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WoodPanels


BMovieBen

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WoodPanels

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WoodPanels has the old school retro feel of playing games on an old TV in a room with bad, green carpeting, but golden wooden paneled walls.  The video game console or platform appears above or beside the television to match that look and feel.  It is paired with a set of 8-bit fonts to complete the experience.

  • Supports Ultrawide 21:9, Widescreen 16:9, and Fullscreen 4:3 aspect ratios.
  • Playlist support!  Watch the video frame and video size dynamically change to match the selected platform and game.
  • Unique views for 53 platforms with game videos, game 3D/2D box art, and game cart images.
  • Consoles are paired with a TV from the same decade they were released.  PCs likewise are paired with a monitor or setup from the same era.
  • "Wall View" for looking at game boxes on shelves is accompanied by the platform logo and image of the original console packaging.

Trailer:

Installation and Setup Instructions:

Spoiler

Unzip in LaunchBox/Themes/WoodPanels. In BigBox under Options>Views>Theme> choose "WoodPanels"
1. To ensure you're viewing the image of the console and TV alongside the game list, go into the BigBox Menu (hit Esc on your keyboard or back on your controller) and select "View Platforms".
2. To view the carousel of devices in your platform view, go into Options>Views>Platform List View> and select "Platform Wheel 1".
3. Lastly, to make sure you keep this view the next time you start BigBox, go into Options>Views>Default Startup View> and select "Platforms".
4. For N64, SNES, Jaguar, Genesis, Sega 32X, Atari 5200, and NeoGeo, you need to download the game cart images AND you need to set your LaunchBox settings so your fallback images are disabled for this, otherwise when you have a missing game cart image it will pull something else and look...bad.  LaunchBox Options>Media>Cart Front Priorities>Uncheck all but "Cart - Front"
5. To enable a the "Wall View", change BigBox Options>Views>Games List View>Wall View.  Switch it back to "Text List with Details" if you decide to go back.

To replace the background image (in case you don't literally want wood panels), just replace the png with your desired 1080p background image (png file) under the directory:
\LaunchBox\Themes\WoodPanels\Media\Background\

Startup Video:

Spoiler

This is a startup video I created for my theme.  It features a logo for "Nescade" which is what I call my multi-emulator PC, as it sits inside of an old Nintendo's shell.  I commissioned Rushjet1 a while back to compose an original piece of 8-bit music specifically for this video.  Hope you all enjoy it!

Instructions for use: Place video file in the LaunchBox folder under /Videos/Startup/

Theme was created using the COMMUNITY Theme Creator by @y2guru


 

Edited by BMovieBen
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  • 1 month later...

Hi everyone, I just submitted this theme for inclusion in BigBox.  Since I initially posted the first version, I've added a ton of images of consoles, handhelds, and computers, as well as the requisite filters list view to be eligible for inclusion in BigBox proper.  Please let me know what you think.  If there's a specific platform out there you would like to see added, let me know!

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5 hours ago, NOMAD0P said:

This is pretty neat. I'm wondering if you could do an age-appropriate PC for MS-DOS Platform instead of the Hitachi TV?

I would be happy to do that. What game(s) do you recommend for the platform? And can you supply a sample image of an age-appropriate PC I can use as a reference?

Edited by BMovieBen
Grammar
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Just throwing in some ideas.

Maybe something like this might work for the platform screen (without the left tablet)

001.jpg

Maybe this on the game details screen

See the source image

Love the theme, really clean and high quality.

Weird question/idea - is it possible to have the cartridge on the systems that have it (ex: Super Nintendo) to have the actual cartridge in the machine be the one from the list? Like it pulls from the cart-front folder and then has a fallback if there isn't one there?

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18 hours ago, BMovieBen said:

I would be happy to do that. What game(s) do you recommend for the platform? And can you supply a sample image of an age-appropriate PC I can use as a reference?

Just the classics yknow Doom, Duke3D, Wolf3D, Quake, Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, Lemmings. It's actually hard to find like a good photo of an old Pentium style or 486 DOS PC 

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21 hours ago, Banditt said:

Love the theme, really clean and high quality.

Weird question/idea - is it possible to have the cartridge on the systems that have it (ex: Super Nintendo) to have the actual cartridge in the machine be the one from the list? Like it pulls from the cart-front folder and then has a fallback if there isn't one there?

Thank you!  It is possible...I worry that the cartridge won't line up though.  I can give it a shot though, will put it on my to do list.

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16 hours ago, Banditt said:

Here is an ibm monitor for the MS-DOS Platform from EMU Movies Device Pack that might help.1843915578_PCMonitor02.thumb.jpg.ba089ed186804343509d56cf8cf6f984.jpg

Thank you!  Just using that would be the easiest for me to use.  Here's what I found on the internet in high enough quality at a good enough angle.  Which one do you all like the best (including the above IBM monitor) to use for the MS-DOS platform? @NOMAD0P @Banditt

789658981_dosboxIBMaptiva.thumb.jpg.02ccc0337cc923aa65acf7295f097519.jpgIBM Aptiva

1307732457_dosboxgatewaymonitor.thumb.jpg.579d9485cd1174118c546a1e31fb7ecb.jpgGateway 2000 (I would just take the monitor portion of the image)

1263912206_dosboxgatewaypc.thumb.jpg.e6ef511403b53a003af95b1a8d64b647.jpgGateway 2000 (I would just take the bottom pc part of the image)

1377209456_dosboxgeneric1.thumb.jpg.07e150e3fd1fa8ce6605976776485fec.jpgGeneric 1

1772405792_dosboxgeneric2.thumb.png.a7f2b1f705cc4d5261f62ec841d30de0.pngGeneric 2

1462293476_dosboxdsc_7799.thumb.jpg.511520a1889203a4cc1d8a5eed7db6e1.jpgIBM 300GL (note: this one would be a huge pain to edit due to the dramatic lighting in the photo.  I'd have to re-build most of it to eliminate the shadows.)

Edited by BMovieBen
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@Banditt So as it turns out...getting the per-game cart image to load is pretty easy, and it looks pretty good!  OK some games don't have the best images, but what can you do.

1052511059_BigBoxScreenshot-WoodPanels-TextGamesView-2020-04-2413_12_12.thumb.jpg.5268d92eda14259c224ed561ceea54bc.jpgPut the box art in there as well.  Downside to all of this is if you don't have a cart image...you can't fallback to a 'generic' cart image.  It will fallback to some alternate art depending on the individual's settings in LaunchBox. In my case, it's falling back to box art, which..looks...no bueno:

1131096336_BigBoxScreenshot-WoodPanels-TextGamesView-2020-04-2413_14_11.thumb.jpg.f14c31494b084fb1ba40d35a85ccb77b.jpgYou can even see my intended fallback image peeking out behind the box.  I don't think this is something I can override/overcome unless there's an option for theme creators I'm unaware of.

EDIT: If you want to play around with it, I've attached the files I used for N64.  Just extract to /Themes in the Launchbox folder and say yes to overriding existing files.

WoodPanels (n64 cart art patch).zip

Edited by BMovieBen
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@BMovieBen 

Whatever monitor you think looks best. I think the Generic 2 is around the right time period. The Gateway 2000 would be awesome. Honestly, any of the monitors would be sweet.

The cartridge and the 3d box art on the view looks sweet.

As for the cartridges, is there a way to have a separate view "don't know if that is the term" that has the cartridge per game in there so people can choose that if they have it and have the default view if they don't. I completely understand if it can't make it in.

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Hey @Banditt and @NOMAD0P I've just published a new version of WoodPanels.  Changes:

  • Added MS-DOS platform device art and platform view by popular demand. (Generic 1 worked the best)
  • Added game 3D box art to all platform views by popular demand; will fallback to 2D box art if unavailable.
  • Adjusted SegaCD image so the console sits on top of the TV.
  • Made some tweaks to how the Sega Game Gear looks; matches the lighting better now.
  • FIXED: BigBox options no longer has the Atari font.

As for the Arcade graphic, I actually really like what I put in there now.  I tried to do a cabinet first but it just didn't look right.  I may try it again later, thank you for the art sample.  Also I added a patch in the earlier post if you want to try out the N64 cart art.

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Man do I love the update. The box art on the bottom really adds an extra visual element that really makes it seem complete. I completely understand about the arcade machine not fitting in.

Thank you so much for adding dos to the theme - all the systems I use are now complete - and the images are perfect.

Also, the N64 cart patch is too sweet! I am going through my games to see which ones I am missing.

I am not a programmer by any means, but I can do batch files, so what I am thinking of doing is 

  1. Check the Box directory (or screenshot directory, or video directory)
  2. For every image, check to see if there is a cart image
  3. If not, copy a default cartridge into the cart directory, name it the same as the box and add it to a list called missingcarts.txt

That way every game will have a cart and will "default" to a default one

Thanks again for all of the updates and for the theme - it is awesome!

 

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1 hour ago, BMovieBen said:

I can dig it!  I put in a request to specify a default fallback image, so we'll see!

There is a way to make this work. LB allows you to set a default image for certain items like Cart-Front. This way if a platform is missing a cart front it will not need to use image priorities to fill the void but will use the default image. What you can do is put a note in your theme description that in order to get the cart image to look right/work right that the user turn off image priorities for Cart Front and ensure they have set a default image in LB for Cart - Front. That would keep the theme from then using the LB image priority fallbacks.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi everyone please fill out this brief survey which will help inform me of whether or not to include support for cart images (certain platforms only) in the next major version:

https://form.responster.com/4urxVf

Edit: Closed!  The people have spoken, and this has been done.  Please see the latest version.

Edited by BMovieBen
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