EmulationStation Toolkit - Theme Making Helper

mattrixk

@herb_fargus woot! I made a release https://github.com/mattrixk/es-toolkit/releases/tag/v1.0.

I thought with the addition of your stuff there might be some big changes coming to the Toolkit, so I wanted this release for posterity. It's my first release and shall always hold a special place in my heart.

I'll have to have a go of 1.5, but it will have to wait until after work. I probably shouldn't download over 200MB for personal use (it's not the biggest file I've done, but I should probably not do it too often. Speaking of which, I should probably get back to work).

herb_fargus

@mattrixk Ok I've submitted a pull request with substantial changes.

Feel free to review at your leisure. I just want to make sure the source is somewhat in parity with what we release in the binaries before we release them as a package to be downloaded.

I know that its currently windows only but I don't really use windows so I'll have a think about any possibilities for adaptation to linux, though as far as ES goes that can all very easily be handled through retropie, it would just be a matter of sorting configs/ creating theme helpers/ video gamelists etc.

mattrixk

@herb_fargus

I've submitted a pull request with substantial changes.

I'll have a look when I get the chance. I looked at your "refactoring" branch before I left work. I noticed you've put all the media and gamelists into the Roms folder, which I think is a good idea. I'll have to make some changes to the UXS profiles so the gamelists all point to the right place.

One advantage of the existing Toolkit is, I think most of it would work on PC, Mac and Linux. The .bat files might not, and the UXS stuff maybe not too (I don't know if that's a windows only program), but the Media, Gamelists and fake Roms (which are the heart of the Toolkit) shouldn't have a problem.

herb_fargus

@mattrixk uxs and rookerviks theme helper are windows only. The only platform agnostic piece is the configs related to emulationstation, which I think is the main benefit of the toolkit

Zigurana

This!
is!
Awesome!

It will really help my tests for ES-kidmode stuff as well!
Question, does it contain a system with subfolders under the main system folder?
I 've seen a couple of issues related to that, so it would be nice to include that in the tests.

herb_fargus

@Zigurana no it doesn't yet but I think that's a great suggestion for testing as it seems to be a use case that is commonly overlooked ;) though it seems with the current issue: it looks all valid but it's only when launching a ton that the issue becomes evident so in that case I'm not sure dummy ROMs would help even if they were in subfolders

mattrixk

@Zigurana Good idea. I'll add them when I get the chance. I also have to add the code for Kid-Friendly icons to the BaseVid theme. On a related note, any chance of getting a Windows build of the Child-Friendly ES the same way you did for the Carousel Mod? Being able to test that on Windows would be awesome.

Zigurana

@mattrixk :
I will have a look at a windows build for Kid modes ES tonight.

mattrixk

@Zigurana Ooooh [rubs hands together with glee].

Zigurana

@mattrixk :

Psst, hey fella, can I interest you in some high-grade ES-SW?

Freshly build, guaranteed!

This is a WIP attempt to rebase the latest developments on videosupport for ES with the incredibly out of date Kids, Kiosk UI modes branch of ES.
I have been trying to iron out the kinks that happen when you do stuff like removing the last favorite game while in 'show fav only'-mode and similar uglyness.

mattrixk

That's awesome @Zigurana. I don't know if I'll get the chance to check it out on the weekend, but I'll give it a go soon.

Also, the secret of Monkey Island is probably my number 1 game of all time (followed closely by Curse and LeChuck's Revenge, in that order)

robertybob

@mattrixk Bit of a long shot, but will there be fake roms for every system that RetroPie supports?

mattrixk

Sorry @robertybob, but it's just too time consuming, and I have a lot of other things on my plate. It's also quite mind-numbing and repetitive. Even if you only have 5 fake roms per System, there are about 80 Systems that RetroPie supports. They aren't hard to do, just follow these steps (using NES as an example):

Google "nes games"
find one you like the look of (Aladdin for this example).
create a new text document.
open text document and add some content (it can just be a couple of random characters, just so long as the file is larger than 0b. Github won't accept it if it think's it's an empty file).
save file as aladdin.nes

Now do that 400-odd more times.

This doesn't even take into account scraping the media (images and videos) for each rom. After scraping them I had to run each image through an image compressor to get the file sizes down, and run the videos through Handbrake for the same purpose. Granted you probably won't need to do that for a personal set-up, but it still takes a lot of time.

I'll also note, that the more Systems you have set up, the longer it takes to swap between themes, which is the best way I've found to "refresh" to see any changes made while building a theme. Having to wait an extra couple of seconds each time you swap a theme can get quite annoying if you're only making small changes each time.

I've found 5 is a good number of systems, it lets you test each View and gives some viariety to screenshots. For most Themes, each System looks pretty much the same, except for console and logo artwork, and background colour, so it doesn't matter if you don't really see all the Systems when you build a theme. Unless you are doing ultra-custom work like the Old-Room theme.

herb_fargus

@mattrixk I also would rather we keep the toolkit small, its just a base. If people want custom additions then they are free to do so.

Btw feel free to merge the changes with the pull request they are satisfactory to you - at your leisure

mattrixk

@herb_fargus My lunch starts in an hour, I'll check it out then.

I extracted your gamestation 1.5 last night. I was very surprised that a 200MB download extracts to over 700MB.

herb_fargus

@mattrixk 7z is a very efficient compression. I still need to update the binaries with the carousel changes but that's just the download, it's easy enough to switch out.

Zigurana

@mattrixk said in EmulationStation Toolkit - Theme Making Helper:

I'll also note, that the more Systems you have set up, the longer it takes to swap between themes, which is the best way I've found to "refresh" to see any changes made while building a theme. Having to wait an extra couple of seconds each time you swap a theme can get quite annoying if you're only making small changes each time.

About that : it might be quicker/easier for you to start ES in debug mode (-debug) and press Ctrl-R to reload the theme while in SystemView.

mattrixk

@Zigurana You just blew my tiny little mind.

alt text

mattrixk

@Zigurana: What else can you do with the debug? Is there a list of commands somewhere?

Zigurana

@mattrixk
Let's see:
Running ES as such: emulationstation --debugwill give the following additional features :

Logging of the debug statements in the output window
Ctrl-R in a GamelistView will reload that view (including the theme)
Ctrl-R in a SystemView will reload everything.
Ctrl-G will toggle the lines of ComponentGrid.
Ctrl-T will show bounding boxes around text elements, to debug text flow and filling and such.

That's all I could find quickly. The last two items might sound interesting but are really only relevant for debugging of the components themselves, and probably not much for the theming of them. But play around with it, and see for yourself!