EmulationStation Toolkit - Theme Making Helper - Update
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Yeah, I don't know a thing about HTML or any of this crap. I find it very frustrating tbh. Put me into Cisco IOS and Redhat and I can work with that like a champ. I had been building a theme in an older version of the toolkit so now am starting over with the new features and can't seem to get anything to work they way that I want it to. I have walked through that tutorial however with these new changes it appears that document is not completely serviceable anymore?
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@fnkngrv I've been meaning to update the tutorial, but as it took me a couple of months to initially write the thing, I just haven't found the time to add in all the new info.
On that note though, the tutorial is far from out of date. Yes, it's missing how to add Video Support and Custom Carousels, but you don't need them to make a theme. They are just fancy extras that you can add if you want to*.
* Granted, there are some things that should be done differently if you wanted to make your theme Video compatible from the start, but they aren't major.
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I am not meaning to throw stones. I have to develop help documents and tutorials for end users on a regular basis. They are definitely time consuming for sure. The tutorial is very thorough, but I am just terrible apparently at put it all together to be able to understand for example how to leverage it against those new features. As you know everyone wants the latest and greatest. I have ideas in my head that I am not being successful at implementing so I can share them with the community.
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Does this support Z-Index?
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@Jaxel not yet.
@mattrixk I just pushed an updated windows build to github.
https://github.com/jrassa/EmulationStation/releases/tag/2.2.2.220Get latest build of EmulationStation for Windows here
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@fnkngrv Is there anything specific you are getting stuck on? If you follow the tutorial from the beginning, is there a point you get to that just kind of stops you cold? Like a "WTF is this talking about?" moment? Or is it more just over-all hard to follow?
@jdrassa I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but I did realise something: the base Toolkit doesn't actually contain any version of ES, but the Release that @herb_fargus put together does. We'll have to get him to put another release together (because I don't know how).
I also want to test the BaseVid theme with your new release to make sure the z-index stuff doesn't bork anything within the theme (it probably won't but I need to test it anyway). I may need to test the included Carbon theme too.
There's also some other stuff I want to add/change in the Toolkit, like updating the UXS profiles to work with the latest versions of UXS, and I also want to make it so each of the systems has 3 gamelists (one each for Basic, Detailed and Video Views), and slightly reshuffle how the all the media is laid out. All of these things take time, and I'd want to get them done before putting out another release.
I also need to update the tutorial at some point with all the new goodies.
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@mattrixk for the time being it should be simple enough for the user to swap out the ES binary our friend @jdrassa provided. May also need a few dlls if the dependencies changed (like for omx, but VLC should be the default for windows anyhow)
But yes if people are using the toolkit it only makes sense for the docs and other resources to match the latest binary. I don't have a whole lot of free time currently as life is a bit hectic for me right now but hopefully people can make do in the mean time
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@mattrixk I used your toolset this weekend ;) and nothing to say, it's great to test theme and to create them (and MIX too ;) Great thanks to you and @herb_fargus for this.
Just one thing can be done (I think) what you do for the 100 fake roms over 5 systems must (I think) be done for "every" system existing in Retropie (and why not Recalbox ^^) ... So create a theme is very easier to test every system 1 by 1 ;)
Not so much time right now (and I have UXS to debug :S ) but I think i will do it at least for recalbox :p
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@screech I think time is the main factor for most of us, as we mainly seem to just do this all as a hobby.
Another stumbling block with adding extra systems (other than just how long they take to set up) is the sheer size they take up. 5 systems comes out to about 25MB without the videos, with an extra 43MB added for 4 systems worth of videos. I'm not sure how much Github would let me get away with, but I doubt most people would want to download a GB of stuff just to get the Toolkit.
I suppose I could make a streamlined version that just had 1 or 2 roms per system, with a really small test video instead of actual gameplay videos. Maybe add it as a supplemental Repo like the ES Toolkit Videos repo... Something to think about anyway.
I'm glad you like it. I love using UXS, and have a blast creating Mix and Scrape profiles. I've been playing with the v2 stuff lately, so I have some new profiles to add the Toolkit after some more testing. I'm having some issues though that I'll tell you about on your thread when I get the chance.
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I'm aware of the last issue on UXS :( (I'm on it ;) )
The idea maybe to have a "common" media folder ?
Exemple : 1 or 2 Screenshot, 1 or 2 marquee, 1 or 2 Video,....
And each gamelist.xml done with "common path" to these media ;)
For rom, It's only a matter of 0K file 1 or 2 by system ;)So it will be very "light" and we can "test" every system with fake info ^^
And if we want "real" info and media on these fake rom, we "just" have to Scrape them ;) -
I wanted to do some updates on my theme and lost track of the latest ES development.
I still use jsdrassa's older release with video support. Now the latest is 2.1.9RP? which contains the swap between views feature that I would like to have on windows too.
I got his latest 32bit release but that throws me some .dll missing error.
Any other, working version out there? -
@FlyingTomahawk I'm currently using a Windows build of the Kids Mod by @Zigurana, but I'm having trouble finding it, so this is a link to his Favourites Filter mod that I was using before that.
I haven't had a chance to play with @jdrassa's latest Z-index build yet.
Edit: Found it. I think it's actually older than the Fav Filter, so it may not have the new filter stuff in there. Arrgh, so many mods, I keep losing track of them. I have no idea which one I'm currently using. I have at least 4 that I use for different testing at different times. I need to clean house.
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Heya @mattrixk i'm in the progress of setting up gamelists for all suported systems with the method @screech mentioned in another thread (using the same images/video for all entrys to keep the amount of used data small). I will need to take a look on your current files to make sure i'll get everything covered. When i'm done i can upload it if you're interested.
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@EctoOne So it would just be a stock gamelist, where each <game> entry just links to a single image? I'm not sure I have it right in my head (and let's be honest here, there isn't much right in there at the best of times).
Can you maybe upload a sample to pastebin or similar so I can see what you mean?
What are you using for rom stand-ins? Are they just renamed.txt files?
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@mattrixk
Yes, i'm using blank txt files, 40 for each system. I'm going to use white images for either portrait,landscape or square covers. For some games i will also use some really long names and descriptions (so that is better to adjust a theme to those).
I will follow the es_systems.cfg and start with 3DO and use the gamenames as some sort of guide to what its about. Then i will do some systems with just images and some with videos (well a single video that is). I just finished creating all the fake roms so i don't have anything to show yet. -
@EctoOne That's pretty cool. Adding extra systems to the Toolkit has been requested, so it's on the to-do list, but my plate is pretty full so I don't know when I would get to it.
I was just planning on adding 1 or 2 roms to each system, with a simple image/video. I was thinking of making it so each system had 3 gamelists (basic, detailed, video) so the user can just switch between them.
You are more than welcome to do what you plan on and I can roll them into the Toolkit when I get a chance. Either you can email me a zip of everything, or do a PR on Github (I don't really know how they work though).
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@mattrixk I just made 40 games just to have a long gamelist as well (i messed up my theme a couple of times because the lack of roms gave me a wrong impression).
And with the latest version you don't need to make multiple gamelists anymore, you can switch between the views if you want. Although i just noticed that the windows version freezes when you switch to videoview without having videos in the gamelist.
Anyways, i finished the 3DO gamelist and will do the rest tomorrow, should be a quick thing to do. Just some copy and paste and replace the suffix in the gamelists.Edit:
Ok, i made it a little easier for myself and just used detailed gamelists for 4 systems. The other ones only contain some fake roms so that they will show up in the systemview.
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3DO supports Videoview
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Amiga has Square Images (DetailedView)
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Atari 2600 has Landscape Images (DetailedView)
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Atari ST has Portrait Images (DetailedView)
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All other gamelists are empty (BasicView)
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These infos are also the names of the Roms in those system (Kind of a Build-in Guide)
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Theres also one very long Gamename in those lists
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And they also have a SubFolder with 1 (Fake)Rom inside
Still need to add all Ports but it's already 6.30 am. Time to catch some Zs
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@mattrixk Question, the point of this is just to make themecreation easier right?
I mean ES doesn't need to be able to actually run the games. If so, i even can save a lot more work by editing the es_system.cfg (which i need to do anyway to let every system appear in ES) to make 4-5 real systems with different gamelist variations and point all other systems to the same folder with just 1 fake rom and an empty gamelist. It even would be possible to only make one complete system and while creating the theme have the user switch between the views via the ES option. -
@EctoOne That's a really interesting idea. I'll have to try that out. If it works it will really cut down on the amount of resources (images, videos) that the Toolkit needs.
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@mattrixk It does work, i have some more systems to add and then i can upload my rom folder with the modified ed_system.cfg. Will do it in a few hours, busy right now.
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