'view genres', 'view play mode' etc - can't change view in BigBox

[danpow]

discussed here:

 

and a little here:

 

Is it possible to theme the alternate views present in the main menu? Genres, Play Mode, Developers, Publishers, etc? Only the default text-list view is available. I've looked through a few themes' folders and there are never any xaml files for these views.

I've been setting up a 4 player cab running BigBox in a busy-ish area in the house, and it's getting some action :-)  For would-be players not familiar with the esoteric platform names though, they often stick to the big name systems. I've found that going in via play mode and picking (for example) two player simultaneous, or going in via the genre list and picking, say, a racer or fighter brings up a list of titles not limited to particular platforms :-) It seems good to be more game-focussed plus it's  cool to have access to all the ports of a game next to eachother. PSX/DC/N64 Tony Hawks Shootout anyone?! Anyway, Delving in to the library via these 'other' menu lists have given me access to, and i've ended up playing, titles i may never have got around to using the platform view.

But the platform view looks beautiful. @CriticalCid your Unified Theme is smoooooth. It feels a shame that when such deep access to the library is only accessible via the practical yet uninspiring text-list layout, so many themers great work is sat there ready to rock!

@Jason CarrDo these menus work differently in a way that prevent them having alternate view layouts?

Edited April 29, 2018 by danpow
tag developer

[Jason Carr]

@danpow That's what dynamic playlists are for. You can create a playlist to do exactly that and include it in the platforms list.

[danpow]

thanks @Jason Carr for pointing me to playlists. i've had a play for a while and wonder if i'm missing something though...

take genre as an example. the main menu 'show genres' presents a list of the individual genres, of which there may be multiple similar - driving, driving sim, racer etc - and let's say a total of 50 genres. would i have to create a playlist for every genre to get it listed in the main platform list? would i have to do the same with developer/publisher?

[Jason Carr]

55 minutes ago, danpow said:

thanks @Jason Carr for pointing me to playlists. i've had a play for a while and wonder if i'm missing something though...

take genre as an example. the main menu 'show genres' presents a list of the individual genres, of which there may be multiple similar - driving, driving sim, racer etc - and let's say a total of 50 genres. would i have to create a playlist for every genre to get it listed in the main platform list? would i have to do the same with developer/publisher?

Yes, though I recognize if you want every genre or every developer, for instance, that's not really going to work. The issue with using other views for genres, for example, is that we just don't have pictures for each genre, or each developer, etc. Otherwise we could easily implement the other views for the other filter types, but without pictures for them, the other views are fairly impractical.

[danpow]

thanks @Jason Carr for giving this thought. I can't tell you how safisying/impressive it is to know that the developer cares about the users and community to actually be active in the community!

i agree that the lack of images/banners etc may make the initial layouts of these views quite sparse. i've been making images for some niche platforms/playlists (super scope/menacer titles for example thanks to a recent purchase of aimtrak guns) and had committed to the idea of doing more of these banners for developer and genre. maybe other community members would help in filling the void. i accept that would likely be a slow process.

another thought however - how simple would it be to have the 'value' field in playlists and filter autocomplete, or have a drop down menu of all the options?

currently i have to back out of the playlist maker to check the syntax of genre/play mode values, before entering them. it's pretty tedious, and as you say anyway making playlists for every value would be impractical.

however, with autofilled entries/drop down menu in the filter field for 'value', i could dynamically choose what to filter very simply indeed - with no extra theming, playlist making or icon making at all!

the live filter view seems to be a very powerful tool indeed after spending more time with it since posting this - but not knowing whether a game is genre'd 'sport' or 'sports' or 'sport game' makes the value entry process very hit and miss. a drop down menu there would be amazing the more i think about it!

thanks for making a great front end!

[alnyden]

19 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Yes, though I recognize if you want every genre or every developer, for instance, that's not really going to work. The issue with using other views for genres, for example, is that we just don't have pictures for each genre, or each developer, etc. Otherwise we could easily implement the other views for the other filter types, but without pictures for them, the other views are fairly impractical.

I think if you allowed other views for the Genres page, people would quickly create pics and vids for them.  (And in fact many of them already exist).   Once there is the option of different views, there will be more motivation to solve the problem of creating the artwork.

[Jason Carr]

55 minutes ago, danpow said:

thanks @Jason Carr for giving this thought. I can't tell you how safisying/impressive it is to know that the developer cares about the users and community to actually be active in the community!

i agree that the lack of images/banners etc may make the initial layouts of these views quite sparse. i've been making images for some niche platforms/playlists (super scope/menacer titles for example thanks to a recent purchase of aimtrak guns) and had committed to the idea of doing more of these banners for developer and genre. maybe other community members would help in filling the void. i accept that would likely be a slow process.

another thought however - how simple would it be to have the 'value' field in playlists and filter autocomplete, or have a drop down menu of all the options?

currently i have to back out of the playlist maker to check the syntax of genre/play mode values, before entering them. it's pretty tedious, and as you say anyway making playlists for every value would be impractical.

however, with autofilled entries/drop down menu in the filter field for 'value', i could dynamically choose what to filter very simply indeed - with no extra theming, playlist making or icon making at all!

the live filter view seems to be a very powerful tool indeed after spending more time with it since posting this - but not knowing whether a game is genre'd 'sport' or 'sports' or 'sport game' makes the value entry process very hit and miss. a drop down menu there would be amazing the more i think about it!

thanks for making a great front end!

That has come up before, and I agree that it would be best add it in (the drop downs for the filter values). It's on my list already, but I'll see if I can move it up a bit.

5 minutes ago, alnyden said:

I think if you allowed other views for the Genres page, people would quickly create pics and vids for them.  (And in fact many of them already exist).   Once there is the option of different views, there will be more motivation to solve the problem of creating the artwork.

Agreed; genres are much simpler than say, developers or publishers because there's a lot less of them. I agree that we should enable that, so I'll that to my list as well.

[danpow]

30 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

I agree that it would be best add it in (the drop downs for the filter values). It's on my list already, but I'll see if I can move it up a bit.

Brilliant. Thankyou :-)

37 minutes ago, alnyden said:

Once there is the option of different views, there will be more motivation to solve the problem of creating the artwork

Yes Yes. If you build it, they will come...