After Using BB for One Year: My Big Fat Requests Thread

[alfredolvera]

 

Hi gang!

After a year of using BigBox just about every day (just renewed my licence for another year. Wohooo!!!) I documented my issues and ideas for BigBox, and I wanted to share them for discussion. I already filled them on BitBucket, and wanted to know what you think of them. You can read more details on each issue by clicking the link for each one on the title:

• #1363: Use Z-Axis (Triggers) to Scroll doesn't work in BigBox

This was filled by OmenBoy, but wanted to raise awareness of this issue

 

• #3521: [Request] Fan Art or Screenshots for Loading splash screen

I would like to suggest an option for BigBox to replace the current "Now Loading" box with random Fan Art or Screenshot from the game.

The behaviour would be similar to the way Xbox One or PS4 loads a game, once selected and as it loads, it shows some artwork.

 

• #3522: [Request] Definable "Now Loading" box or splash screen time

This would be very helpful for a lot of us using RetroArch or CEMU in a standard plate HDD, since from a cold boot they sometimes take 8 to 10 seconds to load, and the "Now Loading" screen is long gone by then. To a novice user this could create some confusion in the seconds it takes to load the program, since the Now Loading box disappears, nothing happens and they might think the game failed to boot for some reason, the user tries again and at worst case scenario, they end up loading two copies of the same emu at the same time, with obvious performance problems.

 

• #3523: [Request] "Themeable" button inputs

I would like to request a standard way of defining button inputs on BigBox. Right now a lot of themes display some button inputs on their themes, but this has created some big issues: Since there's no "canonical" button mapping on BigBox, some custom themes just "guess" that the Y button on XB controllers (or the triangle button on PS Controllers) is mapped to the "Search" splash screen and they display this info on the screen, when on my custom configuration, that button it is mapped to change the theme's view or layout. More info in the link above.

 

• #3524: [Request] "Themeable" Game Details Page

This one is short and sweet: I would love that the Games Detail page becomes themeable. Since the theme developers keep making more and more impressive themes, I think that a themeable Games Details page would make their heads explode with ideas, coming with some very good-looking way to select games with Multiple Versions or Multi CDs, or even selecting a different emulator altogether, maybe all of this with icons, images or even videos (spinning CDs is one idea).

 

• #3526: [Request] Custom Line Parameter to remove options screen

I have a custom arcade cabinet running BB on it, and sometimes when I invite my friends to play while browsing the games and platforms they accidentally go all the way back to the settings screen. Even if it's "locked", this confuses even my best tech-savvy friends, since they are not familiar with the way BB navigates, and they don't know what to do. You can imagine that my less tech-savvy friends just think that the machine is malfunctioning and they just stop playing.

I would like to request a BB custom line parameter to completely disable the options screen. When the user is on the first screen of BB (doesn't matter if it's the platforms, categories, playlists, etc, when the command line is present on launch, the user can't go back to the settings screen. If the back button is pressed on this first page, BB would do nothing.

This would be extremely helpful for us that have BB on an arcade cabinet, and we made sure that everything is ready and set before we invite our friends to play. I wouldn't mind having to Alt+F4 or similar to quit BB when this custom line parameter is used to launch BB in a special "cabinet mode".

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Anyways, hope you like them and hopefully together we can help the LB team make an even better program!

Cheers!

Edited October 31, 2017 by alfredolvera