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bbCinematics [configuration fork of (BBZero 1.18 rc6 by mojmir)]


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#1 knowom

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Posted 26 March 2017 - 07:24 AM

So what is bbCinematics? What bbCinematics aims to do is provide a no nonsense simplicity and ease of use, and functionality, with a focus on resource minimalism, and build orientated and aimed rather squarely in mind at gaming and theater goers. The idea is hide the desktop eyesores and enjoy the cinematic black bar experience running stuff in windowed mode preferably boarder-less I'd recommend pairing this with the program boarderless gaming.

https://github.com/C...rderless-Gaming

you may wish to pair it with TimerTool as well which helps reduce latency a little bit I have mine to startup with windows with a registry tweak just save as a .reg file and place TimerTool in your BB4WIN plugins folder and fix or adjust the file path as needed and don't ask me why it uses two \\'s in the file path name by intention for whatever reason to startup properly so keep that in mind.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"WindowsDefender"=hex(2):22,00,25,00,50,00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,6d,00,\
  46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,25,00,5c,00,57,00,69,00,6e,00,64,00,6f,00,77,\
  00,73,00,20,00,44,00,65,00,66,00,65,00,6e,00,64,00,65,00,72,00,5c,00,4d,00,\
  53,00,41,00,53,00,43,00,75,00,69,00,4c,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,22,00,00,\
  00
"TimerTool"="\"C:\\Program Files\\BB4WIN\(BB4WIN 31!73 CINEMATICS)\\plugins\\TimerTool\\TimerTool.exe\" -t 0.5014 -minimized"


https://github.com/tebjan/TimerTool

 

 

Anyways bbCinematics is really just a configuration overhaul or facelift for bbZero 1.18 rc6 that's been also been stripped down of a lot of unneeded plugins for now at least though any of the ones that work for that will of course work no problem if you still wish to use them. Hopefully mojmir's new BBZero build comes in the near future and irons out some some issues and/or expands some features one thing atm that's unfortunate is blackbox.exe crashing doing certain stuff from time Auto hide is bit glitchy as well, but my extensions hotkeys toggling gets around that problem. I'd recommend reading that extensions.rc file as well to get a idea of the different menu shortcuts, but here's a general lay down of it.

 

 

This all applies to clicking on any empty desktop space with the following commands.

 

  • Right Click: Brings up Blackbox start menu (Start on SystemBarEx taskbar does as well)
  • Alt + Left/Right Click: Brings up task menu
  • Ctrl + Left/Right Click: Switches Workspace next/prev
  • Mid Click + Ctrl: Brings up configuration menu
  • Mid Click + Alt: Brings up Styles folder to change the look and theme of BB4WIN
  • Mid Click: Brings up This PC menu a drive path to browse any of your local disks
  • Forward Mouse Navigation Click X1: Brings up a Desktop menu
  • Back Mouse Navigation Click X2: Brings up a Taskbar menu
  • Shift + Right Click: Loads/Unloads plugin - SystemBarEx (repeat to load or unload)
  • Shift + Left Click: Loads/Unloads plugin - bbIconBox (repeat to load or unload)

 

The Blackbox menu itself has a lot of stuff built into it as well everything by default should work in that as far as I can tell other than calculator that you'll have to configure the path to it manually because I don't use the default configuration path to it I'm using the retro calculator from XP since I hate the Windows 10 calculator app personally which probably knowing Microsoft spies on you every time you open it. Specifically you'd want to change this in Menu.rc

[exec] (Calculator) {"D:\Program Files\calc.exe"}

change to the following or delete it whichever is more preferable

[exec] (Calculator) {"C:\Windows\SysWOW64"}

It's all setup to be quick, easy, and painless as far as the Blackbox start menu is concerned the stuff you'd likely really want to find is at your fingertips pretty quickly and easily and not buried a million feet deep in submenu's. I put a few programs on the start menu for convenience (command prompt, power shell, calculator, paint, defrag, task manager and submenu's) for all the major stuff you'd want to quickly access most likely.

 

You'll want to tweak these in the extensions.rc to your PC users name to get these menu's to function properly and it's worth the few seconds and minimal effort it takes!

# Taskbar menu
blackbox.desktop.X1Click: @BBCore.ShowMenu C:\Users\Invasmani\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar

# Desktop menu
blackbox.desktop.X2Click: @BBCore.ShowMenu C:\Users\Invasmani\Desktop

I made a dedicated thread to this so just I don't hijack the bbZero thread with updates and changes any further. This is really just a fine tuned configuration re-haul around it.

 

Added a style to closely replicate STEAM client look and feel enjoy based on a suggestion from kylxmaster's in another thread. It just seemed like a very natural fit. Also decided to show off how the desktop menu, this pc menu, and task menu's look using the extensions.rc tweaks really liking the convenience factor of them feels rather natural and intuitive. Anyway updated the build link up top with the new STEAM client theme style it turned out decently I probably do a few altercations of it a bit later down the round. I added/updated a few new styles based on a old style of my Mechanical Scorpion. They aren't 100% yet I've just fixed the toolbar for now I'll have to update the menu later to match. With the latest upload the STEAM client SystemBarEx portion of the style looks a bit differently at least til I have time to fix it to look a bit more properly. I had it setup with each style parts manually configured on SystemBarEx's style method assignment section, but I've since switch to using the default. Anyways here's the latest build configuration setup you can copy the RC file from SystemBarEX in the original bbCinematic zip if you want STEAM client to look like it does in the screenshot posted for now here's v2 with the added styles and the new (Shift+ Right Click) & (Shift + Left Click) desktop commands to load/unload (SystemBarEx/bbIconBox) plugins enjoy the newly added functionality. More to come in the future most likely to expand upon a few area's a style refinements and few more commands and plugins bundled in enjoy.

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#2 knowom

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Posted 26 March 2017 - 10:29 PM

Something I thought of recently that might be really neat looking is to link and synchronize different elements of the UI plugins or sections within plugins to auto hide and show based on a users configuration. You know in scifi movies like Ironman they have all these UI elements popping up and hiding based on what's going on for the HUD something like that. For example you could synchronize clock and calender plugins together to auto hide and show or you could synchronize all your system monitoring to do so. I think it would be pretty damn cool however to really have a customized desktop that kind of felt almost self aware of our setup desires in a sense. I suppose that gives me a idea on how that could be somewhat possible by tying together desktop load/unload plugin's together something like shift + left click  along with shift + right click to control plugin load/unload for like a collection of plugins or individual one could work fairly well actually and is intuitive enough could even do shift + middle click and shift + X1/X2 clicks so that's like 5 plugins to load/unload now maybe you could even assign it so downclick loads them and upclick unloads them so you just hold down click while you want to look at them and unclick automatically unloads them basically on command usage! I will have to dig deeper into the BlackHoleBoxVoid at some stage and see just how much of this is possible. I've had macro's to load/unload the plugin for bbIconBox however in the past so a lot of it could be very plausible which is good and means I could selectively bundle in some more useful plugins in the future that I probably wouldn't otherwise bother with.



#3 knowom

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Posted 27 March 2017 - 01:50 AM

Updated with a style that replicates Steam Client and added screen shot showing off the build. I'd suggest using "Inmani - Black Blue White" style for the time being if using auto hide on SytemBarEX the "STEAM OS style is a bit buggy with the auto hide enabled which idk what the root cause of that is right now. Did a bit of testing using Shift+Left/Right Click on desktop to show/hide plugins got it to load/unload the plugins bbIconBox and SystemBarEx individually speaking at least though I couldn't figure out how to assign both to the same command or if that's even possible not that it matters in large part I actually only really needed it for SystemBarEx since bbIconBox's auto hide within the plugin's configuration menu works fine from what I've seen. On another note I've got room for 3 more plugins in total that I could bundle in and setup load/unload commands for  to add to shift + middle click, shift + X1 click, and shift + X2 click on desktop. It works pretty slick too shift + click once to unload/hide it shit + click again to reload/show the plugin again! Got one more thing working the way I had hoped it to more or less so pretty happy with that. It's another step forward to a more fine tuned setup experience. I'll try to upload the latest changes tomorrow. Outside of SystemBarEx and bbIconBox if someone has 3 suggested plugins let me know I'm curious what people's favorites would be? I might add back bbWheelSpace into the build to shift + middle click it's not really needed, but I could then switch CTRL+ left/right click to move to workspace left/right and let mouse wheel handle the other part. My goal is both increased flexibility and ease of use so that would of course work well.



#4 knowom

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Posted 13 April 2017 - 11:50 PM

Changed SystemBarEx configuration for placement so it's no longer set for on top since it was a nuisance especially if you happen to use the edit find feature much to highlight and search for keywords. I also fixed all the extra repeating lines in my styles. I fixed up my custom styles as well a bit the Inmani black blue white styles still need some additional work on SystemBarEx toolbar, but I altered the menu's look to them and made a few variations for it. Speaking of variations I edited the bsetroot on a few of the styles and they turned out pretty nicely I think. I setup them up using the modulation x/y grid and styling options. It makes for a more interesting customized desktop background to the styles and black bar styled back drop effect which is kind of why I did it. Anyway enjoy the style tweaks and on top configuration tweak/fix for SystemBarEx so it behaves a bit more like it probably should in most instances.

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#5 Davila

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Posted 30 April 2017 - 03:45 AM

Is there an option to remove the middle bar in the center of the desktop?



#6 knowom

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Posted 08 May 2017 - 06:29 AM

You can use the following command on the desktop itself to do so

  • Shift + Left Click: Loads/Unloads plugin - bbIconBox (repeat to load or unload)

or

  • Ctrl + Right Click: The Desktop or Taskbar titlebar brings up the main menu for bbIconBox plugin right below where it says new submenu like it labeled remove in that you can click on remove for desktop or taskbar while new will add one to configure new ones for different stuff.


#7 knowom

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Posted 30 April 2018 - 07:42 PM

I have a new version of bbCinematics v4 configuration based on BB4WIN's bbZero1.18 blackbox.exe

https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing

 

The primary change I guess is that I used imagecfg.exe -u -a 0x2 on blackbox.exe so it now only runs off 1 core instead of all cores.

 

Some of the main menu slightly for my personal PC setup. I don't know if I added any additional styles or not I might have not sure it's been awhile.

 

I didn't discover one thing though if you left click on bsetshell.exe go to properties click on compatibility menu and then check Run this program as an administrator it allows the bsetshell.exe menu link to switch the shell between BB4WIN and explorer.exe quickly so you can access either/or which is handy since you can't seem to access the settings menu in window 10 otherwise to do updates and tweak any of those other settings or maybe you just want to use blackbox shell selectively for gaming or whatever purpose. I included a readme about the bsetshell.exe part in the main folder as well.



#8 knowom

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Posted 30 April 2018 - 07:45 PM

Is there an option to remove the middle bar in the center of the desktop?

If you mean to remove that specific box while keeping the box that's labeled taskbar yeah it can be done. If left click the taskbar or desktop header name and go to remove then click taskbar or desktop it'll remove that portion of bbIconbox from the plugin. If you just want to hide by you use the shift click method to load/unload the plugin itself.



#9 xed

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Posted 03 July 2020 - 06:40 AM

Thank you!


It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I'm all outta gum!


#10 knowom

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Posted 03 July 2020 - 07:50 PM

Thinking of incorporating one of the BB4WIN CPU/RAM resource usage plugins to load/unload in the future by shortcut key combination of ctrl+alt+insert so a bit like a light weight alternative to task manage that can be quickly toggled on or off. Curious to see what happens with BB5 because I'll probably be able to transition a lot of bbCinematics over to that blackbox version exe fairly seamlessly though judging from past experiences with different core builds somethings might break in the process or need to be supplemented with another similar functionality plugin itself primarily the task bar, but there have been other notable difference in different builds of the exe core itself like there was a older BB4WIN version that priority process built into it that was great and haven't seen it since. If think of some other general usage/functionality enhancement plugins to selectively use short cuts to load/unload on a need be basis I could incorporate a few others potentially as well ctrl+alt+ (home/end/page up/page down) keys should all be possible to utilize if I wanted to add up to 4 more plugins outside a resource usage metering plugin. I can't think of any I desperately want off hand, but it's something to keep in mind if I spot some plugins that I might temperamentally enjoy there functionality, but isn't necessary as a whole all the time. The keyboard shortcuts to enable/disable toggling of the plugins though works quite well I've found so it's more a question of how I might expand upon it further for other plugins and which ones. You obviously can add your own plugins and enable/disable them manually or fine tune those keyboard shorts yourself if your savvy enough with that process. My goal is both functionality combined with light weight minimalism. A black box build a bit transformer like more than meets the eye variable rate toggled UI plugin elements.


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#11 pitkon

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Posted 04 July 2020 - 09:18 AM

This is interesting. But I suggest instead of a plugin, that most probably won't work on BB5, try a bbinterface frame. This plugin works just fine under xob 5.


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#12 knowom

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Posted 18 July 2020 - 10:17 AM

Will have to keep that in mind if I get back to tinkering around with BB4WIN especially if that's more compatible. Might even try to do another style theme if I get around to do that other stuff with a NES theme coloring similar to the SteamOS style I did that retro black/white/red controller and system look.


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