possible? hierarchal menus and easy hide of platforms?

[d8thstar]

hi guys,

i think i'm going to jump back into launchbox (bigbox in particular) this weekend, it's been a while

since it's been a while, i thought i would check in to see if there are easy ways to do these two things:

• hierarchal menu levels.  i know i can start with high levels like "arcade", "consoles", etc. but is it possible to drill down further?  i'd love to be able to drill into consoles, then have sub categories like sega, nintendo, atari, etc. and drilling into each of those would have associated platforms
• easy way to hide platforms?  i have two master XML files, one for me with everything, one trimmed down to hide specific platforms when folks come over (i just rename them accordingly).
  • i'd love to just have a "hide/unhide" option for platforms within bigbox so i can easily, well, hide and unhide platforms.

i think i've asked this before but it was a while back and i'm jumping back in this weekend so just thought i'd check

[C-Beats]

First point is a pretty easy yes. To create another drill down level you enter the Platform Category sidebar filter (where you see the drill downs in the first place) then right click on any item and go to Add > New Category... To change where that category is placed go to the parent tab and select which item(s) you want. You can then place playlists and platforms under the new category. Your desired heirarchy would look like:

Root
    -   Consoles (Category)
          - Nintendo (Category)
               - Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform)

Second point is "kind of". The easiest way is to hide games that aren't hidden in Big Box is to set the hide flag to true on those games. In Big Box settings hide games mark hidden, then in LaunchBox DON'T hide games marked hidden. This will make it work kind of like you want.

[d8thstar]

Thanks bud!  I'll give the first one a try

I know I can hide games easily but I'm looking to hide whole platforms from the front end.  I know I can do so within the XML, just would be nice to be able to do so easily from the front end.

Thanks again!

[C-Beats]

If every game in the platform is hidden, it hides the platform as well. The hide flag can also be bulk edited. All you need to do is go to the platform in question inside of LaunchBox, then select an item in the grid/list and then press Ctrl+A, Ctrl+E then in bulk edit wizard that appears set the field you want to update to "Hide" and check the box.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, d8thstar said:

I know I can hide games easily but I'm looking to hide whole platforms from the front end.  I know I can do so within the XML, just would be nice to be able to do so easily from the front end.

You can use Launchbox to mark all games in a system hidden, this will then hide said system, then both Launchbox and Bigbox have there own settings for if hidden games are shown or not, so you can hide/unhide as needed in either UI.

[d8thstar]

Awesome, thanks for the workaround guys.