BIGFLIX: A new user experience for your HTPC

[ALIE]

Looks Amazing. Question if i remember user profiles was on the list of things Jason had on thr poll. Your think that could be tied in eventually with your thing here?.... 

[shadowblind]

The best looking theme I've seen. Know I said it before but seeing it in action really brings it home. Fantastic work!

[SNAK3ATER]

Hello everyone,

BIGFLIX 1.0 is live today as promised:

As I mentioned earlier the theme does not come with any set of platform banners and custom fanarts so make sure you download them and applying them to the theme before using BIGFLIX, I recommend the works of @nosh and @niglurion as this is what I use for my personal setup. Also make sure you have good source of game fanarts and Screenshots as this build relies on "Banner" imagetype for platforms and "Screenshots" imagetype for some of the game views. My themes does not officially endorse beta versions of Launchbox thus why steam banners support is omitted in the first release. I will update the with steam banners support as well as explore the new wall view once Launchbox 7.11 is officially released.

As always thank you for your constant support and I look forward to your user feedback and experience!

Cheers,

[mr 2fngrz]

[neil9000]

Hey @SNAK3ATER, i'm loving this theme it's great. Here comes the but  could you tell me how to edit the xaml so as to have a 4:3 aspect game video? I know it's not the intended way and won't look as you intended, but i really don't like the 4:3 game snaps stretched like that. I understand it goes against your design ethos of the theme, and it's purely a personal issue that won't look as you intended, but i would rather a bit of black space rather than a stretched video.

Thank's for a great theme either way i really do like it.  

I'm talking this view specifically, see how it's all stretched.

[SNAK3ATER]

1 hour ago, mr 2fngrz said:

LOL Daniel Bryan was the man back in the days  Let me know your feedback and impressions regarding the theme mate

 

@neil9000 Don't worry bro everyone have their own tastes and preferences I will try my level best to assist you

Just to confirm is this how you want the theme to look like?

Game snaps with 4:3 aspect ratio

Game snaps with 16:9 aspect ratio

[neil9000]

34 minutes ago, SNAK3ATER said:

LOL Daniel Bryan was the man back in the days  Let me know your feedback and impressions regarding the theme mate

 

@neil9000 Don't worry bro everyone have their own tastes and preferences I will try my level best to assist you

Just to confirm is this how you want the theme to look like?

Game snaps with 4:3 aspect ratio

Game snaps with 16:9 aspect ratio

Yeah, lol. The thing is they look great when in the PC platform as most are widescreen games and have widescreen trailers/snaps, but all the other categories/platforms are 4:3, that's why i use bezels in Retroarch, to close of the space at the sides to look nice to me, without stretching the games to 16:9.

[SNAK3ATER]

4 hours ago, neil9000 said:

Yeah, lol. The thing is they look great when in the PC platform as most are widescreen games and have widescreen trailers/snaps, but all the other categories/platforms are 4:3, that's why i use bezels in Retroarch, to close of the space at the sides to look nice to me, without stretching the games to 16:9.

Alright I did some testings and it appears if i'm not mistaken you can't have BackgroundView object and ImageVideoView object simultaneously in the same theme, my theme uses BackgroundView object exclusively as it allows me to stretch the video to whatever space I set to and it doesn't have video alignment issues that's plaguing ImageVideoView..

 

What that means in simple words you cannot use my current setup and the 4:3 view you requested in the same theme. Luckily for us you can have two versions of BIGFLIX running: Original and modified views versions.

I suggest that you keep the current build of BIGFLIX for PC platform and all those eye candy stuff and create a new build of BIGFLIX for 4:3 material, here is the steps on how to create one:

1- Copy the BIGFLIX folder and paste it in Launchbox themes root folder. Rename the new folder BIGFLIX XXX (i.e. BIGFLIX neil9000)

2- Copy the attached ThemeSettings.xml and paste it in your new BIGFLIX folder and replace files when prompted

3- The xaml files to be modified are HorizontalWheel1GamesView, HorizontalWheel2GamesView,  HorizontalWheel3GamesView, CoverFlowWithDetailsGamesView, PlatformWheel1FiltersView, PlatformWheel2FiltersView, PlatformWheel3FiltersView and TextGamesView but don't panic yet as the whole process takes less than 10 minutes to complete. All there is to do is just renaming one line in each of the views.

4- In order to make the videos scale to 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios instead of getting stretched you should replace the BackgroundView to ImageVideoView. For illustration purposes let's edit HorizontalWheel3GamesView.xaml, go to line 251 and replace the following code "<transitions:TransitionPresenter Transition="{transitions:FadeTransition}" Content="{Binding BackgroundView}" IsContentVideo="true" Grid.Column="3" Grid.Row="4" Grid.ColumnSpan="8" Grid.RowSpan="6" Panel.ZIndex="10" />" to " <transitions:TransitionPresenter TransitionSelector="{Binding ImageVideoTransitionSelector}" Content="{Binding ImageVideoView}" IsContentVideo="true" Grid.Column="3" Grid.Row="4" Grid.ColumnSpan="8" Grid.RowSpan="6" Panel.ZIndex="10" />"

4a- An easier method is to use the search or find function of Notepad/Notepad++ and typing "BackgroundView" in the search field, once you located the line code you only need to replace the following part only instead of replacing the entire line code: Transition="{transitions:FadeTransition}" Content="{Binding BackgroundView}" to  TransitionSelector="{Binding ImageVideoTransitionSelector}" Content="{Binding ImageVideoView}"

5- Make sure you uncheck the "use game background video" and "use platform background video" under options

 

I apologize for the long post I know that you're experienced in xaml but I wanted to have a tutorial for beginners who share the same preference as you 

cheers,

ThemeSettings.xml

[neil9000]

Wow, thank you very much for the long and detailed explanation. You are actually wrong in that i am actually very inexperienced in xaml!!  I.E, i have no idea really  . I will have a good sit down with this in the morning, it's 12:20am at the moment. Thank you so much for even taking the time to look at it for me, it really is appreciated, and ill have a real proper sit down in the morning.

Again thank you very much for taking the time to listen.  

[SNAK3ATER]

4 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Wow, thank you very much for the long and detailed explanation. You are actually wrong in that i am actually very inexperienced in xaml!!  I.E, i have no idea really  . I will have a good sit down with this in the morning, it's 12:20am at the moment. Thank you so much for even taking the time to look at it for me, it really is appreciated, and ill have a real proper sit down in the morning.

Again thank you very much for taking the time to listen.  

Don't mention it mate, let me know how it goes and if you require any further assistance 

[neil9000]

Thank you again, ill get back to you tomorrow with thank you for that, or i'm a bit confused.  . I'm just really thankful for you even taking the time, since i'm trying to change from your original vision.

[SNAK3ATER]

So I tried my luck today and created some platform banners for BIGFLIX since the theme doesn't have a banner set

I'm still novice when it comes to artwork development and this is my first attempt at creating banners so go easy on me will ya? 

I also created an alternative version that has BIGFLIX logo on top left similar to how Netflix banners are presented

What do you guys think?

Edited July 22, 2017 by SNAK3ATER

[mr 2fngrz]

@SNAK3ATER, what are the view settings (such as wheels, etc) to get the theme to look the way you have it setup?

[SNAK3ATER]

13 hours ago, mr 2fngrz said:

@SNAK3ATER, what are the view settings (such as wheels, etc) to get the theme to look the way you have it setup?

I can assist you but I need more information, can you share with me a screenshot of your current setup?

[mr 2fngrz]

I probably can when I get home. Let me ask this... What wheel settings, list settings, etc do you have yours set to?

5 hours ago, SNAK3ATER said:

I can assist you but I need more information, can you share with me a screenshot of your current setup?

 

[WarMFusioN]

@SNAK3ATER, Great theme!!!

But I noticed a lot of my box art overlap. (dreamcast, gba, n64, psx...)

Also, I when I scroll through my games I get multiple buffering graphics overlapping on each other.

See both issues in attached image.

Do I have something set up wrong?

Edited July 24, 2017 by WarMFusioN

[Thatman84]

5 hours ago, mr 2fngrz said:

I probably can when I get home. Let me ask this... What wheel settings, list settings, etc do you have yours set to?

 

Im in a similar boat. But i dont have a setup yet. Im starting from scratch and wonder what art i should scape to get this looking as sweet as your video

[ea4492]

Great theme @SNAK3ATER. BTW, I made a BIGFLIX startup video to go along with this. Keep up the great work.

 

[SNAK3ATER]

On 7/24/2017 at 5:21 PM, mr 2fngrz said:

I probably can when I get home. Let me ask this... What wheel settings, list settings, etc do you have yours set to?

 

Not sure if this is what you're after but here are my theme settings:

22 hours ago, Thatman84 said:

Im in a similar boat. But i dont have a setup yet. Im starting from scratch and wonder what art i should scape to get this looking as sweet as your video

Hello @Thatman84, my theme relies on five media files:

-Banners for Platform views 1-3, the theme does not come with an official set but i'm currently working on some banners for this theme (This should be inserted manually at ...\LaunchBox\Themes\BIGFLIX\Images\Platforms\Banner\ (make sure that the images are named correctly to its respected platform name, example can be found below)

-Screenshots for Games Horizontal View 1 and 3 (This will be changed to Steam Banners once Launchbox 7.11 is officially released)

-Game Front Boxart for Games Horizontal view 2, Coverflow view and coverflow with details view

- Game Fanart for all Games views

- (Optional) Platform Custom Fanart for platform views 2 and 3 (This should be inserted manually at ...\LaunchBox\Themes\BIGFLIX\Images\Platforms\Fanart\ (make sure that the images are named correctly to its respected platform name)

- Platform and Games videos can be scrapped from Launchbox  

Here is a screenshot of what to scrape for this theme if you're starting fresh (I usually check all the options but if you are concerned with storage space then checking only the specified options should be fine):

[mr 2fngrz]

@SNAK3ATER, that's EXACTLY what I was needing to know. Thanks bud!!!