Grid View EmulationStation Mod Ideas

[jacobfk20]

@lilbud. I just updated a couple minutes ago. So you may not have the newest with this option, but you can do it with:
<ninepatch name="gridtile_background"> <color>
and just set alpha all the way to 00.
You can also have it only show on the current game you have selected with:
<ninepatch name="gridtile_background_selected"> <color>

[lilbud]

@jacobfk20 Do you know of a way to make the background an outline, like kodi has?

[jacobfk20]

@lilbud In the current situation the only thing I can think of is changing the background color to blue 0000FFFF on ninepatch "gridtile_background_selected" and set it to 00000000 on ninepatch "gridtile_backgound" You can change the <size> of container "gridtile_textRow" to something like 0 0. The only problem is game title text. It is static and isn't animated yet. (as in it has no 'selected' frame. you can still set size, pos, spacing, etc.)

You can also try changing the padding of ninepatch "gridtile_background". (this goes outward from image I think though.)

[lilbud]

@jacobfk20 This is what I have so far.

[jacobfk20]

@lilbud Is that a mockup?

[lilbud]

@jacobfk20 Running in ES, like you said earlier. The bottom of the icon doesn't show

[mattrixk]

@jacobfk20 I'm glad to be of some help. What is the best way to upgrade to the newest version of the code (keeping in mind I'm running RetroPie on a virtual Ubuntu machine)? I can't wait to try out the new "gridtile_background_selected" element.

@lilbud said: Is there a way to remove the background from the grid items?

Another option is to add an empty <path></path> property to the "gridtile_background" element.

[jacobfk20]

@lilbud oh okay, the image you're using may not work well with the ninepatch component. It's kinda weird to figure it out. Can you upload a copy of the image you're setting as the background?

@mattrixk You can download the latest source from the github branch and copy and paste es-app and es-core into where you previously built the last source. Only overwrite files that are new. open terminal, cd to the directory, and hit type "make"

I'll start hosting a x86 build too.

Edit: I've added an x86 build.

[mattrixk]

@jacobfk20: Thanks mate, I'll give that a go when I get home.

@lilbud: The 9patch image needs to be 48px X 48px, so it splits up into 9 16px squares. I've made a little image to try and explain it:

• The 1st image is the 48x48 image that gets used.
• The 2nd has been split up to show the different sections.
• The 3rd just numbers the sections.
• The 4th shows how it gets used. In this example it's an 80x80 square, but it would work exactly the same for any size (eg: 423x 92 or 67x854), it really doesn't matter.

The main things to note are:

• The corners (1, 3, 7 and 9) will always stay at 16x16.
• Top and Bottom (2 and 8) will always stretch along the X-axis.
• Left and Right (4 and 6) will always stretch along the Y-axis.
• The middle (5) will always stretch both X and Y to fill in the middle.
• When a section stretches, any pattern will stretch with it and look wrong/weird (as you can see in the 4th image above), so stick to flat colours.
• Gradients can be used because the gradient stretches cleanly (where the sections meet will always be the same colour, no matter how much it stretches):

• The same should also work with opacity (although I haven't tested this), so you could have the image at 10% opacity at the top and 80% at the bottom and it would work fine.
• You can also use gradients on the border, maybe starting at light at the top and making it darker at the bottom.

Ninepatch gives you huge flexibility in what the "gridtile_background" can look like, that's why I keep harping on about a generic ninepatch element for basic background usage (for behind gamelist and metadata etc). Can you image being able to use <ninepatch> with the same properties as <image>anywhere, on any view?

[lilbud]

@jacobfk20 Here is the image

[mattrixk]

@lilbud: That seems to be a different image to the one you've used in the screenshot above. That one had rounded corners and much thicker border than this one. (I'm not saying this one doesn't do the same thing, just that they look like different images to me).

[lilbud]

@mattrixk First, I redid it. Second, I got the outline working.

Third, I updated the Material theme to have this change.

[herb_fargus]

@lilbud Just so I understand: with the ninepatch thing and the selector we can define the selector border colour to be anything? I.e. we could make every system a diff selector colour to match the colour of that system?

[jacobfk20]

Another update before bed. (it's on my google drive above)
The grid's origin is now set to the top left of the first tile. I don't know if you guys will like the change, but I can revert it back easily.
gridtile_text <color> can now be animated.
"gridtile_text" <color>
"gridtile_text_selected" <color>

I also removed some dead code.

@mattrixk A storm just hit around here and took out my pc that I was using to build the x86 versions. ...so I can't provide an x86 version tonight. I'll let you know tomorrow when I get it back up and running.

@lilbud That looks pretty nice. I actually like the look of not centering the game title text. Is that weird that I like that?

[jacobfk20]

@herb_fargus Yes, you can make the gridtile background be any color. I haven't tried per system, but you should be able to.

[lilbud]

@herb_fargus Yes we can, I changed the selector to white, so all it takes is a color tag in the systems theme.xml

[lilbud]

@mattrixk Hermine? So powers out?

[jacobfk20]

Also here is a quick dirty pic I took of what I've done with the current theme options. Sorry from my phone but the PC I was running ES on got slightly killed by a storm just now.

[mattrixk]

@lilbud: That's looking really good.

@jacobfk20: No worries mate, take your time. I hope your computer and everything else is okay. I should probably spend some time with the missus tonight anyway.

Also, it looks from that pic that you've gotten the gridtile_margin sorted too.

[jacobfk20]

@mattrixk There still is some issue. I had to do -0.05 and -0.08 or something. It'll hopefully be fully fixed tomorrow.