[Theme Changes] Attention Theme Makers: Upcoming Game Collections in ES

HurricaneFan

@capeman https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3979/edited-game-rom-metadata-not-being-saved

Screenshots on where in Emulationstation are in the link above.

Capeman

@hurricanefan AH! YES this fixed saving favories, im not sure why i had it off.

Now my only problem left is that the "Favorites" menu on the carousel disappears every time i restart emulationstation. Do i need to add something to es_systems.cfg? I use a custom one of those also, so i might have something missing. Any ideas? Thanks guys!

HurricaneFan

@capeman If you use a custom es_systems.cfg, I think you might need to add it to your custom file.

Capeman

If anybody could pop open their es_systems.cfg file and post the system entries for the 3 auto-xxxxx systems (if they even exist), i would appreciate it very much.

HurricaneFan

@capeman If you SSH into your pi, you can find them yourself.

The original es_systems.cfg that your custom one is overriding is located here: /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg

Capeman

@hurricanefan Actually... not on mine. I was stupid a while back and updated the es_systems.cfg in the /etc/ folder using root access instead of duplicating it and adding it to the user folder where i should have... Sooo yeah, oops... no original to reference.

HurricaneFan

@capeman I don't actually see any new systems show up in the default file. This might all be meta data based from the gamelist files only.

Capeman

Weird... i wonder why my collections keeps disappearing from the carousel on restart... There must be something I'm missing.

HurricaneFan

@capeman After you turn that setting off from earlier. Mark a game as favorite and then shutdown emulationstation to save the data. Then restart the pi. Is it still a favorite?

Capeman

The favorites are saving in the meta fine after i switched on the save-meta on exit function.

The problem I'm having is i have to re-enable the "favorites" collection to make it appear on the carousel every time i restart my pi - which is why i was wondering if i was missing an es_systems.cfg entry or something along those lines.

TMNTturtlguy

@capeman @HurricaneFan can I suggest you guys start a new thread for this? This thread is intended for themes/thememakers development of themes for the new changes. A. New topic with appropriate title will also help get more views and potential fixes/explanations for the problem. Thanks!

Capeman

No worries and sorry bout that, I just solved the issue in the past few minutes (bad es_settings.cfg file). No more out of me, til i post my completed Favorites Logo.

Capeman

I think this looks pretty rad! I use the simple theme with the blurred bkg's as a basis for my default theme so i blurred the pixel collage, but i still have the sharp version saved. If anyone wants the logo or image, let me know.

mediamogul

@capeman

I think this looks pretty rad!

Rad indeed sir. It's always nice to see these things come together. To that end, I believe I finally have a solution to 'All Games' that I'm satisfied with. I also thought my 'Collections' logo was a little sparse an could use some color, so I used Starlord's ship decor from 'Guardians of the Galaxy' as inspiration and added a boss sticker.

alt text

cyperghost

@Capeman
Is your theme intended to update the "simple"-theme? Do you think you can fork and update this? This was the first stock theme in ES

@mediamogul
Nice catch.
Collections now look even better
Favorites star folder instead of heart, maybe you can switch the heart back in the labeling :) but I'm not sure if this looks consistent.
All Games - nice idea and is self explaining
Last Played - As i said in my comment earlier ... I like this one

pjft

@capeman thanks. Just to close this off, there should be no need to edit any single thing outside of EmulationStation. Hopefully you didn't edit your systems config file or anything.

While you're at it, what was wrong with your settings file that was preventing these from being saved?

Best.

Capeman

I'm really not sure what was wrong with the settings cfg file. I may have edited it once in the past using the root account accidentally, that would have screwed up it's permissions. Nuking the file and reuploading my saved version seemed to fix it, so im guessing that was the culprit.

I've stopped using root access recently since i found that you can add es_systems.cfg and the themes folder to the /.emulationstation folder under opt.

So basically, nobody would have had the same issue as me since i was using an old work-around, and because i was dumb. haha.

ohmycommodore

Just catching up on all this and trying out the three auto-collections. Can someone tell me how the custom-collections will eventually be handled on the user end? It obviously can't be as simple as marking games for favourites...

mediamogul

@ohmycommodore

~~To my understanding, you'll need to edit the game entries in the various game gamelist.xml files with something akin to:~~

~~<collection>Mario Games</collection>~~

~~At which point a sub-heading named 'Mario Games' containing the games you marked would then be accessible from the 'Collections' menu.~~

Edit: After rereading the explanation above, I think I'm off on this. I'm sure @pjft will clarify it's usage.

pjft

@mediamogul @ohmycommodore

If you disregard the need for a black robe and the added chanting, it will be close to marking games as favorites.

EDIT: Just to make it clear: I don't want anyone to have to go to the command-line or manually edit any files to make things work. And that would apply to most - if not all - of the ES developments. I'll concede that one may need a keyboard should one want to name a collection, meaning that that particular aspect wouldn't work on a an arcade setup, but that's the full extent of it.