Video Preview in EmulationStation

robertybob

Should things like Delay and whether a snapshot be shown if no video, be held in the main es_config file?

fieldofcows

@robertybob Good question. What if you want different configurations for different systems though?

fieldofcows

@Nismo I see your point about checking the file system and not just the gamelist. I'll make that change.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Thanks! Good change.

Nismo

@fieldofcows I have notice a little issue introduced in beta 4, nothing important, when you are on gamelist and keep pressing down (press and hold), the gamelist doesn't go down like before, you need to press down for every game. I've tested beta 3 and it's working there.

I want to share more updated oldroom theme tomorrow. And of course keep the ball rolling...

fieldofcows

@Nismo Thanks Nismo. I spotted this one at the weekend and have already committed a fix for it. I've also committed a fix for testing if the video file is there when choosing whether to show the default video.

I tried running it on the Raspberry Pi at the weekend. Although it worked it crashed a number of times while scrolling through the game list. It turns out that one of the libraries used to display the video seems to be a bit buggy regarding scaling the video and causes some memory corruption. I've fixed this issue by rendering the video without scaling and using OpenGL to scale it to the screen. This is most likely far more efficient anyway as long as your videos are not too high resolution. This fix has also been committed.

It now runs beautifully on the rPi. I am using your theme and it looks absolutely fantastic! The rPi3 doesn't seem to have any issue rendering the videos or preview images (I've configured my copy of the theme to show previews). I'll grab a video when I get a chance. I have a couple of issues with the theme but I'll put those in a separate post.

I've also added a couple of extra parameters to the <video> tag which you can safely ignore for now. They are for maintaining the aspect ratio of the video by putting either black bars along the sides or top and bottom, or instead of black bars it can extend the edges of the video. They were already in the code in an experimental state so I've just added tags for them to be configured. The default settings work as before.

enigma7

This looks great. Any instructions on how to build for RPi? Or a precompiled version? I wish this was in the experimental section.

tronkyfran

Awesome work! thinking about themes...could this eventually lead to have animated backgrounds on the system selection screen? On windows with more vram at least...?=

Nismo

Updated Oldroom theme.

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/file/14l1t3ppn3h6k3c/oldroom_1.2.zip

Requirements:

For use with EmulationStation with video support. (@fieldofcows fork)
For Console games your images must be 3d boxes.
For arcade games your images must be screenshots, not mixes images (recommended, not needed).
For console games use "marquees" folder to place wheel art.

systems

Atari 2600
Nintendo Nes
Sega Genesis
Sega Megadrive
Sega 32x
Neo Geo
Mame

Video preview:

Enjoy!

Nismo

Quick update: Changes in gamelist colors for better view the selected game.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/29bk3mdmmq76rcc/oldroom_1.2.1.zip

Rion

@Nismo That theme looks great! How many systems can you have before the infamous "white screen of death"?

Btw are you planing to add more systems?

Nismo

Yes, i'll add more systems, n64 , psx, sega CD, and master system are almost finished.

About the "white screen of death" I never hear about it but I use windows version, maybe that problem is only on Rpi.

Regards.

fieldofcows

@Nismo Thanks for all your hard work with this theme. If it wasn't for you working with me on the visuals side I probably wouldn't have got to where we were with ES. Really appreciated. It looks fantastic.

If there is a "white screen of death" problem with this theme on the RPi then that will be the next thing I work on.

Is there anything else you need from ES for your theme? Any little improvements? If not, I will concentrate on working out how to share a RPi build of this version of ES. This is a pi forum after all!

Nismo

@fieldofcows The hard part is in your side, this fork needed a theme if people want to enjoy! XD. I only contribute to this project how I can.

You did a great and fast work with emulationstation, and yes I have some ideas for theming, like sound for select,cancel, and sound when switching systems, and maybe add a flag in es_settings .cfg for a intro video whould be nice, of course an intro video that you can skip by pressing a button.

But I think most important thing is to fix remaining bugs before add more things. I whould like to try your beta 5 with your latest fixes, and i whould like to see the damm "save metadata" relative path fixed too (if possible).

It's a nice idea to provide an Rpi version so people can test more bugs.

And I'm very curious about your issues with the theme, please tell me if I can help with that. And please download the latest version: http://www.mediafire.com/file/29bk3mdmmq76rcc/oldroom_1.2.1.zip

Regards.

fieldofcows

@Nismo I find the software part easy whereas I cannot make a good looking theme to save my life! Different people; different skills.

Regarding the issues and enhancements - are you able to log these as issues in github on my fork? I'm not sure if I need to give permission or not.

Do you think you should announce your theme in the "Projects and Themes" section?

Regarding the issues. They are more of a wishlist for my personal preference:

I haven't tried it yet but I think you've already addressed this - on my RPi screen I cannot see the highlight on the selected game in the game list
For my MAME games I have quite a detailed description for each game. It would be nice to include this on the view but I can see that most people wouldn't want it - and there's not much room :)
The simulated scan lines don't work when they are scaled onto my 800x600 RPi screen.

That's it.

Nismo

@fieldofcows I'll try to add the issues on github.

Of course i'll post the theme in the right section when finished.

About 1 point. I already did some changes for better visibility in the last release, but i'll try some changes to see if I can do it better without losing the theme essence.

About point 2. Yes I like the description too, but I don't know where to place it, I'll experiment and try to add it in some free space, but not too much space.

About point 3. I have no idea why the scanlines doesn't work when scaled, it's only a transparency png, try renamig scanlines.png to another name inside oldroom>"nameofthesystem">art folder and see if you notice some difference, maybe you don't notice scanlines because of low resolution.

Regards.

Nismo

@fieldofcows I was thinking a lot and I think the best way to implement description in theme is to place it in the same space than gamelist, so I did this:

https://postimg.org/image/qho4yfer5/

But I discovered an issue introduced on beta 4, description autoscroll is not working on video view, it works in detailed view. I have tested old releases and it's working, till beta 3.

I'll try to add this issue and relative path issue on github later.

Please tell me what do you think about placing description under gamelist. And.. we need description scroll working to read full text...

What do you think about add a "Add as favourite" and "remove from favourites" (if already added) option for games when press select on a game? Favourites can be another system in theme, like nes, snes, favourites, etc. But the difficult thing it's to implement diferent systems in same gamelist.xml inside favourites folder...

It's only an idea for future releases. Please don't forget to tell me what you think about description under gamelist.

fieldofcows

@Nismo Yes that looks good. I think I've fixed the issue with autoscroll - it was the same problem that was causing the game list to not automatically scroll when holding the down button. I'll test it later just to make sure. I'll build you a Windows version a bit later with this and the other fixes I've already done.

I've just about finished implementing a video screensaver - something else I wanted in ES. You can now select between "Black", "Dim" and "Random Video". When the screensaver is activated it will scan the gamelists for a random game with video and start playing it. I've got some more testing to do but it's working and nearly there.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Very nice commit. I was thinking about the easiest way to implement favourites, and could be something like this:

Press select on a game and in "options" menu, you can insert another option "add to favourites" or "remove from favourites if already added (for no confusion).
For adding a game to favourites, emulationstation add the tag <favourite>1</favourite> in gamelist for that game, and <favourite>0</favourite> if you remove from favourites.
In the same "options" menu for a game (pressing select) , you can see "sort games by", that's the place where you can implement favourites, sort games by favourites, that way it's super easy and don't need a theme for favourites, it can work inside the system itself so no headaches for multiple systems in a game list.

What do you think?

Nismo

@fieldofcows Here you have a new update so you can test if description autoscroll it's working on video view in beta 5:

New update oldroom theme v 1.3:

Added description for games.
Added rating and last time played.
Added N64 system.
Some fixes on Sega 32x theme.
Fixed Atari 2600 logo on in video view.
Fixed Neo Geo logo in video view.

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/uzj8rrhmkz85zbz/oldroom+1.3.zip

Video preview: when next release.