New Comic Book Theme!

TMNTturtlguy · 30 Apr 2017, 20:27

@pjft thanks for the update. I will add the master system logo to my touch ups for my next release. As for the glget errors. How many systems are you running? Have you adjusted your vram up or down? Before this update I had to adjust my vram or I would get glget errors, but with this update I have been running smooth at 100. @modmaster also tested the build on his pi several times as we developed this so I am Interested to see what others experience.

pjft · 30 Apr 2017, 20:35

@TMNTturtlguy not a problem :)

I wouldn't worry too much about it, as it is certainly a problem with ES, and we should be fixing it anyway. It's just elusive!

I'm running a few systems but not too many - off the top of my head, maybe 20 or so?

Anyways, it happens more frequently after I launch a game and come back, for instance. Some of the backgrounds that were showing prior to that end up having a problem when loading.

My suspicion is that when loading the game and sending ES to the background, the memory manager might, if necessary, release some textures, and then when we reload we just can't find them in memory even though we assume it's there.

It's just an assumption, as I don't know a lot about that particular area of ES nor about memory management on Raspbian, so that's why I'd love to be able to consistently get ES into such a state, so that I could investigate properly and fix it.

Still, as I said, it's not a problem with your theme. This will likely happen to more themes especially as they start becoming more and more complex. :)

Syhles · 30 Apr 2017, 20:36

@TMNTturtlguy
I'll switch to this thread then lol.

I'm not sure what system you are writing the theme on but, I work on Ubuntu and you can open the xml in firefox and it will let your know if there is any syntax errors and where they are located if you're interested. You could post the theme with the new xml here for me and I could troubleshoot.

TMNTturtlguy · 30 Apr 2017, 20:43

@Syhles I am running on a pi3 install.

You can use the Comic_book.xml. You can see in there I have a line for the system info to have the shokapow text. I wanted to apply <backgroundcolor>Ffffff99<backgroundcolor> (sorry I am on my phone so I can't get it to type exactly right. When the background color is there, it breaks old ES installs. When you remove it, old installs just ignore the font type info. @modmaster tested this for me. I wanted to make this a feature, so I added the feature lines, still didn't work. We just deleted the background color, so the color is the standard grey, Es v2.1.6rp should have shokapow text and ES v2.1.5rp or before should see standard text.

Syhles · 30 Apr 2017, 21:00

@TMNTturtlguy
I'm pretty sure I fixed it but you would have to try it on an older es build as I don't have one also I had to move the help section of your system on comic.xml and move it to the theme.xml I'll post the code for you to test in a minute.

TMNTturtlguy · 30 Apr 2017, 21:16

@Syhles in the theme.xml? Really?

Syhles · 30 Apr 2017, 21:19

@TMNTturtlguy
You have one sitting right next to the comic_book.xml in the main folder.

TMNTturtlguy · 30 Apr 2017, 21:24

@Syhles yes, they do different things though...the one in the folder next to the comic_book.xml is just a generic of the .xml that are loaded into each system folder. The one next to comic_book.xml does not do anything.

Syhles · 30 Apr 2017, 21:26

@TMNTturtlguy
This code works on 2.1.6rp

This is what the system field on comic_book.xml should be left you extra code so you would have all the fields I know and more options for what you could do its commented out and you can delete it after you have it all set up like you want.

  <feature supported="carousel">
<view name="system">

	<carousel name="systemcarousel">
		<type>horizontal</type>
		<color>8d8d8d50</color>
		<logoScale>1.5</logoScale>
		<maxLogoCount>3</maxLogoCount>
	</carousel>

	<text name="systemInfo">
		<backgroundColor>8d8d8d50</backgroundColor>
		<color>000000</color>
		<fontPath>./art/Shaka_Pow.ttf</fontPath>
		<fontSize>0.035</fontSize>
	</text>

</view>
</feature>

Also any code that you want to work for the system screen on older versions of es need to have there own <view name="system"> so you'll need two <view name="system"> fields for your theme.

Edit: The forums broke my code aligment...... the feature fields have less tabs or spaces before them then the <view name="system">

TMNTturtlguy · 30 Apr 2017, 21:39

@Syhles thanks, this makes some sense now, I added the feature but not a second copy of the system info. I figured since the base files don't require any info, I wouldn't have to put a duplicate for the old versions of ES. I will test later and see if @modmaster can help test on his older version of ES.

Syhles · 30 Apr 2017, 21:50

@TMNTturtlguy
As far as I know using the <feature supported> is the same as commenting that section out for old versions of es anything inside that will be invisible to old es, so if you want to have shaka-pow as the help font you'll either need to add system to one of the the views that already have the help code or add another <view name="system">.

Also if I optimized your code and made it simplier, would you use it?
Because no offense you could simplify some of the code and merge sections of it to make it easier to work on without losing how it looks or functions.

I'd be more the glad to help out and do it, I just don't want spend the time if you for sure aren't interested in it.

Love the theme by the way, the only reason I didn't already have it was because I was waiting until it was more done, been following the thread since it started.

TMNTturtlguy · 30 Apr 2017, 22:02

@Syhles thanks! Appreciate the kind words.

What do you have in mind as far as simplifying? This was my first theme and I started it before the theme helpers were available. The .xml was based on carbon, so I just worked from that.

As long as the theme looks and functions the same I will definetly use it if it simplifies things some.

dizmodawg · 30 Apr 2017, 22:10

How do i add this to retropie i tried winscp but in home pi there is no .enulatiostation folder and inside that is suppose to be a themes folder. I am using retropie 4.2

Syhles · 1 May 2017, 00:19

@TMNTturtlguy
It's a nice theme it deserves compliments.

As far as the simplifying goes, I was just going for example the help section is currently in three different places in the theme and I'm pretty sure the code is identical in each place it's just one is in the system section, one is in the basic section, the detailed and video section share the last one.

I was going to merge the help into only one instance instead of three and just generally tidy things up.

dizmodawg · 1 May 2017, 00:02

Ok i turned on show hidden files and it works but where do i place the game videos at?

TMNTturtlguy · 1 May 2017, 00:16

@dizmodawg there should be a folder within .emulationstation named themes. If there is not a folder named themes, create this folder and place the theme within that folder.

TMNTturtlguy · 1 May 2017, 00:19

@Syhles Sure, if it is not to much work and the theme looks the same that would be great! I am side tracked right now, I was backing up my current build to my computer so i could make some new changes to it, and when i put it back into the pi, it wouldn't boot. Put it back into the computer and it says it is write protected.....spent the last 2 hours trying to salvage the card, i was finally able to break the write protection and reformat, but now it errors out about 2 minutes into writing an image to it....Not to happy tonight.

Syhles · 1 May 2017, 00:29

@TMNTturtlguy
After your next theme update happens I'll try and clean it up a little. In case there is any XML changes.

I enjoy editing theme xmls, wrote my own theme from scratch, it was enjoyable can't release it though...

Ubuntu keeps breaking micro SD cards on, not sure what it's issue is.

But, I'm more then happy to try and clean your theme coding up, and I won't change how it looks.

TMNTturtlguy · 1 May 2017, 00:54

@Syhles now the SD card question is....my computer has a completed .img file of my current build, the SD card back into the pi and it wouldn't read it. What broke it? When i get a new SD card do I attempt to put my recent backup on it and see if it boots? or do i go with the previous backup and loose about a days worth of setup?

Syhles · 5 Jan 2017, 02:32

@TMNTturtlguy
I'm not sure what would've broke it. I'm not even sure why Ubuntu broke SD cards on me, I went through 2-3 spare small SD cards I had that Ubuntu was breaking when I tried to move files on them, and each instance of Ubuntu breaking them they were moving different files.

Depends on how tight you are on money I guess, if I had the money I would risk breaking another SD card so I wouldn't have to redo work. If I didn't have the money I'd just use my previous backup and redo the work. It's sort of a catch 22, damned if you do, damned if you don't.