Homebrew Homebrew Launcher with grid icons, paging and info on top screen

[mashers]

Hi everyone

I decided to start a new thread about my update of Smea's HBL, as I didn't want to detract from the thread @suloku has running about his fantastic update to provide sorting and folder support.

My update of the HBL is slightly different in that I am endeavouring to replicate this layout:

View attachment 25259


PROGRESS UPDATE 17/09/2015

Please see this thread for a beta release. All future updates will be posted on the release thread not here.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-homebrew-launcher-with-grid-layout.397527/

Spoiler: Previous details

Progress so far:

• Grid layout with paging, touch/d-pad controls
• Built-in settings to change options without editing config files
  • Optionally hide the region free loader
  • Optionally sort alphabetically
• Help page with contact details

Screenshot of current progress:
View attachment 25361

View attachment 25360

The following tasks, when complete, will result in a binary release:

• Change the font
• Improve the appearance of the settings page
• Minor cosmetic improvements to main interface

Following this, source code will be released as soon as I figure out how to upload it to GitHub. The launcher is based on smea's original homebrew launcher.

Finally, the following additional features will be added in further updates in the future:

• Customisable background wallpaper for top and bottom screens
• Customisable colour scheme
• Customisable background music
• Sound effects
• Folders

Please post feedback, suggestions or feature requests here!

 

[ironmaster49]

Woah nice, looks great Will this also have themes, like wii homebrew menu?

 

[Asia81]

NICE

@smealum

Maybe you can add this you too and work together

 

[SomeGamer]

Did anyone made themes for this by now?

 

[ironmaster49]

Did anyone made themes for this by now?

I think he is still working on the theme, the grids work now but i am quite sure he is just working on the theme

 

[duwen]

Nice work! If you do manage to replicate the layout as intended I'll definitely be using this.

 

[mashers]

Woah nice, looks great Will this also have themes, like wii homebrew menu?

It will have themes in a similar way that 3DS home menu does, but in a simpler way; selecting background images, possibly sounds and music, and colours from within the app itself.

Did anyone made themes for this by now?

It's not ready for that yet. I'm still working on the basic redesigned interface. It's harder than you would think since the data structure smea used is in a one-dimensional array (i.e. a list) which suits presentation in a single column. Adding a two-dimensional interface to that (rows and columns) is quite tricky as you have to keep track not only of where you are in the one-dimensional datasource (the array) but also of where you are on the interface (which row/column is selected) and handle translating between them.

Nice work! If you do manage to replicate the layout as intended I'll definitely be using this.

Replicating the layout in the top post is the initial plan

 

[ironmaster49]

Very nice mashers, i like it, even more than sunshell (no offense,Rinnegatamante, your shell was great)

 

[mashers]

My intention is certainly not to compete with any other launchers (smea's original, @suloku's changes, any other launchers out there). I'm making the launcher how I would prefer it, and if it meets other people's needs too then I'm happy about that

 

[ironmaster49]

Yeah, im not saying its competing it just looks very nice i like it just as much as i like all the other launchers sunshell can be quite useful as it has plugins, what if you try implementing plugins too. It just reminds me of sunshell, the icons, very nice

 

[SomeGamer]

Sorry, wrong thread.

Did anyone made themes for this by now?

 

[ironmaster49]

Sorry, wrong thread.

Well by coincidence it turned out to be relevant

 

[suloku]

Great work, I you only tweak the draw functions this could be added to my mod and toogle between list and grid views!
I'll keep a look in your progress.

 

[Keizel]

This will my favourite project about a Homebrew Launcher. Beautiful interface!

 

[mashers]

Great work, I you only tweak the draw functions this could be added to my mod and toogle between list and grid views!
I'll keep a look in your progress.

Unfortunately I've had to amend quite a bit more than that. I've had to modify the C structs representing the menu items to help track their positions in the grid layout and change the updateMenu() and drawMenuItem() functions. It would probably be possible to merge the two projects by making these duplicate functions and then branch off to one or the other depending on the currently selected layout. I'll have a think about it!

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

The grid is now fully working and bug free. Touch controls are still buggy so that's next on the list.

 

[suloku]

Yes, that's what I had in mind. If your modifications don't interfere with the original design and can be added as duplicate functions it is certainly possible. My modifications have the "what if there's no config files" in mind, so hbl behaves as vanilla one (except some things, like favorites).

Anyway, I'm eagger for this, grid view is way better imho, the screen is too small and 4 entries are too few.

 

[mashers]

Ok, once I'm done making changes I'll merge them back into the original source as duplicate methods. I know I should have done this from the start, and bolting it back onto the new source is messier than doing that from the start, but I was too excited to get started

 

[mashers]

Touch controls work now It was complicated to work out why I couldn't get touches on the correct row recognised, until I realised that pixel zero is at the bottom of the 3DS screen and pixel 240 is at the top, whereas the touch recognition was the opposite way round. So I had to translate the touch coordinates to match the coordinates of the icon positions

 

[OctopusRift]

Touch controls work now It was complicated to work out why I couldn't get touches on the correct row recognised, until I realised that pixel zero is at the bottom of the 3DS screen and pixel 240 is at the top, whereas the touch recognition was the opposite way round. So I had to translate the touch coordinates to match the coordinates of the icon positions

This is AWESOME.

 

[mashers]

On-screen buttons now allow moving between pages: