Krakerman Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 Hi guys I am a long time and Content Creator over on the HyperSpin forums and have recently installed LaunchBox and BigBox on my setup in hopes to learn how to design themes for BigBox and have a question regarding the software you use to create them. Can you use Visual Studio 2017? or does it have to be Visual Studio 2015? Thanks! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 Good question I'd think either would be good but I'll tag @Jason Carras he will know 100% Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 Awesome @Krakerman. So glad to have you in the community. Yes, Visual Studio 2017 will work perfectly fine, as will Visual Studio Code, or really any text editor, though Visual Studio should make the job a little bit easier. I assume you've found the tutorials on the YouTube channel? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragon57 Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 Welcome Krakerman! If you have any questions, fire away. There are a good group of helpers here. Content creators too! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kondorito Posted May 3, 2018 Share Posted May 3, 2018 Welcome Kraker I hope you will still keep spawning those awesome bezels 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmoney Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 Welcome @Krakerman...glad to have you on board! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krakerman Posted May 4, 2018 Author Share Posted May 4, 2018 Thank you all! Can't wait to get started. Will be watching the tutorial videos first and playing around with VS to get myself familiar with how everything works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 13 minutes ago, Krakerman said: Thank you all! Can't wait to get started. Will be watching the tutorial videos first and playing around with VS to get myself familiar with how everything works. Depending on your tastes, if you find Visual Studio Community to be a bit overwhelming, you might like Visual Studio Code, which is also free and is more similar to a straightforward text editor. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krakerman Posted May 4, 2018 Author Share Posted May 4, 2018 (edited) 23 minutes ago, Jason Carr said: Depending on your tastes, if you find Visual Studio Community to be a bit overwhelming, you might like Visual Studio Code, which is also free and is more similar to a straightforward text editor. To be honest I am more of a Visual person when it comes to editors (WYSIWYG) type of thing. If you ever used HyperTheme that is what I am very much used too. Thou I do know how to create and include flash animations in HyperSpin which I understand here it's much different which I need to get used too. Now off to watch your tutorial videos hahaha. Edited May 4, 2018 by Krakerman 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krakerman Posted May 4, 2018 Author Share Posted May 4, 2018 I sent you a message Jason btw regarding my marquee issue that I am having. No screenshots but I did hopefully explain it a bit better. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 Thank you @Krakerman. I know the XAML themes can be fairly daunting at first, but we're all really looking forward to your creations, of course. Hopefully we can help get you going. The best way to learn is through examples, and they're everywhere in all of the existing themes. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krakerman Posted May 4, 2018 Author Share Posted May 4, 2018 Yes it is very different than I been accustom too. I will have more time hopefully this weekend to play around with it and see how the other themes work. I really liked adding flash animations to my themes on HyperSpin but see that GIF's is the way to go about it with BigBox. I there a limit on how many animated GIF's you can add to a theme? I have tools that I can use to convert my flash animations SWF's to GIF's so I was gonna try and incorporate them into BigBox theme if it's possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 GIFs do work, but they're not exactly ideal because they can cause performance issues. Animations can actually be done directly in XAML, but naturally they're not easy. The primary focus for "flash" in Big Box has been 1080p or 4K videos, just because it's often easier to build a video and play it in the background than a custom solution of sorts. GIFs are great for small animations though, just not large ones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Carr Posted May 4, 2018 Share Posted May 4, 2018 Come to think of it, if you're looking to convert your Hyperspin themes, often times the best solution is to record a video of the Hyperspin theme and then it can just be used as a background video in Big Box, which works extremely well. @CriticalCid has been helping out with that stuff for a long time; let me know if that makes sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krakerman Posted May 5, 2018 Author Share Posted May 5, 2018 Interesting ... but will play around with it this weekend and see how far I get if I have time which usually I do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlightRisk Posted July 13, 2018 Share Posted July 13, 2018 (edited) @Krakerman, Welcome! A lot of us love your bezels. Can't wait to see your themes. Would you like to start a thread like you have on the RL site to point people to your EmuMovies FTP downloads? Or maybe they can be hosted here too. Not sure how Jason handles what is for download here. Edited July 16, 2018 by FlightRisk spelling correction Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krakerman Posted July 15, 2018 Author Share Posted July 15, 2018 I am glad you guys like my bezels! I am currently working on some new ones but as far as themes for LB/BigBox I've found it a bit daunting and not as easy to learn to do ... so I have decided not to tackle that currently maybe down the road when I have more free time. I have way too many other projects working on and real life tends to get in the way as well. As far as a thread to my other projects that I am working on I might just do that if you guys are interested. Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlightRisk Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 I would love to have that thread here as well. Yeah, it is a bit of a learning curve on the themes. I haven't done it either. If you know Visual Studio, it makes it a little easier. Are there multiple downloads for your bezels, or have you included all in one zip. For example, you have asteroids bezel where it is accurate and covers a part of the screen on the left and one that doesn't. You also have versions from a year or more back and then "version 2" versions. It would be nice to know I have them all to be able to select the ones I want. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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