BigBox + Steam is a total mess. Can I disable the launchbox pause screen when using Steam?

[drw4013]

Steam Big Picture + BigBox is almost unusable. Problems include: 1) game losing focus, 2) game doesn't launch at all, 3) game doesn't close and keeps running in the background when I return to BigBox, 4) exiting game via BigBox pause screen returns me to Steam Big Picture front page, and more. It just seems like BigBox and Steam do not play well together when Steam Big Picture is running.

I've had the most success when using only the Steam overlay to exit the game and then return to BigBox, instead of the BigBox pause screen.  Is there any way to disable the BigBox pause screen from appearing in the first place, like you can with an emulator?  I don't see a way in the menus.  Any way to manually edit a file to do this?

Edited September 20, 2022 by drw4013

[drw4013]

Anyone know?

[Kiinkyfoxx]

No idea about Steam Big Picture as don't use it, but Steam and LaunchBox/BigBox do play nicely together with startup/shutdown screens and also pause screens with effort and quite a bit of ahk work

However to answer your question about disabling pause screen from appearing - yI think you can do it and you can do it in LaunchBox without messing around with files - I'm sure I did in the past but haven't tried recently

Highlight the game you want to disable the pause screen in

Go to edit metadata/media

At the very bottom on left hand panel is Startup/Pause

Go onto that page and put a tick in the Override default pause screen settings box, click the Customize button, and make sure none of the check boxes are ticked - that SHOULD stop pause screens working.

If you have lots of games you want to do it to and don't want to do them one at a time, then highlight every game you want to change, right click on the last one and then open bulk edit tool and make the changes via that.

Hopefully that will work for you 

Good luck

Ps I haven't tested this as use an ahk to open my steam games so have an "emulator" that I can make changes in, but the theory is correct and should work.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Kiinkyfoxx

[skizzosjt]

On 9/19/2022 at 8:00 PM, drw4013 said:

Steam Big Picture + BigBox is almost unusable. Problems include: 1) game losing focus, 2) game doesn't launch at all, 3) game doesn't close and keeps running in the background when I return to BigBox, 4) exiting game via BigBox pause screen returns me to Steam Big Picture front page, and more. It just seems like BigBox and Steam do not play well together when Steam Big Picture is running.

I've had the most success when using only the Steam overlay to exit the game and then return to BigBox, instead of the BigBox pause screen.  Is there any way to disable the BigBox pause screen from appearing in the first place, like you can with an emulator?  I don't see a way in the menus.  Any way to manually edit a file to do this?

You don't want to be using the frontend's pause screen in actual PC games. that screen suspends the process and this is mostly possible with emulation, but it's much more likely you will have issues trying to use it with a PC game such as a Steam game. any normal Steam game is going to have a built in pause button so it's always better to use the game's native options before going to something external that messes with the game's process. in other words, pause the game the normal way, and exit the game the normal way.

 

I've never gotten overly familiar with Steam Big Picture, but I would bet using it is part of the problem with losing focus and the sorts. LB/BB is a frontend and Steam Big Picture is kinda sorta a frontend wanna be.....I don't see the value in basically using a frontend to launch another frontend to select your game. I haven't noticed others on here mentioning they use Steam Big Picture so I'm under the impression there is little to no desire from users to want that to work, devs likely have never even bothered testing out a setup like yours as a result. I would recommend to totally ditch using Steam Big Picture and use Steam in its "normal" mode/presentation.

 

KiinkyFoxx's advice is correct, that is the way to disable the frontend's pause screen when you are launching an application rather than an emulator. Launching Steam games is considered an application so you do it on a game by game basis but thankfully as they already mentioned there is a built in bulk editor that can change this setting for multiple games simultaneously if you wanted to do them all in one swoop, which depending on how many games you have could end up being a big time saver!

[drw4013]

I was using BigPicture mode because I liked being able to access Steam's in-game menu with the BigPicture mode.

Using Steam in standard mode still doesn't work quite right - starting the game shows the windows taskbar for some reason. Also, selecting "Resume Game" form the BigBox menu returns to BigBox instead of the currently running game (Elden Ring in this case).

I will try KiinkyFoxx's suggestion and see how that works.

Edited September 27, 2022 by drw4013

[drw4013]

8 hours ago, Kiinkyfoxx said:

No idea about Steam Big Picture as don't use it, but Steam and LaunchBox/BigBox do play nicely together with startup/shutdown screens and also pause screens with effort and quite a bit of ahk work

However to answer your question about disabling pause screen from appearing - yI think you can do it and you can do it in LaunchBox without messing around with files - I'm sure I did in the past but haven't tried recently

Highlight the game you want to disable the pause screen in

Go to edit metadata/media

At the very bottom on left hand panel is Startup/Pause

Go onto that page and put a tick in the Override default pause screen settings box, click the Customize button, and make sure none of the check boxes are ticked - that SHOULD stop pause screens working.

If you have lots of games you want to do it to and don't want to do them one at a time, then highlight every game you want to change, right click on the last one and then open bulk edit tool and make the changes via that.

Hopefully that will work for you 

Good luck

Ps I haven't tested this as use an ahk to open my steam games so have an "emulator" that I can make changes in, but the theory is correct and should work.

This resulted in still hearing the game video from BigBox looping in the background after the game started running....

Edited September 27, 2022 by drw4013