How do I remove game number belt (the number of games in an emulator)

Nicky_S14

Hi,

How would I remove the thing that shows how many games are in an emulator? (e.g. if PSX had 50 games, how can I make it so the menu just shows the PSX emulator and not the amount of games.

Thank you so much!

mediamogul

@nicky_s14

There's no option to remove the game number listing.

Nicky_S14

Hi,

I briefly remember that this could be done, and I did it myself, but this was some years ago. I'm not the retropie geek that I used to be - and I couldn't find the guide for this again.

Are you 100% sure about this? If so, I'll take your word for it. Thanks for you help <3

herb_fargus

@mediamogul I don't want to tell you you're wrong as I've yet to see you be, but...

You may be able to modify the theme xml to render that part of the carousel off screen:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/12625/where-can-you-change-the-position-of-the-games-available-in-a-theme

Relevant pull request in the code:

https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/pull/101

See bits on systeminfo

https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/blob/master/THEMES.md

Or if you want to go the more difficult route you can hard code it and recompile emulationstation

https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/6s295e/changing_es_games_available_text/

EctoOne

@nicky_s14 you need to find the following element in your theme <text name="systemInfo"> and set <origin>0 0</origin> <pos>1 1</pos>.
This should move the element of screen.

Nicky_S14

@EctoOne @herb_fargus Hmm. I'm having a problem here;

I did this in the commandline:

cd /etc/emulationstation/themes/playstation (i'm using Playstation theme) and then I opened theme.xml.

I found the systemInfo tag but I applied the code you gave me, I read this elsewhere too. It looks like this:
<text name="systemInfo"> <pos>1 1</pos> <origin>0 0</origin> </text>

BUT the issue hasn't gone, and the game amount still shows. Any help?

chipsnblip

you can't disable it, but can make it disappear. for this you'll have to edit the theme.
my example is for the carbon theme, but can be adapted to any one.

copy the theme directory and give it a new name:
cp -R /etc/emulationstation/themes/carbon ~/.emulationstation/themes/carbon-modified

check if your theme has a systemInfo node:
cat ~/.emulationstation/themes/carbon-modified/*.xml | egrep 'systemInfo'

if it has this node, find which xml it's in (most themes have one or two) and edit it. if not, you'll need to create the node.
the following stanza goes in carbon.xml after the <view name="system">:

      <text name="systemInfo">
      				<pos>0.00 0.00</pos>
      				<size>0.0 0.00</size>
      			</text>

save the file and change your theme set to carbon-modified in emulationstation's UI settings.
as a bonus, while you're in there you can even change the default white carousel to something else.

	<carousel name="systemcarousel">
			<color>777471BF</color>
		</carousel>

color is represented in 8-digit hexidecimal notation.

that's it, hope this was helpful :)

Nicky_S14

@chipsnblip @herb_fargus @EctoOne

Hi :)

Please read my previous post on what I did. I believe I did the same thing as you told me, but for good measure, now, I have added <size>0.0 0.0</size> - but it's still showing up.

My guess here is that the theme isn't allowing it. I'm using Playstation here. I remember long ago when I did it, I just used a tool in Retropie Setup. That was awesome, and super friendly to use. Do you have any idea of this?
(sorry that I don't know, it's been years).

chipsnblip

@nicky_s14

i think it's because you don't have privileges to edit the files in /etc/emulationstation. try placing a copy of the directory in ~/.emulationstation/themes

Nicky_S14

@chipsnblip

Okay, I'll try that. Could you perhaps guide me on how to do that? I've never heard or tried that before, I'm a bit clueless on this one.

I checked if my edits went through by SSHing into my Pi, and I opened the same file on my computer and it showed a modified file. I think you might be right though...

chipsnblip

@nicky_s14 see my post above, just change carbon to playstation. the playstation theme already has the systemInfo node (line 41), so just edit it.

mediamogul

@herb_fargus said in How do I remove game number belt (the number of games in an emulator):

I don't want to tell you you're wrong as I've yet to see you be, but...

Ha! You're too kind, but it's OK. This isn't nearly as bad as the time I swore that diet Dr. Pepper tasted more like regular Dr. Pepper. A lot of good people were hurt because of that erroneous info. It's good to know that this is an option after-all.

edmaul69

@herb_fargus you are correct. Position it off screen is the answer

Nicky_S14

@chipsnblip Doing so just gives me an error no such directory. I've already went to the systemInfo tag and edited it, trying to render the belt off the screen - but it didn't happen.

I appreciate your help, I will do some more shovelling in this tomorrow. Perhaps I'm just lost.

chipsnblip

@nicky_s14 said in How do I remove game number belt (the number of games in an emulator):

@chipsnblip Doing so just gives me an error no such directory. I've already went to the systemInfo tag and edited it, trying to render the belt off the screen - but it didn't happen.

I appreciate your help, I will do some more shovelling in this tomorrow. Perhaps I'm just lost.

not sure what the problem could be then, i just tested this on the playstation theme and it works.

Nicky_S14

@chipsnblip This is what I'm doing:

cp -R /etc/emulationstation/themes/playstation ~/.^emulationstation/themes/carbon-modified and it gives me so:

cp: cannot create directory '/home/pi/.emulationstation/themes/carbon-modified': No such file or directory

Am I doing something wrong?

mitu

@nicky_s14 You need to create the theme folder first:

mkdir -p ~/.emulationstation/themes
cp -R /etc/emulationstation/themes/playstation ~/.emulationstation/themes/psx-modified

Your personalized theme will be called psx-modified. Make sure you don't add the ^ character again when running the command.

dudleydes

@nicky_s14 When it comes to editing custom themes, I find it far more straightforward to use Samba shares. You will need to have your Pi connected to your home network.

The direct path to the EmulationStation folder is smb://retropie/configs/all/emulationstation. This folder is symlinked to /home/pi/.emulationstation so any changes made through Samba shares will be reflected in the latter folder.

I also prefer to download the theme from relevant Github page. The Playstation theme can be downloaded from here. Unzip the download on your PC and use Samba shares to transfer the es-theme-playstation-master folder to the themes folder, which you may have to create. You can then edit theme.xml in a text editor on your PC to make your changes.

In the UI setting in ES, your custom theme will appear as es-theme-playstation-master.

Nicky_S14

@chipsnblip @mitu

Guys, you are actually amazing. It finally works. Thank you so so so so much! I've been banging my head on my counter to not being able to do this.

It now works with all of my themes, (if someone uses Chicuelo, add <color>ffffff00</color> within the systemInfo tag and then the number of games will be transparent, if it still renders on your screen ( depending on your resolution).

Thanks for all the help on this thread <3