Theme Basics

[angryherbalist]

Where would I find a run down of theme basics for BigBox?

I'm wondering these things:

• What's a startup theme vs playlist theme vs general themes.  How are they different?
• What are the components of a theme?
• What are different views?
• When does a platform or playlist theme stop and a game's theme take over?  Is there such a thing?
• Where are the files stored and how?
• How can I have a startup video play when BigBox is loading?  Is that a theme option?
• If I have a logo I've made for my build i.e. "Dad's Arcade", how do I include that throughout the experience?  Is this in customizing the theme?

Thanks!
 

 

[Jason Carr]

Hi @angryherbalist, you can get most of this information in the following places:

• In the Readme.txt files in the three theme folders inside your LaunchBox folder
• In the LaunchBox\Themes\Documentation.pdf file
• In the custom themes YouTube videos here:

Forgive me for not addressing each individual question, but most of this information is available elsewhere, and it would take me an hour to respond to everything. Feel free to follow up with questions after you've reviewed things.

[angryherbalist]

thanks man!

i know there's a ton of videos around, but i must be an old guy or something at 38 where i just can't stand listening to amateurs drone on and on when i could just look at a bullet list for an answer. and 4 minutes of "subscribe and watch my other videos."

thats a long way of me saying, would it be helpful to create a wiki for your awesome software?  i could chip away at it.  it wouldn't be perfect but it'd be something?

let me know

 

[Jason Carr]

We've actually had a wiki before, but it just never really got filled with content, so I ended up just getting rid of it. The problem there is that it would need to be filled with info by folks who are knowledgeable about everything. So if you're just learning theming, you'd have a long way to go before you could fill it with that content.

I may create a wiki though here soon, as our audience has grown quite a bit since then. I'll want to create it myself though if we're going to get one going.

[angryherbalist]

Written instructions are better than video.  Something is better than nothing. 

Thanks!

 

[Lordmonkus]

2 hours ago, angryherbalist said:

Written instructions are better than video.  Something is better than nothing. 

Thanks!

 

That's a pretty definitive statement there except it all depends, sometimes written instructions are better and sometimes video are better, it's situational.

[angryherbalist]

40 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

That's a pretty definitive statement there except it all depends, sometimes written instructions are better and sometimes video are better, it's situational.

i thought we were discussing in the context of Launchbox.  I'm sure a video would work well, but as I pointed out, most videos are 2 seconds of actual help and 9 minutes of fluff.

[Lordmonkus]

So some bad guides means all video guides are worse than written guides ?

Having been helping out with this stuff for a while now I have found some people prefer written guides while others prefer video guides and certain things lend themselves better to one or the other. It's never a simple "one is better than the other".