New Comic Book Theme!

[darkbreaker]

@TMNTturtlguy First of all, thank you! . As I said before, I'm a little new to this. Could you guide me in the updated ES?

[Nismo]

@TMNTturtlguy

I think you must leave marquees in main xml file and remove the system on the top right.

I don't see the point having different system logos on top left and right, why don't leave the top right box for marquees? You already have a awesome nice system logo on the left...

Also are you planning to do the gamepads more comic feeling?

I forgot to say that the dithering pattern on backgrounds seems to much strong for my liking, just a personal opinion.

Yes I know, there are not much to do with the fonts, fortunatelly not too much games with accents, and easy to solve. I repeat i love that font.

Thanks for the sounds.

Regards.

[pjft]

@TMNTturtlguy sure, I'll try! It's it 6 per system?

@darkbreaker I honestly don't know enough about recalbox to suggest how to update ES in it. Meaning, I don't know in which folder it is, and how to update individual packages.

If you do have access to the file system, and if you are comfortable with the command line and with manually changing things there, try to locate the path for ES in recalbox and then backup the current emulationstation binary, and copy one of the latest ones there. I believe @jdrassa has shared some builds that are close to the latest somewhere on the forums, and if you search for OMX player you'll find some that I put together. They'll each have their own particularities but should both have the white screen fix.

You may also compile it straight from the RetroPie repository if you're comfortable doing so.

But otherwise my best recommendation would be to seek such guidance on the Recalbox forums, just so you don't break anything unintentionally via any pointers we give you here that may be specific to RetroPie. I'm sure you're not the only one who has considered doing that, so maybe someone can share their experience:)

Sorry for not being able to help further, but if you decide to try it out on your own via installing one of our builds, let us know, happy to try and help, though I'd backup your entire Recalbox installation prior to attempting it, just in case it breaks something in the process.

Best.

[darkbreaker]

@pjft Thanks for your help.I think in recalbox, ES is integrated and I have not found anything about how to update it. I also do not see the specific fix for recalbox. Thanks for the help.

[TMNTturtlguy]

@pjft I am away right now, but I believe it is 7 games and 1 controller image per system. Thanks

[TMNTturtlguy]

@Nismo

• I will modify the theme so that the marquees are in the arcade cabinet systems for example, arcade, all the mame, FBA and Neo Geo. I will remove the marquees for console systems and leave the classic system logos. I have 2 reasons for this. 1. A lot of people do not have marquees for all of their games, especially not for console games, as i said, i only have marquees for arcade cabinet games that actually had marquees. If you don't have marquees, then the box would be blank. 2. I really like the original/classic logo for each system. I like having my new comic text logo, but I also like having the original feel to each system logo as well. Please feel free to modify your personal build to display as you would like. If you need me to send instructions on how to modify your .xml let me know.

• Gamepads. I originally wanted to do comic style controllers, but I just don't have the time to do this for all the systems, so i went with the classic outline because they already exist for every system. If you would be so kind as to create some really nice comic style controllers, i would love to review them and incorporate them into the theme!

Dithering - I agree with you and @pjft on this. As i already described earlier, I originally built this theme on the old build of ES/retropie 4.1 before the white screen issue was resolved. After about 10 systems, i would get white screens no matter what i would do. I had to find a way to make my file sizes smaller to run 15-20 systems. After hours and hours of testing on both my 21" arcade monitor and my 55" 4K TV i devised the current system in which i use a pixel filter and then compress the file size. In doing so, we get a dithering pattern that might be a little much, but what it does is let me get a very small file size and allow me to expand the artwork to 55" 4K without much quality loss. I also separated the boarder so that it would stay nice and crisp. Now that we have the updated 4.2 and ES i might not need to compress my file size so much, but it would just take to much time to go back and redo each background and retest to see if 20+ systems would run nicely. I think the overall look and feel of the theme is still really nice, and after awhile the dither has actually grown on me. When i look at a more clear crisp game image, it almost looks overdone and to sharp and I think you actually have to much focus and to many pictures, the dither softens the entire background and makes it more of a composition instead of sharp detail. Just my opinion.

Thanks again for all your support and comments, really good stuff that I will get updated.

[Nismo]

@TMNTturtlguy

I use riot for resizing, maybe you will like to take a look at it.

About the old system logo at top right... well it's your theme, and of course you will do the theme the way you like it, I know how to modify it to add my marquees in all systems, so it's not a problem for me, the problem it's for users who have marquees, they will see their theme "broken" at top right, without the old system logos nothing will see broken for nobody...

That's because I said if you want to consider put all marquees /logos there.

About the dithering I would like less amount of them, but if not possible it's still not a problem, just because the theme it's amazing as is, but I think it can be better with less dithering.

You did a great job.

Tip: You can add game launching sounds, if you need my help tell me.

Example for launching game sound (working in all ES versions)

 <view name="basic, detailed, grid, video">
	<sound name="launch">
		<path>./art/launch.wav</path>
	</sound>
</view>

Example for sound when switching between systems (need a ES version that supports it):

<view name="system">
	
     <sound name="systemSound">
         <path>./art/systemsound.wav</path>
     </sound>
</view>

[TMNTturtlguy]

@Nismo I have an updated that will be posted momentarily that will fix the marquee issue. Marquees will show properly for all arcade cabinet systems, and console logos for all home console systems.

The theme already has launch sounds for NES, SNES, GB, GBA, GBC, NDS, N64, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, PSP, PSX. I also added more to the other sega systems in update coming in a few seconds.

Thanks again for the kind words - will you be able to help out with comic style controllers?

[TMNTturtlguy]

UPDATE: v2.1 16:9 Theme and v0.1 4:3 Theme Updated

v2.1 16:9 Theme Github Link: Comic Book v2.1
Thanks to @Nismo for his excellent comments and suggestions I have updated the 16:9 theme as follows:

• Marquee's have been corrected. For all Arcade Cabinet systems, a marquee will appear in the upper right hand dark gray space. If you do not have a marquee this will be blank. For all home console systems, the original console system logo will be displayed.

• md_image in bottom right box corrected. The scraped image/box art in the box below the controller has been corrected to maxSize.

• the background images for all Mame systems and FBA have been changed to match the Arcade background for the time being. I think Mame will stay the same, FBA may be updated in the future.

• The backgrounds for all sega systems except Sega Saturn have been updated to match the Sega Genesis background for the time being. Eventually these will need to be udpated with proper controllers and some game image changes.

• Launch sounds were added to more sega systems.

v0.1 ComicBook 4:3 Github link: ComicBook-4:3

• Marquee's have been corrected. For all Arcade Cabinet systems, a marquee will appear in the upper right hand dark gray space. If you do not have a marquee this will be blank. For all home console systems, the original console system logo will be displayed.

• the background images for all Mame systems and FBA have been changed to match the Arcade background for the time being. I think Mame will stay the same, FBA may be updated in the future.

• The backgrounds for all sega systems except Sega Saturn have been updated to match the Sega Genesis background for the time being. Eventually these will need to be udpated with proper controllers and some game image changes.

• Launch sounds were added to more sega systems.

[TMNTturtlguy]

@Nismo What size do you typically try to get your backgrounds down too? I try to get mine below 500 kb each. Your oldroom theme has such nice images, i hope to get something like that on my next theme attempt!

[Nismo]

@TMNTturtlguy

With size I think you mean "filesize"...

I said to you before, for 720p no more than 256kb, and for 1080p no more than 512kb.

Very nice update. I'll modify your theme to show console logos instead system logos on top right for my personal use.

Unfortunately I can't help you with controllers, I'm still working in my theme and I still have a lot of work to do with it, and also with the media files.

Thanks for the update.

[pjft]

@TMNTturtlguy Thanks.

I'll try to look into it in the coming days!

[pjft]

@darkbreaker Not at all. I'd love to be able to sort that out - I doubt that ES is any more "integrated" in Recalbox than on RetroPie (meaning, I suspect it'd be updatable, even if we do it manually).

I'm happy to try and help, though I'd strongly recommend backing up your Recalbox card first, as I don't know how customized is their version of EmulationStation.

Still, their executable should be stored in /usr/bin, from what I seem to observe in the package.

If you can access the file system, whether via SSH or via another computer - and once again, after backing it up! - I imagine you could easily replace that executable file with, for instance, the binary at

https://github.com/pjft/EmulationStation/releases/download/v0.2-ES-OMX-Apr17/emulationstation

You will likely need to give it executable permissions by running

chmod +x /usr/bin/emulationstation

It's risky, but it's worth a shot.

Let us know how it goes. If it breaks, as we don't know what changes the RecalBox team has done to EmulationStation, just restore your backup, and everything should be back to normal.

Best of luck!

[Nismo]

@TMNTturtlguy

I have tested your last theme update, now the marquees/logos are displaying on top of the cool comic style system logos on top left box...

[TMNTturtlguy]

@Nismo hmmmm....I just rechecked on my system and the code on github and I do not have this issue, and i cannot recreate this issue either? What systems is this happening on? The only thing i did was delete the "md_marquee" from the comic_boo.xml file and insert it into the Arcade, FBA, and Mame theme.xml. The marquee should no longer appear in any other system, for example NES or Atari. Here are screen shots of the code off of github:
FBA/MAME

NES (forgive me as this is my first theme and i was learning, for some reason in the arcade/mame i have my comic style logo as "Logo" but in the consoles I have it as "logo3" I should have probably cleaned it up, but in the end what really matters is that system.png is the comic style in every system and system 3.svg is the old logo)

As you can see, marquee and system 3.svg have the same locations specified and they are not the same locations as system.png which is the comic style logo in the left box.

If you could tell me what systems you get this error and maybe a screen shot that would help. Can you also post the information from the .xml you downloaded? That will help speed up the trouble shooting.

[Nismo]

@TMNTturtlguy

Game logos are displaying on top left box over nice comic style system logos for all consoles.

If you delete the marquee/logos code, the logos still displaying in the default top left corner of the screen.

You can't delete the marquees code, you always have to place marquees, if you don't want to display them, place it outside the screen, but the marquees/logos are displayed always even if the xml code doesn't exist.

[pjft]

@Nismo said in New Comic Book Theme!:

but the marquees/logos are displayed always even if the xml code doesn't exist.

...really? Is that working as intended, though? I'd imagine there'd be a cleaner way to handle this in EmulationStation, if the theme does not specify a specific element. I can't see the value in ES rendering an element that has not been specified by the theme, as it will always be located in the wrong place.

@jdrassa, @Zigurana for additional thoughts.

[Nismo]

@pjft
Really, and more theme elements do the same, like metadata, if I remember well if you don't want to show some metadata, for example, times played or rank, you need to place them out of the screen to "hide" them.

I don't remember what elements you need to place out of screen to hide them, but there are a few of them, but for sure marquees/game logos it's one of them.

[pjft]

@Nismo Sure. I wasn't as much asking "really" in terms of asking for confirmation, as in terms of being somewhat surprised that that is deliberately the case.

I believe that that should not be the case, but rather if an element is not specified, then it shouldn't be rendered at all.

But I haven't looked into the ES theme implementation, so I don't know if it's just so painfully tied together that it would be too hard to change.

[Zigurana]

Hi,
The current rendering of the different theme elements is rather dumb at this point.
Simply put; all elements are rendered always, and if they are unwanted, they are moved off-screen.

This is an old eye-sore, and I have been looking into fixing this, but that will be a while in coming.