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    PICO-8: Retroarch lr-retro8 core installation script

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    pico8
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    • FollyF
      Folly
      last edited by

      https://github.com/FollyMaddy/RetroPie-Share/commit/7ed4f67efbdb8872ea679136322ea356268eacac

      BuZzB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • BuZzB
        BuZz administrators @Folly
        last edited by BuZz

        @folly this module looks good btw minus maybe a couple of tweaks but please feel free to submit it as a PR. Thanks.

        To help us help you - please make sure you read the sticky topics before posting - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • T
          theofficialgman
          last edited by

          you can disable the retroarch image viewer in order to allow retroarch to load the .p8.png files

          in retropie, this looks like a retroarch.cfg like this

          # Settings made here will only override settings in the global retroarch.cfg if placed above the #include line
          
          builtin_imageviewer_enable = "false"
          
          #include "/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg"
          
          BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • BenMcLeanB
            BenMcLean @theofficialgman
            last edited by BenMcLean

            Wow! It looks like great minds think alike! I have been trying to implement a nicer experience of playing pico8 on retropie too!

            I have made a logo for the default EmulationStation skin for pico8:
            p8logo_best[1].png

            It comes from this post. I used Aseprite to put a 1 pixel black border around the white version so that the logo will show no matter what color the background is. It would be nice for someone to also make one of those red outline graphics for it too.

            The Retro8 core for RetroArch will run many pico8 games but not all. It'd be nice to give people the option to choose between the Retro8 core or the official Pico8 binary if they've placed it on their system just like how people can choose between the ppsspp official binary or the ppsspp retroarch core by holding the "A" button after they select a game in EmulationStation to get that little menu. I'm still not entirely clear on how that all works.

            In my opinion:

            We need to figure out how to set RetroArch to run the games correctly whether they're .p8 or .p8.png or just .png.. Those are all correct pico8 cart filenames.

            Also, always display the cart itself as the image for the cart in the EmulationStation menu. Even if the cart is .p8 -- it should display it as a png image anyway.

            My thought was that I'd have a little python script that runs every time you exit Splore which updates the gamelist.xml with whatever new games you added so they'll show in the EmulationStation menu with their little cartridge pictures. I was even trying to make it use picotool to scrape the metadata from the code inside the cartridge but I couldn't get that to work right.

            BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • BenMcLeanB
              BenMcLean @BenMcLean
              last edited by BenMcLean

              Here's the little Python script I wrote to make a gamelist.xml for pico8 carts:

              import argparse, io, os, lxml
              from lxml.etree import ElementTree
              from lxml.etree import Element
              from lxml.etree import SubElement
              from glob import glob
              parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Input XML file')
              parser.add_argument('file', metavar='file', type=str, nargs='+', help='Input XML file')
              filename = parser.parse_args().file[0]
              path = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(filename))
              et = ElementTree.parse(filename).getroot() if os.path.exists(filename) else ElementTree(Element('gameList'))
              files = glob(os.path.join(path, '*.png')) + glob(os.path.join(path, '*.p8')) + glob(os.path.join(path, '*.p8.png'))
              for file in files:
                  relativeFile = os.path.join('.', os.path.basename(file))
                  foundit = False
                  for game in et.getroot().iter('game'):
                      if (game.find('path').text == relativeFile):
                          foundit = True
                          break
                  if (not foundit):
                      game = SubElement(et.getroot(), 'game')
                      gamePath = SubElement(game, 'path')
                      gamePath.text = relativeFile
                      gameName = SubElement(game, 'name')
                      gameName.text = os.path.basename(file).removesuffix('.png').removesuffix('.p8')
                      gameImage = SubElement(game, 'image')
                      gameImage.text = relativeFile
              lxml.etree.indent(et.getroot(), space='\t')
              with io.open(filename, "w", encoding="utf-8") as f:
                  f.write(lxml.etree.tostring(et, encoding='unicode', pretty_print=True))
              

              It requires lxml.

              A known issue: I should make the file extensions case insensitive somehow.

              There are probably cleaner and faster ways to do this. I'm not real experienced with Python.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • FollyF
                Folly
                last edited by

                Hi guy's we are in the middle of a pull request.
                Hopefully we can merge pico-8 this week ;-)

                @theofficialgman @BenMcLean
                When I can I will try both your input.
                Really great !

                BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • BenMcLeanB
                  BenMcLean @Folly
                  last edited by

                  @folly said in PICO-8: Retroarch lr-retro8 core installation script:

                  Hi guy's we are in the middle of a pull request.
                  Hopefully we can merge pico-8 this week ;-)

                  @theofficialgman @BenMcLean
                  When I can I will try both your input.
                  Really great !

                  The question for me is: should I be continuing to try to work on this, perhaps in some capacity to help with what you're doing or have you got this and I should just wait for your version?

                  FollyF 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • FollyF
                    Folly @BenMcLean
                    last edited by Folly

                    @benmclean said in PICO-8: Retroarch lr-retro8 core installation script:

                    @folly said in PICO-8: Retroarch lr-retro8 core installation script:

                    Hi guy's we are in the middle of a pull request.
                    Hopefully we can merge pico-8 this week ;-)

                    @theofficialgman @BenMcLean
                    When I can I will try both your input.
                    Really great !

                    The question for me is: should I be continuing to try to work on this, perhaps in some capacity to help with what you're doing or have you got this and I should just wait for your version?

                    I have asked @buzz if he can finish the merging in the pull request of pico-8, because there are things that become too difficult for me.
                    Btw. : This work is focussed on the module-script.

                    Your part is something different and it's not something that can be included into the module-script, I think.
                    So please continue.

                    The theme for carbon that is something that should be worked on. Preferably the "system" picture should be a vector image. (.svg)
                    Is that something you can do ?

                    BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • BenMcLeanB
                      BenMcLean @Folly
                      last edited by

                      @folly said in PICO-8: Retroarch lr-retro8 core installation script:

                      The theme for carbon that is something that should be worked on. Preferably the "system" picture should be a vector image. (.svg)
                      Is that something you can do ?

                      Yes, I am familiar with InkScape for SVGs and can definitely come up with something.
                      It might be just a vector outline of that same pico8 logo but I figure that should be close enough, right?
                      I'll look at what the SVGs for the other systems are like for reference.

                      BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                      • BenMcLeanB
                        BenMcLean @BenMcLean
                        last edited by

                        I believe blocky is the program I need to convert the pico8 logo (which is indexed png pixel art) to SVG. I should report back with results after I get that working.

                        BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • BenMcLeanB
                          BenMcLean @BenMcLean
                          last edited by BenMcLean

                          blocky is pretty awful: making a gazillion little rectangles in the SVG instead of merging the same color together in contiguous areas like such a program should. I could click on every single rectangle and try to merge them by hand but I expect there's got to be a better script out there which does this properly.

                          BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                          • BenMcLeanB
                            BenMcLean @BenMcLean
                            last edited by BenMcLean

                            It turned out that the right script to use is actually Jirinrin/pixel2svg-outlines.

                            I don't know whether the scaling might need to be adjusted for EmulationStation to match the other systems or not so for now, I'm just going to upload the raw untouched output from pixel2svg-outlines. However, it is clear that the shapes are correct from examining it in InkScape, plus the file size being appropriately tiny.

                            BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • BenMcLeanB
                              BenMcLean @BenMcLean
                              last edited by BenMcLean

                              Apparently that source image I was working from is actually a little bit distorted in its dimensions. It makes the diamond symbol of the colors a little bit taller than it should be. So there's probably going to be some more revisions before the final version.

                              BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                              • BenMcLeanB
                                BenMcLean @BenMcLean
                                last edited by BenMcLean

                                OK, I went back to the original pico8 site to get my source image, I forced it into being an indexed pico8 palette, I used the drop shadow from the web site plus the 1 pixel border together and I made the border use the dark blue pico8 color instead of the generic black, then I ran that through pixel2svg-outlines. Here's the result:
                                system.svg
                                One remaining imperfection is rather subjective: the drop shadows don't include the 1 pixel border. I could make another version which makes the drop shadows bigger to include the border but I think it looks good as is. Any thoughts?

                                BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                • BenMcLeanB
                                  BenMcLean @BenMcLean
                                  last edited by

                                  Here's a version which keeps the 1 pixel border (using the pico8 dark blue color) but omits the drop shadow for comparison:
                                  pico81px.svg
                                  Sorry for the many replies.

                                  BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • BenMcLeanB
                                    BenMcLean @BenMcLean
                                    last edited by BenMcLean

                                    Here's one where the size of the drop shadow is expanded to match the 1 pixel border.
                                    system2.svg

                                    So there's three choices:

                                    • system.svg with the small drop shadow.
                                    • system2.svg with the big drop shadow.
                                    • pico81px.svg with no drop shadow.

                                    Which one's best? :)

                                    At the moment, I'm leaning slightly towards the small drop shadow.

                                    UnknownU FollyF 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                    • UnknownU
                                      Unknown @BenMcLean
                                      last edited by

                                      @benmclean I vote system2

                                      You can't beat the classics(unless you copy them).

                                      BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • BenMcLeanB
                                        BenMcLean @Unknown
                                        last edited by BenMcLean

                                        @unknown said in PICO-8: Retroarch lr-retro8 core installation script:

                                        @benmclean I vote system2

                                        Yeah, on looking at them all again, that might be the best one after all.

                                        AFAIK, there is no official controller for pico8 so here's my idea of what to do for controller.svg:
                                        controller.svg

                                        Another possibility for controller.svg would be to create some kind of outline based on the imaginary controller or system depicted here:
                                        h800_pico8.png

                                        BenMcLeanB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                        • BenMcLeanB
                                          BenMcLean @BenMcLean
                                          last edited by

                                          I tried it with this thing:
                                          controller2.png

                                          It is definitely arguable whether the resulting outline is recognizable as a controller or not and has more iconic association with pico8 design-wise than the diamond shape that was my first idea.
                                          controller2.svg

                                          BenMcLeanB FollyF 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                          • BenMcLeanB
                                            BenMcLean @BenMcLean
                                            last edited by BenMcLean

                                            OK two more options:
                                            system3.svg:
                                            system3.svg
                                            system4.svg:
                                            system4.svg

                                            I'm thinking system3.svg

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
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