New Comic Book Theme!

Zenjiro

@sergio_mikkos Depending on the version of Emulationstation and how you have it setup in the gamelist.xml file. It can be several things.

I was able to reproduce the issue on my Raspberry Pi 2B, as well as on Jrassa's EmulationStation port for Windows. From what I can tell it is probably something to do with the new Z-indexing (Image Layering) As the image is present but the grayed out image is overlapping the colored image.

But this is might be an issue with Retropie's EmulationStation itself. As this behavior does not appear on fabricecaruso's EmulationStation.

sergio_mikkos

@Zenjiro Thanks!

In the stars I can appreciate a bit of the red color outlining the star, so I guess the problem is with the Z-indexing you said.

Is there any way to manually fix it?

And another question: I just saw that the theme is being updated by you (great work dude!) and now the last version is 3.2 Beta, how can I update the theme to this new version or download it from scratch (maybe from the Retropie Setup Menu)? Actually I am using the Comic Book Theme downloaded from the retropie setup menu which I guess is the original TMNT version.

Thanks!

Zenjiro

@sergio_mikkos If you are going to use my fork I recommend starting fresh or renaming it to something like comicbook_revived or anything other than the default. I moved several folders and images around so if you were to overwrite what you already have it will probably break something.

Best thing to do is to download it from my github page and manually add it to your themes directory.

As for fixing the overlay of the two images, I can poke around, but can't guarantee I can get it working. I am a very novice themer and have self taught myself several things during this project.

Zenjiro

@sergio_mikkos hahahahaha well... I fixed it

It was stupid simple to do.

I will update it to my fork, but it you want to do it manually, all you need to so is open the comic_book.xml in the text editor of your choice. (I use Notepad++) And edit the following:

From this:

<rating name="md_rating">
         <pos>0.87 0.66</pos>
         <size>0 0.038</size>
         <filledPath>./_assets/star_filled.png</filledPath>
	 <unfilledPath>./_assets/star_empty.png</unfilledPath>
        </rating>

To This:

<rating name="md_rating">
         <pos>0.87 0.66</pos>
         <size>0 0.038</size>
	 <unfilledPath>./_assets/star_empty.png</unfilledPath>
         <filledPath>./_assets/star_filled.png</filledPath>
        </rating>

What is happening is that when it is applying the images on the screen it first applies the star_filled.png then the star_empty.png, which causes the overlap. So the edit just changes the order of apply the empty star image first, then the filled one.

sergio_mikkos

@Zenjiro great dude!! :D

I will download it and install it as soon as you update your fork :)

Thanks!!

Zenjiro

@sergio_mikkos It has already been updated. The version naming I am using is subjective. I will typically create a new branch if I am experimenting with new features. The latest is 3.2-Beta2 and small tweaks like the one you pointed out will simply be added whenever I make a push to the repo, and if anyone else finds small graphical errors I will do the same, and make adjustments to the images.

The reason it is Beta is because I made so many changes/alterations that there might be some small issues here and there, as well as possible compatibility issues with older devices, but overall it is complete in its current form.

Zenjiro

Currently in-between jobs, so I have some more spare time to pump out a few more themes here and there.

Wish she got a spot in Super Smash Bros Ultimate.

Zenjiro

My personal goal is to create one theme per day, until all the tickets I've created for myself have been completed.

Here is todays:

Zenjiro

Today we have Devil May Cry:

smartazz104

These updates are looking great, but has anyone noticed that the border.svg file reduces the fps by about 15 in the main menu?

Zenjiro

@smartazz104 Can you give me some more info:

System Platform (Windows, RetroPie, Batocera)
Resolution of Screen (4K, 1080, 720, 480)
Hardware you are running (RaspberryPi, Windows PC, etc)

From what I understand with SVG files; is that while they are great for auto-upscaling based on the output resolution, they can be taxing on lower end hardware, such as the RaspberryPi. Which is why I converted most of my images to PNG as they have a fixed resource consumption with the trade off of not looking all that good on higher end screens (4k and 1080p).

smartazz104

@Zenjiro said in New Comic Book Theme!:

@smartazz104 Can you give me some more info:

I'm running Retropie on a RPi 3B+ @ 1080P. I did find that commenting out the section that displays the border.svg fixes the issue basically.

Zenjiro

F-Zero for today's theme:

Zenjiro

Today I created a theme for Indie Games:

salor10

@Zenjiro i love it. Which are the indi games, i'm only know cave story.....🤨🤨🤨

mitu

@salor10 Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Cuphead, Journey. 3 left that I don't recognize.

Zenjiro

They are as follows from Top Left to Right: Cave Story, Shovel Knight, Undertale, Hollow Knight, Journey, Hyperlight Drifter, and Cuphead.

salor10

@mitu said in New Comic Book Theme!:

Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Cuphead, Journey. 3 left that I d

GREAT!!!!

Crush

Glad i came over here, cause the version that can be installed from within Retropie has its ratings broken since the Pi4

Perhaps it'd be a good idea to include @Zenjiro updated version to the Retropie theme installer.

Zenjiro

I've played around with the idea of adding in background music for each system, or at least offering the ability to do so. The issue is, is that Retropie does not support .ogg natively within their version of EmulationStation. It does support .wav files for making sounds which is why this theme has the cursor ticking noise and launch sounds when launching into a game. But even if I convert files to .wav it will greatly bloat the size of theme. (Example: 40sec music clip is 680KB in .ogg but same clip is 6.82MB as a .wav)

I've been successful in adding background music, but with the caveat that you will need to use the Batocera EmulationStaion, which means not all features will work in Retropie, and possibly break existing sound elements within the theme, but will work completely in Batocera. Does anyone have any knowledge on the subject matter of adding background music natively into themes?