Vertical Aspirations - A vertically oriented cabinet theme (Animated Marquee Mod Added)

[yourmovecr33p]

Lol, looks like I went down the same rabbit hole as you and ended up making a very similar theme! I went for attempting to utilize the cover flow and 3d boxes though. I'll have to post a video of it here, but I still have a lot of polishing to do. See the attached initial designs for now... I should probably get back to work.

If you're interested I can flip you some corrected arcade machine backgrounds. Those speakers always bugged me as I feel they are too far up.

 

[JaysArcade]

On 10/12/2020 at 7:03 PM, P-chan said:

This is awesome!  I have a silly question - I have a portrait-oriented TV in my cab but the lower quarter is hidden below the control panel (see attached, the green is the TV and the blue line is the visible portion.  I have custom bezel art that I created and .lay files for each game in MAME, but I'm getting around now to configuring Bigbox and I'm using a vertical theme but I don't know how to modify it to only use the right 75% of the screen (roughly).

 

Any ideas would be appreciated.  I'm comfortable with XML although I haven't started messing around with BB Themes yet.

Cool design on your cab there. I'm not really sure about modifying existing themes. I think it would probably be simpler in the long run if you just designed your own. If you message me a generic bezel, I might be able to knock out a simple theme for you. They are pretty simple to make with the Community Theme Builder.

[JaysArcade]

15 minutes ago, yourmovecr33p said:

Lol, looks like I went down the same rabbit hole as you and ended up making a very similar theme! I went for attempting to utilize the cover flow and 3d boxes though. I'll have to post a video of it here, but I still have a lot of polishing to do. See the attached initial designs for now... I should probably get back to work.

If you're interested I can flip you some corrected arcade machine backgrounds. Those speakers always bugged me as I feel they are too far up.

 

That's cool. We can always use more vertical themes. I left out the cover flow wheel due to personal taste, but it's something I might visit in the future. Are you going for Arcade only, or are you doing consoles and other systems too? Maybe we could collaborate on something some time.

[yourmovecr33p]

18 minutes ago, JaysArcade said:

That's cool. We can always use more vertical themes. I left out the cover flow wheel due to personal taste, but it's something I might visit in the future. Are you going for Arcade only, or are you doing consoles and other systems too? Maybe we could collaborate on something some time.

I hyper focused on TATE mode games for my cabinet and use generic themed global lists accessed through Platform Categories. The video for each game re-orients depending on its aspect ratio as some games are running from Steam and have 16:9 videos instead of 3:4.  I may venture into pinball as well at some point. I'm going to track down some other games that run in tate for saturn and dreamcast etc, but there isn't really that many that aren't already in MAME.

So I may end up creating a theme for the playlists I create as I go along. Like favourites / Shmup / platformer / racing etc. I don't know if I'll ever do specific systems though. Depends if I can wrangle a bigger tv out of my better half so I can support better 4:3.

If any of that interests you I'd be more than willing to share, or help you out with something of your own 
 

[P-chan]

58 minutes ago, JaysArcade said:

Cool design on your cab there. I'm not really sure about modifying existing themes. I think it would probably be simpler in the long run if you just designed your own. If you message me a generic bezel, I might be able to knock out a simple theme for you. They are pretty simple to make with the Community Theme Builder.

Thanks, I appreciate it.  I actually started playing around with the Community Theme Builder but I wasn't able to get it to do what I want.  Ideally I'd just have a wheel with clear logos and maybe a screenshot on the side?  A plain black background is totally fine.  Attached is a generic template of how my screen will be laid out and where the "cutoff" will be.  Everything above the cutoff will be viewable, so you don't need to stay in side the "screen area".  

 

Super appreciate all your work!!

[JaysArcade]

29 minutes ago, P-chan said:

Thanks, I appreciate it.  I actually started playing around with the Community Theme Builder but I wasn't able to get it to do what I want.  Ideally I'd just have a wheel with clear logos and maybe a screenshot on the side?  A plain black background is totally fine.  Attached is a generic template of how my screen will be laid out and where the "cutoff" will be.  Everything above the cutoff will be viewable, so you don't need to stay in side the "screen area".  

 

Super appreciate all your work!!

Something like this? Or literally just a game screenshot on the side of the screen? You know, If I get the marquee, and wheel, and the bounds box for the video exactly where you want them, you could just drop your own bezel file in there and overwrite whatever image I use for the bezel. Anyhow, I won't be able to do anything from work. I only have access to MS Paint here, LOL. But honestly, I could probably knock something like this out pretty quick

[yourmovecr33p]

That's about as far as I've gotten. Still a ton to do, trying to have it pull default art as much as possible.

[JaysArcade]

15 minutes ago, yourmovecr33p said:

That's about as far as I've gotten. Still a ton to do, trying to have it pull default art as much as possible.

Looks like you're off to a good start!

[P-chan]

5 hours ago, JaysArcade said:

Something like this? Or literally just a game screenshot on the side of the screen? You know, If I get the marquee, and wheel, and the bounds box for the video exactly where you want them, you could just drop your own bezel file in there and overwrite whatever image I use for the bezel. Anyhow, I won't be able to do anything from work. I only have access to MS Paint here, LOL. But honestly, I could probably knock something like this out pretty quick

That's great!!  If you wanted to go even simpler, maybe something like this?

 

 

[JaysArcade]

I don't understand. Won't that block the video?

[JaysArcade]

Heres what I got for you. Took me about an hour. Honestly the hardest part was downloading and installing GIMP on this computer so I could edit your bezel/template image. Still not sure how, or why you want that image covering the video area so I left it out. I included the Theme Creator Files so you can download the Community Theme Creator and edit it to your heart's content. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/o6i9909gn3jkcpi/AAAovbrS4JyX6P3M4mNVUOZma?dl=0

[P-chan]

12 hours ago, JaysArcade said:

I don't understand. Won't that block the video?

This is just the game selection screen, there won't be any video.  Just a screenshot is totally fine in the center.

[P-chan]

10 hours ago, JaysArcade said:

Heres what I got for you. Took me about an hour. Honestly the hardest part was downloading and installing GIMP on this computer so I could edit your bezel/template image. Still not sure how, or why you want that image covering the video area so I left it out. I included the Theme Creator Files so you can download the Community Theme Creator and edit it to your heart's content. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/o6i9909gn3jkcpi/AAAovbrS4JyX6P3M4mNVUOZma?dl=0

WOW Awesome!, I'll download it now and check it out.  Thanks!!!

[JaysArcade]

3 hours ago, P-chan said:

This is just the game selection screen, there won't be any video.  Just a screenshot is totally fine in the center.

Oh, I see. Yeah, if you only wanted an image, that is easy to do as well. Not sure why I didn't do it like this to begin with, but I should use a screenshot as the fallback in that space.

[P-chan]

2 minutes ago, JaysArcade said:

Oh, I see. Yeah, if you only wanted an image, that is easy to do as well. Not sure why I didn't do it like this to begin with, but I should use a screenshot as the fallback in that space.

I got it sorted out, luckily BigBox is already automagically falling back to a screenshot in that space.  I am now trying to get all my game videos downloaded and working!  Thanks again for all your help, it's going to be great!

[P-chan]

To clarify, I have a couple game videos downloaded and working in the menu, I'm just downloading the rest.

[JaysArcade]

8 minutes ago, P-chan said:

I got it sorted out, luckily BigBox is already automagically falling back to a screenshot in that space.  I am now trying to get all my game videos downloaded and working!  Thanks again for all your help, it's going to be great!

Oh cool. It must be image priorities settings that are built in to Launchbox/Bigbox. I didn't think of that. I hope it works out for you. Let me know if there is anything odd that you'd like me to look at. I know it must be hard to work with that custom screen size.

BTW: If you want, you can remove the template image and throw your own bezel in its place. You just need to rename it to the same thing.

[P-chan]

1 minute ago, JaysArcade said:

Oh cool. It must be image priorities settings that are built in to Launchbox/Bigbox. I didn't think of that. I hope it works out for you. Let me know if there is anything odd that you'd like me to look at. I know it must be hard to work with that custom screen size.

BTW: If you want, you can remove the template image and throw your own bezel in its place. You just need to rename it to the same thing.

Cool idea about the bezel, once I get everything working I'll play around with that.  Thanks again!!

 

[pahleto]

Thank you so much for this great theme! I have this running on my vertical setup and it really shines!!! ?

Would you be willing to upload your project files so as to edit your theme with the Community Theme Creator?

I really like your images/media-only approach. For me personally there are 3 bits of information that I would really like to add to your vertical theme, because I feel this would greatly enhance the experience:

 

1) Star Rating

I have quite a few playlists that are sorted by star ratings. "Best of ..." style. Once I enter these playlists and move around  it is hard to know where I am, top, middle, bottom of the list? It would be very nice to have this information on-screen.

 

2) Release Date Year

I have some playlists "A History of Shmups/Brawlers etc." where I sort by release date year. This way you get a nice overview of the evolution of any given genre/series. But again, it is difficult to navigate the playlist without having the release year on-screen.

 

3) Max Players/Play Mode

When playing with family or friends there is always a situation like this: "Oh this looks nice! Is it co-op? I don't know, let's try. Oh damn, it is only single player." I would love to have this bit of information available at first glance.

 

Of course these are only my personal ideas. I think this would look very nice just below the video screen, moving the clear logo wheel slightly lower.

I have tried to mess with your xaml files, copying over parts of other themes, but of course this does not work. Unfortunatley I am a xaml noob ?

But I am willing to try, see if it is possible to add these features with the Custom Theme Creator tool ... 

Again, thank you for your great theme!!

[JaysArcade]

On 1/11/2021 at 1:23 AM, pahleto said:

Thank you so much for this great theme! I have this running on my vertical setup and it really shines!!! ?

Would you be willing to upload your project files so as to edit your theme with the Community Theme Creator?

I really like your images/media-only approach. For me personally there are 3 bits of information that I would really like to add to your vertical theme, because I feel this would greatly enhance the experience:

 

1) Star Rating

I have quite a few playlists that are sorted by star ratings. "Best of ..." style. Once I enter these playlists and move around  it is hard to know where I am, top, middle, bottom of the list? It would be very nice to have this information on-screen.

 

2) Release Date Year

I have some playlists "A History of Shmups/Brawlers etc." where I sort by release date year. This way you get a nice overview of the evolution of any given genre/series. But again, it is difficult to navigate the playlist without having the release year on-screen.

 

3) Max Players/Play Mode

When playing with family or friends there is always a situation like this: "Oh this looks nice! Is it co-op? I don't know, let's try. Oh damn, it is only single player." I would love to have this bit of information available at first glance.

 

Of course these are only my personal ideas. I think this would look very nice just below the video screen, moving the clear logo wheel slightly lower.

I have tried to mess with your xaml files, copying over parts of other themes, but of course this does not work. Unfortunatley I am a xaml noob ?

But I am willing to try, see if it is possible to add these features with the Custom Theme Creator tool ... 

Again, thank you for your great theme!!

I'm glad you like the theme. To be honest, I'm not that super stoked to share the maker files publicly, but I might be able share with you on an individual basis. Alternatively I can try to make some views that include what you're asking for, but it would probably only apply to the main games view and I don't really want to do anything else to the theme until Community Theme Creator 1.0.9.0 is released.