Random loading splash screens, info, etc

NIGHTKILLER05

Hi guys, I have a couple of questiosn for you, the experts in the matter:

ES version: V2.9.6RP
Raspberry Pi4 8GB

1 - It is possible to have a folder with, let's say, 50 different loading screens and when I load a game the system will choose one of them to show in a random fashion, instead the actual behavior (to show this only image /opt/retropie/configs/system_name/launching.png). If not, it would be possible to me to learn how to program this in ES?.

2 - It is possible to show information about the game (like the game's name, year, manufacturer, genre, rating) in the bottom of the loading screen? If not, it would be possible to me to learn how to program this in ES?.

3 - I want to show a particular loading screen for a new system called "famicom" that it is not in the default es_systems.cfg" I took famicom disk system section of that file, clone it and made some changes:

<system>
<name>famicom</name>
<fullname>Famicom</fullname>
<path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/famicom</path>
<extension>.7z .nes .fds .zip .7Z .NES .FDS .ZIP</extension>
<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 SYS fds %ROM%</command>
<platform>famicom</platform>
<theme>famicom</theme>
</system>
<system>
<name>fds</name>
<fullname>Famicom Disk System</fullname>
<path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/fds</path>
<extension>.7z .nes .fds .zip .7Z .NES .FDS .ZIP</extension>
<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 SYS fds %ROM%</command>
<platform>fds</platform>
<theme>fds</theme>
</system>

Everything is fine, exept for the splash loading screen, it is the same that "fds" system, I made a folder with an image inside "/opt/retropie/configs/famicom/launching.png" without any success, help me please.

mitu

Not out of the box, but I think you can leverage the onstart scripts to run your script before the launch screen starts (runcommand-onstart.sh) and choose a random image from a list, then link it to the default launching image for the system. See the docs.
You can add the game's info to the launching image or (more difficult) create a dynamic image based on the game's data, using imagemagick from a script that will read the game's metadata from EmulationStation's gamelist.xml file. Similar to 1, the script can be run from the onstart runcommand script.
runcommand still thinks it's running on the fds system, since you didn't change the launching command:

...
<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 SYS fds %ROM%</command>
...

Change this to

<command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 SYS famicom %ROM%</command>

then create the /opt/retropie/configs/famicom folder and copy the emulators.cfg file from /opt/retropie/configs/fds to it.

EDIT: corrected the runcommand launch command, thanks for the heads-up @sleve_mcdichael .

sleve_mcdichael

@mitu said:

... fds ...

Change this to

... fds ...

I think you mean change this to famicom

NIGHTKILLER05

@mitu Thank you! I will try that, by the way I created te missing folders and It works flawlessly,

¿do yo have an example of a "random thing/image to show" as a starting point? I am kinda new with programming, I only used bash a few years ago.

mitu

To get a random file from a list of files, you can use the same approach as the splashscreen command, using the shuf command:

file=$(find "/path/to/images" -maxdepth 1 -type f  | shuf -n1)
# link $file to system's `launching.png`.
ln -sf "$file" "path_to_launch_image/launching.png"