Input needed: ES theming improvements

mattrixk

@FlyingTomahawk Yeah. My Pi is more of a media box than a game centre (I have dual boot Kodi/RetroPie, but it spends 98% of the time on Kodi). It barely leaves my lounge room. I want to get a second Pi to set up on my computer desk for tinkering/testing/playing, but I don't have the funds for it at the moment.

The only time I really get to work on anything RetroPie related is on my lunch break at work, and occasionally in the evening after everyone else has gone to bed (and at that point it's choice between "work" on something RetroPie related, play a game (Path of Exile at the moment) or sleep. Sleep wins a lot.

Zigurana

@mattrixk @FlyingTomahawk
I agree fully.
To add to that, I did not take the time to create another thread for these developments on the carousel specifically. That leads to these kinds of mega threads where it is difficult to find stuff, never mind figuring out the status of each branch / repository. That is mostly on me, and I will try to anticipate and do better next time.

jdrassa

@Zigurana I sent you a pull request.

Zigurana

@jdrassa yep, saw that, testing as we speak.

MWGemini

@mattrixk You have my email. Send me your address and I will ship you a Pi for development and testing.

mattrixk

You know those times when you naively think you will have some free time over the weekend? Yeah... I didn't.

@MWGemini I'm torn between my modesty saying "No, I can't accept that" and my greed saying "Yes, give me free stuff", but either way the generosity of the gesture is overwhelming.

Zigurana

Update time, (getting there, I think).
Changelog:

Merged in the PR from @jdrassa, (thanks!) so now we have awesome carousels that can fill only part of the screen.
Tweaked the default values a bit more (opacity of the infobox)
Added support for the fading in/out of the infobox background color.

Windows build here, or get it from the repo.

Note to @jdrassa: I made a mess off the git commits while pulling in your PR, do you think it would be better to do an (interactive) rebase and squash a lot of my small commits into a few bigger ones? That will make it easier for the RetroPie core-team to assess the PR to master for this. I'll try to preserve your commit as is.

mattrixk

@Zigurana I'm loving this more and more. I'll check it out in my lunch break.

mattrixk

@Zigurana I've just started playing with it, but I've noticed something (but it's a little hard to explain): the logos in the carousel don't stay positioned within the carousel.

<pos>0 0.5</pos>
<size>0.5 0.250</size>
<color>FFFFFF80</color>

This will give you a half-width white box against the left of the screen. Unfortunately the logos within the carousel still act like the carousel is in the middle of the screen, rather than the middle of the white box, like this:
Imgur
This is with Gameboy active

It still tries to show only the correct number of systems at the correct size. It works fine if all you want to do is limit the width of the carousel (as I want to do), but it doesn't if you want to move the shorter carousel left or right (or if you want to move a vertical carousel up or down).

FlyingTomahawk

@mattrixk

Sorry for this offtopic question.
I was just wondering did you open a thread for your new theme already?
Is it available already on github?
Looking for a theme for my Pi Zero, currently working on simplebigart to match the scraped images from UXMLS.
I would love to have a go at it.

mattrixk

@FlyingTomahawk A very very basic v0.1-alpha version is on github, but it only has 5 systems set up and is more of a placeholder than anything else. I'm still creating the console images, and I've decided to do the logos differently, so that is taking time. I've also written some specific UXS Scrape and MIX Profiles to get the cool images and videos, but they aren't in the github repo yet as they need more testing. I also haven't tested them with the latest UXS, which is pretty major update.

Basically I don't mind anyone seeing it, but it won't be much use due to the lack of systems. I'll make a post for it once it's ready, but it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would.

FlyingTomahawk

@mattrixk

I see... so I'm a bit too early.
Would love to see a thread for it with a title like Indent Theme (WIP) then I could bookmark it and stay up to date. :)
The UXMLS stuff is awesome. The large MIX images are basically a theme already, you just need to add the gamelist, metadata and a system logo and you're done.
Not sure why people want video preview though I personally go so quick through my gamelist it would not have time enough to even start the video. lol
Anyways, please stay on it if time allows it. Looking forward to it.

jdrassa

@Zigurana I'm sure the RetroPie team would prefer it to be squashed down to a single commit. Feel free to squash my commits as well.

jdrassa

@Zigurana I have a fix for the issue that @mattrixk reported a couple posts up. If you haven't fixed it yourself, I can create another PR if you like.

Zigurana

@jdrassa that would be great! Just create a PR, and I'll merge it in.
Thanks!

nevsan

Are there any plans for creating gamelists by adding games while you browse? I little like a favourites option but where you can generate a list the add any games from any system.

This would be a game changer for me. I'd love to easily be able to create say, a CAPCOM (company) list or an OUTRUN (game) list.

Not sure how feasible this is, but I thought I'd ask :)

Awesome work though fellas

Zigurana

@mattrixk , @jdrassa ,
So that last bug is gone now as well, I can successfully place a partial horizontal or vertical carousel element anywhere on the screen and given a reasonable xml, it will render as expected.

You can download this latest version HERE for windows users, or get it from the repo.

This version is hopefully the final one for now, so if anyone can find some bugs, please let me know. Also i'd like to hear from people who have tried this on their Pi, as I haven't yet. If anyone can comment on performance or other glitches, please let me know. I do not expect much, but what do I know?

In a week or so, I'll squash the twenty or so commits, and create a pull request for the RetroPie core-team to consider in the main branch.

And a final screenshot:
alt text

mattrixk

@Zigurana Love your work. I'll test it during my lunch break and let you know.

mattrixk

@Zigurana This works great! Well done mate.

Notes:

I can only find one small issue. The pop-in of the right logo is gone, unless you set the carousel to display more systems than you have. I have 5 systems and have no pop-in if the carousel is set to 5 or fewer, but if I set it to 6 or more, then the right-hand logo will pop-in. Not a major problem, and relatively easily fixed for anyone that runs into it (just set fewer systems).
<forceUppercase> doesn't work on <text name="systemInfo">, but it also doesn't break the theme if it's used.
<alignment> does work on <text name="systemInfo">and that makes me happy.

Requests:

I'm curious how hard it would be to change the alignment of the logos... At the moment, all the logos are aligned along the center-line of the carousel. I wonder how hard it would be to give them the ability to align to the top or bottom of the carousel, then we could have them running along the top/bottom of the screen and have the active logo higher/lower than the rest. Just thinking out loud.
It would be great if we could use the <alignment> tag on the <helpsystem name="help"> element. It would make it a bit more versatile.

Again, love your work!

lilbud

@mattrixk I can only think of maybe 5 themes that could do something extraordinary with a themeable carousel. I got nothing. Thoughts?