be what ever the video is the default for the user. As for the RSS feed, right now I know that's not available but hopefully in the future Jason can implement so we can add that in.

Aw, I see. Beautiful idea with providing visual concepts.

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22 hours ago, CriticalCid said:

Hey GiantTitan, I hate it to be the party breaker because your mockups are looking really great! :)

Unfortunately there are quite a few more things besides the RSS feed that are currently not possible to do with the theming engine.

 

Games View:

- You can only have one navigation element in a view. A mixture of a games list and the boxes at the top is not possible.

- You can only show the platform of the current selected game. LB doesn’t offer any cross-referencing for finding other versions of the same game on different platforms.

- Showing an icon for the number of players is possible if you have manually added these info’s to your own collection. The problem is that it won’t work for anybody else as long as LB and the games database don’t have an official data field for that.

 

Platforms view:

- LB can only show the metadata/media for the currently selected platform/game. The middle part with the selected platform should definitely work like in your mockup but unfortunately you won’t be able to show the Year, Games Count, Favorite/Recent games lists or any other information's for the platforms on the left and right side. 

 

I don’t know in which extent these problems can be solved once the BigBox plugin system is integrated but it would still need some extended programming knowledge to implement these features.

 

@CriticalCid, if these panels were essentially just giant platform images on a wheel of three where the left and right are just images and the larger middle panel would be the dynamic info panel that basically just lays overtop the smaller static platform image behind it. couldn't that work? I mean it at least would be doable until more features/plugins are implemented?! I'm asking because this is a very nice looking UI (not perfect) but a good start and something I personally would like for my "Emulation System" in my livingroom.

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That’s actually a great idea and would definitely work. The only problem that I see is that the favorite/recent games lists would heavily differ between the fixed covers on the wheel image and the actual dynamic ones from BigBox itself.

Of course that could be also bypassed by either removing the covers from the wheels on the left and right or by removing the whole dynamic favorite/recent games list and only use the fixed covers as non-selectable examples of games that are available for that system.

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