[Theme] Art Book

[alphatoanant]

Thank you for the assist @Sashby and thank you for trying out the theme @fynflood!

[Sashby]

So sorry guys. Selph Scraper doesn't work with .pbp files for PSX. Thats why it cut short in my screenshot. @alphatoanant your scraping command lines work perfectly otherwise. Sorry for wasting your time.

[Jaxel]

Is it possible to make it so that if a game doesn't find a related VIDEO to it, it instead shows a SCREENSHOT?

[HurricaneFan]

@jaxel I believe if you put an image in the video tag, you can do that in your gamelist.xml file. This will load instead of the static video.

example:
<video>./images/myimage.png</video>

[alphatoanant]

@hurricanefan is spot on - that will work

[Jaxel]

I like this theme! I think there are a few specific things that can be fixed though... I am using the 1920x1080 layout.

1 - The meta data area seems truncated for some reason. If a game has multiple "genres", it gets cut off with an ellipsis, even though there is plenty of space to show more text.

2 - Three to four lines of text for the game description seems a bit small. It will scroll on every game. Maybe some of the elements can be shifted around to give more space for the description? Move the "launch" and "favorite" text to the bottom middle of the screen? (and move the "random" text down to be in line with them). The "ratings" stars could probably be moved too.

3 - The panel on the right with the list of games is very thin. Pretty much every game title is going to get truncated.

[Jaxel]

Okay, here is a screenshot of the slight changes I made:

You'll notice I make more use of the "negative space" in the theme... without making it seem cluttered.

• Moved the console logo up 0.10

• Moved the random button down 0.10

• Increased the height of the game list 0.20

• Moved the "launch" and "favorite" buttons to the same level as the "random" button, and centered them in the grey area.

• Doubled the length of the meta-data fields (it used to say "Shoot`em Up / Li...")

• Slightly decreased the font of the meta-data description, and greatly increased the height of the field.

[greekmanx]

@jaxel i really like those changes looks good just make gamelist wider and I am happy

[Graphicsgod]

@alphatoanant

Wow I was just thinking of doing a layout like this!!

If you need help with the artwork and ideas, hit me up bro!!

[Graphicsgod]

I'll try to whip up some concept images tonight after I get off work. And if you like it, maybe we can work together on this..

[msheehan79]

@hurricanefan @alphatoanant

"I believe if you put an image in the video tag, you can do that in your gamelist.xml file. This will load instead of the static video.

example:
<video>./images/myimage.png</video>"

Did you guys successfully get this method to work? I tried putting an image in the video tag and it didn't render for me.

My ideal scenario is a theme that can display the wheel/logo, boxart and instead of a video just a screenshot image but could never get it to work and was under the impression ES doesn't support this. It would be awesome if it does work and I just missed something.

[Jaxel]

I've made some more changes...

In addition to the changes I mentioned in my post above... I made the right panel bigger, with smaller text.

Then I went for some uniformity in the default and landscape layouts. As well, to fill up the extra space in the default layout, I added marquees below the meta data.

[Graphicsgod]

@graphicsgod

Ok Heres something I came up with that explains the idea I had in mind..

System List

Game List

[greekmanx]

@graphicsgod your gamelist view looks awesome man nice mockup although just my option but I don't care for the whole page 1 system view thin. I myself prefer the layout used by showcase theme by david marti which shows more systems on one screen. but otherwise good stuff and again only my opinion.

[Graphicsgod]

@greekmanx

No please, I need criticism! I need to know if something sucks or not.. The red and blue are more "extreme" to what I would probably do for this system, but I wanted to see how bad it would look with bright colors contrasting each other. Otherwise it doesn't look too bad. But for Genesis, I'd probably go with black and gray backgrounds.

What do you mean by showing all systems? Have a screen shot for example?

I haven't mocked up other system examples yet. This took me about four plus hours to create in PSD. But now that I have a template in place, adding in other colors, images, and systems is just making a few tweaks here and there and changing a few images!

[HurricaneFan]

@graphicsgod Can you create a new post for your new theme idea? This way it doesn't make the Art Book post super long since its unrelated.

[alphatoanant]

@Jaxel, thank you for your suggestions and examples!

• For metadata - I need to fix that width issue for genre. Missed it on initial build will get to it as soon as possible
• For gamelist - There have been a few requests for a wider gamelist so I am looking at that too. For height; I don't plan to use the full height of the gamelist in the theme. I had tried something similar in a first pass and noticed watching friends use the theme that they found it easier to focus on what game to pick when the list had less items. 14 display in the current theme which seemed to be a good balance. And keeping the font at its current size helps when viewing from a couch. I'll try ideas on width.
• For description - I agree on the scrolling. Whats been bothering me most is that it starts right away and I have been wondering if there is a way to put a delay on when it begins to scroll. I agree moving the launch and favorite buttons to below the box and video gives more space for description - not sure how i feel about that layout yet though but I will play with it.
• Again thank you for helping and giving more ideas.

@Graphicsgod, nice work on your theme! I like the style and would be glad to help out (and also get help from you on my theme) My initial feedback on system view is to maybe try bringing in at least 2 more systems (so they flank on either side of the selected one) and remove the arrows. Having the focus on that view be the books themselves could look really clean. For detail view are you thinking of using the marquee tag for a screenshot? I hadn't thought of that before but it could be interesting.
Please write back to the link to your thread on your theme and I would be glad to continue the conversation there.

@msheehan79, I was able to reference images in the video tag and have them display on my pi3. Do you have OMX player turned on? If so I am wondering if thats whats causing it not to work on your end?

[alphatoanant]

Updates 9/18/17:
Added a #playing folder - why you ask? =)

So Custom Collections are an awesome new feature (continued thanks to @pjft) and it got me thinking of an easier way to get back into games I am currently playing. Essentially having the first system shown be a list of those games (less searching, less clicks)

Before custom collections I would just try to remember which system + game I wanted to continue playing. Which as you can imagine would lead to a bunch of searching, scrolling, etc...

So with custom collections a natural way to solve this is to create a collection called "playing" or something similar. This is all good with one minor niggle for me. That system is going to either be grouped with the other custom collections or sorted alphabetically with other systems (depending on the setting you have chosen for game collections)

So I decided to create a theme folder called "#playing" for 2 reasons...

1. the "#" makes it sort to the begining of a list when viewing things alphabetically (e.g. it shows up first)
2. Creating a theme folder for it means it will show up with a nice logo and not be grouped with other unthemed collections

So now when I boot up retropie the first system i see is "now playing" which allows me to jump directly into that list of games. No more scrolling or searching for what to play... unless I am looking for something new to start =)

Hope you find this helpful too

[HurricaneFan]

@alphatoanant There is a Last Played collection that might help you. It was one of the first 3 collections built before custom collections was released.

Last Played will just use the lastplayed gamelist.xml data that is already getting saved every time you start a game.

[alphatoanant]

@hurricanefan true I use Last Played from time to time.

There are a few minor things though that made me go with the #playing folder instead

• with last playing you still have to scroll to a different system before jumping in
• I wanted a bit more curation other than what i have last played (as I will play a game on a whim from time to time that I am not interested in diving in deeper on just yet)