Skyscraper: marquees not working

timmay

Pi 3 Model B+
RetroPie 4.5.2
SanDisk 64GB SD card
Skyscraper latest ver.

I can't get it to work properly, marquees are either cached only and not transferred to /emulationstation/downloaded_media/platform/marquees or not downloaded at all, but even if they are cached and also put into the downloaded_media folders they still don't show up in ES.
(Using Retrorama theme, marquees should appear in the description box above the text)

No matter what I try, running simple mode through retropie-script or manual mode via terminal. I also tried with 'Skyscraper' command from the terminal after adjusting the config.ini but no luck.
Not sure but it seems the config.ini isn't used because it just asks me a bunch of question (output folder, system to scrape, match percentage etc.) before scraping although that should be taken from the config.ini (?).

What am I missing or doing wrong?

mitu

@timmay said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

I can't get it to work properly, marquees are either cached only and not transferred to /emulationstation/downloaded_media/platform/marquees or not downloaded at all, but even if they are cached and also put into the downloaded_media folders they still don't show up in ES.
(Using Retrorama theme, marquees should appear in the description box above the text)

Please post the gamelist.xml file created by Skyscraper. If it contains the marquee tags and they're populated, then it's not a Skyscraper issue - but a theme/Emulationstation problem.

Not sure but it seems the config.ini isn't used because it just asks me a bunch of question (output folder, system to scrape, match percentage etc.) before scraping although that should be taken from the config.ini (?).

If you don't run it with enough parameters (--unattended, the right -s options), then Skyscraper will ask some information to know what to do. That's normal, it doesn't matter if your config.ini is already set or not.

EDIT: did you also download videos with Skyscraper for your games ?

timmay

@mitu said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

If it contains the marquee tags and they're populated, then it's not a Skyscraper issue - but a theme/Emulationstation problem.

Good hint. I checked a bunch of gamelists, some have the marquee paths integrated, some not. Probably caused by all the different scraping methods I tried- so that should not be the issue, seems like ES or the theme causes not showing the marquees.
That's odd to me because for a few systems (e.g. CPS1,2,3, C64, Mastersystem) marquees are actually appearing above the description text.

EDIT: did you also download videos with Skyscraper for your games ?

Usually yes. For a couple of attempts I left out scraping videos to make the trial and error process faster. I'm guessing this is not the issue because for example when scraping MAME-libreto I also tested different of the above mentioned scraping ways, with and withoud videos, and so far no marquees showed up.

EDIT: I will try for FBA from terminal with 'Skyscraper -p fba -s screenscraper --videos'

mitu

Try this - for a system where you scraped videos and marquees, see if the marquees are showing up. Check also with the default (Carbon) theme. I think there's a bug/missing feature in Emulationstation where if the 'View style' is not set to 'Video', the marquees are not shown.

timmay

@timmay said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

EDIT: I will try for FBA from terminal with 'Skyscraper -p fba -s screenscraper --videos'

--> result: 30 marquees and no videos were scraped (there are 142 roms in FBA folder). Those 30 do show up in ES.

That's strange because when originally scraping via retropie-script/ Skyscraper menu it scraped all 142 marquees and nearly all videos. (this way scraped media is placed in /emulationstation/downloaded_media/platform/...).
Using the command line 'Skyscraper -p fba -s screenscraper --videos' the scraped media is placed in roms/fba/media/...
The different locations are due to the scraping method but now only 30/142 marquees and no videos?

Switching to Carbon theme makes no difference: the few systems that show marquees do that no matter which theme is used, the others not at all.

So the issue really seems to be located somewhere in Emulationstation. Can I find out where exactly? Because as mentioned a few systems show the marquees correctly. I just don't know where to look.

Changing the 'gamelist view style' in ES doesn't help. With automatic, detailed and video they show up, otherwise not. So either the marquees appear or they don't - independent of the chosen view style.

mitu

@timmay said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

Switching to Carbon theme makes no difference: the few systems that show marquees do that no matter which theme is used, the others not at all.
So the issue really seems to be located somewhere in Emulationstation. Can I find out where exactly? Because as mentioned a few systems show the marquees correctly. I just don't know where to look.
Changing the 'gamelist view style' in ES doesn't help. With automatic, detailed and video they show up, otherwise not.

I' m sorry, but this is getting confusing for me - you started by stating that marquees do not work, but now they work, but now they don't work for all systems (?).
I expect that a theme would not support marquees for 'basic' view, and 'automatic' will use either 'video' or 'detailed' , so I'd say that's to be expected ('video', 'detailed' + 'automatic' to work the same).

Can you please post some concrete examples - the gamelist.xml file for the system where they don't show up and what theme are you using ?

So either the marquees appear or they don't - independent of the chosen view style.

If the theme doesn't support marquees, then of course they won't show up.

timmay

Yes. that's the point, for a few systems it works and marquees are eventually appearing but for most systems they don't show up, it's confusing. Excuse me if that wasn't specified accurately in the beginning.
I now tried for every single system one more time (via retropie-script/Skyscraper menu with videos enabled) and with the exact same method for a few systems it's working, many others not. The odd thing after scraping is that for the non-working systems marquees are downloaded/cached but not transferred to the media folder (examples see below):

A) systems with marquees appearing:
marquees cached + placed in /emulationstation/downloaded_media/platform/marquees
example: NGPC
gamelist: https://pastebin.com/NcGVv0j6

B) systems with no marquees appearing:
marquees cached but not placed in /emulationstation/downloaded_media/platform/marquees
example: Gamegear
gamelist: https://pastebin.com/XkqmYtxg

@mitu said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

Can you please post some concrete examples - the gamelist.xml file for the system where they don't show up and what theme are you using ?
So either the marquees appear or they don't - independent of the chosen view style.
If the theme doesn't support marquees, then of course they won't show up.

Retrorama theme. It supports marquees, otherwise there would be no marquees for the couple of systems that do show them like NGPC, FBA, Mastersystem, etc.

mitu

@timmay said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

A) systems with marquees appearing:
marquees cached + placed in /emulationstation/downloaded_media/platform/marquees
example: NGPC
gamelist: https://pastebin.com/NcGVv0j6

OK, this gamelist has the 'marquees' added to the gamelist.

B) systems with no marquees appearing:
marquees cached but not placed in /emulationstation/downloaded_media/platform/marquees
example: Gamegear
gamelist: https://pastebin.com/XkqmYtxg

.. but this one does not, so that's why they don't appear.

I'll test again with the gamegear system and the ROMs you have in your list to see if the marquees are downloaded by Skyscraper.
You can make sure you've had 'marquees' selected when scraping AND generating the gamelist for Emulationstation and try again.

timmay

Yes, I checked a couple of gamelists yesterday and those systems that show marquees have them in their gamelists, all systems without marquees are missing the paths to them.

Ok, hold on, I think perhaps I found the issue.
Since it's suspicious that the marquees are actually cached for all systems but only for a few systems transferred to .../downloaded_media/platform/marquees and added to the gamelists I began checking the actual marquee.png files.

I compared the ones in Skyscrapers cache folder to the ones in .../downloaded_media/platform/marquees. Interestingly the marquees for each system have different png-images in the cache and downloaded_media... folders. Systems that show marquees in ES and have a path info in the associated gamelist have their marquee.png actually compiled based on the downloaded wheel.png image!?
Example:
Metal Slug - 2nd Mission (World) (En,Ja).png
in: .../downloaded_media/ngpc/marquees

is based on

bd1bddac4672d05945113a976e7476f451aed442.png
in: .../Skyscraper/cache/ngpc/wheels/screenscraper

I don't know if that's a normal process but I had no clue. So in the end those systems that have no marquees in ES have no scraped wheel images cached and/or in .../downloaded_media/platform/wheels.

If I'm correct the question now is how to get the remaining systems to also make & name the *.png images based on the wheel images (if available in cache)? On the other hand why are for a couple of systems wheels missing (not cached) although they are there for most systems? All systems where scraped by the exact same way in Skyscraper.

mitu

@timmay said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

I don't know if that's a normal process but I had no clue. So in the end those systems that have no marquees in ES have no scraped wheel images cached and/or in .../downloaded_media/platform/wheels.

It's normal, wheel is another name for marquee and some scraping sites name the image this way. See for instance https://www.screenscraper.fr/gameinfos.php?gameid=12972&action=onglet&zone=gameinfosmedias.

mitu

OK, so I did a quick test with GameGear and I don't have this problem. Marquees are downloaded and assembled in the gamelist.xml file and they're also shown in Emulationstation:

Make sure that Skyscraper downloads the marquees for the systems that don't have one and the marquee option is enabled (it's the default) in the RetroPie-Setup script.
If the tag isn't been added to the cache, then it will not be added to the gamelist.

timmay

Should be working now but only if the option 'force cache refresh' is enabled. Still a surprise to me since I ran Skyscraper dozens of times and the settings for videos and marquees definitely were enabled all the time - but I'm glad it finally seems to be working.
@mitu Thanks for helping out, very much apprechiated!

timmay

I have one more minor thing I couldn't figure out. In Retrorama theme's gamelists the last title is cut off by some sort of black overlay border (not in Carbon theme, only Retrorama).
This occurs for all systems that have more games than the page can list (so you have to scroll down).
I checked and it's not by default. Normally the last title should not be partly listed like that at all, instead the shown titles for this page should be ending with 'QIX'.

muldjord

This post is deleted!

muldjord

@timmay said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

I can't get it to work properly, marquees are either cached only and not transferred to /emulationstation/downloaded_media/platform/marquees or not downloaded at all, but even if they are cached and also put into the downloaded_media folders they still don't show up in ES.

I don't have time to read through and understand all that's posted in here right now, but just making sure, did you actually change the ~/.skyscraper/artwork.xml file to include the marquee exports? Otherwise it won't use them at all. It's not enough to cache them, you also need to add an output for it. If not, then please check the docs here

EDIT: The default artwork.xml exports the marquee using the wheel graphics to give the best look to the default ES theme. This is why you'll see wheel exported as marquee's. This is supposed to be like this. You'll need to customize your artwork.xml to get it to do what you want.

This is the default one:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- This is the default artwork.xml provided by Skyscraper. More examples can be found in '~/.skyscraper'. Be sure to check the full artwork documentation here: https://github.com/muldjord/skyscraper/blob/master/docs/ARTWORK.md -->
<artwork>
  <output type="screenshot" width="640" height="480">
    <layer resource="screenshot" x="20" width="520" height="390" align="center" valign="middle">
      <rounded radius="10"/>
      <stroke width="5"/>
    </layer>
    <layer resource="cover" height="250" x="0" y="-10" valign="bottom">
      <gamebox side="wheel" rotate="90"/>
      <shadow distance="5" softness="5" opacity="70"/>
    </layer>
    <layer resource="wheel" width="250" x="-10" align="right">
      <shadow distance="5" softness="5" opacity="70"/>
    </layer>
  </output>
  <output type="marquee" resource="wheel"/>
</artwork>

As you can see, the last output node (scroll to see it) outputs a marquee, but uses the wheel resource for a better look when using the ES default theme. If you want it to actually export the marquee, simply remove the resource="wheel"part of that output node.

timmay

@muldjord said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

As you can see, the last output node (scroll to see it) outputs a marquee, but uses the wheel resource for a better look when using the ES default theme. If you want it to actually export the marquee, simply remove the resource="wheel"part of that output node.

Thanks for breaking down the process! This way it's actually perfectly fine, it does look better in ES using the wheel art anyway. I just didn't recognize the marquees being based on the wheel images in the beginning.

timmay

@timmay said in Skyscraper: marquees not working:

I have one more minor thing I couldn't figure out. In Retrorama theme's gamelists the last title is cut off by some sort of black overlay border (not in Carbon theme, only Retrorama).
This occurs for all systems that have more games than the page can list (so you have to scroll down).
I checked and it's not by default. Normally the last title should not be partly listed like that at all, instead the shown titles for this page should be ending with 'QIX'.

Any suggestions for this or should I put it in a new thread?

muldjord

@timmay No idea about that. I love the default theme and have only ever tried a few others before going back to the default one. It has everything I want.