Game List and Gif ideas (ES)

paffley

While its fresh in my mind also..... I'm looking at the element of the gamelist structure and that es obviously reads the metadata of the gamelist.xml on output - what would the option be of it reading '<image>./path-to-box-art/Game_Title.png</image>' rather than the actual <name>Game_Title</name> from the gamelist.xml.

Just a thought...

Just seen your post while i was typing this......I will, ill have a look at the system carousel and its options and the possibilities.

Thanks @Zigurana

lilbud

@zigurana @paffley Okay, just skimmed over this thread and had some ideas.

Only focus on box art
Single row

Having the theme maker decide which would work for their theme would be best in my mind. But if a theme doesn't support a boxart carousel, then ES will fall back to a simple text list. Maybe using that thing you were talking about a few months ago @Zigurana where if a theme doesn't have a certain element, ES will just not display it.

Also, if a gamelist carousel is made, then we would need support for "MD_Title"

Here is what I was thinking

paffley

Nice input @lilbud my thoughts exactly.

paffley

<carousel name="gamelistcarousel">
<type>horizontal</type>
<pos>0.5 0.5</pos>
<size>1 0.90</size>
<color>FFFFFF00</color>
<ImageScale>1.06</ImageScale>
<ImageSize>0.19 0.35</ImageSize>
<maxImageCount>5</maxImageCount>
</carousel>

Pretty much the same as the system carousel, can you think of anything else that could be added for the above?

I'm guessing we would need a maxSize for the box art rather than the ImageSize.

paffley

@lilbud why the reason to have: Also, if a gamelist carousel is made, then we would need support for "MD_Title"

Could this not stay the same as people may still want to have a title list also when theming? Just a thought.

If one line for the game title was required as the image above, theme the '<textlist name="gamelist">' as <size>0.76 0.08</size> or to suit.

paffley

@Zigurana Am I correct in thinking a gamelist carousel would be a completely separate class/element all together rather than replacing an existing element? More of like an option to themers?

lilbud

@paffley well, if we have a carousel that shows only the box art. I think it would be good to also have the 'md_title' so that you could be able to tell which game is what. Or if you have a special name for it, it will show.

Also, I just think that 'md_title' would be a good addition to ES as a whole.

paffley

@lilbud I totally agree that a md_title would be a good option but I'm believing the gamelist carousel is going to be a separate class than to the <textlist name="gamelist"> therefore it is still optional to display the game title name within the theme if set to 0.08 in height, think of it as the same method as the md_players etc.

But.....like I say and totally agree with you, any new addition to the md_ family is always a great option! :)

Keep em flowing :D

paffley

This post is deleted!

paffley

It wouldn't let me upload a pic :|

lilbud

@paffley said in Game List and Gif ideas (ES):

Keep em flowing :D

Oh, you want ideas for new ES additions? I'll get back to you once I eat breakfast, got a long list. :)

paffley

@lilbud said in Game List and Gif ideas (ES):

@paffley said in Game List and Gif ideas (ES):

Keep em flowing :D

Oh, you want ideas for new ES additions? I'll get back to you once I eat breakfast, got a long list. :)

haha I like it! :D...lets see if your list is as big as mine *high5

lilbud

@paffley okay, got some ideas.

Bilinear scaling for boxart - the scaling of box art looks awful with nearest neighbor. Maybe bilinear would make the boxart look better scaled.
ES element scaling - there are a few themes that have very specific positions for certain elements. They have to be designed at certain resolutions and will not work at others. I was wondering if ES could be modified to scale elements to any resolution.
This is more for when a image carousel is made, but maybe we can have the option to use the marquee as the image on the carousel.

And now some ideas going forward towards 3.0.0

Videos on the system view
the obvious plug for gridview.

RichardBr

@lilbud This looks nice, but yeah would be great if you add the title of the game in, like clicking on the game and the title also appears. I didn't read the below posts so I'm not sure you fixed this already. If so, don't worry about my comment :)

paffley

@lilbud

Videos on the system view

Thumbs up

EctoOne

@lilbud said in Game List and Gif ideas (ES):

This is more for when a image carousel is made, but maybe we can have the option to use the marquee as the image on the carousel.

I like that. I recently did a full reinstall of my system and while doing that I rescraped all images and this time I separated them all in different subfolders while using the same filename (without suffix). With that I'm able to change what image I want to use as marquee (or boxart) by simply search/replace the folder in my gamelists.
But I wish there was something like <imagetype>boxart|marquee|screenshot (whenever we get that added to the gamelist)</imagetype>.

Edit: I meant that i can change my image type by renaming the folders directly and not that i have to edit my gamelists.
And i also want that <imagetype>tag for md_video so that we can select which image should be shown when using showSnapshotDelay.

paffley

@Zigurana The more I'm thinking of this, the more I'm swaying towards @lilbud 's idea of using the md_marquee as the carousel. This would then give the option to display boxart also and optional title name.

Whats your thoughts?

EctoOne

I would prefer boxart images as the carousel and to get md_name as optional element, because I asked for md_name for some reason i can't remember before.

But now that i think of it, the option to set which type of image we want to use is important. Because if someone wants to use marquees as carousel and edits the gamelists to have md_image to show marquees instead of boxart and vise versa, it would (maybe) break some themes that uses the delay thing for videos. It then would display the marquee as well before starting the videos and the boxart can be also look weird when it's shown by using md_marquee.

For someone like me, that wouldn't be a big problem, because i use my personal theme. But even if i wanted to test other themes they might look weird, just because of the way i've set up my gamelist (i already have that problem by using screenshots as marquees).

Zigurana

From the programming side of things, this is not really an issue, you want to have a carousel element where the theme definition sets the source of images.
Now the real question is: do you want to enable your end-users to set the source, or should it be locked in the theme (requiring changes to the xml to change the source).

paffley

@ectoone said in Game List and Gif ideas (ES):

I would prefer boxart images as the carousel and to get md_name as optional element, because I asked for md_name for some reason i can't remember before.

But now that i think of it, the option to set which type of image we want to use is important. Because if someone wants to use marquees as carousel and edits the gamelists to have md_image to show marquees instead of boxart and vise versa, it would (maybe) break some themes that uses the delay thing for videos. It then would display the marquee as well before starting the videos and the boxart can be also look weird when it's shown by using md_marquee.

For someone like me, that wouldn't be a big problem, because i use my personal theme. But even if i wanted to test other themes they might look weird, just because of the way i've set up my gamelist (i already have that problem by using screenshots as marquees).

Very good points there @EctoOne