How do I show the arcade groups/playlists in Big Box?

[Hamburglin]

In LaunchBox my Arcade platform has groupings like "2-Player Games" and "Light Gun Games".

However, these don't show up when I set big box to View Playlists. Only my custom playlists show up.

I tried editing these pre-made arcade playlists to "Show with platforms" but I don't want to see them with platforms. I want to see them as playlists.

Is there a way to achieve this?

The reason I don't want to show them as platforms is because I'm hiding all platforms. I'm only showing people a single arcade playlist I made. I'm doing this because there was no way to hide everything but Arcade from players and there's no obvious way to group by genre for my non techy friends.

[faeran]

13 hours ago, Hamburglin said:

In LaunchBox my Arcade platform has groupings like "2-Player Games" and "Light Gun Games".

However, these don't show up when I set big box to View Playlists. Only my custom playlists show up.

I tried editing these pre-made arcade playlists to "Show with platforms" but I don't want to see them with platforms. I want to see them as playlists.

Is there a way to achieve this?

The reason I don't want to show them as platforms is because I'm hiding all platforms. I'm only showing people a single arcade playlist I made. I'm doing this because there was no way to hide everything but Arcade from players and there's no obvious way to group by genre for my non techy friends.

There's an option in Big Box called Hide Auto-Generated Playlists from Playlists View, found under the Views section. It sounds like this is the option you are looking to disable.

You could also build up the Platform Categories section to see only the playlists/platforms/categories you want to see in Big Box.

[Hamburglin]

58 minutes ago, faeran said:

There's an option in Big Box called Hide Auto-Generated Playlists from Playlists View, found under the Views section. It sounds like this is the option you are looking to disable.

You could also build up the Platform Categories section to see only the playlists/platforms/categories you want to see in Big Box.

Kind of. I only want to show some of the playlists. Seems like I'd have to delete some of those playlists for this way to work.

Tbh having a full library of games and trying to use big box as safe kiosk front end seems impossible without huge sacrifices or custom software I saw in another thread.

I just want to show a subset of arcade games to my friends and family without losing my other playlists or platforms in launchbox.

The fact that there's not a better filtering mechanism makes this even harder. I can't expect my family to understand regex or string matching or even understand how to get to the filter screen and maneuver on it.

Everything else about the product is pretty good. But this is a huge issue for setting up that child-safe kiosk mode.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Hamburglin

[faeran]

6 minutes ago, Hamburglin said:

Kind of. I only want to show some of the playlists. Seems like I'd have to delete some of those playlists for this way to work.

Tbh having a full library of games and trying to use big box as safe kiosk front end seems impossible without huge sacrifices or custom software I saw in another thread.

I just want to show a subset of arcade games to my friends and family without losing my other playlists or platforms in launchbox.

The fact that there's not a better filtering mechanism makes this even harder. I can't expect my family to understand regex or string matching or even understand how to get to the filter screen and maneuver on it.

Everything else about the product is pretty good. But this is a huge issue for setting up that child-safe kiosk mode.

If you want complete control in what you are seeing, whether it be playlists, platforms, or categories, that's what the Platform Categories section is for. It's essentially a way for you to have full control of the building blocks, and you can place whatever you what, wherever you want, and all of that gets reflected in Big Box.

[Hamburglin]

4 minutes ago, faeran said:

If you want complete control in what you are seeing, whether it be playlists, platforms, or categories, that's what the Platform Categories section is for. It's essentially a way for you to have full control of the building blocks, and you can place whatever you what, wherever you want, and all of that gets reflected in Big Box.

So you're saying I should create a category and dump everything I want in there and then "view categories" in big box?

[faeran]

1 hour ago, Hamburglin said:

So you're saying I should create a category and dump everything I want in there and then "view categories" in big box?

Kind of. Really depends on what your end goal is. If your only end goal is to build a section in Big Box that has the platforms, categories, playlists you want to see, in any hierarchical structure you want to see, then that's what Platform Categories is for. Once you create it in LaunchBox, you would use the Platform Categories section in Big Box to see it.

 

[Hamburglin]

11 minutes ago, faeran said:

Kind of. Really depends on what your end goal is. If your only end goal is to build a section in Big Box that has the platforms, categories, playlists you want to see, in any hierarchical structure you want to see, then that's what Platform Categories is for. Once you create it in LaunchBox, you would use the Platform Categories section in Big Box to see it.

 

What I'd really like to see is my arcade category of 300 games that is then dynamically grouped into 2 player, 4 player, lightgun, etc etc without me needing to make each of those.

1. Have a custom arcade playlist of 300 games and ONLY show this when big box starts, even though I have a ton of other game's and platforms

2. Once I click into the custom arcade playlist, I want to see the 2 player, 4 player, light gun groupings to choose from that only have my 300 pre chosen games in them

I'd like to do step 2 without literally making those playlists. Is there a way to regenerate those premadr arcade playlists only on my custom, 30p game playlist?

[faeran]

14 minutes ago, Hamburglin said:

I'd like to do step 2 without literally making those playlists. Is there a way to regenerate those premadr arcade playlists only on my custom, 30p game playlist?

Yes, within Platform Categories section in LaunchBox, right click your Arcade Platform and use one of the playlist auto-generator options:

[Hamburglin]

15 minutes ago, faeran said:

Yes, within Platform Categories section in LaunchBox, right click your Arcade Platform and use one of the playlist auto-generator options:

I only see that option for the pre generated Arcade platform. I want to do that for my custom playlist or category.

Should I make a new custom Platform, then toss my custom playlist under it to do that? Its warning me that I should only create a Platform by Importing and I'm definitely not about to manuallt copy and paste 300 roms into a new folder just for this. Edit: I just tried making a custom Platform and it doesn't show up in the list.

So far my honest experience is that the ability for big box to behave as a proper kiosk by providing functionality that limits what to show to the end user while also allowing for easy filtering does not exist in this product.

From my enterprise experience, launch box is an admin console and big box is for the end user, but it doesn't provide what is needed for the end user (my family and friends).

Please take the cristiscm kindly as I greatly appreciate the product in all of its other areas.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Hamburglin

[rakier]

This is the exact functionality I am looking for as well.  Any update on those being integrated?

[Hamburglin]

1 hour ago, rakier said:

This is the exact functionality I am looking for as well.  Any update on those being integrated?

He added this pretty quickly. 

For each platform, platform category or playlist, click edit and in the bottom left is a checkbox like "show/hide in big box'.