Library Scroll : Wall View Centric Theme [Updated for Launchbox 11.10]

[crispy4000]

I recommend setting background transitions to Quick Fade and videos to Fade for the theme to display properly.

Spoiler

Looking for a theme with a wall view that highlights video while still letting you scroll through a grid of box art or clear logos. Something with the video display at least half resolution to the total screen area.

I made some crude mock-ups:


Or perhaps:

(With the box art not quite so small, and faded out towards the bottom)




Anyone know of any themes that have views like this?  I'd like to be able to scroll through some of my larger playlists quickly without resorting to a text list.

 

 

 

 

Library Scroll v0.6.zip

Edited December 8, 2021 by crispy4000

[crispy4000]

Made another mock-up based on the Aeon MQ7 theme, the only theme auto-listed with a wall+video view.

The theme itself puts the video in the top left corner, at that small resolution, and shows more boxes.

Not sure I like the placement of the additional images, might want to reverse them, etc.  And adding a border around the selected game would be preferable. Would anyone consider adding a similar view to (their) existing theme?  Or point me in a direction of one that already does?

Edited May 23, 2020 by crispy4000

[Mr. RetroLust]

You can make themes these days with the excellent Community Theme Creator, go get started @faeran makes videos to show you how it works: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2C5q0Muy-ehYpZUIIdJ94Q

 

[crispy4000]

Early attempt at building it myself.  Little unfortunate that the wall view (seemingly) can't be customized beyond 5 per row.

[crispy4000]

Decided to upload my first pass at it.  Let me know if you have any comments, criticisms or suggestions! Tried to make it snappy to browse but still with a little flair.  I recommend setting background transitions to Quick Fade and videos to Fade.

I don't know anything about the etiquette of using images from other themes here, so for now I stuck with star images from the default one.

Edited August 20, 2020 by crispy4000
removed old version

[crispy4000]

Went back to work on this again, I'm looking for feedback before I publish to the download section.  Thanks, and have fun!

v0.2
- Created two platform views, with horizontal and vertical scroll wheels.
- Wall view: Created a slight zoom/fade effect highlighting videos and clear logo when idle.
- Wall view: Changed fonts for game score.
- Wall view: Adjusted fade timings.

Edited August 20, 2020 by crispy4000

[crispy4000]

Preview of what I've been working on.  Manged to fit 9 games per row now!  There's so much less wasted space.

Normal scrolling:


Zoomed Video/Faded when idle:

Wish I could fade the non-higlighted boxes further as the background dims, but that might be beyond my very scrappy coding ability.

One more screen capture showing multiple rows:

Edited April 8, 2021 by crispy4000

[crispy4000]

Found a good compromise for the faded view.  The top and bottom of the wall now fades as the rest of the screen does.  It actually might look better this way than what I originally intended.  It's kind of a mix between the default theme and POC.

And with that, I feel confident to release another preview build.

v0.3:
- Updated Wall View to be compatible with Launchbox 11.10.
- 9x3 grid, with selected game highlighted
- Fading effect improved, highlights current row.
- Minor timing/transparency adjustments
- Pulsing white arrow added to horizontal platform wheel view.
- Minor timing adjustments to this view as well, videos move smoother.

Download found in first post.

Edited April 9, 2021 by crispy4000

[Retro808]

@crispy4000 Theme looks good. I like the subtle fade with the highlight staying on the game in the active row and the clear logo. So far it runs pretty smooth with no errors. I do want to mention I had to rename the folder the just "List Scroll" as I was not getting images for the ESRB and the Stars. Since you named the folder List Scroll v0.3 inside the zip it was not finding the images since the theme is looking for "List Scroll" folder name.

Also recommend either adding a scroll text for the platform names or an expanding text box/label for platforms with longer names.

[crispy4000]

Thanks, that's all really helpful!  I've updated the folder name in the zip file, so that should fix the ESRB issue.

My focus isn't the other views right now, they're tacked on admittedly.  But I'll look into fixing the platform name issue.

Edited April 9, 2021 by crispy4000

[crispy4000]

Felt motivated to return to this, so here's a small but practical update to the details pane in the wall view:



v0.4:
- ESRB rating now defaults to NR icon for unrated games.
- Favorite, completed, and source icons added.   A Retroarch image is defaulted to if a game's Source field is empty.  Feel free to add your own platform icons to the Source folder.
- User rating is now prioritized over community ratings.
- Controller icon with max players added.

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by crispy4000

[zacharyt86]

This theme is amazing and actually one of my favorite themes I’ve come across. It’s exactly what I’m looking for. The only issue I’m coming across is that for my pictures, the big one in the center and the smaller one to the left, it always uses the same picture, even if I have more than one screenshot for the game, they are always the same picture for every game. Is there a setting somewhere that I’m missing? Because in all of your example screenshots they are two different pictures. 

[bundangdon]

This is a very simple but extremely nice theme! However, the boxes which are square (gba, nds, playstation, etc.) along with the wide rectangular boxes (snes, n64) look rather strange since they're using the wrong dimensions. Is there any way this could be fixed, or possibly make 3 versions: regular (horizontal), vertical (snes, n64) and square (gba, nds) and then assign a particular theme to each platform.

[crispy4000]

Thanks for the kind words!  I won’t be able to work on it again until next week, but will look into your suggestions when I do.

 

1 hour ago, zacharyt86 said:

This theme is amazing and actually one of my favorite themes I’ve come across. It’s exactly what I’m looking for. The only issue I’m coming across is that for my pictures, the big one in the center and the smaller one to the left, it always uses the same picture, even if I have more than one screenshot for the game, they are always the same picture for every game. Is there a setting somewhere that I’m missing? Because in all of your example screenshots they are two different pictures. 

The ‘picture’ in the middle is actually of a preview video being played (unless you mean the background image?).  I’ll look into changing up the middle one if no video is loaded.  Depends on what’s possible in Community Theme Creator.  

 

37 minutes ago, bundangdon said:

This is a very simple but extremely nice theme! However, the boxes which are square (gba, nds, playstation, etc.) along with the wide rectangular boxes (snes, n64) look rather strange since they're using the wrong dimensions. Is there any way this could be fixed, or possibly make 3 versions: regular (horizontal), vertical (snes, n64) and square (gba, nds) and then assign a particular theme to each platform.

The wall view is a combination of The POC’s wall grid (which introduced LB’s 10.0 new features) and a Community Theme Creator project.  It was a problem in the former when I first tried.  I can have a go at it, it would be nice to have different wall views for each box type.  But it’ll always be a problem in custom playlists combining platforms.

I’m still replacing the last few Steam Banners being used as box art in my own setup.  I definitely feel ya.

Edited December 4, 2021 by crispy4000

[zacharyt86]

18 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

Thanks for the kind words!  I won’t be able to work on it again until next week, but will look into your suggestions when I do.

 

The ‘picture’ in the middle is actually of a preview video being played (unless you mean the background image?).  I’ll look into changing up the middle one if no video is loaded.  Depends on what’s possible in Community Theme Creator.  

 

The wall view is a combination of The POC’s wall grid (which introduced LB’s 10.0 new features) and a Community Theme Creator project.  It was a problem in the former when I first tried.  I can have a go at it, it would be nice to have different wall views for each box type.  But it’ll always be a problem in custom playlists combining platforms.

I’m still replacing the last few Steam Banners being used as box art in my own setup.  I definitely feel ya.

Yeah I'm talking about the one in the middle, If a game doesn't have a video then it just grabs the same screenshot as the little picture on the left, even if there are multiple screenshots for that game. If there was a way to make sure it chooses different screenshots it would be perfect, or even if there was a version that didn't have the screenshot on the left at all. It just looks kinda weird having two of the same picture right next to each other. I've attached a few screenshots just for examples. Again, this is hands down my favorite theme I've ever used. It looks just like the theme I used to use on PlayNight called Fullscreen Banner, which I've been trying to find something like since I switched to LaunchBox. Thank you so much for the hard work!

[crispy4000]

@zacharyt86 Addressed your issue:

v.05
- Minor spacing and scaling adjustments to the badge icons added in v.04.
- The second available screenshot is always used for the left side image.  This should prevent image duplication when a game video isn't loaded.  As a trade-off, random screenshots are no longer selected for games without "Screenshot - Gameplay" specified.

I'll be working on additional wall views next for platforms with different box art sizes.  Could take me a little while, since it's a lot of trial and error with adjustments to that part of the wall.
 

Edited December 6, 2021 by crispy4000

[zacharyt86]

On 12/6/2021 at 12:44 PM, crispy4000 said:

@zacharyt86 Addressed your issue:

v.05
- Minor spacing and scaling adjustments to the badge icons added in v.04.
- The second available screenshot is always used for the left side image.  This should prevent image duplication when a game video isn't loaded.  As a trade-off, random screenshots are no longer selected for games without "Screenshot - Gameplay" specified.

I'll be working on additional wall views next for platforms with different box art sizes.  Could take me a little while, since it's a lot of trial and error with adjustments to that part of the wall.
 

.05 is perfect! I especially like how, if there is no second screenshot, the picture just doesn't show up. I'd much rather have no picture there than 2 of the same pictures. Hands down the best theme I've come across and will be using this as my daily driver for the foreseeable future.

[crispy4000]

@bundangdon

v.06
- Added Horizontal and Square wall views, modeled after SNES and PS1 box art dimensions.  Opted to display less boxes for the horizontal layout.
- The corrected views are defaulted to for the following platforms category playlists: Gameboy, Gameboy Color, GBA, SNES, PS1, N64, Dreamcast, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS.

I'm sure there's more out there.  You can swap orientation with the change view button.

Edited December 8, 2021 by crispy4000

[bundangdon]

@crispy4000 Wow! Great work, once again. Thanks a lot for the update!