Grid View EmulationStation Mod Ideas

jacobfk20

@Workman Yes, I am actively working on this still. I'll be releasing a minor update soon that fixes gridview eating too much vram. If you need help with anything, especially with installing this as it's still experamental and not officially supported, then just send me an email. (same username as here at gmail.)

Also, cool that you're making something for your brother for Christmas :)

Workman

I sent an email to you; any help you could give me would be amazing!

enigma7

(http://i.imgur.com/SviqMo3.jpg)

Would this be possible? Pop out selected image while the rest have an opacity?

dudleydes

@enigma7 I have been working on a theme based on the Carbon theme that does something like this. You can see a preview here - ignore the white triangles, that's an issue regarding vram use.

You can download the theme here. Place it in /home/pi/.emulationstation/theme and you should be able to select it from the UI setting in EmulationStation. If you are using SNES or any landscape art, you can set Grid Size to Big in System UI Setting to make sure the art fits better across the screen.

Quick warning that this theme is very much experimental. The Grid View ES build I have is a vram hog so I would recommend restarting ES regularly otherwise you are likely to see the white rectangles appearing.

Also, I have manually edited my gamelists so Release Year occupies the Publisher field so it's likely your metadata may not appear as in the preview.

jacobfk20

@dudleydes I'll be pushing an update today that helps keep vram from leaking.

@enigma7 Steam's Big Picture Mode is my dream, though I'm more focused on stability.

enigma7

@dudleydes That looks good, thanks. I'll give it a shot.

@jacobfk20 Did the vram issue get fixed? I'd love to try this out. Is there a precompiled version available to download? I don't know how to compile.

radius

Hi guys, I'm trying to get the gridview working on a debian jessie VM but for some reason it's not,
I downloaded and compiled the source from https://github.com/jacobfk20/EmulationStation/tree/Gridview
but I don't have the gridview option, I downloaded the theme from @dudleydes and still it doesn't appear with the grid view, could you please help get this working ?

jacobfk20

@enigma7 vram leak is fixed. I'll upload a compiled version later tonight.

jacobfk20

@radius did you put the theme into '/etc/emulationstation/themes' ?

You may also build from the release-beta branch. It is more up to date.

radius

@jacobfk20 my bad I just discovered the grid option was in the "Settings" menu and not the Menu / UI Seetings ^^

herb_fargus

@radius press select while in the gamelist

radius

@herb_fargus ahah thanks I just figured that out now :'(

dudleydes

You can download the binary that I built earlier this week from my Google Drive. Bear in mind that it does not include commits from the last few days.

A word of warning. The vram issue is not fully fixed as, to make sure that the vram used doesn't get too high, I have had to reduce the file size of my boxart. (240 pixels wide and 24kb in size). They look fine on my 27" 1080p monitor but if you have a large TV, then they may look blocky. You could always make the grid bigger in the theme.

If you do wish to edit the theme, then I advise placing it in /home/pi/.emulationstation/theme.

enigma7

@dudleydes I'm getting big white borders around my box-art unlike in your theme preview. Is there a way to remove them?

dudleydes

@enigma7 Apologies - I had to update the theme with the latest changes.

In the file /home/pi/.emulationstation/theme/es-theme-carbon-master/carbon.xml, if you find and replace ninepatch with image, then restart ES, that should fix it.

radius

Some things I came accross and can't fix myself :

when defining padding in "gridtile_background" the theme is not working anymore so I can't manage to change the padding at all
when defining 0 as height (size) in "gridtile_textRow" it reverts to default value so you can only use 0.01 to minimize it but it's visible, can't disable it :/
plus it looks like changing this messes with the tile height calculation
I tried to add an image for "gridtile_background_selected" to have a shadow effect in non selected state and a border when selected, which involves having one image for each state, I added a path to "gridtile_background_selected" by duplicating the code from "gridtile_background" :
```
  if (elem->has("path")) {
  	setBackgroundPath(elem->get<std::string>("path"));
  	bThemeBackground = true;
  }
```

but it's overlaying the non selected image

when you first launch ES and get into one system the title isn't showing

here's what i managed to do for nes presentation but I still have a problem with sizes, I can't get the one I set to be used, I'm using the automatic one for now :/

alt text

jacobfk20

@radius I've created issues on github so I can keep track of these. Thank you for taking the time to write this out in detail. I will work on fixing these soon.

Have you tried just changing the color of the gridtile_background from faded gray to blue instead of changing the image? such as:

<image name="gridtile_background">
    <color>ACACAC77</color>
</image>
<image name="gridtile_background_selected">
    <color>7777FFEE</color>
</image>

It should tween between the two colors so you don't have to have two different images. This also makes for smoother animations than switching images.

radius

Thanks for your help @jacobfk20, too bad I hardly understand coding enough to help :/
as I couldn't get my mod to work I actually removed it already, the screenshot was taken without the mod, I used the same method you suggested (except my image is blue) :)

enigma7

@dudleydes Fixed. Thanks it looks great!

@jacobfk20 Did you ever upload the compiled version? Sorry I'm not sure where to go for the latest binaries. Thanks.

jacobfk20

@enigma7 yes, it's here.