Old TV Theme Idea
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I was bored after my kids went to bed and threw this together in photoshop.
Would anyone be interested in using this if i build the theme files? I'd likely only put together files for the popular consoles and a couple handhelds, maybe an arcade cab if somebody has a nice high rez straight-on view they would like to share.
Looking at video preview inside the tv, the scanlines are 1/10 opacity png overlay.
Feedback welcome.
Vector Artist, Designer and Maker of Stuff: Laser Cut Atari / Pixel Theme Bartop
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Very nice! I think it would make a fantastic theme.
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@Capeman That looks really good. Would you use a different TV for each system, to kind of fit in with the years they were around? So Playstation would have a newer TV than NES, etc.
Edit:
Another option might be to put the wheel art/game logo in place of the system logo, then have the system logo on theTV somewhere, or above the gamelist. -
I know you can pull box art with 'md_image', i'm guessing 'md_video' will likely pull the video snap (i can figure that one out), but do you know what md tag i would use for game titles/wheel logos?
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@mattrixk Waiiit a minute, i think i just answered my own question. Im guessing it's the tag you associate it with inside the gamelist.xml for each system right?
<image> in gamelist.xml is pulled by 'md_image' in the theme.xml
<video> in gamelist.xml would be 'md_video'so in theory i could make anything work like this
<logo> would be 'md_logo'
<marquee> would be 'md_marquee'
<sprite> would be 'md_sprite' (if i wanted to make a little mario or mega man standing on top the tv, for example)I could pull like 10 elements per game if all of the tags exist in the gamelist. Obviously none of my custom variables could be scraped, but i do everything manually anyway.
Im i right on that one or is there a list of set variables somewhere? This is my first theme, but i have a really good understanding of this kind of coding syntax and layout since i do this kind of stuff for web layout at my 9 to 5.
Vector Artist, Designer and Maker of Stuff: Laser Cut Atari / Pixel Theme Bartop
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@Capeman Originally it was just the <image> tag along with all the metadata. Now with the new Video Preview functionality it also includes new <video> and <marquee> tags, but that's it.
It would be great if we could just add in whatever tags we want to the gamelist (<fanart>, <screenshot>, <logo>, etc) but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. You would need a programmer to change the way ES works to get that to happen.
When I mentioned putting the logo artwork in, I was thinking about making a MIX image with the Universal XML Scraper. You could set it up to scrape the video into the <video> tag, screenshot into the <image> tag and then scrape the boxart and logo into a single MIX image into the <marquee> tag.
Also: Web Developers unite!
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Dude this looks great. I am running a Pi Zero in an NES cart, so it probably couldnt handle this theme but this would be perfect for my next Pi3 build Great look man!
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Have you checked out @Nismo theme, very similar
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@Roxsteady you should be able to handle this just fine with a pi zero
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@__Scannigan__ that's a pretty cool theme, I'll make sure to make mine different enough to not repeat efforts
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OK, here's a question.
I'm thinking of using the marquee tag to add a small sprite character from the current game on the bottom right of the tv... Will ES theming support animated gifs if loaded with the marquee tag? It would be cool to load the megaman walk cycle or simon belmont whipping in the corner.
Vector Artist, Designer and Maker of Stuff: Laser Cut Atari / Pixel Theme Bartop
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Thats VERY nice! keep going!!!
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Looking forward to your theme!
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@Capeman I don't know, but my gut says probably not. Would you want the same sprite for every game in a system, or a different sprite for each game?
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@mattrixk I was thinking of using the marquee tag to load a custom one per game, it'd take a while to make them, but it would be cool looking when done. Also some games could have still PNGs instead.
Vector Artist, Designer and Maker of Stuff: Laser Cut Atari / Pixel Theme Bartop
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@Capeman Hmm. It's an interesting idea, but I don't know how well it would work in practice. You would have to create an image for each game, then add the <marquee> tag for each game to your gamelist.xml for each system. Then if someone else wanted to use your theme, they would also need to manually add each <marquee> tag to each game for each system. It's a lot of work, both for you and for whoever wants to use your theme.
An idea: You could have a couple of sprites as part of the background image (the TV and desk and what-not) for each system. Eg: for the NES you could have an old TV sitting on the desk, with Mario on top of the TV jumping up and breaking a block, while Samus and MegaMan are having a shootout on the table in front of the TV and some Ninja Turtles are climbing down the side.
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@Capeman ES doesn't support animated gifs.
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@Capeman this is sort of similar to Old Room Theme that Nismo is working on.
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/8019/oldroom-theme-w-i-p-media-packs
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@mattrixk Wheel art/marquees images are pretty easy to find online. I've been collecting those for all of my roms along with boxart and video previews. It's been a bit of work but having it all change for each game looks awesome.
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@HurricaneFan Yup. I'm making a new theme with video support and I've created custom MIX and Scrape profiles for UXS that scrape videos and screenshots, but also scrape boxart, media art (cartridges), and wheels/logos and MIX them into a single image. It then creates the gamelist.xml with all the metadata and adds the videos into the <video> tag, the screenshots into the <image> tag and the MIX image into the <marquee> tag. It's awesome, but it's not ready yet. Still quite a bit of work to do making images for each system.
Also, @screech has recently done a major update to UXS and I haven't had a chance to see if the new version will still play nice with my new Profiles or if I'll have to update them.
I'm tempted to give a sneak peek, but I don't want to derail someone else's thread. It seems rude.
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