Fun Facts Splashscreens

[hiulit]

@meleu Thanks! :D It's super basic now, but it seems to be working. Now it's time to take a look at your generate-launching-imagesscript and improve mine ;)

[meleu]

@hiulit I'm glad to know it can inspire you. I usually spend sometime making my code readable just to help others to understand it (including @meleu in the future). Knowing that you're reading it and getting some inspiration makes me feel like the work was worth it. :D

Let me know if you have any doubt!

[meleu]

@hiulit a small tip: if you want to store fun facts in a text file, one fun fact per line, you can get a random line from the file using the shuf command. This way:

shuf -n 1 fun_facts.txt

EDIT: This aproach would be useful if the users want to customize their fun facts. They wouldn't need to edit the script's code.

;-)

[hiulit]

@meleu Thanks for the tip! I'll try it! :)

[hiulit]

@meleu Done! It works beautifully :D

[Zigurana]

If it takes too long, maybe run the image-generation-script on system shutdown, to be used at next boot-time?

[meleu]

@zigurana good idea! ;-)

@hiulit I have more comments, maybe it's better to move the nerdy conversation to the nerdy topic... :)

[hiulit]

@zigurana Yeah, good idea! Although I really don't have any idea of where I should put my script to do that... (⊙_☉) hehe! Noob at scripting here :P

[hiulit]

More progress! :D
Now the splashscreen is created using the font of the active theme in EmulationStation, and if it has none it takes the Carbon theme font as default.

A little video demo of the script working https://streamable.com/s/bbzzd/fecqc

And here's the the splashscreen of the Pixel theme with a Fun Fact!™ using Pixel's own font.

[meleu]

@hiulit you're doing a good job bro!!

I've submitted a PR to your repo. But, as I'm away from my RetroPie currently, please test it before merging. ;-)

[hiulit]

WOW, thanks man! I will take a look at it and I'll get back to you :)

[hiulit]

@meleu Hey, I've merged your pull request but I had to make a little change because it didn't seem to work properly.

The change I made was adding a ! before -f "$splashscreen" when checking for the splashscreen.

if [[ ! -f "$splash" ]]; then
    splash="$DEFAULT_SPLASH"
fi

Besides that, everything was alright! Thanks! :)

[hiulit]

@meleu When I encountered the problem with Pixel theme and xmlstarlet I tried a different approach for finding the font.

function get_theme_font() {
    get_current_theme
    if [[ -n "$(find "$ES_DIR/themes/$current_theme/art" -type f -name '*.ttf')" ]]; then
        font="$(find "$ES_DIR/themes/$current_theme/art" -type f -name '*.ttf')"
    else
        font=$DEFAULT_FONT
    fi
}

I did the job, but I wasn't happy about repeating the find function , but I don't know any better :P

Do you think that could be a workaround for finding theme fonts?

I know that some themes can have multiple fonts but I think it's ok to use the first one found.

[meleu]

@hiulit it's better to move the nerdy conversation to the nerdy topic... :)

I'll try to answer your questions there. Wait a moment. ;)

[hiulit]

@meleu Oh, you're right! ;) See you there!

[meleu]

@BuZz please, evaluate if you would accept the following feature for splashscreen script module (and asplashscreen.sh script):

Adding an option to put a random "fun fact" on the splashscreen.

The result would be something like this:

Some notes about how I'm thinking to implement that:

• add a toggle option on splashscreen script module to enable/disable fun facts.

• when enabled, a new splashscreen would be generated at every boot

• a new dependency to generate the images: imagemagick (same as launchingimages scriptmodule).

• the image would be generated at boot in a background process and would be used in the next boot. I mean, when I boot my pi, the splashscreen I would see already exists and the script would be generating a new one for the next boot in a background process.

• (obviously) it would be only used when the splashscreen is an image (do nothing when using a video)

• the "fun facts database" would be a text file in $datadir/splashscreens/.

  • an "official" funfacts collection could be stored in the official repo in scriptmodules/supplementary/splashscreen/

  • provide a way to the user use a custom funfacts collection.

• the font to be used for the fun fact text would be the same as the one used by the current ES theme in detailed view.

  • Note: RetroPie must be frontend agnostic. Then, if the script can't find the font as described above, it would use a generic font.

• all the logic for the image generation would be in asplashscreen.sh script

[BuZz]

@meleu I wouldn't be interested sorry.

[meleu]

@buzz copy that.

@hiulit let's keep the development extra-officially.

[hiulit]

@meleu Alright!

[hiulit]

Good news everyone!
We have a working Fun Facts Splashscreens generator! :D

https://github.com/hiulit/RetroPie-Fun-Facts-Splashscreens

Fun Facts Splashscreens for RetroPie

Not working yet! Well, it's working, but it's not officially released! It's just for testing purposes!

This script generates splashscreens for RetroPie with a random Fun Fact!™.

WARNING: Splashscreens are only only available on the Raspberry Pi.

For now, this is the best way to use the splashscreen created by this script:

• Create a Fun Fact!™ splashscreen. See the examples below.
• Go to the Splashscreen Menu (the Splashscreen Menu can be accessed from the RetroPie Menu in EmulationStation or through the setup script under option 3)
• Select the Choose Own Splashscreen option. See the Splashscreen wiki.
• Select the recently created Fun Fact!™ splashscreen.

Instalation

cd /home/pi/
git clone https://github.com/hiulit/es-fun-facts-splashscreens.git
cd es-fun-facts-splashscreens/
sudo chmod +x es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh

Usage

sudo ./es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh [options]

If no options are passed, you will be prompted with a usage example:

USAGE: sudo ./es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh [options]

Use '--help' to see all the options

Options

• --help: Print the help message and exit.
• --enable-boot: Enable script to be launch at boot.
  • $1: Path to the splashscreen to be used.
  • $2: Text color.
• --disable-boot: Disable script to be launch at boot.
• --create-fun-fact: Create Fun Fact Splashscreen.
  • $1: Path to the splashscreen to be used.
  • $2: Text color.

If no options are passed to --create-fun-fact or --enable-boot, the script takes the splashscreen and the text color defaults, splash4-3.png and white, respectively.

Examples

--help

Print the help message and exit.

sudo ./es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh --help

--enable-boot [options]

Enable script to be launch at boot.

WARNING: Backing up /etc/rc.local it's most recommended before using this option. It could erase important stuff. Use it at your own risk.

Options:

• $1: Path to the splashscreen to be used.
• $2: Text color.

sudo ./es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh --enable-boot /home/pi/Downloads/retropie-2014.png black

--disable-boot

Disable script to be launch at boot.

WARNING: Backing up /etc/rc.local it's most recommended before using this option. It could erase important stuff. Use it at your own risk.

sudo ./es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh --disable-boot

--create-fun-fact

Create Fun Fact Splashscreen.

Options:

• $1: Path to the splashscreen to be used.
• $2: Text color.

sudo ./es-fun-facts-splashscreens.sh --create-fun-fact /home/pi/Downloads/retropie-2014.png black

Credits

Thanks to:

• @Parviglumis - For the idea of creating the Fun Facts Splashscreens.
• @meleu - For all his help and wisdom with the code :D
• All the people at the RetroPie Forum.