Carousel Enhancements

jdrassa

So I have been working on some enhancements for the system carousel that I wanted to preview and get some feedback on.

The scaling of the logos will now animate properly and they will grow and shrink gradually as they become selected/unselected. This has added benefit of simplifying some of the code. Previously, we created 2 images for each logo, a normal and a selected image. With this change we are now only creating one.
Text Logos now increase is size properly. This should reduce/eliminated the ... that are seen sometimes now with carbon when using the new game collections feature.
Origin support for carousel.
Fixed a bug where background extras would bleed into gamelists when using vertical carousel. @ruckage this was the bug you reported here.
I have added alignment options for the logos.

Current horizontal carousel with center alignment:

New top alignment:

New bottom alignment:

Current vertical carousel with center alignment:

New left alignment:

New right alignment:

The final change is support for a vertical wheel style carousel.

However, I would like some feedback on this part.

So this is building off of the rotation support that I added recently. The way that it works is that the logos default position is in the center of the carousel where the selected logo is rendered. They are then rotated outward. However, in order to get a good rotation, the rotationOrigin has to be set to what may seem an odd value.

Here is an example of what the theme xml looks like.

<carousel>
  <type>vertical_wheel</type>
  <logoCount>3</logoCount>
  <logoRotation>7.5</logoRotation>
  <logoRotationOrigin>-5 0.5</logoRotationOrigin>
</carousel>

The logoRotationOrigin x value is -5. Below is a diagram that shows roughly how the rotation works (it is not to scale). The value of -5 is the radius of the circle about which the logos are rotated. I am not really sure if there is a way to make this configuration more intuitive. The other potential issue is that if you were to increase the logoCount, you wouldn't actually see anymore logos without first decreasing the logoRotation.

Code is available on github

A Windows build is available for download here

Hex

@jdrassa This is amazing. I have a question. Is there a way to move the carousel on the right side if needed? [Vertical scroll]

jdrassa

@hex yes I just didn't bother to move it for the screenshot. You can place it anywhere.

lilbud

A couple questions

Is the origin definable?
Are the only options for alignment top middle and bottom?

mattrixk

@jdrassa said in Carousel Enhancements:

Origin support for carousel

Thank you thank you thank you. This is something I asked for back when Zigurana was first working on the custom carousel stuff. Now you can have all the logos along the bottom and have the active logo sit above the rest (because of it's increased size).

Regarding the wheel carousel, I think it's fine as it is. That image with the circle explains it perfectly. It's just going to take some trial and error for a theme creator to get the wheel just how they want it.

ruckage

@jdrassa

Fantastic update, thanks for fixing that bug with the vertical carousel as well. Your explanation for the wheel carousel makes sense to me, as long as that info is made available to theme creators I don't think it will cause anyone any problem.

I'll try and give this a test later, and I'll also give your last update with the image/text rotation a proper test as well. (Sorry I haven't been able to test it properly sooner - I've had a hectic week).

Omnija

this looks great, with the new wheel methods. I can see theme maker make use of it for hypderspin a like themes.

jdrassa

@lilbud what other alignment options would you like to see?

herb_fargus

@omnija can't stand hyperspin. But I'm sure other people will probably like it.

paffley

wow amazing! great work! @jdrassa

Is this feature going to be merged ?

ruckage

@herb_fargus

Just curious, what is it about hyperspin that you dislike? I've never really used it myself but I always thought it looked cool.

lilbud

@jdrassa Actually, never mind the alignment thing. (I was half asleep when mentioning that and I'm not even sure why in the first place.)

But could you show some examples of the origin support?

Capeman

@ruckage I don't like hyperspin either. Everytime the screen changes it's a whole different UI experience and you have to reorient both your eyes and thought process. It's an ADD kid's nightmare.

It's kind of fun for about 30 seconds, but when you have a big library of games, jumping slowly though those menus while all that crap loads on screen is just an exercise in annoyance. Give me the simplicity of EmulationStation anytime.

jdrassa

@lilbud origin support is for the positioning of the carousel as a whole and it works pretty much the same as it does for images. The main advantage is ease of placement.

For example here is the default positioning for the carousel.

<carousel name="systemcarousel">
	<size>1 0.2325</size>
	<pos>0 0.38375</pos>
</carousel>

Here it is using origin.

<carousel name="systemcarousel">
	<size>1 0.2325</size>
	<pos>0 0.5</pos>
	<origin>0 0.5</origin>
</carousel>

paffley

@jdrassa will this be merged into the official repo?

lilbud

@jdrassa So, origin for the carousel will decide which logo stands out?

jdrassa

@paffley that is the plan.

@lilbud origin just affects positioning of the carousel.

herb_fargus

@ruckage I don't want to derail this thread and take away from the hard work our friend is doing but to put it simply hyperspin reeks of everything I hate about the emulation community: greed, wanting full sets of everything complete with all videos, packaging it all up for a profit and a bunch of yokels on YouTube bastardising all our hard work by perpetuating these builds all the while slowly killing the project they are profiting off of.

twd

@herb_fargus Hit the nail on the head...... Fanatical Clapping

ruckage

@herb_fargus
Thanks for the reply. So it's more the Hyperspin community you dislike than the software itself?
I'm sure there are bad elements but my limited experience with members there was positive with people being helpful and polite (I've uploaded a few image packs there in the past). I guess there will always be bad apples in any community and people taking advantage (especially as the community grows). Sadly, as we know, it happens with Retropie as well - the number of ebay auctions profiting from it and people on youtube gaining masses of subs/views by providing 'fully loaded images' is quite depressing at times and discourages people from contributing to the project.

Apologies @jdrasa for going off topic, it was just something I was really curious about as I had heard several people mention that they hated Hyperspin and I wanted to understand why.