Jump to content
LaunchBox Community Forums

COLORFUL bigbox theme


viking

Recommended Posts

@Jason Carr Thanks for your feedback! ?
I think you're right about the CG power.
I'll generalize my optimizations to all views, but I couldn't do much better.

 

On 1/25/2020 at 12:43 AM, Kevin_Flynn said:

Honestly, I wouldn't have noticed a difference. Optimized withing compromise! The drop shadow scales perfectly on 1440p and should help lower-end machines. Keep it up the work.

Thx Kevin !

 

On 1/25/2020 at 2:29 AM, johnsanc said:

@Jason Carr @viking - Here is a video of the platform switching lag.

I don't think it's the platform videos causing the delay because they load very quick with other themes. Any idea what is causing this?

Notice how when I try to view the platform after the first time its pretty quick.

Wow, OK! Thanks for this video feedback, it is clearer.
Indeed, this is not normal at all. The theme is not coded to wait for each element to advance. The entire animation segment is a time-based storyboard. Normally, if an element is not loaded, the storyboard still progresses. There must be a charging spike which blocks the advancement. But I don't know which one.
Can you try this:

  • test with another video set? (which works well for you on other theme) To see if it comes from the videos.
  • Edit "Theme/Colorful/Views/  PlatformWheel1FiltersView.xaml  , line 716 , replace Text="{Binding GamesCount}"  by  Text="test".  To see if it comes from DataBinding.

 

On 1/25/2020 at 6:53 AM, BendBombBoom said:

It runs much better for me on my surface pro 6. I get odd hitching on the movie sliding as you mentioned above. I have had this with a couple themes and I have found it has to do with loading. A half second or more of extra padding in the timing in video visibility fixes most everything for me. I have attached my modified version of your platform so you can see what runs well on my lower spec machine.

I would like to add that my machine slows every time I change views or themes in the Bigbox settings. I suggest people restart BigBox to make sure it's running at it's full potential after playing with.

Thx, I'll try quickly !! ?

 

On 1/26/2020 at 4:54 AM, dbinott said:

this is awesome, but i can't use it. need 4:3 or 5:4 ?

Probably one day, I also have a 4:3 bartop.
But it will be a complete adaptation, not a simple scaling up. That is going to take time !

 

13 hours ago, ed20910 said:

With the addition of the dark options, is there a plan or is it possible to give the option to have the game details screen dark?

I can't. But at the end, I will probably split the theme into 2 separate versions. Light + Dark.
At this time, the GameDetail will be in agreement with the selected version.

 

 

Thank you all for playing the game and making these feedback!
I don't think I can do much better for optimization. It's on the video slide design ...

However, I am thinking of an alternative for low spec PC.
Radical: On other view, dont use videos, but create a Banner set, based on the video files. It will be much lighter to display and I gain the transparency of the PNG for more worked designs.

What do you think ?

Edited by viking
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
9 hours ago, HyperSpinEmu said:

Beautiful theme. When pressing A on a game. The game options menu is white? Is there no dark view on that? 

This has been touched on in prior posts. No there is no dark view currently there as that view is limited to one view type so it cannot have a white and dark option in one theme. Viking did mentions plans to have just a white theme and a dark to fix this. 
 

 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/8/2020 at 10:51 AM, Retro808 said:

This has been touched on in prior posts. No there is no dark view currently there as that view is limited to one view type so it cannot have a white and dark option in one theme. Viking did mentions plans to have just a white theme and a dark to fix this. 
 

 

Ok thanks. I decided to keep it white for keeping it uniform.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/18/2020 at 12:04 AM, BendBombBoom said:

This a great theme. It looks great, is clean, and simple.

I'm curious why some colors don't match the videos with the SelectionSnoop plugin? Genesis, for example, shows up white. I run this theme on a surface book pro 6. To get it to run smooth I have to change all blur effects to "0" and gave the transition from white to movie and extra .5 to 1 second for things to load. Do you have plans to makes video's for an Apple IIe or the Magnavox Intellivision?

Again, your work is excellent. Thank you for making it.

No offense, but don't you mean the Mattel Intellivision? Magnavox made the Odyssey 2

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey viking... amazing work, i love the theme... in fact i already posted a positive review for you :)

 

Will you create Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum Platform Videos as I have to use the Nostalgia ones and that menas when I slect that Platform to play games half the image of the console disappears off to the right.

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, knuckleheadz said:

Hey viking... amazing work, i love the theme... in fact i already posted a positive review for you :)

 

Will you create Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum Platform Videos as I have to use the Nostalgia ones and that menas when I slect that Platform to play games half the image of the console disappears off to the right.

I personally use the 4:3 platform videos with this theme on a 16:9 monitor and it helps eliminate a lot of that cut off you are referring to.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/6/2020 at 5:50 PM, shawn15oth said:

need ultra wide version. thanks

It is not a priority, but why not!

On 2/8/2020 at 1:55 AM, HannesRoets said:

wow i love this theme, thanks for your hard work.

hoping to see more systems added in the future keep up the great work!

The goal is always to cover ALL platforms. Please be patient! ?

On 2/16/2020 at 12:24 AM, LordEvyl said:

No offense, but don't you mean the Mattel Intellivision? Magnavox made the Odyssey 2

 The goal is always to cover ALL platforms. Please be patient! ?

On 2/16/2020 at 2:17 AM, LiveFastCyYoung said:

@viking

On the video page, you have images of the systems. They may be screenshots of the videos. Do you have images like that for all of the systems available?

I'm thinking of creating a BANNER SET to, based on photo montage. You will have all the PNGs available!

  • Game On 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@viking - I just wanted to update you and say I resolved almost all performance issues with my setup. Now the only slowness is switching platforms for the first time like I posted earlier. I confirmed this still does not occur with the 4K videos with other themes. Is there anything your theme does with the game videos when switching platforms? 

 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, johnsanc said:

@viking - I just wanted to update you and say I resolved almost all performance issues with my setup. Now the only slowness is switching platforms for the first time like I posted earlier. I confirmed this still does not occur with the 4K videos with other themes. Is there anything your theme does with the game videos when switching platforms? 

 

Are you using a network share for the videos as well?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Jason Carr said:

Are you using a network share for the videos as well?

@Jason Carr - Yes for game videos only since I don't have enough space on my local NVME drive. Not the platform videos though, those are all local. It seems like something is checking video links upon switching platforms for the first time to cache them, and its particularly noticeable with this theme. Random access to SMB shares is expectedly kinda slow - I just wasn't expecting that when switching platforms.

The really weird thing is that when I moved the IMAGES locally the videos over the SMB share loaded MUCH faster when switching games. This is another reason I asked in my other post what is going on under the hood with the cache and such. I confirmed that when I purposely break the paths to the game videos this theme switches platforms very fast, so it believe it has to be related to those video paths

Edited by johnsanc
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@viking - A few design suggestions on the Game View...

  • I noticed that the video is cropped by the bezel, but the bezel doesn't put the video in context to a monitor or machine so it doesn't really make sense to me to crop the game video at all. Notice the "N" in "COIN" is cut off.
  • The bottom corner of the video is covered by the up/down icons and the box art covers a significant portion of the right side of the video. If you make the video smaller and align the bottom edge of the video with the bottom of the info box on the right it would still look very clean and it would free up space so more of the video is visible. It would also add a bit more symmetry around the border.

Just food for thought!

Colorful_Game_View_Suggestion.thumb.jpg.966c371ce0e886c0ac826ce1ff8c48eb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, johnsanc said:

@Jason Carr - Yes for game videos only since I don't have enough space on my local NVME drive. Not the platform videos though, those are all local. It seems like something is checking video links upon switching platforms for the first time to cache them, and its particularly noticeable with this theme. Random access to SMB shares is expectedly kinda slow - I just wasn't expecting that when switching platforms.

The really weird thing is that when I moved the IMAGES locally the videos over the SMB share loaded MUCH faster when switching games. This is another reason I asked in my other post what is going on under the hood with the cache and such. I confirmed that when I purposely break the paths to the game videos this theme switches platforms very fast, so it believe it has to be related to those video paths

Videos are not cached at all. If it's happening the first time videos are loaded, it could be due to loading up the video engine. Other than that, I'm not sure what could be causing a slowdown.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...