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

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.

mediamogul

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

@mediamogul @ohmycommodore
If you disregard the need for a black robe and the added chanting

Ha! ...and here I overstocked on goat's blood in preparation. You can't give that stuff away after the first full moon of the season.

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.

Very promising and very exciting. Your attention to the user experience is greatly appreciated.

pjft

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

Ha! ...and here I overstocked on goats blood in preparation. You can't give that stuff away after the first full moon of the season.

I'm sure I can add that as an option.

ohmycommodore

this will be so usable / functional, that if you can get it as friendly as possible it will be worth the effort i'd say.

mediamogul

@cyperghost

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.

I always like to keep iconography consistent wherever possible in interface design. My thoughts for 'Favorites' is that it have a very warm and personal feeling to it. I believe a casual, handwritten typeface works to that effect and to add a little bit of warmth and color, I thought dotting the 'i' with a red heart followed nicely. However, it had the side-effect of also reading as romantic, or flirty, which I believe muddied the intention.

Of course, replacing the heart with a star requires that the color be changed from a red to something from the yellow or orange family. To keep the "warm" feeling I wanted, yellow was eliminated immediately as it has the connotation of being an energetic color first and foremost. Orange does too, but to a much lesser extent, especially when it's mixture tips the scale back toward a warmer red.

cyperghost

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

My thoughts for 'Favorites' is that it have a very warm and personal feeling to it. I believe a casual, handwritten typeface works to that effect and to add a little bit of warmth and color

It worked for me!

I thought dotting the 'i' with a heart followed nicely. However, it had the side-effect of also reading as romantic, or flirty, which I believe muddied the intention.

Yes, my first attempt of a favorite for IO theme was also a heart. Stars are better, you rate with stars, you have stars and starlets as actor/actress and if you mark something within a letter to keep a downnote then you also use a star :)

Of course, replacing the heart with a star requires that the color be changed from a red to something from the yellow or orange family. To keep the "warm" feeling I wanted, yellow was eliminated immediately as it has the connotation of being an energetic color first and foremost. Orange does too, but to a much lesser extent, especially when it's mixture tips the scale back toward a warmer red.

Maybe you can work with color gradiation? Red to yellow/orange from outbounds of the star to inner? You need a strong color to keep shape. Otherwise it will look blurry.

mediamogul

@cyperghost

Maybe you can work with color gradiation? Red to yellow/orange from outbounds of the star to inner? You need a strong color to keep shape. Otherwise it will look blurry.

That's a very good idea. I'll try it out.

Capeman

On the favorites system, every game shows the emulator name in brackets after the game name.

Can these emulator names be removed in the theme file or is there another setting for this? I see where some people may want to know what system every game on the list is fromt, but I think it just makes the list look cluttered.

mattrixk

@capeman I dunno, it seems kind of necessary. Take Tetris for example. There are at least 30 games for different Systems simply called "Tetris". It's not until the early 90s that they start to be called other names (Super Tetris, Vs Tetris, Tetris II, etc).

This is just a simple example, but it illustrates my point. A lot of the early cross-console games shared the same name, no matter what console. If I wanted to play the MegaDrive version of The Lion King, I would potentially have to search through 6 Systems (MegaDrive, Super NES, Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Game Gear, Master System) to find the one I want.

As an alternative to the [system] suffix, I'd like to be able to display the System Logo of the game somewhere on the screen.

cyperghost

@capeman You can fork ES and change this behaviour. I also think it's a usefull feature and should not be switched off nor there should be an option to switch it off.

You can search sourcecode for this and it may work if you comment it out - I didn't test nor can I code anything in c++

	mCollectionFileName += " [" + strToUpper(mSourceFileData->getSystem()->getName()) + "]";

@pjft Why mDirty?

pjft

@cyperghost

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13503243/what-does-dirty-flag-dirty-values-mean

It means it needs the name needs to be updated as it has changed (or not been initialized). I don't want to have to always compute the name every time we render as it's expensive and unnecessary. :)

@Capeman I'm not considering adding yet another option at this stage, unless there's a significant number of requests. If/when there are changes to the theming architecture to support console icons (and to make clear, that is not on my particular roadmap, as theming is not my forte), then there may be a bigger case to remove them, but for now it seems to be useful for those particular use cases.

But open to feedback, as usual.

cyperghost

@pjft I told him where the magic of uppercase+romname+[] is ... so I see no problem of compiling onself.
I agree with you that there no changes will be made ...
But what do you think of an "advancedsettings.cfg" - file?
I know you want ES easily be setted up ... but that's the only way I see to get things optional or selectable without overloading the Main Menu in ES.

Thanks for the link ... writePending would sound more specific.

pjft

@cyperghost It's not only about the menus. Creating, maintaining and updating that code - together with testing the possible combinations with new features - can easily turn into a big mess.

cyperghost

I'm with you

Capeman

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

I dunno, it seems kind of necessary. Take Tetris for example. There are at least 30 games for different Systems simply called "Tetris". It's not until the early 90s that they start to be called other names (Super Tetris, Vs Tetris, Tetris II, etc).

I see your point to an extent, but if you have box art enabled, you would know right away which system or version you were playing. I'm just suggesting that it would be an option you could turn off. Even if there were 30 versions of tetris or multiple versions of lion king, you would probably only favorite the one you like best anyway.

Capeman

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

I'm not considering adding yet another option at this stage, unless there's a significant number of requests. If/when there are changes to the theming architecture to support console icons (and to make clear, that is not on my particular roadmap, as theming is not my forte), then there may be a bigger case to remove them, but for now it seems to be useful for those particular use cases.
But open to feedback, as usual.

If the need to keep them is there maybe possibly cleaning up the naming structure would make it a little more appealing to read.

2 Examples:
Atari games added to favorites say ATARI2600 with no space
Mame games say MAME-LIBRETRO

It appears to me (the non-coder noob) that the name is derived from the folder the rom is contained in, maybe instead if it pulled the system name from the <fullname> tag for the system under es_systems.cfg that would make for a cleaner look since those names are meant to be read by the user, where as rom folder names are meant for the backend.

BUT of course if the name IS pulled from the folder name, i suppose i could just edit es_systems.cfg to look for a folder called just MAME instead of MAME-LIBRETRO and change the folder name and it should update accordingly, right? OR just move all of my FBA and MAME over to the arcade folder.

Sorry if I'm nitpicking but I'm a perfectionist when it comes to UI. Web designer problems i suppose.