Can I read walkthrough text while pausing the game in retropie??

thief122

Hi all,

I am new in the forum. I have a question about reading games walkthrough document.
Is there any way to read the walkthrough in the retropie since there are many old games which I need to read the walkthrough.

Thank you

BuZz

@thief122 Yes, using a tablet, mobile phone, e-reader etc :-)

Nothing built into retropie for this.

thief122

Oh really?
Hope the newer version can make this build in.
Thank you for reply

BuZz

@thief122 I doubt this will ever be included.

CodeDrawer

@thief122 Yeah, it just isn't pratical for most people.

chipsnblip

i would like to explore this possiblity further, but my knowledge in scripting is very limited. i've only ever made very simple shell scripts, and it took an entire evening to piece together something that vaguely resembles proof of concept.

the idea is to automatically convert a text file/web page to images for use as an overlay, with the potential to cycle through them page by page.

the following example is a command (it's all one line) that works on my arch linux laptop, but has some authorization issues being run directly from the pi:

cat TheGooniesII.txt | col -b | expand > tmp.txt | \
convert -page 1920x1080 -background '#333333' -fill white \
-font Liberation-Mono -pointsize 18 \
text:tmp.txt -trim +repage \
-gravity center -extent 1920x1080 \
TheGooniesII.png && \
rm tmp.txt

in this example, there are 4 walkthroughs located at: https://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/563420-the-goonies-ii/faqs
here's the most recent one, in a printable format: https://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/563420-the-goonies-ii/faqs/70272?print=1

saving to TheGooniesII.txt and running the above command will produce 14 images:
http://imgur.com/a/6Adul (sample of 4)

the fonts/colors can be tweaked in all sorts of ways for different displays and resolutions. for example at 1360x768, pointsize 12 looks best.

so i suppose the next step is to figure out how to put together an overlay.cfg so they can be cycled through with a button combo.
hopefully there is a way to automate the entire process. i'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas, or whether or not this is even worth attempting.

pjft

@chipsnblip I love the creativity here.

I believe there was a separate request/suggestion for this a while ago, and the main answer was that one such feature would have to be built into RetroArch.

You have, however, built something within the constraints of RetroArch. Well done.

Even if this doesn't go anywhere, kudos on the thought process and approach.

Edit: for the sake of exploring this further, you'd want to render this to one of the sides of the screen, and then create a config file for the ROM to move the viewport to the opposite side and load the overlay.

Nobody said this would be practical, but this would at least make for an interesting experiment if you choose to explore this further!

chipsnblip

@pjft thanks for the words of encouragement. with regard to rendering it at the sides and moving the viewport, would that mean the user would have to be on a widescreen monitor, and not stretched? either way, i might be inching closer to something workable here..

without fully understanding the overlay configuration files, after many hours of trial and error i have managed to coax it into displaying some test images. feel free to try it out. you'll first have to set up a button for input_overlay_next = "nul" in retroarch.cfg (or Overlay next in Quick Menu > Settings > Input > Input Hotkey Binds) so you can cycle through the pages of text.

download these:
http://imgur.com/a/OjWc6
https://pastebin.com/xtFWEzBM

an example folder structure:

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/overlay/walkthroughs/nes/The Goonies II/
TheGooniesII.cfg
TheGooniesII-0.png
TheGooniesII-1.png
TheGooniesII-2.png
TheGooniesII-1.png

this is the 1920x1080 image set and TheGooniesII-0.png is a blank/transparent image. i created it manually for now, and will hopefully be able to incorporate that into the convert command. it could in theory be replaced by whatever overlay is currently in use for that core.

i might get around to setting up a little github project for fun, but that's another thing i've never done before.. would it be overkill at this stage?

pjft

@chipsnblip Thanks.

I suspect @thief122 would hopefully be able to provide more feedback as to whether this is something he'd use and how, given that the use case was brought up by him :)

In terms of the overall approach, I think that it's always positive to set up a GitHub project for anything you'd do that's on the creative/technical side. It's good for learning and sharing above all. It'll also help you get feedback - and even help - from other people who are interested in the same problem, as well as thinking about how to bring it to the wider audience. So yeah, I would recommend that, should you be interested in investing time in this. Not sure at what stage you are, and where do you see this heading - as well as whether this solution is something that people would in general use. Definitely getting feedback from the end users would help!

I suppose the key thing in all of these projects is that a) this is a problem that you are keen in exploring and solving, and b) that you're having fun along the process :)

My comment on the layout was just an option, as I was thinking about the problem. Indeed, right now it's just rendered on top of the game, which may (or may not) be ideal for those who will use it. That's kind of why I thought of using the wide screen real estate, but you may be right, it might not work on a smaller screen, or if the game is stretched! Well spotted.

I think there was a similar thread to this a while ago, though I can't find it. Might be interesting to see if this is indeed something more people would like to have and how, and maybe take it from there if you're keen to!

Best of luck.