@herb_fargus Sselph's scraper supports video scraping from screenscraper.fr. I've recently submitted a patch that transcodes videos to a more Raspberry Pi friendly format. This needs HandBrakeCLI and is not advisable to run on the Pi unless you like it melting through the floor. I got into the habit of running sselph's scraper on my own linux machine (mac should work too I guess) and then copying the resulting files to my Pi after it's done.

@herb_fargus

I'll leave the astrocade to you ;)

Done and done. GitHub isn't nearly as scary as I had imagined. I hope to work my way up to a script module submission when I have some time to learn a bit more. For now, I made some small revisions to my previous Astrocade artwork to make everything read a bit more cleanly.

Astrocade

@chubsta said in Understanding why a 'theme' doesn't show in a particular system:

I wasn't sure if that was really important as i kind of figured that in order to work they would have to conform to set standards, so really the differences would be purely cosmetic. I guess i will do a bit more reading up on it all before i pursue this further - cheers for the reply.

Hello,

The gamelist.xml should have nothing to do with it. The theme you are using is important info as it's likely that the particular theme you are using simply doesn't have support for that system (there is themeing information per system and if a system isn't included you will get the results you described).

Try a different theme such as Carbon or Pixel as I think these both support practically everything.

@grila I love your Fundamental theme! I'm trying to modify the theme for systems not included in your original theme (Atari Xegs for example) and I'm struggling. I copied another Atari theme and it works for the most part, but I can't change the main console name in the main menu when selecting. I know this is an old post, but if you're still around, could you help please?

Thank you.

@MWGemini awesome, thanks for the info.

@Jeck11 It was a while ago, so I don't remember enough. As such, I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying "any" theme, but it wasn't particularly hard, no. I suspect it depends on how modularized the theme files are (i.e. if you have to add the icons to each of the system files, it can be a pain, where if it's all centralized in the theme.xml file, then it's fairly easy).

It's critical to update the XML version in the theme xml files, though, otherwise it won't be recognized no matter what you do :)

I'm happy to try and share my versions of the themes, if it helps. Let me know.

This is the last update (I felt I could get the icons even closer to the style of ruckage's originals, and believe that I have). Here are ALL of the assets I've adjusted for the ruckage/es-theme-snesn-mini theme for RetroPie. This includes backgrounds, labels and icons for the auto-random list that goes with all the different configurations of this theme that are available by editing config.xml that comes with the theme. They are as follows:

Icons
es-theme-snes-mini/art/icons and es-theme-snes-mini/art/icons_usa
auto-random.png

es-theme-snes-mini/art/nes_icons and es-theme-snes-mini/art/nes_icons_usa
auto-random.png

Logos
es-theme-snes-mini/art/logos and es-theme-snes-mini/art/logos_usa
auto-random.png

Backgrounds
es-theme-snes-mini/background/bg_tron/auto-random.png
auto-random.png

es-theme-snes-mini/background/bg_tron_blur/auto-random.png
auto-random.png

es-theme-snes-mini/background/bg_tron_blur_usa/auto-random.png
auto-random.png

es-theme-snes-mini/background/bg_tron_usa/auto-random.png
auto-random.png

es-theme-snes-mini/background/blurred_shots/auto-random.png
auto-random.png

es-theme-snes-mini/background/nes_mini/auto-random.png
auto-random.png

I use the old arcade font on all my themes. Love it.

Nice work

@jdrassa awesome, will try it.

thank you

One is in development for Attract Mode
http://forum.attractmode.org/index.php?topic=1222.0

Hi guys!

I really enjoy this fantastic theme... (great idea!).

Therefore I would like to contribute to update earlier version with new stuff.

So, I would like to focus on kiosk version... so if you have some pictures with high quality do not hesitate to share them... Indeed, it's quite tough to get it.

Also If you have some ideas... Let me know !

In the meantime... Work in progress...! Here's some snaps attached...

nes kiosk (1).jpg

gb kiosk (1).jpg

PS : Appologized for picture quality!

@herb_fargus Thanks for the reply. I have tried a few things with no luck. If the text names are hard coded that will be the reason. Thanks.

I will just scrape meta-data then maually edit either developer or publisher with the horizontal
or vertical text.

Just a quick thought which location is a 'safe place' to avoid the metadata being over written on a system/theme update?

Thanks

Hi @Capeman! I'd like to resume your work. What do you think? Can I start from your semifinished piece? Can you share the partial theme package? thank you so much

Thanks for give me inforation

In my long shot to do list :

Create a software to create MIX (and why not ES Theme ;) ) Modify the MIX function to use a "Batch/Bash" file using Imagemagick... so when the script is created from the MIX profile, you can use it with what you want ;)

But it's not for tomorrow ^^

So... i found this topic searching for the same question paffley did... and while the solution for him was to use the "marquee" category, I wanted instead to keep marquees showing, and displaying screenshot and boxart on my theme's video view for the games that doesn't have video. So, I was in need of a third set of displaying artwork... and after searching a lot, I found it on the development fork of EmulationStation!

For those that, as me, ended up here, here it goes the "workaround":

you have to install "emulationstation-dev" instead of the default "emulationstation" for it; then you need to change the resource (probably a repeated "image" field on the same position and size of the "video" field) on your theme to the "thumbnail" tag (i used ComicBook theme for this example, on the video view); lastly, after scraping (i used skyscraper), on gamelist.xml, change your boxart XML tag to "image" and your screenshot XML tag to "thumbnail" (i did a replacing macro on notepad++).

Tested here and works flawlessly! You don't have to switch exactly the same XML tags, it's only an example of how I did mine.

@mattrixk Yep, I totally understand WHY you want to protect your work- and your should, and you have every right to. Just saying that I've seen very expensive (and not necessarily successful) corporate legal battles over stuff like this.

As for which license to use, I don't know enough about the various licenses out there right now to make an educated suggestion for you. Perhaps @herb_fargus or @BuZz might have some suggestions.

@fatelvis1 I am not sure that this theme is under development anymore, but you can download my theme inspired by these original images.

Comic Book Theme

@mattrixk lol I never thought of that. But yeah a more generic wallpaper makes more sense. Good thing is that it can easily be switched to something else. ;)

@FlyingTomahawk If your PNGs are pixelated on the edges, you are likely using 8-bit PNG format, this uses a gif style indexed pallet and has no support for alpha blending. This is the default setting on photoshop/illustrator for save-for-web output. Make sure you are saving your PNGs as 24 bit to allow for alpha transparencies around the edge pixels, and the pixelated effect will be gone. Drawback is the file size will be 5 to 10x larger.

Graphic designer by day, gamer by night, haha.