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Lambda 2 functionality preview (video)


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Hi,

I wasn't fully satisfied with the Lambda beta UI so I spend (way too much) time redesigning things into a hopefully more straightforward UI and user experience. Many hours of work but most of the result can be summarised in a 1 minute video:

lambda2_demo2.thumb.gif.c84b7fae0749e2798ca8369a41b4f00c.gif

Most notable changes:
-Combined Title/menu/button bar
-Details panel: all media are now grouped into one tabbed viewbox (thumbnail grid on hover, click image to enlarge)
-Details panel media viewbox: Front/back box images now included (zoomable on hover)
-Details panel media viewbox: Fanart has platform logo and game logo overlayed (when available)
-Lots of smaller layout changes
-Various style sheets (skins) included, selectable via a command line menu:

lambda2-style_chooser.png.dc54d659bc64b0b4ee0fa6b9bae81e51.png
(btw. not the definitive list, I'm still experimenting with styles)

For example this is how Lambda 2 looks in Lambda beta style:

lambda2-lambda1_style.thumb.png.7c684cefd7497aaf2e62874a60545e2c.png

Note: it may take awhile before I release the theme, I still got plenty of work on streamlining code and tweaking things. (I'm probably not adding more features because I'm sort of on the limit of what I can do with the theme API.)

Also there are a few issues I'm unable to resolve unfortunately:
-(mayor) LaunchBox crashes occasionally when hitting one of the menu buttons. (This crept in last autumn, I suspect because of a change in LaunchBox's code.) Edit: This is fixed in LaunchBox 12.7
-(minor) When the details panel is visible and a game with a lot of Fanart or screenshots is selected, LaunchBox freezes up for several seconds. It will become responsive again when all media is loaded. Edit: solved; this was caused by a specific platform logo png file.
-I'm not sure how well it performs on slower systems.

Edited by shadowfire
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Update:
I've made some changes, did some code streamlining (which is still a lot of work I have to do before it's ready for release) and made use of some new features in LaunchBox 12.7:

Greenshot-2022-02-08_00-43-48.thumb.png.315933cfaf35bb7240ff57dd67ec8ef0.png

Greenshot-2022-02-08_00-44-04.thumb.png.6f1a051940536f3c47b22c79c1059bcc.png

As you can see I also redesigned the Favorite/Ratings bar in the lower game details header (I found a workaround that let me set my own colours). New functionality from left to right:

-Favorite toggle
-Completed toggle
-Ratings bar (tooltip provides ratings details)
-Video link button
-Wikipedia link button
-Achievements toggle*

*) I kind of prefer achievements to be hidden by default because of potential spoilers. Clicking this button reveals the achievements panel.

Edited by shadowfire
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Just an update on progress (I'm working on this project on and off): the 12.8 update and Steamy inspiration gave me a way to try out an idea I had a while ago; replace the sidebar with a dropdown-type menu. (It wasn't easy to getting this to work though.)

Advantages:
-more horizontal space for game boxes and details
-it's even suitable for a lower 4:3 resolution like 1024x768
-navigating categories makes more sense to me
-cleaner look/aesthetics?

Disadvantages:
-other categories are less visible
-dropdowns covers content when a dropdown is open
-maybe there is a small performance penalty when using the dropdowns (most of the work was to mitigate this)

I've been trying this variation out for a week or so now and I'm leaning towards this version because I kinda like it... I'm less distracted by the sidebar and at the same time I'm more interested in browsing other categories for some reason (before I always stuck to Platform Category without touching any of the other categories).

Greenshot-2022-03-27_22-47-19.png

Greenshot-2022-03-27_22-47-26.png

Greenshot-2022-03-27_22-56-08.png

Greenshot-2022-03-27_22-42-34.png

Edited by shadowfire
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  • 3 months later...

Getting closer to release (90% done), here are a few updated screenshots:

New List View (Shark skin) :

Greenshot-2022-07-27_12-08-22.thumb.png.d73a026ab64363c6cebe89593e6e27ac.png

New List View (Glassmorphic skin) :

Greenshot-2022-07-27_12-14-57.thumb.png.0a982dcfb580048dfc11357306c4f40e.png

Scroll down to Recommended Games in Details View (Glassmorphic skin) :

Greenshot-2022-07-27_12-14-25.thumb.png.e7072cdf4f79a33d6b17562b5567dfdb.png

Compact List View - fits on 1024x768 (Glassmorphic skin) :

Greenshot-2022-07-27_12-20-56.thumb.png.edff4e3c746afbee1022379b28a21207.png

Compact Details View full width (Glassmorphic skin) :

Greenshot-2022-07-27_12-21-28.thumb.png.c8a53cb2bd0774986a600ff1f4b4ee52.png

I've made several more skin variations which can be selected through a skin chooser command line tool. Atm. I'm considering which ones I will include and what kind off skin should be default; solid (like Shark) or translucent (like Glassmorphic).  Personally I prefer solid skins but maybe the community expects something like Glassmorphic because it's closer to what Lambda beta looked like? (Solid skins basically have background art disabled.)

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...
On 9/12/2022 at 3:59 PM, shadowfire said:

Yeah it's almost there but unfortunately I don't have time to finalise things because of other priorities. I hope to pick this up again in November...

Very much looking forward to your progress, Lambda is the only theme that shows clear logos properly in grid view that I've found that I also like!

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On 11/17/2022 at 3:40 PM, Drybonz said:

This theme looks really promising in the screenshots.  I notice that there are pics with the game titles under the boxes and some without.  Will it be possible to toggle it with the default LB options?

Yes! It's toggled with the "Show Text On All Games" option. Without text it also crops the boxes to your configured aspect ratio so all boxes are the same size. Alternatively you can set text rows to 0 in settings which doesn't crop the boxes.

Also, when the titles are hidden titles will be shown in a tooltip when hovering over a box.

Edited by shadowfire
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