[Theme] Art Book

spoonmugen

just did an update
seems to have slow downs in main window which didnt occur before...

noticed fba/mame folder/menus have a bg image of a controller - and this is where the slowdowns generally happen?

pjft

@alphatoanant what image resolution are we using for the carousel backgrounds?

alphatoanant

Hmm interesting.

@pjft The controller backgrounds are 1280x720 svgs on system view.
I am thinking I should be able to shrink those down resolution wise and still allow them to scale well because they are svgs. Maybe that will solve it?
Edit: I just noticed an error when restarting ES "glGetError 0x505" figured thats being thrown because my recent changes. Have you ever run into that before or know what it points too?

@spoonmugen are you using a pi3 or a pizero?

spoonmugen

@alphatoanant i'm using a pi3 - it used to run like butter now its really laggy at spots in the main carousel.

i tried art-book pocket... main works like a champ!
really like this one too :)

pjft

@alphatoanant Ok, so that's double interesting.

The glGetError means the GPU runs out of video memory. I usually recommend setting VRAM to 80 to work around that, but in this case I'm inclined to suggest using 1280x720 PNGs on the system view.

I am not an expert in the image processing pipeline on ES, but from recollection SVGs (vector) and non-vector assets are handled significantly differently. Vector images are resized in memory to take up the needed size at full resolution, so I am willing to believe that they are in fact being rendered as full-on 1080p SVGs (or whatever screen resolution you're using). The reason why "1280x720 svg" doesn't really make much sense is that the SVG resolution per se doesn't matter much as vector images are really meant to scale to any resolution and stay as sharp as a native-resolution image.

I'd recommend trying to make those PNGs and see if the performance improves.

alphatoanant

@pjft good call. You are on to something for sure as I just did a test of scaling the viewbox of a few SVGs down to much lower resolution and even with that I can still see the error. So even though the image is smaller in resolution I can imagine ES still seeing it as "this is a 1080p image that I need to render somehow". Going to work on converting a few to PNGs.

For now I have removed the controller background from the main theme.xml so at least it won't affect live installs until I work out another approach.

@spoonmugen you should be able to get latest now

Thank you both for your help

spoonmugen

@alphatoanant just refreshed :) - tbh i prefered the clean look/performance of being just logos

alphatoanant

Updates 9/29/17: just some simple housekeeping tweaks I have been meaning to get to

made genre wider (less chance for ellipse to display now)
made the gamelist a "tad" bit wider - its not a huge amount (about 60px on a 720p display) as I still want to keep the spacing balanced. More to try but this its at first pass at least
cleaned up spacing on landscape layout
on landscape view vertical snes boxes are centered better now to balance things better when mixed with standard landscape ones

duiz

Is there a way to display Developer and Publisher info rather than rating and last played? I don't make much use of last played or ratings so having more actual game info would be a plus.

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant Are you going to try png controller backgrounds in your next update, or is that on hold?

alphatoanant

@hurricanefan yes I am going to work on that when I get back from the trip I am on.
I had an idea to be able to keep them as svgs - just want to test it further before pushing it to master . When I get back i'll try to create a zip to test with.

@duiz, showing publisher and developer info is not in my current plans for the theme. That could change just right now I plan to spend time on system view before anything else.

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant Hope you have a good rest of your trip!

spoonmugen

@hurricanefan prefer not to have any controller image background ... keeps it cleaner and lean

greekmanx

@spoonmugen you are the only one so far that has disagreed most others want a little more to carousel

spoonmugen

@greekmanx define how u came to the conclusion 'most others' ? as no one has really commented/or polled votes?
just voicing my opinion that i preferred a minimalistic front end

if @alphatoanant decides to put controller images/and pink unicorns everywhere on the theme then i'd either edit them out of the config or just switch themes...

greekmanx

@spoonmugen no poll just meaning everyone that responded in regards to adding color and images to theme until you that is all no biggie

Sashby

@spoonmugen +1 for pink 🦄

fastpop72

@alphatoanant These images are cool but please KEEP ARTBOOK CLEAN! It's my favourite and only theme! I love the clean aspect of the theme.

Please notice too there are missing images like NEO GEO and DAPHNE.

fastpop72

@duiz said in [Theme] Art Book:

Is there a way to display Developer and Publisher info rather than rating and last played? I don't make much use of last played or ratings so having more actual game info would be a plus.

I have the same request! I use a fixed gamelist.xml and the lastplayed tag is never updated. I much prefer to see publisher and/or developer instead. Rating is OK.

HurricaneFan

@fastpop72 You can tweak the xml file to do this.