REQUEST: Stricter practices on advertising screen aspect ratio

[OMGrant]

Hi LaunchBox community,

I just want to make a simple yet important request for the developers here. Please do a better job of stating what screen aspect ratio your theme is designed for. If your theme doesn't scale to and support 4:3 or 5:4 and was only designed for 16:9 screens, don't state that it works for all aspect ratios without actually having native support for them.

I'm coming from the Arcade1UP modding community where those small boxes come with a 5:4 screen and will be working on a 4:3 or 5:4 theme for BigBox coming up due to the major lack of feature rich options here.

Thanks all,
Grant

Edited July 26, 2019 by OMGrant

[LogicalEgo]

Welcome to the forums. Most themes are going to be 16:9 with a few 4:3 here and there. There may also be vertical themes as well. Going to say that we probably do not have any 5:4 themes but seeing how it has became pretty cheap to buy and mod a 1up machine we will see more users requesting such. We always welcome new themes.

[Zombeaver]

Yeah I could be wrong but I think that generally speaking, unless otherwise stated, the vast majority of them are designed with 16:9 in mind. Most of the time if a theme is designed for 4:3 that fact is going to be stated front and center (because it's kindof unusual). I don't believe there are any that are designed with 5:4 specifically in mind, although there may be some that still mostly work within that context.

[neil9000]

26 minutes ago, OMGrant said:

I'm coming from the Arcade1UP modding community where those small boxes come with a 5:4 screen and will be working on a 4:3 or 5:4 theme for BigBox coming up due to the major lack of feature rich options here.

Well to be fair Launchbox/Bigbox isnt designed for the 1up cabinets, i mean they have to be modded to even run Windows in the first place. It is also used mostly on HTPC's and cabinets a lot of which will be 16:9. There are some 4:3 themes in the download section, and i believe the default theme also supports that ratio.

[Retro808]

15 minutes ago, OMGrant said:

Hi LaunchBox community,

I just want to make a simple yet important request for the developers here. Please do a better job of stating what screen aspect ratio your theme is designed for. If your theme doesn't scale to and support 4:3 or 5:4 and was only designed for 16:9 screens, don't state that it works for all aspect ratios without actually having native support for them.

I'm coming from the Arcade1UP modding community where those small boxes come with a 5:4 screen and will be working on a 4:3 or 5:4 theme for BigBox coming up due to the major lack of feature rich options here.

Thanks all,
Grant

Welcome to the forum and we look forward to more user created content. 5:4 themes are likely to be a bit one off for a while so we definitely welcome one. "Lack of feature rich options" though I am not sure of. Launchbox and BigBox are very feature rich and Jason is adding new stuff regularly. Not bad for a one man show. I do believe the themes loaded into the BigBox theme manager does have to specifically state all aspect ratios it was tested to work on. 

[OMGrant]

Thanks for the swift responses guys,

In the theme download manager of BigBox, there is a meta text for this where most themes are showing as supporting any aspect ratio. I'm asking there be more diligence in making this accurate in spite of the fact that it may be unusual. Most go with a Raspberry Pi, but Arcade1UP's have plenty of enthusiasts looking to trade out that hardware with a PC running LaunchBox/BigBox, and there are many cabinet enthusiast who prefer the authenticity of a 4:3 monitor or CRT. 

Best,
Grant

Edited July 26, 2019 by OMGrant

[OMGrant]

5 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

"Lack of feature rich options" though I am not sure of. Launchbox and BigBox are very feature rich and Jason is adding new stuff regularly. Not bad for a one man show.

I'm sorry! What I was referring to were the number of features each theme supports (views), not the features built into LaunchBox/BigBox. I caught Jason's feature poll live stream and am a big fan of him, his character and his work here. 

[Retro808]

12 minutes ago, OMGrant said:

Thanks for the swift responses guys,

In the theme download manager of BigBox, there is a meta text for this where most themes are showing as supporting any aspect ratio. I'm asking there be more diligence in making this accurate in spite of the fact that it may be unusual. Arcade1UP's have plenty of enthusiasts looking to trade out that hardware with a PC running LaunchBox/BigBox, and there are many cabinet enthusiast who prefer the authenticity of a 4:3 monitor or CRT. 

Best,
Grant

Yeah, Jason does require the theme creator to state what it was tested and works on. Not sure how Jason would go about ensuring they are accurate and do in fact work on those aspects short of making sure he owned 1 of each aspect ratio monitor and tested the themes on each prior to it being approved in the downloader. So we are sort of going on the word of the creator. Hopefully we can get more 4:3 and 5:4 themes. We do have a member working on a theme creator UI that when ready should speed up theme creation. 

[LogicalEgo]

Pretty good jumping point if you want to look under the hood of a 4:3 theme. One day I will make one. One day.

 

Edited July 26, 2019 by neil9000

[OMGrant]

7 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

This is AWESOME! I couldn't ask for anything more from Jason's side - only that this post be a humble PSA to the designer/developers here donating their time on theme support as a curtesy to the user experience.

 

7 minutes ago, keltoigael said:

Pretty good jumping point if you want to look under the hood of a 4:3 theme. One day I will make one. One day.

Thank you for the very helpful suggestion keltoigael. I happen to have already been under the hood on this one so to speak and I appreciate By Jack's work here.
Many of the views on this theme however aren't working correctly which is directly where my comment earlier derived from.

I'm super impressed by the discourse here so thanks again guys. I feel incredibly welcomed,
Grant 

[Jack.]

On 7/26/2019 at 8:37 PM, Retro808 said:

We do have a member working on a theme creator UI that when ready should speed up theme creation. 

That would be perfect, do you have any link about this? Thanks

On 7/26/2019 at 8:55 PM, OMGrant said:

Thank you for the very helpful suggestion keltoigael. I happen to have already been under the hood on this one so to speak and I appreciate By Jack's work here.
Many of the views on this theme however aren't working correctly which is directly where my comment earlier derived from.

Thanks, you're  right.. my theme only has 2 views the rest is all default theme. My bad i should have mention that in the theme page, which i did now. I hope to make it fully functional someday, but right now i don't have the time or the skill (can't program).