Skip to main content

BigBox Theme: Separate TextGamesView & GameDetailview

LaunchBox for Windows

This is a sticking point in BigBox theme design.
I think we should totally dissociate the “GamesListView” and the display of “selected game details" & option”.

I suggest replacing the game launch page with a fully customizable popup, over the current view.
Advantage and desired feature:

  • Can be called from any GamesViews.

  • Can be called directly from the Game Discovery Center.

  • Replace the “Game Option List” with pad-navigable icons. Much more modern and customizable!
    At least 2 buttons: “PLAY” + “OPTION”, which could open a mini popup-list with options. This will considerably streamline navigation!

Posted by le.viking ·
Status: Open To Community3 comments

Log in to comment and vote

Comments3

  • Brian Faeran

    Team•

    Apr 15, 2025

    Thanks for the request!

    I can definitely see some users liking this, but also other users not liking the removal of an extra game details page that can display extra/different information than the game list view. We see this on Android which essentially has an overlay in a similar fashion to what is being requested. If we added this, it would most likely need to be a user option, or theme developer option on what they are wanting to show. Also, by disassociating the GameListView from the Game Menu, you end up causing all theme developers from requiring to create one extra view before their theme is usable.

    I think more you are trying to request the ability to have a more flexible game list. The issue is the amount of options that can exist inside of the game menu. Some are hidden due to them being platform specific, but there’s got to be at least 30 possibilities of what could potentially be shown here. How we dictate what doesn’t get buried inside of a sub-menu could be subjective, and I’m sure a lot of users wouldn’t like what we end up burying and what we don’t, so this would also probably be a user option as well.

    Icons are already possible, and the fact that no theme does this currently is due to the amount of extra work involved in doing this. Most icons don’t fully represent the nature of the option as well, which is usually why a better UX is to also display the name of the option.

    So, if I can sum up what I think this request is:

    1. An optional ability to overlay a themeable game menu, instead of entering into a Game Details page. Either make it a user setting, or a theme developer setting (I’d be leaning to make it theme developer only)

    2. A more flexible Game Menu, where theme developers could choose from Vertical or Horizontal orientation, and the ability to move specific items into a Sub-menu that’s either dictated by the user, or theme developer (I would be leaning to make this a user option)

    I would classify this as:

    Effort: 7/10

    Would be a big rewrite of a lot of systems inside of Big Box to accommodate this, along with the need for the default theme to showcase this change. Risk is pretty large that we’d break something in the process during beta.

    Value: 4/10

    While this doesn’t bring any useful new features for users, it does marginally improve navigation within Big Box, and brings new tooling for theme developers.