Playlists/Playlist Categories don't currently work well with Big Box

[Elvis Martini]

It seems the only way to reference a system image or metadata is through the “platform name” or the “nested name”, which means that navigating through sublists don’t retain the system displays. I believe this could be resolved by adding an additional “platform” tag to playlists, allowing them to identify with a parent.

For example, in text menu view, scrolling over “Nintendo Entertainment System” can display the device image, the clear logo, the system information, etc., but in the Platform Categories view, the sublists will leave those portions of the theme completely blank unless there are images defined for “Nintendo Entertainment System Genre” or “Nintendo Entertainment System Adventure”. This would mean that in order to show the NES device image for each of the sub-playlists, the image would have to be copied and renamed for every category/every playlist. You can see an example of how this currently works in the attached images.

There doesn’t seem to be a workaround for other system metadata, since the playlists don’t appear to have an association with the parent platform in any tags - only the first part of the playlist name.

The solution, I think, is for each playlist to have a “platform” tag that associates that list with its parent, allowing every sub-category to call back to, for example, “Nintendo Entertainment System.png” under the device image folder when, for instance, “Nintendo Entertainment System Action.png” doesn’t exist.

Otherwise, using categories and playlists in Big Box mode breaks the theme. (It already does for wheel views where a clear logo is always expected of the theme and the underlying text has no proper formatting, so it would also probably not be a bad idea to allow separate menu views for playlists and categories which are distinct from that of the parent platforms. This would probably require a massive overhaul of some kind, however, and can be worked around by using a wheel that calls an image associated with the nested name rather than the unique name.)

I hope this all makes sense; it’s currently the one thing preventing me from being able to really use LB as a front-end since navigation through playlists and categories is essential for my own use.

[brian]

Thanks for the request. A couple things to keep in mind:

• Playlists are actually platform agnostic. This is why they are not associated with any specific platform. A playlist can have games from multiple platforms, even if they are a child of a specific platform.
• There’s one image type I can think of that can accomplish what you are after. This would be Fanart Background. If using the CTC, you’d put your device images into the BigBox Media Overrides\Images\Platforms\Fanart folder, then make your image’s metadata: Fanart - Background. In Big Box’s options, you will need to uncheck: Options > Images > Use Random Game Image Backgrounds for Filters, and make sure you check: Use Platform Fanart Backgrounds (could also use the background transition, but I don’t think that exists in the CTC)

‌

[Elvis Martini]

I can’t really wrap my brain around why this works, but it does. After duplicating the device images to the fanart folders and setting the metadata to “Fan art”, the system images now display for all sub-playlists.

It’s definitely not intuitive, but it appears to solve my problem as far as the images go. Unfortunately, it means there isn’t a way to continue displaying other system information (or videos, either, I would guess) once the user is navigating the sub-playlists, but this at least makes it functional. Thanks!

[brian]

Glad it worked out.

It’s really the solution that was made a long time ago. Well, it wasn’t for fanart backgrounds in-particular (you have to use it because it’s the only solution currently in the CTC), but there’s a generic background binding that gives users control of what gets displayed, just by using Big Box options (instead of having to dive into the code). Users can use it for situations like yours, where they have child playlists and they want the same background image (or video) to be displayed in specific conditions, or they can use it in a multitude of other ways, depending on how a user created their own platform category hierarchy.

So, really the issue is in LaunchBox’s open-ended flexibility. It’s one of those things to keep in mind when building a theme. Do you build it generically, taking into consideration other people’s different ways they could set up LaunchBox, or do you theme specific to your own library.