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Maintaining Platform/Theme associations in Bigbox


alnyden

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Recently I changed my main theme in BigBox and noticed all other platforms & playlists also switched to that theme.  @Jason Carr mentioned this was a change that happened at some point though I hadn't noticed it till now.  For me, this is a pretty big issue and I'm curious how others feel.  I have 60+ platforms & playlists (and granted I use a lot of different themes for individual platforms & playlists) but it will take well over an hour to re-associate each of them with different themes.  (Not only do you have to select the theme for each platform/playlist, but cycle through the views till that's correct as well).   After doing all that, there's no way I'm going to try out another main theme as I'd have to re-do this busy work each time.  And given that several new themes like Coverbox & Unified - Refried are based around different themes for each platform, this is bound to be an issue for many users.

Associating different themes for each platform/playlist was one of the most exciting Bigbox updates for me, but this change really undermines the benefits.  I'm hoping Jason will consider maintaining platform/theme associations as an option at some point.  Either way, I'd like to thank Jason and the many theme creators for all their hard work.  It's come such a long way since I purchased BigBox a couple years ago. 

R

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@alnyden I have plans to change the theme system to better support different themes and views for each platform. For example, for Unified Refried, I plan on adding an option for @RetroHumanoid to be able to use one theme instead of so many. Stay tuned for that.

Regardless, an easy workaround is to simply back up your LaunchBox\Data folder before experimenting. It's small and easy to back up.

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Thanks for the reply and suggestion to backup the data folder.  I still feel this isn't the ideal setup.  There are many reasons one might want to change the main theme for a time, either to have some variety, or that themes occasionally break with BigBox updates.  (For example, I currently can't use Retrotastic since it's hanging on some playlist categories.)  In those cases it's a real pain to re-associate everything.  But if others disagree I understand.

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Oh no! We're going to have to update everything yet again?

I'm using the Unified Refried theme and I went through every single system theme and changed the settings for how the artwork gets displayed in every system. Retrohumanioid did a good job in his theme but I like my artwork displayed slightly different. Is this going to be an issue? At a certain point the theme creators will stop supporting their themes if things are constantly changing.

 

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4 minutes ago, Styphelus said:

Oh no! We're going to have to update everything yet again?

I'm using the Unified Refried theme and I went through every single system theme and changed the settings for how the artwork gets displayed in every system. Retrohumanioid did a good job in his theme but I like my artwork displayed slightly different. Is this going to be an issue? At a certain point the theme creators will stop supporting their themes if things are constantly changing.

 

The structure has never once been changed with the themes. We still have themes that work from the first Big Box betas that first supported themes. So no, things are not "constantly changing".

That said, the new structure will be *optional*. Things won't just break.

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On 12/8/2018 at 9:28 AM, Jason Carr said:

@alnyden I have plans to change the theme system to better support different themes and views for each platform. For example, for Unified Refried, I plan on adding an option for @RetroHumanoid to be able to use one theme instead of so many. Stay tuned for that.

Regardless, an easy workaround is to simply back up your LaunchBox\Data folder before experimenting. It's small and easy to back up.

FYI, it doesn't reset the associations each time I change the main theme through the pop-up menu.  So I'm not sure what caused them to reset before, since that's the only method I use.  It would be nice to know exactly when this happens so I can try to avoid it in the future.  : )   Also, that would be great if Retro's theme could use only one, looking forward to it!

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18 hours ago, alnyden said:

FYI, it doesn't reset the associations each time I change the main theme through the pop-up menu.  So I'm not sure what caused them to reset before, since that's the only method I use.  It would be nice to know exactly when this happens so I can try to avoid it in the future.  : )   Also, that would be great if Retro's theme could use only one, looking forward to it!

Ah, that's good to know. That's how I thought it was working. If you use the popups, it will not reset everything. The only time it should be resetting the themes for all your platforms if you change the theme through the Options menu.

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3 hours ago, Jason Carr said:

Ah, that's good to know. That's how I thought it was working. If you use the popups, it will not reset everything. The only time it should be resetting the themes for all your platforms if you change the theme through the Options menu.

I don't remember using the options menu to change, but I'm thinking I must have and forgot about it.  :)

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