rpie-art: easy way to install art on your RetroPie

ohmycommodore

(here you go. repeat-posted from the Retrorama thread.)

I played around with this a bit over the last hour, grabbing some selected images for BOTH Retrorama and Comic Book. I of course grabbed images that matched my installed systems (ie. I may have a C64 image for each theme, etc). Two questions:

(1) I end up with a mix of launch images across my systems. For example, I might get a Retrorama launch image for one system, and a Comic Book image for another system... and yes this is regardless of which of the two themes I have set in retropie. Is the correct way to work with this to only download and have "active" launch images to match one theme at a time?

(2) Related to this, I can't seem to delete images and tidy this up. I see options to "delete local repository files" as well as "uninstall art", but in my first couple of attempts neither avenue seems to remove the installed images (even after a reboot). Am I missing something here in terms of the process to delete / tidy up / manage images?

Running retropie 4.2 with just-updated retropie setup script 4.2.12. Latest theme updates today as well. Hardware is a Pi3 B with a good power supply. Keyboard and PS4 controller attached via USB.

meleu

@ohmycommodore

Is the correct way to work with this to only download and have "active" launch images to match one theme at a time?

No. The script doesn't care about your active/installed themes. Even if you have only the default theme on your system, you can install the launching images available in rpie-art.

Note: the only (intentional) limitation is that rpie-art does NOT show the launching images for a system you don't have installed. Example: if you don't have an emulator for N64, the rpie-art won't show the available N64 launching images in that dialog check box. It was made this way intentionally.

I see options to "delete local repository files" as well as "uninstall art", but in my first couple of attempts neither avenue seems to remove the installed images (even after a reboot). Am I missing something here in terms of the process to delete / tidy up / manage images?

I coded that part thinking in launching images in a per game basis and forgot the system launching images. Will look into it soon.

Thanks for your report! ;-)

Cheers!

ohmycommodore

Thanks, yes, system launch images are the interesting thing for me. The main screen of a game will come up soon enough, along with whatever art or style goes with it. System launch images aren't up for long either... but I think it's a nice upgrade over the text default.

Let me know here if you make any changes and how I can try them out. For now, I'll leave what I had installed alone.

meleu

@ohmycommodore

could you update the rpie-art and try it again? I think it's done!

ohmycommodore

@meleu

I can definitely progress now with the "uninstall art" dialogs, and have success deleting images one by one.

I didn't get any new behaviour in "delete local repository files" though.

As well, note that I still had Retrorama images taking precedence over Comic Book images, while I was using Comic Book theme. If I remember correctly, I think I installed these all in one go when I first tried pie-art.

If these files are all called "launching.png" is that somehow still getting in the way? And is Retrorama taking precedence because "r" images were downloaded later than "c" for Comic Book?

meleu

@ohmycommodore

I can definitely progress now with the "uninstall art" dialogs, and have success deleting images one by one.

good.

I didn't get any new behaviour in "delete local repository files" though.

The rpie-art stores the art repository files at ~/RetroPie/art-repositories/. If you want to save space in your SD card/hard drive, you may want to delete these files. And if you delete them, the installed art won't change. Got it?

Retrorama images taking precedence over Comic Book images.
(...) And is Retrorama taking precedence because "r" images were downloaded later than "c" for Comic Book?

I think yes. You can only have one launching image for a system.

ohmycommodore

@meleu

ok i think i get the difference between the repositories and the actual art.

so for the launching images, you do in fact need to manually delete / download images if you want to switch themes...?

i suppose one way around that would be if, in the future, system launching images were included as part of the themes themselves, as a default of sorts instead of the basic text that pops up during a launch.

meleu

@ohmycommodore said in rpie-art: easy way to install art on your RetroPie:

so for the launching images, you do in fact need to manually delete / download images if you want to switch themes...?

Yep. Maybe using the "uninstall art" option can be less painfull for those who have fear of command line. :)

i suppose one way around that would be if, in the future, system launching images were included as part of the themes themselves, as a default of sorts instead of the basic text that pops up during a launch.

I aggree it would be awesome, but I'm afraid it won't happen...

An EmulationStation theme is an EmulationStation thing. A launching image is a runcommand thing. The RetroPie developers have a strong conviction that RetroPie (which runcommand is part of) must be frontend agnostic, which means that EmulationStation must not deal with configs that has nothing to do with the frontend itself (the only accepted exception is the input config).

That being said, I think that moving launching image files automatically when the user changes the ES theme set in the UI Settings is something that won't happen.

@BuZz am I right saying that?

BuZz

@meleu yep. Pretty much :-)

beastmode

@meleu I'm unable to press a button to configure launch options for individual games after using the rpie-art tool to set 16:9 basic launching images by @tmntturtlguy

How do I go about solving this?

RetroPie-Setup Script Version: 4.2.12 (all packages updated)

meleu

@beastmode rpie-art can't do this kind of "harm" on your system. Maybe it's related with the issue reported here. The good thing is that it's already solved. You just need to update your RetroPie-Setup script and try again. ;-)

jdrassa

@meleu said in rpie-art: easy way to install art on your RetroPie:

That being said, I think that moving launching image files automatically when the user changes the ES theme set in the UI Settings is something that won't happen.

I was thinking about this recently and one idea I had would be to implement scripting similar to what Pegasus is doing.

meleu

@jdrassa it would be neat! You guys don't stop!! Hehehe!

ruckage

@beastmode
Are you waiting until the launch image disappears? You can't access the menu while the launch image is being displayed.

From the wiki:

Once these images are installed, the timing to activate the the runcommand menu differs, in that pressing a button will not register successfully until just after the image has disappeared.

TMNTturtlguy

@ruckage Very true. I have my launch images display for 4 seconds, i then have about 1/2 second to hit the button in order to access the options menu.

rkoster

Minor issue, but the script allows uninstalling of overlays specific to a game, but does not show the generic overlays for whole systems, such as NES or GBA, so they cannot be uninstalled from there.

Further, going into the Retroarch GUI and disabling the generic overlay or leaving the selected overlay blank doesn't take. Next time you launch the system, it's back.

VGMonkey

Wow, how have i only just heard of this? Thank you for the work involved in getting this up and running.

meleu

@rkoster thanks for the report. Will fix it when I have a chance.

rkoster

@meleu No problem!

For anyone who has need to uninstall manually, you can go to (from memory) /opt/retropie/configs/ and manually edit out the lines that were added to each system's retroarch.cfg.

I managed to get my GBA display stuck off to one side somehow; you can also basically regenerate the retroarch.cfg by reinstalling that package from Retropie Setup.

hansolo77

I just tried to do the install of this. Followed the instructions in the 1st post. I ran RetroPie-Setup and updated the script (now at 4.2.15). I then existed ES. In the terminal I cloned the repo, then I went into the directory and tried the ./rpie-art.sh --install command. It said this:

chmod: changing permissions of '/home/pi/RetroPie/retropiemenu/rpie-art.sh': Operation not permitted
FAIL: failt to install "rpie-art.sh" on RetroPie Menu.

Not sure what I could have done wrong... don't want to try a sudo ./rpie-art.sh --install until you say to..