New Comic Book Theme!

Zigurana · 20 Apr 2017, 14:55

Hi,
The current rendering of the different theme elements is rather dumb at this point.
Simply put; all elements are rendered always, and if they are unwanted, they are moved off-screen.

This is an old eye-sore, and I have been looking into fixing this, but that will be a while in coming.

pjft · 20 Apr 2017, 14:57

@Zigurana That's good enough for me. :)

TMNTturtlguy · 20 Apr 2017, 15:03

@Nismo Can you post a photo? I am not understanding what you mean by game logos? Do you have game logos listed as marquees in your gamelist?

I only have marquees for the arcade cabinet systems, so to try to recreate your issue i added marquees to my NES folder and added them to some of my NES games in my gameslist. I kept the theme as it is posted on github without the marquees in the video view. Everything on my end works as expected. No marquees showing up, no logos showing in the incorrect location, so i am unable to recreate what is happening to you. I absolutely believe you that there is an issue, i just can't seem to recreate it, and without being able to recreate it, i can't fix it!

I am also not clear on why a marquee must be included? I do not believe this to be true because if you look at a theme such as carbon, back before the video updates were added, marquee was not included in any of the views. I have an old copy of basic carbon saved and just checked to verify.

TMNTturtlguy · 20 Apr 2017, 15:06

@Zigurana has this always been the case? per my reponse to @Nismo, in an old copy of carbon i have before video was implemented I do not see any references to the marquee? I also can't seem to replicate the marquee issue on my build and I eliminated md_marquee from my theme. Thanks for your help!

TMNTturtlguy · 20 Apr 2017, 15:07

@pjft have you had a chance to download my newest updates? you might want to make a copy of the original download just in case. If you do download the new version, can you replicate what is happening to @Nismo ? Thanks

pjft · 20 Apr 2017, 15:12

@TMNTturtlguy From skimming through the code (which means I may likely be factually wrong), it may seem that Marquees are only rendered in the Video view of a theme.

I don't have marquees other than for arcade games, so I can't replicate it on my end if I try (unless I obviously use that gamelist in another system that supports .zip roms :) ).

But according to @Zigurana's confirmation - and, from my quick look at the code as well - it does seem that all elements for a specific view are always rendered, regardless of whether they are present in the theme. So, in the Video view, it seems that the fact that you remove a marquee does not in any way change things - you may have to explicitly place it outside of the 0-1 range, or make it size 0. Unsure what's the best practice, I'd defer to @Zigurana , @Nismo or any other person more knowledgeable about themes.

Sorry I can't detail further.

Nismo · 20 Apr 2017, 17:05

@TMNTturtlguy

Here you have a photo, to replicate it place 1 video and 1 logo for a console game:

Also the game box it's not centered...

TMNTturtlguy · 20 Apr 2017, 18:51

@Nismo Thank you! I was able to recreate the issue and i have come up with a fix. I have placed the marquee back in the main comic_book.xml with a size 0 0 and off the screen. I have kept the marquee in the individual system theme with the proper location. Now the theme.xml will override the comic_book.xml for arcade cabinet systems and there should not be conflicts with other home console systems.

Update Link v2.2

On another note, i do like your idea of having the game logo in the right hand box, unfortunately i don't have game logos for most of my games, and definitely not saved as marquee in my gamelist. I suspect a lot of users do not have this either. Great idea though, i do really think it will look nice.

The box art - this is a puzzeling issue for me. I noticed it on my game boy md_image scraped art. Here is what I have, most of my scraped art is a 3 or 4 image compilation from the universal xml scraper. I did this well before my knowledge of how to put together themes, and before video previews, so it looked really nice on the standard theme options. Now, i would like to show them like yours, but i have to re-scrape them for a lot of games/systems. The <maxSize> boundaries are set to the size of the gray box that the art goes into, so my 3 image art fits perfectly into the space, but my single image does display like yours. I am wondering if there is an alignment issue with the <maxSize> function. Does that function allow you to center the image in the maxSize or does it align it to the right? I have provided images of my issues as well. This did not happen with <size> They were always centered with <size> @pjft, since you are good at reading the code, would you mind looking into this to see if you can verify what might be happening? That would be great.

Lastly, i need to do some research on how to take screenshots from my pi! I know there is a way, just need to figure it out so i can stop these terrible phone pictures!

TMNTturtlguy · 20 Apr 2017, 18:54

@pjft Thanks, i was able to recreate the issue and fix it. I think that it should be easily removed from the video view at some point, but at least the work around is easy. I just had not clue it was an issue. Like you, i only have marquee for actual marquees from standup arcade cabinets, so it doesn't affect me. I do like how @Nismo game logo art would show up in that box though, that is a very nice touch to the theme! Unfortunately that would be a lot of work for most users to scrape game logos and update properly in their .xml files.

Nismo · 20 Apr 2017, 19:41

It's easy to add logos for console games and to update your gamelist. Take a look at my oldroom theme thread, you can find there logos and how to update your gamelist.

I still need to upload lot of system media, for sure..

pjft · 20 Apr 2017, 19:53

@TMNTturtlguy I would probably expect @Nismo to have some insight into how to center the image there. Maybe there's an alignment parameter?

I am happy to take a look at the image code tomorrow when I'm not on my phone, but I don't think it should be the case. I believe even carbon or the simple theme use max size for the images and they are centered.

Could you share the code for that image in the thread? Maybe it's something others would be able to spot?

TMNTturtlguy · 20 Apr 2017, 20:13

@pjft here is my code, it is from the theme.xml file.

        <image name="md_image">
		<pos>0.982 0.6</pos>
		<maxSize>0.127 0.149</maxSize>
		<origin>1 1</origin>
	</image>

as you can see in my screenshots in the earlier post, the larger images are centered correctly and if i increase their size, they spill out of the bounding box. I notice when i increase the max width, the image expands to the left, and the right side of the image stays in the same location. It does not expand to the left and right as i would expect it to if the image was centered.

@Nismo since you are very skilled in theme building, any ideas on what i might be able to do? how do your horizontal boxes show? do you have an snes or n64 boxes to show an example of?

pjft · 20 Apr 2017, 20:19

@TMNTturtlguy if I recall correctly, for it to be centered, origin must be 0.5 0.5. As it is you're anchoring it to the bottom right edge, I believe.

TMNTturtlguy · 20 Apr 2017, 20:46

@pjft ah ha - this has been my issue all along. I haven't downloaded the theme builder as I started this before that became available. My initial understanding that >1 1< was center of the screen overall and the position was based off of that. I did not think it was within each image box itself. I will have to give that a try later on tonight to see if it works! Thanks for the tip.

TMNTturtlguy · 21 Apr 2017, 01:02

@pjft sure enough, that was the issue. Thanks again

TMNTturtlguy · 21 Apr 2017, 01:04

@Nismo Thanks again for your testing and recommendations. Both issues are now resolved through my testing. I am posting updated versions. I believe your system is more advanced than other users, so i really appreciate the issues you are able to identify for me and help make this a much better theme!

TMNTturtlguy · 21 Apr 2017, 01:07

Update: Themes updated with more bug fixes. Thanks to @Nismo for all the testing and comments. Thanks to @Nismo and @pjft for all the help and trouble shooting.

16:9 Update Link: v2.2

4:3 Update Link: v0.2

Nismo · 21 Apr 2017, 05:23

@TMNTturtlguy @pjft

Sorry for the delay, I downloaded the latest version and all issues seems fixed.

I'm still thinking there's no need of two system logos... XD. I'll tweak the theme to display the game logo at top right... ;-)

The only issue I notice, it's the 3D Box for the game it's so small to appreciate any details...

I think you can still rush a little more the available space to make the images a little bigger.

TMNTturtlguy · 21 Apr 2017, 05:49

@Nismo no worries on the delay! I agree with you that the game logo will look nice on the top right, i just think that not many users have all of those logos downloaded and in their gamelist. I might modify my personal one as you are doing because it will look cool!

Nismo · 21 Apr 2017, 06:14

@TMNTturtlguy

I notice that the black lines on sega CD are not displaying correctly:

Also I modified md_image to make 3D box biggest as possible (both width and height) to appreciate more details.

Before:

After:

Code:

<image name="md_image">
	<pos>0.923 0.525</pos>
	<maxSize>0.155 0.195</maxSize>
	<origin>0.5 0.5</origin>
</image>

But since gamepads are usually wider, I think cuold be better if you can make the gamepad box less taller to increase 3D Box height size. Example of my desired size:

And as a request, I miss system logos for Game Gear, Master system, Sega 32X, Sega CD, SG-1000, 3DO, Atari 5200, Atari Lynx, Neo geo pocket, Neo Geo Pocket color, Turbografx 16, PC Engine, Zx spectrum, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST.

Thanks in advance...