[Theme] Art Book

HurricaneFan

@lilbud on computer only I imagine. This isn't available on pi right?

lilbud

@hurricanefan Oh yeah, only on PC & Mac. This could NEVER run on the pi. Maybe the Pi 50

You also need one hell of a computer to run CEMU

pjft

@lilbud thanks.

@alphatoanant Apologies for bothering. The final name for custom collections might change, sorry.

Will post in a separate thread on Monday or over the phone if I have the chance. Sorry about that.

SP

@pjft I use Emulation Station on my PC, and lilbud is correct.

alphatoanant

Updates 7/28/17

Finished all systems I had initially planned for (open to adding more as well - just let me know)
Centered artwork on default layout (trying an idea for All,LastPlayed,Fav systems)

System theme status

As of this release I should have coverage for most of the main systems used in Retropie
This is the full list of what I have covered: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gzaP0klzaBaE5_oB1_hQwr46qOmQnacSvSU3o-p5Q7U/edit#gid=0 (also can be seen at the gitHub repo)
@SP I also added support for Wii, WiiU and Sharp X68000 - please don't hesitate to let me know if there are others you would like

What does Arcade/MAME/FBA look like?

It was easier to make a video to walk through it

Essentially I am aiming to optimize the design for flyer artwork on Arcade/MAME/FBA/Daphne systems
This does pose some challenges though...
Primarily is I haven't found a method to scrape flyer artwork and videos for Arcade systems in one command
Why? It comes down to our current metadata sources not having good coverage of both flyer and video in one place (gdb has great flyer coverage, screenscraper has great video coverage)
So what I am doing is running Selph's scraper twice in my arcade directories
First run is this (scrapes flyers from GDB): /opt/retropie/supplementary/scraper/scraper -mame=true -mame_src=gdb,adb,ss -mame_img=fly,b,t,s -max_height=540 -max_width=394 -image_dir=media -image_path=media
And the second run with this (to scrape videos from screenscraper): /opt/retropie/supplementary/scraper/scraper -mame=true -mame_src=ss,gdb,adb -download_videos=true -image_dir=media -image_path=media -video_dir=media -video_path=media
Thats how I got the look in the above video
So yes, its not ideal but it works and I think it looks good in the end =)
Also this only applies to Arcade/MAME/FBA (consoles have great boxart/video coverage at screenscraper)
Looking forward to hearing your feedback on this

Notes

@HurricaneFan yes the box art overlap for systems that have a landscape boxart (snes/n64) is intentional. But there is a somewhat quick way to change them.
For example if you open up snes/theme.xml you will see this

<theme>
   <formatVersion>4</formatVersion>
   <include>./../theme.xml</include>
   <include>./../_inc/templates/landscape.xml</include>
   <view name="system, basic, detailed, video">
      <image name="logo">
         <path>./_inc/system.svg</path>
      </image>
   </view>
</theme>

See the 4th line that references "landscape.xml"?

Remove that line so it looks like this:

<theme>
   <formatVersion>4</formatVersion>
   <include>./../theme.xml</include>
   <view name="system, basic, detailed, video">
      <image name="logo">
         <path>./_inc/system.svg</path>
      </image>
   </view>
</theme>

Removing that makes the layout fallback to what you see on "All Games" system (e.g. its a more square type layout with no overlap)

If that is what you are looking for then the above change only has to be made on SNES and N64 systems.

Whats next

I am considering this release 1.0 at this time and going to see if it can be included in the Retropie ES Themes list
Also I am starting to play with the default layout and seeing whats possible to make it fallback gracefully in situations where say a game is missing artwork or description (as you can see in the video above for situations like Cave Story)
I need to look at how to handle folders as well
@pjft no worries on a possible name change to custom collections. I am more than happy to do it and help support the feature... it's another reason I am looking at folders soon =)

Thank you for helping me with this everyone

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant Great post! And thanks for the tips on tweaking the xml. I'll play around with that tomorrow.

Dumb question about the scraper. I've never used the command line scraper before. Do I need to install that? I've only used the built in scraper in EmulationStation gui.

SP

@alphatoanant Awesome, man. Thank you.

soloskywalker

This looks nice, any plans on adding the TG16CD?

alphatoanant

@soloskywalker yes I can do that (I'll plan also add pcecd at the same time)

would it be possible to let me know what "theme" folder is referenced in your es_systems.cfg for tg16cd? I want to make sure I add the right name =)

alphatoanant

@hurricanefan great question

I think there 3 main scrapers that people use (at least these are the ones I know about)

The one built into ES's GUI
Selph's Scraper (see the info under "Steven Selph's Scraper" here: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Scraper/)
UXS (https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/5291/soft-universal-xml-scraper-v2-easy-scrape-with-high-quality-picture)

For #1:

can run directly from within ES
gets metadata from thegamesdb
image is usually boxart (flyers in the case of arcade games)
I don't believe it can scrape videos?
doesn't give control over where images are stored (e.g. stores images in downloaded_images folder)

For #2

has a few different metadata source options (one of them being thegamesdb)
Should be run while ES isn't running
It has a GUI with a good set of options to make it easy to run
Can also be run from the command line which gives a lot of flexibility like..
--- folder to store images
--- if you don't want boxart for example you can set it to get screenshots
--- etc...
--- this is how I achieved the arcade look in my previous post)
Can scrape videos (as long as the source you are scraping from has them)

For #3

Run from a windows machine (accessing retropie install over the network)
Scrapes metadata from screenscraper.fr
GUI with a good set of options
Custom scrape profiles can built (for me this allows for similar flexibility to command line args that #2 supports)
scrapes videos

Once I learned more about the command line args for #2 (Selph's) its becoming my primary because I like that it can be run directly on my pi and has access to a few different metadata sources. It can be installed from the retropie setup script (I believe its under optional packages).

The GUI it provides out of the box pulls in great metadata without any command line work (though if you are interested I can write up a quick step by step for how I am using the command line approach)

Does this help?

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant This helps a ton. Thank you! I'm trying option 2 right now. With option 2, do you re-encode your videos after they are downloaded?

I'm on a Mac so I can't use option 3.

alphatoanant

@hurricanefan said in [New Theme] Art Book:

With option 2, do you re-encode your videos after they are downloaded?

Yes I do. I think my handbrake settings are 320x240 @ 30fps with a Constant Quality of 30

Though I remember you had said you used emumovies too right? If so the good news is you might be able to just use those videos.

When selph's scraper runs it checks to see if it has the image/video it expects to get in the folder its looking in. If it does then it just picks up that media and adds the reference to the gamelist (so no downloading needed). For this to work you have to make sure the videos are named as the scraper would expect them to be named. Default I believe is romname-video.mp4 - though this can also be changed if using the command line.

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant Yup, I do have emumovies.com for everything except arcade videos. I plan on using your scraper settings for video and just wondered if I had to change them after they were downloaded.

Really loving your theme and appreciate all the help you've provided me.

alphatoanant

Updates 7/29/17

Started testing the Custom Collections work from @pjft (see: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11805/please-test-creating-custom-collections/)
Added 2 new systems with custom logos to help with testing =)
-- tloz (The Legend of Zelda)
-- smb (Super Mario Bros)
Tweaked the retropie system layout to remove unnecessary metadata
Added a new font to use in logoText property for cases when a custom collection is not based off of theme

Preview:

New SMB and LOTZ systems with logos
alt text

lotz system created using the "custom collections > create new custom collection from theme" feature
alt text

custom collections not created from a theme shown grouped together
alt text

@pjft I am having a lot of fun with this feature. The metadata change you made for grouped collections is awesome. Excellent work!

Latest is up at https://github.com/anthonycaccese/es-theme-art-book

pjft

@alphatoanant these look fantastic! Thanks for the note on the grouped collections metadata, glad you feel it's useful, and an elegant solution for the context :)

TMNTturtlguy

really like the elegant look of this theme! Nice job

alphatoanant

@soloskywalker I just added tg-cd and pce-cd systems following the naming convention seen in carbon theme. Latest is on github now.

alphatoanant

Update 8/1/17

Art Book can be installed through the ES Themes section in the latest version of Retropie now (you can still install manually from github as well)
Added new custom systems to help support the custom collections feature coming soon in Emulation Station

The list of new custom systems added:

atari
capcom
dataeast
finalfantasy
konami
namco
nintendo
pokemon
sega
snk
sonicthehedgehog
squaresoft
taito

HurricaneFan

@alphatoanant Is it possible for you to add a few more custom systems?

Midway
Williams
Super Mario
Star Wars

alphatoanant

@hurricanefan yes for sure.

Super Mario is in place now (its called "smb"). Was wondering if I should rename it to supermario though.

Will look at getting Midway, Williams and Stars Wars done