Updated EmulationStation for Windows

CarissaIsWierd

I'm also interested in having a link to the theme you build ;-)

Hmm, am I allowed to share it if it's a mod of another theme (spaceoddity)? It also has optional assets from even more themes and edited artwork I've found elsewhere. All I've kept the same is the carousel view (for the most part.) It's so pretty though @_@..

I found "gridtile.overlay" in one of your edited themes, but I can't get the game title to appear on top of it, even using zIndex. I'm trying to add a shadow image (which barely shades just the bottom) from the Kodi screenshot I shared, so I can position the title at the bottom and have it clearly readable without glowColor. Example of it underneath the overlay.

duiz

Is there a way to set screenscraper to only search for games with missing metadata? TheGamesDB is down for the forseeable future and when updating games it makes me rescrape every game.

LiveFreeDead

@duiz It actually has in the Scrapers Filter (top option when you pick Scrape Now), the reason it scrapes all games instead of ones without media is either it doesn't have a description for the game, you have Scrape Ratings enabled or you use a different tool to scrape the existing Meta Data - I found if I use Skraper that if I then use EmulationStation to re-scrape over the top, it would get ALL the games again regardless of the filter choice and place the new meta data (screen shots, videos) in the current ROMS\Images, ROMS\Videos sub folders, once they were placed there it would skip existing properly.

Hope this helps.

f.caruso

@CarissaIsWierd

I found "gridtile.overlay" in one of your edited themes, but I can't get the game title to appear on top of it

Overlay as its names says displays over others components. I have no zIndex management in gridview child components.
The shadow can be realized using imagegrid.padding ( which can take 4 values, left/top/right/bottom ) & using the background as a ninepatch using gridtile.backgroundImage with a gridtile.backgroundCornerSize (where values have to be >= 1 to define shadow + border size in px )

EDIT : The padding was only a 2 value. I extended it to accept 4 values & tested it - you'll have to download the latest build. See what it looks like using a png with the shadow & <padding>4 4 14 14</padding><backgroundCornerSize>32 32</backgroundCornerSize>

@duiz Yes, see the "only missing medias" option. "The reason it scrapes all games" is that the only way to know which medias you are missing is to ask the server its list of medias. As the option name says : Using this option, only missing medias are downloaded.

CarissaIsWierd

@f-caruso That's all a bit confusing to me. Can you paste it as working code, or edit one of your themes?

f.caruso

@CarissaIsWierd

<gridtile name="default">
      <backgroundImage>./art/tileshadow.png</backgroundImage>
      <padding>4 4 14 14</padding>           
      <backgroundCornerSize>32 32</backgroundCornerSize>     
</gridtile>

using this image:

CarissaIsWierd

@f-caruso

I tried that in Carbon and it appears underneath the game image. In my theme, it just distorts the game image a little.

<view name="grid">

	<imagegrid name="gamegrid">
	    <imageSource>image</imageSource>
	    <autoLayout>3 3</autoLayout>
	    <autoLayoutSelectedZoom>1</autoLayoutSelectedZoom>
	    <animateSelection>false</animateSelection>
	    <pos>.05 .05</pos>
	    <size>.9 .9</size>
	    <margin>.005 .005</margin>
	</imagegrid>

	<gridtile name="default, selected">
	    <selectionMode>image</selectionMode>
	    <imageSizeMode>minSize</imageSizeMode>
	    <backgroundCornerSize>.01</backgroundCornerSize>
	    <backgroundColor>ffffff00</backgroundColor>
	    <imageColor>ffffff</imageColor>
	    <padding>8 8</padding>
	</gridtile>

	<gridtile name="selected">
	    <backgroundColor>ffffff</backgroundColor>
	</gridtile>

	<image name="gridtile.image">
	    <roundCorners>.01</roundCorners>
	</image>

</view>

That's mine, with some unnecessary stuff removed. An overlay (or something similar) with zIndex seems simpler though :x

f.caruso

@CarissaIsWierd There's no other possibility to draw a shadow.
Overlay applies on the image rect only and can't render"outside".

Anyway, it works fine using your xml & changing :

 <padding>8 8 18 18</padding>           
 <backgroundCornerSize>32 32</backgroundCornerSize>

( <padding>4 4 14 14</padding> works fine also, just it does small borders )
Also the image I provided needs image roundCorners at 0.06, & it renders gray as it is gray inside.

But maybe I didn't understand what you are trying to achieve...
You are trying to add a shadow under the tile ? right ?

CarissaIsWierd

This post is deleted!

LiveFreeDead

@f-caruso I noticed a few weird issues you might be able to have a look in to:

Softening of the window/theme elements is applied when you run ;
set HOME=%~dp0
start "" emulationstation.exe --resolution 1280 720 --windowed

but if you try and just run it without being in windowed mode (running EmulationStation.exe) it doesn't soften the window at all, even makes the fonts jagged and hard to read, it would be good to have this optional, but I would rather it always soften than have jagged edges for non screenshot elements. I also noticed if I run "emulationstation.exe --resolution 1920 1080" without the "--windowed" switch it will fill the screen and be softened how I like - maybe there is already a switch for making it full screen bun to full screen? I tried "--resolution 0 0" but that failed to even run.

2.Once you pick a item, if the Description text is bigger than can be shown it starts scrolling the text up after only 200ms or something, I feel this should either be optional or at least increased to 1 or 2 seconds, nobody could read a line of text before it scrolls IMO.

3.The clock is displayed as 24 hour and not available as am/pm 12h, I'd prefer the latter as it matches my windows OS clock's defaults.

4.Video's for a game will repeat until the screen saver becomes active, it would be nice to be able to set how many times it loops and or, make it possible to add a delay in seconds between each loop (unless you change items of course).

I mainly care about issue 1, but listed the other ideas while at it.

CarissaIsWierd

@f-caruso Oof, so it was a misunderstanding. No, I wanted a shadow image underneath the game title, not the tile.

f.caruso

@LiveFreeDead

Try "--fullscreen" in the command line. I changed the default mode to fullscreenwindowed, because exclusive fullscreen can create problems (expecially when not hiding when running a game).
I didn't change default timings.
Interesting...
I know, I'm thinking about a theme property to handle that...

@CarissaIsWierd A shadow image underneath the game title ??? What kind of shadow ? On the text, on the image ??? I don't understand what you want...

jero

@f-caruso Well every time this has better things. There could be settings for the videos that appear without making the animation. In other words, an adjustment for on off and maybe put some more animation.

Another thing I do not know if it is already possible to play background music and sounds when moving and selecting the carousel.

Another idea would be a bootscreen video, when you start ES.

Finally, about the padtokey. there is a possibility that it is something within ES without having to be outside of ES. You plan to make a github of padtokey. I think it is a fundamental part of ES in windows, but I understand that everything is done as long as it is to back up as well and that Padtokey makes no sense in retropie. Scheme padtokey is amazing when it works. It would be incredible to be part of It is also that with padtokey could also be used as a mouse also for retro games that are tactile or have 3D gameplay.

For example, the padtokey doesn't work for me now, it's because of a problem with windows. Because if I change it from hdd it works for me I don't know how to solve it, if some place to delete a file or registry so that it works again

As always, thank you for your work.

CarissaIsWierd

@f-caruso Nevermind! I've been updating from inside ES and even though it seems like it's been working, it apparently hasn't. I downloaded directly from github and your new changes are appearing for me now, along with "Gridview : text, marquee, favorite & overlay can now be zOrdered", which is what I wanted. There must be a bug in the updater you added.

f.caruso

@jero said in Updated EmulationStation for Windows:

settings for the videos that appear without making the animation

Supported in theming, using video.effect ( none, bump, size, slideRight )

play background music and sounds when moving and selecting the carousel.

Supported for theming, using <sound><path> in system view (for music) & carousel.scrollSound for scrolling sound.

Bootscreen video, when you start ES

I don't agree. It's not ES responsability. It's the launcher / script role.

Padtokey [...] without having to be outside of ES.

I don't agree. It's not ES responsability.
I know, I shall do a configuration UI & a testing tool for the launcher, but I don't have time for this.

@CarissaIsWierd

There must be a bug in the updater you added.

Yeah, I made a terrible mistake in the auto updater code between Nov 21 and fixed it Nov 26. Versions installed in this range need a manual update, sorry....

ThePlagueIsBack

@f-caruso Fabrice, when I launch games using the retroarch core genesis_plus_gx_libretro the frontend stays in front
and Retroarch in the background, requiring me to do alt + tab on the keyboard to switch over, that does not happen
on other platforms that use a different form, it always does not happen on the "regular" emulationstation build and jrassa's
build, although on their builds it's rather ugly how it opens up a terminal window to launch the emulator (windows pc).

Anyways, the issue does not happen when I switch over to another MS/GS/GG core named "picodrive_libretro", it behaves
as expected keeping ES in the background and Retroarch on top without alt+tab.

I know this seems to be an issue with genesis_plus_gx_libretro but I'm just wondering if you would know of any trick or special
setting to get over this foreground/background issue launching this libretro core or if there is anything code wise that can be
done if not a big deal for you to give it a look.

Thanks a lot.

f.caruso

@ThePlagueIsBack Absolutely no idea... Especilally if it happens with one core & not the others. Try to launch ES with --fullscreen command line argument to go exclusive fullscreen maybe it can help in this case.. . If is does not, try enable "hide when launch" option.... if it does not... mmm I don't know...

LiveFreeDead

@f-caruso The --fullscreen method scales from a much smaller resolution, would it be possible to make it set the resolution to the used screen numbers current resolution if no --resolution is supplied? this would not have the scale issue if enabled. Thanks

-EDIT-

I just did some more testing, if I set my High DPI screen to scale 125%, it looks poor when the window is active but looks fine if I click off it (or alt tab out), as soon as the window is active again with 125% DPI it goes blocky again. But if I set DPI to 100% it works perfect if the windows is active or not. I can improve the results if I use --resolution 1920 1080, but if I make the resolution the same as my desktop res it loses the extra 25% scaling size amount of ES on the screen (ES is too big due to it upscaling)... So I am not sure how you could fix this now I know it's related to multiple causes.

https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/issues/378

Link takes you to the issue affecting a few other people, seems manually changing the DPI scaling back to 100% is the only way to fix it... I have a QHD screen, so that isn't going to happen :(

ThePlagueIsBack

@LiveFreeDead , Just a few thoughts, have you tried these approaches?

Tool: shorturl.at/uyQY6
Batch:

REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v DpiScalingVer /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00001018 /f
REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v Win8DpiScaling /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000001 /f
REG ADD "HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop" /v LogPixels /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000078 /f

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-change-high-dpi-settings-classic-apps-windows-10-april-2018-update (System (Enhanced))

LiveFreeDead

@ThePlagueIsBack I tried all the options and nothing seems to fix it except setting the DPI Scaling back to 100% from the default 125%

Here is an example taken with a phone as ANY and all video and/or screen capture software does not capture the issue, it is perfect for them:
https://i.imgur.com/Ajt4EZb.jpg

The only difference between the first and second photo is the first one had me click the start key on my keyboard to make it inactive (or click desktop of my 2nd screen) and the second image is when I click ES and make it the active Application.

I have tried disabling my second screen with all the tips and tricks also, it's such a weird little issue.

-EDIT-

I've also played with nVidia Control Panel, nothing is making any difference, apart from changing any DPI Scaling to 100%, which makes my OS unusable (small) and I can't change it from command line. Not sure it'll be something fixable, but perhaps if others can reproduce the issue it has more possibilities of being fixed one day.