let's improve ES docs

EctoOne

@meleu I understand, yet Creating your own theme is in the docs and they are part of ES aren't they? They are documented in the themes.md but not in the tutorial. And THB even I noticed that the themes.md exist and is kinda up to date just recently.
Anyway, I just wanted to point that out. Do what you want. :)

meleu

@ectoone Sorry, I didn't express myself well. I think the subjects you've listed are very valuable and need to be documented.

I was refering to this specific page of ES documentation, but I agree that I wasn't very clear. I'm going to edit the OP.

Thanks for pointing that. ;-)

Hex

@meleu Can we add developer comments eg. detailed documentation of feature workings so it becomes easier to maintain for others? I am interested in explaining how PS works and what must be handled by new features to get optimal behaviour.

meleu

@hex that would be really useful to increase ES longevity, IMHO. But I'm not sure if the ES wiki page is the best place to put this kind of info.

I believe that dev stuff should be at RetroPie's EmulationStation repo. Maybe a wiki on the repo with info for developers? Let's see what @BuZz think about it.

meleu

@pjft said in let's improve ES docs:

Please let me know where I can contribute

Well, I would like to know how I can add games to a custom collection after "finish editing 'my custom' collection" using ES interface only. Is there some way to do it? Or is it doable only by adding lines with rom paths to ~/.emulationstation/collections/custom-my custom.cfg?

pjft

@meleu You certainly can!

Edit collection:

Navigate to the games list of the collection you want to edit
Press "select" to open the Gamelist Menu
Choose "Add/Remove games to this game collection"

From there, you can now navigate in ES, and you can add or remove games from that collection by pressing "Y".

Finish editing collection:

In any games list, press "select" to open the Gamelist Menu
Choose the "Finish Editing Collection" entry

Notes:

You will also start editing a collection automatically when you create a new one.
You will stop editing the previously selected collection the moment you decide to start editing a new one.
If you stop editing all collections, the "Y" button will revert to the default function of editing the "Favorites" collection.

Does this help?

cyperghost

@meleu I think here is the thread you've asked for.

@pjft I think the manual method is really nice one and I recently talked to meleu that the custom-collections feature is one of the milestones done during ES development. But I think we should also talk about other ways to manage collections :) Thank you thank you thank you for this one

My outfindings are this, that if you share a collection and the file is missing, the concering ROM isn't displayed. So for a share of SNES-minicollection for ex. can be prepared if some other people will contribute their ROMSet and we merge all sets together into one file.

Because some naming conventions are just Super Mario Land.gb other is Super Mario Land [E].gbother is Super Mario Land (E).gb and so on ;)

For MAME-sets the exchange of custom collection will work much much better as the names are standarized in a kind of manner.

lilbud

@herb_fargus said in let's improve ES docs:

But yeah the ES themes are in various stages of disrepair, not sure if it's worth leaving in hopes someone updates them or if a culling is in order. Idk. Haven't been able to decide myself.

What if we combined the different versions of the same themes (Simple and Simple Dark for say) and create 1 theme with different layouts for the different versions, like the SNES Mini theme by @ruckage

meleu

@pjft I've added instructions about how to use custom collections to the ES wiki page. Can you check if it's fine and/or if there is something more to say?

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/EmulationStation#custom-collections

pjft

@meleu Thank you! I added a few bits and pieces, but you did the majority of the work - thank you!

I'll add the video screensaver to that page then in due time - thanks!

Zigurana

@lilbud that would become much easier once I get the time to finish up the theming refactoring activity I had started some months ago. Then you could create an infinite amount of views within a single theme, and not be limited to the fixed simple/detailed/video trio.

I'll see when I can get a chance to look at it again.

meleu

Changelog

I've added a link to a video showing how to scrape videos for ES video preview (it's actually in the Scraper page, no in the ES one):
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/Scraper#scraping-videos

jdrassa

@ectoone said in let's improve ES docs:

Missing things I noticed are related to theme creation.

Carousel Theming (including vertical wheel)

Variable Support

Default Theme Support

Default image Support

And there is the thing to disable the ES splashscreen by editing the es_settings.cfg (or whatever it's called). It's just a little tweak but still. I have to take a look later to find the exact line if needed.

I have started to document some of these here.

Hex

@jdrassa Shouldn't that be in the ES repo considering that only RetroPie/ES supports that type of themes?

EctoOne

@hex Well, it is under Advanced Configuration in the wiki, so it shows up under Emulation Station in the Docs. I'm not sure if it would do that if it was in the ES repo.