darreldearth Posted November 24, 2022 Share Posted November 24, 2022 Is there a way to get playlists to show custom art like the platforms do? Other themes let you so figured it might work, but When I place custom backgrounds, pointers, logos, and video boarders in their respective folders they don't do anything, and the only thing that shows up is the platform art which is the parent to the playlist. Using the playlists because some platforms are broken down from "Sega mega Drive" into "sega genesis" and "Sega mega drive" playlists which each need seperate artwork Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted December 1, 2022 Author Share Posted December 1, 2022 On 11/23/2022 at 8:51 PM, darreldearth said: Is there a way to get playlists to show custom art like the platforms do? Other themes let you so figured it might work, but When I place custom backgrounds, pointers, logos, and video boarders in their respective folders they don't do anything, and the only thing that shows up is the platform art which is the parent to the playlist. Using the playlists because some platforms are broken down from "Sega mega Drive" into "sega genesis" and "Sega mega drive" playlists which each need seperate artwork Any art you want to replace, like backgrounds, pointers etc must exactly match the name of the playlist and be in the correct folder. They also need to be PNG format, not JPG. When artwork is not found, the _default.png is used. Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted December 23, 2022 Author Share Posted December 23, 2022 (edited) I was toying around with the idea of allowing fanart backgrounds or not. It would be something the user can easily turn on/off completely. I've included a sample image of the theme using fanart background. Looks ok right? But, not all games have fanart and the ones that do, not all of it is very good. Or it has a really high contrast which ruins the readability of the information card (second sample). Maybe if fanart is shown, the card has 100% opacity... Shrugs... It was just something to try I guess. I'm not sure I will continue down this path. Rob Edited December 23, 2022 by Rob_G 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darreldearth Posted December 23, 2022 Share Posted December 23, 2022 (edited) I personally think the fan art option looks great especially if u had an option to enable/disable them. Would it be on the vertical wheels also? Yeah the cards could just have like a 25% transparency or something so u can read them 🤷♂️, but overall I think it looks great. Edited December 23, 2022 by darreldearth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denys06 Posted December 27, 2022 Share Posted December 27, 2022 (edited) This will become my new permanent theme Can I hide the " status " and the " your vote " fields ? Edited December 27, 2022 by Denys06 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted December 29, 2022 Author Share Posted December 29, 2022 On 12/27/2022 at 2:57 PM, Denys06 said: This will become my new permanent theme Can I hide the " status " and the " your vote " fields ? Status is there for MAME games and tells you what playable state the game is in. For example, Good, Imperfect or Unplayable. When viewing other types of games, that is collapsed and replaced with the version of the game rom you are playing. You can always directly edit the XAML files, but doing so is going to affect the layout of other items like the notes scroller below it. At this point I would recommend just leaving it alone (for now) Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted December 29, 2022 Author Share Posted December 29, 2022 (edited) I will probably ditch the glass element in the next version. I'm not happy with the readability and will replace it with a 50% opaque black frame. Edited December 29, 2022 by Rob_G 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darreldearth Posted December 29, 2022 Share Posted December 29, 2022 (edited) Yeah the black looks a little easier to read 👍 Edited December 29, 2022 by darreldearth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted December 31, 2022 Author Share Posted December 31, 2022 (edited) I think I've made considerable improvements to the theme and hope to have something for release soon. I'm just not completely happy with the platform views yet. I made a lot of changes last version and they are better, but something is still missing. Unfortunately, the new wheels in CTC 2.5 can't do true curves (yet). I've also abandoned wall views for now because it's been too much work getting wheels where I want in the other views. There has been A LOT of attention to size, spacing, angle etc. I'm going to call this newer one V4 because it's been such a major update with CTC 2.5. Edited December 31, 2022 by Rob_G 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted January 5, 2023 Author Share Posted January 5, 2023 (edited) One more update coming soon I hope and then I'm hanging it up for a bit. I've had A LOT of stress in my life lately and this theme stuff has been a good distraction for me. But bad stuff is afoot, my situation is not good. Health is ok (I think), finances are not. I worry... New video borders for platform and non arcade games has been implemented. Readability in some cases has been improved even more with additional semi opaque framing. I wanted to implement 'recent games' but got no help on that and I can't get past how the controls activate the element - it's backwards from what I want. Maybe some day... Probably this weekend I'll drop 4.1 and barring any issues that will be it for now. Rob Edited January 5, 2023 by Rob_G 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted January 6, 2023 Author Share Posted January 6, 2023 (edited) If you ever wondered about nesting elements....... Back in the late 90's I used to program HTML in notepad and would nest tables for layout purposes... Reminds me of nested loops in programming in a way too. I always enjoyed that stuff. I do a lot of powershell and some REST API stuff these days for work. I don't think I would attempt it today without a WYSIWYG editor like CTC. Thanks @y2guru Edited January 6, 2023 by Rob_G 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted January 8, 2023 Author Share Posted January 8, 2023 I do need feedback if you like this direction or not. I'm ditching the notes scroller from platforms because nobody is going to read that crap. Maybe once, then it's useless to have. I moved a random game and rating in the frame as well as the device image. In the space below, I added a recent games listview. My focus is on what's useful and what's not (fluff). Some fluff is ok, but too much and nobody cares. I even thought about ditching repetitive platform videos and the random gameplay video would play instead, like a 'featured game' of sorts. I can't do that with CTC and may have to ask the bigbox team @faeran if it's even possible? It's a WIP.... Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rincewind Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 Some views don't warrant the game notes true but you can't just say "nobody reads that crap" because there will be users that do like to read it, so my feedback would be maybe have one vertical game wheel with the recent games.... and favourites if you can get it in there. And then a second vertical game wheel with the notes. That way you keep everyone happy 😊 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darreldearth Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 Is the new theme going to still have the original platform layout as well? I think the new one looks nice. Only thing I could come up with was maybe the top right box be only the description/clear logo, and then the bottom box having the recent games and the system icon somewhere. And there wouldn't be a random game 🤷♂️. Honestly I personally like simple, so just like seeing the description, system icon and the video. Anything else is just fluff to me. Also thanks for all the work on the theme man. I hope your personal situation works out so you don't have to stress. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted January 9, 2023 Author Share Posted January 9, 2023 (edited) 22 hours ago, Rincewind said: Some views don't warrant the game notes true but you can't just say "nobody reads that crap" because there will be users that do like to read it, so my feedback would be maybe have one vertical game wheel with the recent games.... and favourites if you can get it in there. And then a second vertical game wheel with the notes. That way you keep everyone happy 😊 I came up with a compromise. I will scroll the platform notes on the status bar. Edited January 9, 2023 by Rob_G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted January 9, 2023 Author Share Posted January 9, 2023 9 hours ago, darreldearth said: Is the new theme going to still have the original platform layout as well? I think the new one looks nice. Only thing I could come up with was maybe the top right box be only the description/clear logo, and then the bottom box having the recent games and the system icon somewhere. And there wouldn't be a random game 🤷♂️. Honestly I personally like simple, so just like seeing the description, system icon and the video. Anything else is just fluff to me. Also thanks for all the work on the theme man. I hope your personal situation works out so you don't have to stress. The layouts are still basically the same, but a few things things have also been re-arranged. I think I'm pretty much done except I may check out a random game plugin and see if I can integrate that as well. Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted January 16, 2023 Author Share Posted January 16, 2023 Not so final after all. I got a cold so instead of going outside on my long weekend, I spent time indoors doing some some research on XAML. I learned a few cool animation tricks which I will implement into my game wheels. I also have a few other fixes, improvements and changes implemented on game views. I noticed box wheel movement is backwards compared to my clear logo wheels and I'm not sure why. So I'll make another wheel template for boxes I guess and fix that. Rob 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_G Posted January 26, 2023 Author Share Posted January 26, 2023 On 1/8/2023 at 12:45 PM, darreldearth said: Is the new theme going to still have the original platform layout as well? I think the new one looks nice. Only thing I could come up with was maybe the top right box be only the description/clear logo, and then the bottom box having the recent games and the system icon somewhere. And there wouldn't be a random game 🤷♂️. Honestly I personally like simple, so just like seeing the description, system icon and the video. Anything else is just fluff to me. Also thanks for all the work on the theme man. I hope your personal situation works out so you don't have to stress. Platform views are now updated and I think they turned out pretty good. V4.4 is available now. Rob 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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