EmulationStation mod

herb_fargus

@lilbud another idea is to have the grid view be modified to have the game name right under the image for each game kinda like kodi, don't know how that would work code wise though. (Or you could just remove the gamelist altogether if all games are scraped)

lilbud

@herb_fargus I was trying to move the game title with no success. Maybe a rectangle under the header would be the game name

mattrixk

@jacobfk20

Themes.md makes mention of a Grid View. If you could get that running theme makers could create separate layouts just for Grid View instead of using the Detailed View. I know the Detailed View of my theme MetaPixel won't look any good with your Grid View, but it would only take a few minutes to whip up a decent Grid View layout.

lilbud

@mattrixk I tried to add a grid view in the theme.xml files. But ES will not see it, or crash.

If someone could try this code posted above.

jacobfk20

@mattrixk I can easily make Gridview report as Gridview instead of detailed view. All themes will have to be updated after changing that.

@herb_fargus I actually would like to do it how Kodi does it. It is possible. Also, sorry I kinda just dumped the whole thing onto github... If you would like to add or remove anything I'd be glad to do it. Just about everything I added is modular and can be removed.

@lilbud I will look into how themes work fully today to make sure they work as they should and move the game title.

lilbud

@jacobfk20 when I tried to make a change under detailed. Nothing happened. Adding a grid view in the theme.xml did nothing. I am trying things on my theme to see exactly what needs to be done. The md_title you mentioned does not exist in any theme. Or anywhere for that matter. If you need anything tested. Get in touch with me. 3 - 4 themes are unusable in some state due to the logo overlapping the game title. If you could make the grid have the game title under each box art like herb mentioned. That would be best to fix some issues

jacobfk20

@lilbud I just updated the original post with an update. There is now a test build that makes Grid View separate from other gamelist views. You earlier posted that <view name="grid"></view> didn't work, well it now will in the test build. This should make it fully customizable for theme makers. Putting the name on or under the game's boxart will take me a couple days to add, but I am wanting to do that.

mediamogul

@jacobfk20 said in EmulationStation mod:

Here is an Imgur link to a small album showing some of the things I've added.

It looks... It's... so beautifu.. ahem. I promised myself I wouldn't cry.

LasagnaDevil

One of the things I've always though was needed was a “Favorite” games option within each system, and another one where we just displayed ALL GAMES in one single folder, either sorted by letter, size, amount of times played or system.

Thus we could have all Favorites in a single folder to be displayed upon loading, for instance.

herb_fargus

@jacobfk20 the main thing I'm interested in is the grid view, though there are obviously other features that others would like as well (there has been quite the backlog of requests since aloshi left it) but for each feature added feel free to either submit a PR or log an issue here: https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation which can further the discussion on what we can add to the RetroPie project to make it better. You've done fantastic work and it would be great for the whole RetroPie community to benefit from it. I'd be happy to do any testing as well.

lilbud

I just updated my theme to work with grid view. Just one thing you could look into, folders don't seem to work in grid view. I keep my mame roms in alphabetical folders. and folders will not open.

jacobfk20

@herb_fargus I didn't even know there was a retropie branch of ES. I now see I am pretty behind on its branch. I will fork and build on its latest build and make sure everything is compatible. Thank you for pointing me in that direction. (I'll also try submit things I've done in different PRs)

@lilbud Glad to hear you were able to get your themes working. I looked into why files inside folders are not being added and understand why. It shouldn't take long to fix.

@LasagnaDevil I like the idea of having a favorites section that the user adds to. Someone else mentioned it as well as the different sorting options as well so it may be my next project.

@mediamogul No need to cry :) Thank you.

lilbud

@jacobfk20 To get any theme working, change

Change in the main theme.xml. carbon.xml, pixel.xml, etc.

Rookervik

Dangit, if this carries on, I'll have to redo my entire collection of game snaps and convert them all to box art! You might want to contact @Zigurana as he's been working on Kid Friendly additions, favorites and some neat things as well.

lilbud

@Rookervik Between this, the multiple forks and Zigurana's ES. We could have something here

ben_thatmustbeme

@jacobfk20 Awesome work man. I'm looking at diffs now to see how I can bring all this stuff in to my fork. I've been trying to keep copies of all the current forks, honestly it seems that RetroPie's copy of ES is the most actively updated.

I have done a bunch of work to try to make sure everything is clean and free of any build warnings (i'm a bit of a nut for that). I'd love to get all the people interested back in to a single repo, and I think doing so under RetroPie's name would be great.

Who is in change of retropie's ES branch? Is there really anyone in charge of it? I wanted to get everything on a standard style (which makes merging diverging branches a LOT easier). I've been using
astyle --style=1tbs -n --recursive '.cpp' '.h'
in the main directory as its pretty close to the style I am used to.

If I made PRs to that effect for both Retropie's branch and @jacobfk20 would that be acceptable? Where would the best place for conversations of this nature be? here? IRC? ('m in there all the time as ben_thatmustbeme)

herb_fargus

@ben_thatmustbeme well the priority for RetroPie hasnt really been with development on emulationstation, at least I know @BuZz doesnt really want to maintain ES, there's enough to maintain as it is, and any further development just fragments ES more but you'd have to ask him as he is the final say as to what is and isnt part of RetroPie. Perhaps we still have a minute hope that aloshi will pick it back up (which is incredibly unlikely at this point it would seem)

Anyways I personally don't have any issue with adding a features that are discussed, well tested, and properly coded. I really like the grid view option, and there have been others that the community has discussed in the past as well.

ben_thatmustbeme

@herb_fargus certainly this would be more along a dev branch and everything would need full testing before going in to retropie. But I certainly understand not wanting it to be another thing to maintain.

I wouldn't hold out any hope for Aloshi though. He said flat out that he wasn't going to maintain it.

I guess the question really is, what's the best path forward?

meleu

Let me share some thoughts...

@ben_thatmustbeme said in EmulationStation mod:

If I made PRs to that effect for both Retropie's branch and @jacobfk20 would that be acceptable?

It seems that the RetroPie's branch is a very "conservative" one (my perception). I think in it being like Debian in the Linux distros universe.

The thing I love most in RetroPie is its flexibility. It is its main feature. Therefore you don't need to be so concerned to implement new features in RetroPie's ES branch.

Maybe the best path is you and other ES developers deliberate about a github repo to create/focus on. And then write a RetroPie scriptmodule to let the users install your ES branch via retropie_setup.

If you guys make your branch compilable the same way that the RetroPie's branch is, the scriptmodule can be quite simple. This is exactly what happens to the Zigurana's Child-friendly branch, look how simple the scriptmodule is:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/supplementary/emulationstation-kids.sh

I think this simple attitude (make your branch installable via retropie_setup) and the creation of a wiki page at RetroPie's wiki showing your ES branch's features, would help it to grow in popularity.

Where would the best place for conversations of this nature be? here? IRC?

I had this feel too. For some reason we tend to view this forum as a place for end-user questions only... "Where do I have to post my development questions? Here or github?"

Then I remembered that I asked for a "Development" section and was attended. Thereafter I decided to post all my questions/suggestions here (using the "Ideas and Development" section). And I'm enjoying using the forum for it. So, my suggestion is to use this forum as well.

jacobfk20

For right now I would love to just make a script module to install my build and continue to iron out the kinks that anyone finds that is brave enough to run it. It would be nice to have Gridview in the main branch but after reading the last few posts in here and going through the retropie es branch it seems like it may not happen, or maybe be a stripped down version of it.

To be honest, Gridview is the least modular thing I added to ES. For example, in order for the user to be able to change to the grid view there had to be a menu added to gamelistoptions.cpp. The saved options in that menu get saved to SystemData-- but SystemData doesn't have a save function... so one had to be added.
If these are removed then the user would have to manually go to their es_systems.cfg file and add <view>GRID</view>... or maybe just have a separate theme made that can enable grid view.

So for right now, I will look into just creating a script module and making sure my changes (based on the main ES branch) do not conflict with this branch.