Video Preview in EmulationStation

Nismo

@fieldofcows thanks for all. I'll try to answer all your questions.

First of all, yes i think is not the best forum to post the launcher for windows version, but already a lot of themers use that version for testing their themes so... don't know what to do. Unfortunately official forums are totally break because thousand post of spam. Thank you for your permission.

Ok let's go, you said:

2. Saved image and marquee paths are not relative
You are wrong, problem is with video and marquee.

- you are using a variable named %HOME%. I'm guessing you've set this to "P:". Instead, leave the trailing backslash off and I think it will solve that problem.

If i change %HOME% to "P:" then it's not portable, in other computer doesn't load videos and marquees, but images working.

- you can work around the relative path issue by using the ~ character to make it relative to the home directory. So instead of "./Videos/..." set the path to "~/.emulationstation/roms/Sega32x/Videos/.."

I always use the ~ character in all the paths (see code above, my script does it automatically), sometimes emulationstation stores the path ./Videos/ and sometimes full path, i need to reproduce this but don't know how.

The most interesting thing is that <image> path is never touched by ES, so I wonder why it writes video and marquees. The <image> tag it's working perfect.

Whould be nice if you can take a look at image tag code, and try to make video and marquees tag code uses the same behaviour than already written image tag code. (Don't know if it's possible).

Thanks for your help, i did a lot of working in the theme, i will upload the new theme tomorrow.

Regards.

fieldofcows

@robertybob said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

@fieldofcows Would it be a huge undertaking to get it Pi-compatible?

Hi. No, I developed this for the Pi from the beginning, always making sure it worked well on that platform. The reason it has been Windows-centric over the last few weeks is because @Nismo has been kind enough to work in parallel on excellent theme using video (something I couldn't possibly do - I have no artistic talent!) and @Nismo uses Windows.

I posted a video above of it working on the Pi and just need to either post a binary or instructions on how to install it.

fieldofcows

@Nismo said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

@fieldofcows thanks for all. I'll try to answer all your questions.

2. Saved image and marquee paths are not relative
You are wrong, problem is with video and marquee.

Yes, sorry. I meant video and marquee.

- you are using a variable named %HOME%. I'm guessing you've set this to "P:". Instead, leave the trailing backslash off and I think it will solve that problem.

If i change %HOME% to "P:" then it's not portable, in other computer doesn't load videos and marquees, but images working.

Ok, so looking through the code I cannot see where image is behaving differently to video and marquee. This is only true as of beta 6. Before that marquees and paths would have been changed on metadata save.

I've tried reproducing this but on my system the paths consistently work without problem. I haven't tried setting up so the .emulationstation directory is the root of a volume though (like on p: in your case). I'll try that out and if it causes the problem then I'll fix.

One thing I did notice is that I am treating videos and marquees as separate metadata "types". Although consistent with the image metadata type there is no reason why they shouldn't all share the same type which would mean they are guaranteed to be handled consistently.

I seem to remember a problem I had with VLC and paths where the default path handling in ES didn't work with VLC. Maybe there is an issue around there somewhere...

Oh, I wish I had more time for this!

Nismo

@fieldofcows Thank you very much for your support, I know you have a test version installed on windows, try like me, a gamelist with a few games and write path like me:

~/.emulationstation/videos/
~/.emulationstation/marquees/

Then start ES in portable mode and play one or two games in the gamelist.

Close ES and take a look at gamelist, maybe the games you played didn't change but the other games yes.

Thanks for your patience.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Ok here we go with a new update. I did a lot of fixes and improvements, so i don't remember all.

Oldroom 1.5:

Fixed neo geo tv borders not in their place.
Fixed scanlines displaying on top of tv borders.
Rearrange files and paths to reduce theme size and more organized.
Tweaked scanlines.
Now you can select a few scanlines intensity, go to oldroom/art/ and rename scanlines you want to use to "scanlines.png". Rename to "noscanlines.png" if you don't like scanlines.
Now all video options are in main file oldroom.xml inside oldroom folder, you can tweak it there for all systems.
I did modifications in all themes backgrounds and added some reflections missing.
All images optimized.
Now the theme has more systems and half size (from 18mb to 5.92mb 720p version, 8.64mb 1080p version).
Added zxspectrum, sega mastersystem, sony PSX, Nintendo 64.
Added snes almost finished (i only need to do the emty 3d box here).
Added Sega CD system wip (this theme need some work).
Now oldroom theme come in two sizes, 1080p and 720p - Rpi optimized.
I don't remember XD.

WARNING:

Now this theme has more than 10 system so it can cause white screen of death, i can't test because i don't have Rpi so be careful.

@fieldofcows maybe you can test this because you are the only one at this moment that has a Rpi build of beta 6.

White screen of death info here: https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/themes#white-screen-of-death

If you have a white screen you solve by doing some of these:

Switch your theme to any Carbon, Pixel, Eudora, Turtle-Pi, or Canela variant.
Remove some systems.
Increase your GPU/CPU split

Download

oldroom theme 1080p: http://www.mediafire.com/file/0d73b4ae5t9kbg3/Oldroom+1.5+-+1080p.zip

oldroom theme 720p (Recommended for Rpi): http://www.mediafire.com/file/bz4g76bj4axds36/Oldroom_1.5_-_720p.zip

Both of them includes fix for 800x600.

Video preview:

Enjoy!!.

fieldofcows

@Nismo That looks absolutely fantastic! I'll try it on the Pi shortly.

I've spent a while trying to reproduce your metadata problem and it doesn't matter what I do I cannot make it save absolute paths. It works correctly every time. Are you definitely using the latest version? I'm not quite sure what to do about this if I cannot reproduce it. :(

By mapping my P: drive to the root folder of ES I can get the double backslash when launching games though. That should be easy to fix.

Nismo

@fieldofcows I'll try to do some test to reproduce the problem but i'm a very bit busy with the theme.

If you fix the double backslash whould be very good for me because I can use other emulators.

One little request: set default sound when switching between systems.

There's some way that i can send to you private messages? I want to send you some files for testing.

Edit: I'll download beta 6 again, maybe i'm confused and using and old version, i was changing versions while testing bugs.

fieldofcows

@Nismo My email is roy.hopkins@ then my retropie user name dot com.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Thanks. I redownload beta 6 for testing, and seems relative paths working good now, maybe i was confused and using beta 5, sorry so much i'm so clueless.

I'm really sorry.

fieldofcows

@Nismo No worries. I've just made a change to the metadata handling to store the original path from the gamelist file along with the resolved path in order to be able to write it back out without modification. I'll keep it on standby for the time being and if you encounter any more problems with paths I can test it then commit it. It will use a bit more memory to store the extra paths but I doubt that's a problem.

Nismo

@fieldofcows Ok, thank you very much, i don't like my mistakes. I'm preparing one file to send to you later to your mail (maybe in a hour or so).

My email is jos75x so if you see some message is from me.

fieldofcows

@Nismo said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

set default sound when switching between system

I don't quite understand what you mean by this. Do you want to be able to define a sound that plays when you scroll through the systems on the system view? Or when you perform a system switch when viewing a system? If so, where do you want the sound to be defined?

Nismo

@fieldofcows something like this on system view:

<view name="system">
	
        <systemSound>./art/system.wav</systemSound>
</view>

I want to hear a click sound or something when switch systems in system view, i whould like when you perform a system switch when viewing a system too, but maybe that is more complicated.

Nismo

@fieldofcows mail sended, sorry for the delay.

cyrax3

even a different music for each system would be a good idea

robertybob

@cyrax3 Doesn't Recalbox do something like that?

Zigurana

It does exactly that. Background music is a themable element, wich can differ per system.

cyrax3

recalbox have this feauture...but i'm on windows and there isn't

Nismo

@cyrax3 said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

even a different music for each system would be a good idea

Yes but if you doesn't use videos, will be a chaos if you hear the background music and video snap music of each game at same time.

cyrax3

@Nismo said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

@cyrax3 said in Video Preview in EmulationStation:

even a different music for each system would be a good idea

Yes but if you doesn't use videos, will be a chaos if you hear the background music and video snap music of each game at same time.

i refer to the first menu when emulationstation launches, the system menu not the selection roms menu...good idea is navigate on system menu with backgroud music of each system (es. nes with a mario music theme, master system with sonic music theme) and when you chose a system stop the music backround and go to a selection rom menu with a video snap...i hope my english is good i'm italian