slow down description when shown on game selection menu

daniel

Hi guys,

This is my first topic so hi to everyone and thanks in advance for your help.

I have set up retropie 4.3 on a raspberry pi 3 B +. I've added roms for snes and neogeo and have scraped both systems using Steven Selph's Scraper. Everything working and looking nice.

I've just something that I haven't been able to figure it out yet. For some reason, I love to read the description of the game I'm going to play. Especially, if there's some sort of plot (i.e. Castlevania, megaman, etc).

Now, when I scroll down to a particular game and try to read the description, the text scrolls down really fast. It's just not possible for me to read it.

So, I was wondering if there's any config file where I can change this speed. Even better if I manually was to be able to scroll up and down as needed.

Just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, the below is just an example of the text field I'm talking about:

Because the scraper sometimes adds more text than it can be seen, the text will automatically scroll up after one or two seconds.

I hope my question makes sense. It is obviously not a major issue but it's something that would enhance my experience.

Thanks a lot.

Daniel

chipsnblip

it appears that the scrolling speeds are defined in this file:
https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/blob/master/es-core/src/components/ScrollableContainer.cpp

i've seen people ask about being able to change these settings before. maybe you could submit a patch or open an issue on github for them to be included in es_settings.cfg.

in the mean time, you could fork your own copy of ES on github and change the repo in /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/supplementary/emulationstation.sh (line 139) to your repo url. then re-install ES from source.

someone please correct me if i'm wrong. at least, i think that's how it will work (i'm not a programmer and have never tried it).

GoldManSex778

This is something I have been thinking about how to improve as well. It’s not the speed that’s the problem it’s that the text starts scrolling immediately. It should wait a second or two before scrolling.

A simple fix I have considered is to put 3 or 4 lines of blank spaces at the beginning and end of each description in the xmls. So that the first lines scroll from bottom to top giving you time to read them.

But if the only way to affect properties of descriptions is to compile your own version of ES then that is a bit excessive for such a minor issue

daniel

Sorry for my late reply.

Thanks a lot guys. I appreciate your assistance.

I'd love to try something like that but nowadays my spare time is limited so anything that is "out of the box" included in retropie is not possible.

I'd say I'll leave it as it is for the time being.

Clyde

@goldmansex778 said in slow down description when shown on game selection menu:

A simple fix I have considered is to put 3 or 4 lines of blank spaces at the beginning and end of each description in the xmls. So that the first lines scroll from bottom to top giving you time to read them.

I finally got around to write a console command for that, here on the example of Neo Geo:

cd /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/neogeo/   # change into the rom folder "neogeo"
sed -i.backup -r "s/<desc>/&\n\n/" gamelist.xml   # edit the gamelist there

Just change the path to the rom folder in question and the number of \n to the number of empty lines you want to insert at the beginning of each description (two in my example).

I split the command into two for convenience and clarity. Instead of the cd command you can also just put the path gaplessly in front of the gamelist.xml in the second line. You won't "be" in that directory then, though, e.g. for further commands like the backup's restore below.

The sed command creates a backup named gamelist.xml.backup. But beware, the backup is overwritten without asking for confirmation each time you run the command. You can restore the backup quickly by entering cp gamelist.xml.backup gamelist.xml from within the rom directory.

At the moment, I'm too lazy to write a script that does this to all gamelists in all rom folders. Maybe I'll do it later, but I don't promise anything. 😇 Anyone else feel free to do it at your leisure.

By the way, does anyone know how to increase the amount of the description text that is shown? It stops at some point regardless of the actual length in the two themes I tested, namely Carbon and Comic Book.

verynicholas

HEy guys. Made an account just to post this. I have realized the same exact problem. IS there anyway we can just use a control stick so the user can scroll up and down instead of automatically scrolling. I only have a few of my favorite games scraped but I stop and re read shit a lot so its annoying to have to sit there waiting for things to autoscroll. Seems like a better idea to me anyways. everyone reads at their own pace.

pengafin

@Clyde Thanks for this console command! It works if you need more time to read the description. But do you know how to add another two empty lines at the end? sometimes i need even more time to finish reading the whole description before it starts again (english is not my native language)

Clyde

@pengafin This should do it:

sed -i.backup -r 's#</desc>#\n\n&#' gamelist.xml

Explanation: &\n\n adds the new lines after the search pattern, whereas\n\n& adds them before it. Note that I had to change the delimiter character in the regular expression from the standard / to # because the search pattern now includes a / itself (</desc>, the end tag for descriptions). The # is arbitrary, sed treats any character right after the s (for "substitute") as the delimiter to use, so s:</desc>:\n\n&: would also work.

pengafin

@Clyde Great! It works perfectly. And thanks also for the detailed explanation!