ES themes ready for favorite, all games, recently played and custom-collections

ohmycommodore

Is there a separate Canadian theme with "favourites" spelled correctly? :)

cyperghost

@ohmycommodore Yes... IO-theme! I rather prefer BE did not know that canadians also use the ou

pjft

Hi all,

Happy Saturday.

Apologies for the trouble here, and a big thank you for all your support so far throughout this process!

As you know, we started this endeavor without anything concrete, but now that there's a testable working build and themes are starting to be updated, I ran into some inconsistencies that, while they'll unfortunately require a slight bit of work from us all, it's good that they come up early-ish in the process as we can make the best decision together.

Now that a few people are testing builds, especially when they choose to sort the systems alphabetically, the experience can be somewhat inconsistent and awkward. The main reason for that was that - in my miserable naming skills - named the designated folder to group the collections custom-collectionsbut during development after some suggestions I ended up settling on a more friendly name of "My Collections" for the user facing name.

This poses the following problems:

For themes that named the user-facing theme "custom collections", it's fine, as the system is sorted between "c" and "d", as expected.
For themes that named the user-facing theme "my collections" as I suggested, it's weird if they sort the systems to go from "colecovision" to "my collections" to "daphne".

I've thought about this, and here are the few options I'm seeing:

Name the user facing theme "custom collections".
- Pros: it will match the folder name. It will be correctly sorted. Some themes already have that.
- Cons: longer name, which poses some challenges for some themes in terms of font sizes. "Feels" less user friendly/more jargon-y.
Name the user facing theme "my collections", and rename the folder to custom-my-collections.
- Pros: More user friendly. Some themes already have that.
- Cons: needs change in the current themes to change the folder structure to custom-my-collections. Needs to change the code as well.
Let things be as they are.
- Pros: no extra effort.
- Cons: inconsistent user experience. Some themes will call it "custom collections", other "my collections". Sorting order will either be good or bad, if they sort it. May look like a bug.

I'd love to hear your perspective, as most options will require a bit of work from all of you - and for that I do apologize.

I'm personally inclined to option 2, if you feel "My Collections" is more user friendly, and update the code accordingly. I know a lot of you will have to change the name that shows in the carousel to match that (well, in option 1 others would probably have to change it as well to match "Custom Collections"), and I know that's not necessarily a small task.

So let me know your thoughts, and I do appreciate you all having been early adopters and supporters of this work. I'm sure ES will be a lot better and user-friendlier platform as a result!

Thank you, and have a good weekend.

cyperghost

@pjft As I'm no theme creator and I'm far away from saying everything must work 100%. I vote #3 because there is still the option to sort all auto generated systems together if you are not happy with alphabetical order. And I find it a bit funny - there is more than just the western part of the world. The alphabetical order is not always ABC - ABW is also common :)

But you are so kind to ask the users - so let the users decide :)

So here is the poll

before vote please read @pjfts thread above!

pjft

Thank you for the poll.

By the way, we can also just call them "collections", without the "custom" or "my" prefix, and keep the folder as custom-collections.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft just an FYI, it is very easy for theme makers to change the folder name. Changing the folder name is a simple click and rename of the folder and then uploading that change to github. If the themes uses github desktop this whole charge is about 4 clicks of a button.

Changing the system logo art is of course more work, but I don't see a need for that in any of your request.

If you want to test this out you can renam the theme folders within the ComicBook theme however you like and see how everything works.

alphatoanant

@pjft I agree with @TMNTturtlguy thoughts on this as well. Its easy/quick to update a folder name on the theme side.

Are these are the aspects?

the name of the folder:
From a theme maker perspective this can be changed easily. Any of the folder name options presented above would be fine
the logo:
This would be up to a theme maker to decide what is displayed in the image so I think this is ok as well
the text that displays if there is no logo defined for the theme (e.g. what shows for logoText element):
The proposed options are "My Collections", "Collections" and "Custom Collections" right?
If so I like the simplicity of "Collections".

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant @pjft I also like the minimal term "Collections".

dmmarti

Since I personally don't usually rearrange my es_systems.cfg .. it doesn't bother me so much where ES displays it in the menu. But, I could see where the folks that do...it might bug 'em.

As for renaming the new theme subfolder from "custom-collections" to something else, as the others have said, easy peasy. My only thoughts about that would be, if folks have already installed a few themes that use that folder name, then update their RetroPie install ... just need to make sure they also update their themes too (if the theme author made the change to the different name).

dmmarti

@cyperghost --- real quick, my recent theme called "Showcase" has full support of the 4 virtual systems .... if you wanna throw it in the chart above.....thanks

cyperghost

done added Showcase theme @dmmarti

nestor1924

Hi, im kind of confused... so foe this to work i have to do editinga of my own? I mean, it cant be done the normal way but just going into the menu???... i just updated emulation estation scrips too, o get the option but keeps saying that the theme is not compatible....

pjft

@nestor1924 what theme are you using?

You shouldn't have to edit anything, it's all done inside Emulationstation. The custom collections aren't available yet, though, only in the development build.

@dmmarti it's not really about changing anything in that file, but rather there'll be an option to sorry the custom collections with the existing systems. That's where it manifests itself as if it's sorted, users in the carousel will go from C to My Collections and then to D.

Omnija

@cyperghost Even though "Metro Theme" is still WIP/Demo and unfinished, it supports all 4 to add to the list.
https://github.com/Omnija/es_theme_metro

fastlowrex

@cyperghost --- real quick, my recent theme called "Magazine Madness" has full support of the 4 virtual systems .... if you wanna throw it in the chart above.....thank you very much :)

pjft

@alphatoanant @TMNTturtlguy Thanks for the replies.

The aspects are really mostly #1 and #2 in your list - I'm not that concerned with what text displays if there's no logo.

The thing is, if users choose to sort all systems and collections, the names they'll see (because of the logo being displayed) will be off, depending on whether theme creators named it "My Collections" or "Custom Collections".

After thinking a bit about it, I'm kind of liking it being just "Collections", and keeping the folder custom-collections.

Would anyone have strong concerns with that? It makes the name smaller, so that's a plus in my book.

The only problem would be that every theme would need to adjust the logos to name it collections...

Before anyone does anything, though, I'd certainly like to hear others' opinions on what you feel would be a good system name for the group of collections users can create, and then we can close that. Currently under consideration:

Custom Collections
My Collections
Game Collections
Collections

Thank you all, and happy Sunday.

cyperghost

@fastlowrex said in ES themes ready for favorite, all games, recently played and custom-collections:

@cyperghost --- real quick, my recent theme called "Magazine Madness" has full support of the 4 virtual systems .... if you wanna throw it in the chart above.....thank you very much :)

Done Magazine Madness added

HurricaneFan

@pjft I like "Collections".

ohmycommodore

agreed, "Collections" seems the most tidy

alphatoanant

+1 for Collections