New Comic Book Theme!

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?

TMNTturtlguy

@Panther7 yup, you need to update EmulationStation. There was a bug in an ES update a few months back. @jdrassa came up with a fix for it. Update ES and it will fix the issue! I would love to see your splash screens. I keep meaning to create system launching screens for the theme, but i have not had time. It is on my to do list.

Panther7

@TMNTturtlguy Awesome, thanks! It had sounded like you had it figured out, I just couldn't connect the dots...

Here is one of them:

I made about 30 of them with the built-in generator. A few had to be manually touched up. They might look bland at first glance, but they look really good in the theme. It draws your attention to your awesome art and just fits that "cartoony" comic feel.

Here's a few more while I wait for ES to update:

Panther7

As my thank you for the help (you did solve the problem), I went ahead and did it now. I'll likely add a few more by the time I'm done.

http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=07551040683414970278

TMNTturtlguy

@Panther7 These are awesome! Thank you so much, i think they are elegant and also very sharp! I will pull these down in a bit. Do you mind if we make a github repro for these? Either you can do it, or I can do it as well. I will of course give you all of the credit for them in the post.

TMNTturtlguy

@Panther7 WOW - i just downloaded them and again amazing work. So perfect, so simple and the colors are so vibrant! I was going to do something so much more complicated, I might put that on the back burner now that you have created these, I don't think I can beat them!

Panther7

@TMNTturtlguy You (or anyone else working on development of the theme) can do whatever you want with them. I don't know how to use github (I'm not a developer in any form). You can post them there if it helps people out. :)

If you need to make more, I actually just used the method posted here:

It's experimental package "launchingimages"; after installing it, go to the configuration section of the Retropie Setup Script

Settings were:
theme: Comic Book
system: (you must do it one by one if you want different colors)
extension: .png
loading_text: (unchanged)
press_button_text: (unchanged)
loading_text_color: Either white (for color screens) or black (for dark screens)
press_button_text_color: grey75 (to pair with white above) or black/grey10 (to pair with black above)
show_timeout: (doesn't matter)
no_ask: true (you can turn it on if you want to preview it)
no_logo: false
logo_belt: false
solid_bg_color: This is the key. I tried to pick the one that best fit the color of the text (usually the top color in the shader) A few multi-color systems needed a few tries to find something that worked.

This will generate you a screen in "/opt/retropie/configs/(systemname)/launching.png", which you can obtain through SFTP. If the image needed touchups (some will need background touchups), you can fix them with GIMP or PS, and then copy over the previous image.

TMNTturtlguy

@Panther7 Cool! That is @meleu 's script, glad it worked so well. With your awesome work created from his script, i can just as easily create these in PS copying the great work you came up with since i have all the actual files. That is with your permission to continue on with your work.

Github is a nice place to put stuff because it allows us to easily update them and users to pull down the information. Thank you for permission to create this. When i get time i will do that.

Lastly, I don't want to steal your hard work, so i am looking for your thoughts and approval on a potential modification. I am undecided on this since yours are so clean and perfect, but here is a little addition to what you have created. Thoughts? Also - community thoughts are welcome. Again, Great work on these!

Panther7

@TMNTturtlguy It's all yours. Do whatever you like, you clearly have good judgment based on the current theme. You've done a million times more work than I did, no need to feel bad! Consider it part of my thanks for all your hard work.

I like that idea. I'm sure there is a number of different ways you could take it to improve upon it. My art skills are rather limited, you clearly have me on that end. :)

meleu

@TMNTturtlguy Wow! They are astonishing! :D
@Panther7 had a good idea using a solid background!

Just to let you guys know, that in RetroPie-Setup is a kind of a frontend to the actual image generator tool. If you want more convenient way for trying several configs to see the results, maybe it's faster to use the command line.

The tool is installed on /opt/retropie/supplementary/launchingimages/generate-launching-images.sh and you can see useful info with the --help option.

If you have something to say about the tool use this thread: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/7193/runcommand-launching-images-for-any-theme

Cheers!

Panther7

@meleu Awsome work, btw. I was able to try a bunch of different ideas before I found this one. Your tool is really handy, especially in themes without preset images or ones without many systems.

Just FYI, I tried using the "theme color" for each system, and that didn't work at all. Not sure if that's a theme issue (which I suspect) or your script.

meleu

@Panther7 said in New Comic Book Theme!:

Just FYI, I tried using the "theme color" for each system, and that didn't work at all. Not sure if that's a theme issue (which I suspect) or your script.

The ComicBook theme doesn't have a color for background, it just use the image. That option is useful for themes like metapixel and material.

I know that @TMNTturtlguy is against changing a perfectly working theme just to make it useful for a 3rd party script, but if he define a <color> for each system and make them all transparent, it would not affect the theme in ES, but would make the launching images creation really easy.

I'm not near to my RetroPie to make the tests, but maybe you guys can give it a try.

[UPDATE: that trick doesn't work as I expected!]

Open the file /etc/emulationstation/themes/ComicBook/nes/theme.xml and in the <image name="SystemBackground"> part add a <color> with the value FF000000 (or FF0000FF, as I can't remember the value for total transparent or total opaque :) ). In the end it will be something like this:

		<image name="SystemBackground" extra="true">
			<tile>false</tile>
			<pos>0 0</pos>
			<origin>0 0</origin>
			<size>1 1</size>
			<path>./art/comic.png</path>
			<color>FF000000</color>
		</image>

Restart ES after making the change to see if it changes the Nintendo theme (if the background is totally red try using <color>FF0000FF</color>). If it doesn't change anything, great! The theme won't be affected but the script can easily generate the launching images.

TMNTturtlguy

@meleu Thanks for the info! I am not against changing anything to help your script work better now that I know what is going on.....my comment before was more in regards to a user stating my theme was "Broken" because a script didn't work on it.

That being said, adding a color into each theme is at the very bottom of my to do list! I have 116 current systems in the theme and to find the exact color code for each would be a great task. Then i have 4 separate theme variations, so i would need to update this 116x4= 464 files!

meleu

@TMNTturtlguy said in New Comic Book Theme!:

That being said, adding a color into each theme is at the very bottom of my to do list! I have 116 current systems in the theme and to find the exact color code for each would be a great task. Then i have 4 separate theme variations, so i would need to update this 116x4= 464 files!

If you make the test I mentioned above and confirm it works fine, I can submit a PR adding those <color> fields in all needed files, at least to the main ComicBook repo. ;-)

Maybe we can use the colors that @Panther7 used...

serotonin

heys i finally got my rasp pi 3 ordered setup and ready to go :) cant wait to try your theme on the pi.. i flashed my sdcard with the new motion blue v5... should i be using the comic book theme SE because all my gamelist xml came with motion blue.. and my roms have videos, snaps ect with them in the pack... thanks for the help and good work

Panther7

@serotonin Normal will do video and picture (boxart), the SE adds Marquee logo as well. You can install both and see how it works.