Netflix-Style Theme Idea

red2blue

Someone should make a netflix style game theme...

You scroll by going horizontol to select game [left and right][ which would be the box cover of said game, all resized to same dimensions], & on top right it shows video [like netflix] top left it shows the wheel/marquee whatever its called [like netflix showing movie logo] with description underneath and rating under that, as well as publisher and date created maybe.

Then if you press the down button on controller, you can browse the next system like netflix.

for example

[ - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - -- - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - -- - - - -- - - - -- - - - -- ]

    GAME MARQUEE HERE      

  GAME DESCRIPTION HERE                                      GAME VIDEO PREVIEW HERE        
  
    GAME Rating Here



           SYSTEM CATEGORY HERE [NES]
  •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• 

           SYSTEM CATEGORY HERE [SNES]
  •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• 

           SYSTEM CATEGORY HERE [SEGA]
  •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• •Boxart• 

  etc etc etc

[ - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - -- - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - -- - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - -- - - - -- - - - -- - - - -- ]

[Replace picture of movie with box art, and the categories with system, top right would be video preview, and background could be screenshot or fan art? user choice?
alt text

red2blue

@pjft maybe you can use this idea for your collections?

Go under collections folder in emulation station and it does this for favorites, last played, etc?

pjft

@red2blue Thanks for adding me and for the suggestion.

This is more related to theming/UI changes rather than data organization/structures.

These suggestions resemble the Grid View mode that was in development a while ago, and could probably be adopted there should that keep on being developed.

My changes do not affect the frontend in any meaningful way - I'm just adding more systems in a pre-existing layout.

TMNTturtlguy

@red2blue This is a great idea, however to expand upon what @pjft most of what you are trying to do is currently not possible in the current build of Emulation Station, however i have some thoughts i might try to come up with something close. Basically the current game list is a text list only, and it does not work like the side scrolling movies in netflix. The system carousel in the system selection view can now look like what you are suggesting, but not the game list. The second issue is that we are currently only allowed to display 1 image, 1 video and 1 marquee at a time. So we can't show boxart and a background image unique to each game at the same time. We can only show 1 of them.

I think there are some possibilities here, but nothing as neat as what Netflix does and you are suggesting at the time.

Also, i would like to invite you to read the documents and wiki pages on how to create a custom theme. I think it would be great for you to play with themeing and see if you can come up with something like this to share with everyone. I think you would find a lot of enjoyment in the process.

Thanks

meleu

@red2blue I'm not sure, but I believe that a theme like this would more doable for Pegasus (and I saw you already posted this suggestion there :) ).

red2blue

@meleu yep definitely would meleu!! you are what inspired it haha

Looks like from what everyone else is saying, we can only do it on your front end. Emulationstation is too limited

@TMNTturtlguy I actually just downloaded the theme editor thing, funny you mentioned that... i got a few ideas i might try out.. looks a little confusing tho

meleu

@red2blue said in Netflix-Style Theme Idea:

we can only do it on your front end

Mine? The Pegasus developer is @fluffypillow . I'm unable to write C++ code. :)

EctoOne

@tmntturtlguy said in Netflix-Style Theme Idea:

The second issue is that we are currently only allowed to display 1 image, 1 video and 1 marquee at a time. So we can't show boxart and a background image unique to each game at the same time. We can only show 1 of them.

There is a workaround for that issue. The Mix-Images from Universal XML Scraper.
I tried to recreate a Kodi theme a while ago, with full screen fanart as background and whatnot. There was a problem with the z-index and that the game list was hidden behind the image. @screech mentioned to add transparency to an area but I never got it to look good with that so I gave up.
Should be possible today tho after we got the z-index feature.

TMNTturtlguy

@ectoone The problem with that approach is that whoever creates the theme would then need to create a full screen background image for every single possible rom and make those available for download. The users would then need to modify their gamelist to use the custom image for each rom. This is similar to what @ruckage has done with the images and marquee (wheelart) files for his neo geo capcom theme. If someone is up to that, i wish them all the luck, but the amount of work creating these backgrounds for every game is much to big of a task for me.

EctoOne

@tmntturtlguy Or the thememaker could just provide the mix template. But that would require people to use it for scraping. Thats another reason why i gave up on creating the theme; since UXS has no option to create Mix images from local files, i often was not pleased by some of the created images.
That's why i'm waiting for someone who adds extra tags that can be used in themes. At that time i would change my whole game folder structure to the same that Kodi uses for local files.

red2blue

We don't have to use a image for the background, was just a idea. Another idea would just make a background for each system so when you scroll down or up background changes depending which system.youre under showing custom console on bg.

I would expect no one to make one for every game that would take ages lol

EctoOne

@red2blue Like it was mentioned before, without grid view we can't use boxart as gamelist, only text. But sadly that's a feature that's not being worked on I think.
Getting the images would, at the current state, at least be possible.

red2blue

@ectoone I know, just saying that when the time comes where we can use grid mode, we dont have to use background images :)