Input needed: ES theming improvements

mattrixk

@herb_fargus That makes me curious about how easy/hard it would be to show the carousel on other Views. I notice you saw this post, is that what got you thinking about it?

Imagine the possibilities if we could do that, although I have some reservations about the controls. Eg: if you have a vertical carousel down the left side of the Basic/Detailed View, pressing Left on the d-pad would activate it. Would Up and Down change the active System as you scroll, or would you have to press A to go into it? Then pressing Right on the d-pad would go back to the gamelist.

But what if you had a horizontal carousel across the top (or bottom) of the screen? Would it still be left/right to get to it? But then when it's active, left/right would cycle Systems, so would you then need to use up/down to activate the gamelist?

@Zigurana: Would you consider putting in a menu option to let the user choose a vertical or horizontal carousel, then a Theme Maker could put in code for both? Although, I don't know how the Maker would differentiate between the 2... maybe <carousel name="systemcarousel-horz"> and <carousel name="systemcarousel-vert"> or something, but that wouldn't cover having different backgrounds, borders or artwork for each layout. Maybe something could be added to <view name="system"> like <view name="system" carousel="horz"> or <view name="system" extra="horz"> or something. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud.

lilbud

Dream list of ES features: (Just some ideas, you don't have to take these seriously.)

Change width of gamelist selector
Color logos in carousel with codes
Variables in theme.xml's

Theme.xml ideas
Be able to set everything in main.XML, like in the main.xml file, say this:

<image name = "logo">
    <path>./$SYSTEM/system.svg</path>
</image>

And ES will pick out logos automatically.

jdrassa

@lilbud I have an implementation of theme variables.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/7156/variable-support-in-themes-in-emulationstation

lilbud

@jdrassa Would love for this to become official before using it, I'd like to keep the number of theme repositories I have to manage to a minimum.

jdrassa

@Zigurana I did some testing earlier with the popClipRec and it worked pretty much how I expected.

I also did some general testing. There were some tweaks I made to the defaults to get it closer to the current behavior. Another thing I noticed is that the background for the infobar does not fade in and out when you switch systems as it does now.

I will try to put together a pull request for you once I pull down your latest changes.

jdrassa

@lilbud I don't blame you. I will probably submit a pull request at some point in the near future. There is one last issue I want to solve before it will be ready.

mattrixk

@Zigurana It's looking good.

Notes:

I'm still getting pop-in of the right-hand logo if <maxLogoCount> is set to 4 or more, but I don't get it if it's set to 3 or fewer. That happens in both Vert and Horz.
I'd love to be able to set the alignment of the <helpsystem name="help"> element so we could right-align the text to avoid it clashing with the logos.
The Carousel element has the <origin> set at "0 0" is it possible to make it use the <origin> element like an image?

EctoOne

@mattrixk said in Input needed: ES theming improvements:

The Carousel element has the <origin> set at "0 0" is it possible to make it use the <origin> element like an image?

Same for the systemInfo element if possible. Having a hard time to get it positioned right now. :D

cylum

Something small that I would like to see is the ability to type the release date for games instead of having to select the digits. A good chunk of older games don't have any (or 100% accurate) numbers for the month and day, so it would be nice to just have the year only.

EctoOne

@cylum I think you can do that with the Metadata Editor although I'm not sure about the year only part.

FlyingTomahawk

Not sure where I should ask this since there are 2 topics (maybe even more) that talk about modding ES.

One is using variables, other using customized carousel (thank God for that!) and then others with grid view and video previews.
Now my question would be is there any chance that all those mods will come together into one ES or ES repository or better more will all this be available through the RetroPie menu anytime soon? Keeping many different modded ES around is confusing and not ideal, I think. Those mods are all great I mean variables make life easier for theme builders, changing that carousel is a long time wish for many and so is the grid view.

Kinda confusing right now as to which one to test or even look at.

mattrixk

@FlyingTomahawk We have quite a few very talented programmers working on making ES better all around. All those different mods you mentioned are things that each of their respective programmers are passionate about and want to eventually see as part of the RetroPie core.

In saying that, each one is a pretty major change and needs lots and lots testing before it can become part of the main branch. It's much easier to test these mods if they are in different branches/repos, so you are basically testing a stable RetroPie with just one new mod. If you tried to test a bunch of mods together, then there's no telling how they might interact with each other.

They way I see it, if someone is working on a mod that you really want to see in core, they can help test it. Maybe they're better equipped to test one mod over another. I'm helping test this Carousel mod, both because I really really want to see it as part of core, and because Zigurana has been awesome enough to have a Windows build of each new change.

I'd love to help out with Grid View, but without a Windows build, I'm limited in what I can do (I've tried the Ubuntu virtual machine route, and it was nothing but aggravation).

I'm impartial to Video Previews, but as a theme builder, it's something I need to keep an eye on even it's not something I can help test too much (and I respect the hell out of the work fieldofcows is doing). Also, if I remember right, Video Preview is already part of the latest RetroPie, but I think fieldofcows is looking into a different video player to combat some overheating issues or something.

So basically, lots of mods are a good thing, and the more people like you and I can help out the developers, the faster they can become part of RetroPie core.

FlyingTomahawk

@mattrixk

That's what I call an explanation. Thank you very much.
So you are testing new mods on your Windows machine and not on a RPi?
That would make things really easier.

mattrixk

@FlyingTomahawk Yeah. My Pi is more of a media box than a game centre (I have dual boot Kodi/RetroPie, but it spends 98% of the time on Kodi). It barely leaves my lounge room. I want to get a second Pi to set up on my computer desk for tinkering/testing/playing, but I don't have the funds for it at the moment.

The only time I really get to work on anything RetroPie related is on my lunch break at work, and occasionally in the evening after everyone else has gone to bed (and at that point it's choice between "work" on something RetroPie related, play a game (Path of Exile at the moment) or sleep. Sleep wins a lot.

Zigurana

@mattrixk @FlyingTomahawk
I agree fully.
To add to that, I did not take the time to create another thread for these developments on the carousel specifically. That leads to these kinds of mega threads where it is difficult to find stuff, never mind figuring out the status of each branch / repository. That is mostly on me, and I will try to anticipate and do better next time.

jdrassa

@Zigurana I sent you a pull request.

Zigurana

@jdrassa yep, saw that, testing as we speak.

MWGemini

@mattrixk You have my email. Send me your address and I will ship you a Pi for development and testing.

mattrixk

You know those times when you naively think you will have some free time over the weekend? Yeah... I didn't.

@MWGemini I'm torn between my modesty saying "No, I can't accept that" and my greed saying "Yes, give me free stuff", but either way the generosity of the gesture is overwhelming.

Zigurana

Update time, (getting there, I think).
Changelog:

Merged in the PR from @jdrassa, (thanks!) so now we have awesome carousels that can fill only part of the screen.
Tweaked the default values a bit more (opacity of the infobox)
Added support for the fading in/out of the infobox background color.

Windows build here, or get it from the repo.

Note to @jdrassa: I made a mess off the git commits while pulling in your PR, do you think it would be better to do an (interactive) rebase and squash a lot of my small commits into a few bigger ones? That will make it easier for the RetroPie core-team to assess the PR to master for this. I'll try to preserve your commit as is.