New Comic Book Theme!

pjft

I know you hate me by now for bringing up new things every now and then. I'm sorry. :)

I'm wondering if it'd be possible to ask you to create a separate theme folder as well, under custom-collections for users to be able to create their own collections under it, should there not be a custom theme for it.

This comes from @cyperghost 's suggestion, which after thinking it through I think makes some sense and is an elegant way to standardize the support for these features across themes.

This way, if you create a TMNTcollection, if you have a TMNTtheme folder it will use it as an entry in the systems list. If not, it will create a subfolder under this Game Collectionsentry on the system list. That way you could use whatever theme you'd want, and create whatever collections you'd want, without being restricted by existing theme folders, provided that that custom-collectionsfolder exists. So battletoads, best-of 2-player games, final fantasy, whatever - people can create them and organize them without needing a specific theme entry.

No urgency, but let me know if this makes sense.

Thanks in advance for your time - regardless of whether you have the availability or interest in pursuing it!

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft I don't mind your requests at all, i enjoy them, so keep them coming. You have done way more for me and the community than i have done for you,.

I can create a folder called custom-collections

I do need more clarity on how this will work and what it should look like. Unfortunately i have been traveling for work not stop and have had little time to work on my projects. I have spent my available time completing a full size arcade cabinet build, Last night I got it all lit up and running, now i just need to tweak the 4 player controls a bit!

My understanding is you want a folder called custom-collections. Will this be a themed folder with a system background and system logo? How will users create a "Battletoads" within this? How will they create a system logo? Will it just reuse the same background for each system the create?

If you could clarify how this will work, i can get you what you need! Thanks

cyperghost

@TMNTturtlguy
It will look like this. Just a text selection inside the custom-collection. If there is already a them for ex. "Megaman" available it will be shown in the caroussel selection if not it will be a text selection within custom-collection
It's a sneaky way to maintain themes because not all themes are so extended as your "Comic Book Theme" is (good work btw.)

Of course it is intended to work without these dirty hacks, bugs and "features" like I wrote in the linked topic ;)
@pjft mate, please correct me if I'm wrong

pjft

Apologies - made the same mistake when asking @UDb23 for his help with Carbon. My bad.

@cyperghost explained it for the most part, but I'll write a separate post for all theme makers, so the information is centralized now.

Summary is:

Users will be able to create any kind of collections in ES (examples: "2-player best games", "kids games", "co-op games", "final fantasy", "sonic games", "sega games", "NES Mini", "SNES Mini", whatever).
If there's a theme folder for the collection, it will be added as a separate system entry.
As not all themes will have all possible collections (and, in fact, different users may have different collection ideas), instead of requiring the themes to be constantly updated, if a collection doesn't have the name of an exiting (and unused!) theme folder, it will be added as a sub-folder entry in this new custom-collectionssystem. This way different themes don't need to implement multiple specific folders. As long as there's this folder, they'll all have a place to live, regardless of the theme.

Hope this clarifies it a bit.

Thanks for the help!

cyperghost

@pjft No I got really be excited how this works exactly. Can you post this also in the central thread you will create? Just for the stupids like me :D
@TMNTturtlguy The "How it work"-link I send to you is no means similar to the @pjft ES fork works ... But it will look like that :) Just as intention! How the magic behind really works I don't know - that's pjft's se c re ++.

jdrassa

@pjft how are you going to handle switching between themes? Are you going to regenerate the collections? I am going to make finishing up the theme variables / default theme feature a priority. I think it will provide a simpler alternative.

pjft

@jdrassa The collections themselves (i.e. the data) isn't regenerated, but the views will be.

...I see. You're covering the case where the starting theme would have, for example, a theme folder kidsgamesand the new one wouldn't - or vice versa.

I suppose whenever we load a new theme, I'll check for existing folders, and then I suppose I can do something like:

vector<string> unused_theme_folders;
vector<FileData> custom_collection_subfolders = custom_collection_filedata->getFilesRecursive(FOLDER);
vector<SystemData> game_collection_systems;

// check which ones have a dedicated folder and move them out of the custom collection games.
for each (entry in custom_collection_games)
{
   if (unused_theme_folders contains entry_name)
      create new system entry for this collection
}

// check which ones don't have a dedicated folder and move them into the custom collection games.
for each (collection_system in game_collection_systems)
{
   if (unused_theme_folders does not contain system name)
      add collection_system to custom_collection_games as a subfolder
}

Obviously, this is very rough, but I don't expect to have to do a "reload all" equivalent. Hopefully it'll be more of a "shift things around" kind of thing. In my naivety, I'm thinking it might be just a "change parent FileData" thing. But I'm not sure, would need to test it.

Do you think I'm missing something critical here?

Also, I was thinking about the theme variables, how do you see it helping this scale? I'm thinking of how to handle the different possible names - would they be plain text if the theme maker hasn't specified them?

Thanks!

EDIT: @jdrassa I just read your post in the other thread: "Part of that also included the concept of a default theme that would be applied if there was not a theme for the selected "system"."

Got it.

cyperghost

@pjft

...I see. You're covering the case where the starting theme would have, for example, a theme folder kidsgamesand the new one wouldn't - or vice versa.

I think that isn't an issue. It can be avoided if a theme change always restarts ES. That would be a new behaviour but in the real usecase... how much times do people change their theme? Or is my thinking just ignorant?

@pjft Can you please reopen a new topic? I don't want to SPAM @TMNTturtlguy thread

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy End of off-topic.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/11321/theme-changes-attention-theme-makers-upcoming-game-collections-in-es

Thanks for the patience, you're very kind! You've done tremendous contributions for me and the community as well, so I always feel that "one more thing" is always a big request, as it comes out of your free time.

Hope your work travels have calmed down now - and looking forward to seeing pictures of that 4-player cabinet you've been setting up :)

Have a great weekend!

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft thanks! Great threads and explanations. I finally arrived from another 5 hour journey to my current location. No raspberry pi with me, but I have my computer so I should have some time to put into this. Hardest part is going to be deciding what the comic rip should be!

I took some photos of the cabinet before I left last night, one of the LED buttons light was dead on arrival so I have to change it out. It's nothing to special but I like it. It is my first cabinet I owned, dad bought it for us in the late 80's and we loved it. It of course stopped working years ago and was in my dads barn. After finding retropie I decided to resurrect it and change it into a 4 player cabinet. I will try to post a new thread with photos soon!

Have a great weekend and I hope you can spend some time with the family!

EDIT Here is a link to my new post about my arcade build Donkey-Kong-3-arcade-cabinet

TMNTturtlguy

New Comic Book Special Edition- Wheel Art Themes added to ES-Themes Download Menu!

2 new theme options have just been added to the ES-Themes menu. Be sure to update your retropie startup script to see these.

The new theme options are for Video View users only that have marquee or wheelart scraped and in their gamelist for all of their systems. You must have files in your <marquee> line of your gamelist. If you do not use video view and you do not have images in your marquee line, this theme will not work for you.

What does this new theme option do: This theme removes the system logos over the top of the video preview and instead displays your marquee or wheel art over the top of the video preview.

Why does this only work in video view: In the current ES build the marquee meta data only works with video view. There is an update working on resolving this, but until then you have to use video view.

Why is this a separate theme? The way current themeing works, the marquee has to be listed in the theme or it will break the theme. In order to make the theme work for users without wheelart scraped, I must hide the marquee off of the screen and display the system logo file over the video/image preview. When we want to show the wheel art, we need to move the location of the marquee and turn off the system logo. This can only be done by modify the main comicbook.xml and each theme.xml. Sorry for the long explanation, but I wanted to clarify for those who are interested.

Here are some screenshots i have taken, mostly from my 4:3 build. These where also shared in an earlier post.

@Nismo If you are still out there I hope you are doing well! You had asked for this about 3 months ago and here it is at last!

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft All versions of the ComicBook Theme have been updated with a custom-collection theme.

I don't have a pi to make screen shots, but here are the components:

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy wonderful! Thank you for the quick turnaround - and great job on the cabinet, which I just saw you had updated the post for with the link :)

I hope this will be available in the coming... Weeks, even if only for testing to begin with. I imagine it'll take longer to merge.

A question: did you consider calling it "collections"? I'm a non-native English speaker, so it might be my fault, but I mostly associate "customs" with customs, so I'm not sure of whether it's a language thing for me or not :)

Either way, the hard work is done, and that's what matters. Thank you very much, hope you're having a good weekend! When this is all done hopefully you'll be able to create your own collections on your cabinet without a need for internet or a keyboard. Hopefully :)

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft I can change the system logo out to say collections. I tried custom collections and it was to long! I will make the change and update the themes in the near future, certainly prior to your final release.

hooperre

This feels like an ok landing spot for this question as opposed to another topic. Say I wanted to rename some things in the es_configs to incorporate a custom collection type thing. How would I format that in es_configs.cfg? Specifically if it's not dedicated to a singular system.

  <system>
    <name>ryan</name>
    <fullname>Ryan's Favorites</fullname>
    <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ryan</path>
    <extension>.sh .SH</extension>
    <command>/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh %ROM%</command>
    <platform></platform>
    <theme>ryan</theme>
  </system>

TMNTturtlguy

@hooperre You are on the correct path with this. There are several threads on how to create custom collections right now. They are all "hacks" or work arounds. In my opinion they work well and should not be considered hacks, they just take some knowledge of how the system works. @pjft is working on getting something similar incorporated right into ES so it is more user friendly. Here are links to a few different ways of doing this. Post your questions in the associated threads.

@meleu 's method using symbolic links! This one is what I use on my systems, it is awesome: link to post

My method, which I only use on builds that don't have standard folders like NES, SNES, this is a good method if yo don't want to use symbolic links. post 589

@cyperghost my little favorite launcher - I have not used this, but @cyperghost is brilliant at code and scripts so I assume this is a great solution as well. link to post

hooperre

@TMNTturtlguy Thanks! For whatever reason, my searches didn't return anything. Thanks for pointing me in the correct direction!

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft I have updated all of the ComicBook Themes custom-collections folder with the My Collections logo.

0_1499023910325_my collections.png

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy This looks stellar. Thank you!

Hope you had a good weekend, and that this new week is a bit more relaxed with less travel for you. :)

Panther7

Awesome Theme. I actually made a bunch of matching splashscreens that I'll upload when I'm done with my build. However I just ran into a problem. After editing the gamelist XML for pcm, I got a bug where my descriptions are blacked over when I scroll. I can't seem to figure out how to fix this. I found a thread with you guys talking about the problem, but I didn't catch the solution. Any help?