[Mini-Tutorial] Select a theme at startup with bat files

[walter10h]

If you're a big time enthusiast when it comes to retro games, chances are you have been looking for or already have a 4:3 screen (Or some other aspect ratio). There are several themes that are compatible with 4:3 screens, but here's a bit of an issue. If you use Launchbox with more than one screen, it's a hassle to have to go to the menu and change the theme, so I came up with a simple solution.

Make sure to go to .\LaunchBox\Data and make a backup of BigBoxSettings.xml!

1. Change your 16:9 theme to your 4:3 theme inside BigBox.

2. Make a copy of BigBoxSettings.xml and rename it to BigBoxSettings.43

3. Go back inside BigBox and select your 16:9 theme again.

4. This is where the magic happens. Create 2 new txt files and change their extensions to .bat, let's name them Default.bat and CRT.bat, open both with your favorite text editor (Notepad works).

5. Copy and paste the following in CRT.bat (Adjust the paths to reflect your Launchbox install!).

@echo off
rename "D:\LaunchBox\Data\BigBoxSettings.xml" "BigBoxSettings.16"
rename "D:\LaunchBox\Data\BigBoxSettings.43" "BigBoxSettings.xml"
D:\LaunchBox\BigBox.exe

6. Copy and paste the following in Default.bat (Adjust the paths to reflect your Launchbox install!).

@echo off
rename "D:\LaunchBox\Data\BigBoxSettings.xml" "BigBoxSettings.43"
rename "D:\LaunchBox\Data\BigBoxSettings.16" "BigBoxSettings.xml"
D:\LaunchBox\BigBox.exe

You're done! Now, if you want to use your 4:3 theme, all you have to do is start BigBox with CRT.bat, then Default.bat for 16:9.

There's probably a better way to do this that I don't know about, but this method ensures that your changes get saved to each BigBoxSettings.xml without interfering with each other.