EmulationStation Toolkit - Theme Making Helper - Update

xaGe

@herb_fargus hehe.. I do actually like Debian, just not as a daily driver.

Thank you sir for your information. You have no idea what I know and your just trying to help. I'm new to the forums, but not to Linux. Hopefully I'll contribute and help others more than be a burden. ;-)

xaGe

I started to look into this actually, but the retropie setup script is very tied to the Debian & Ubuntu's APT (Advanced Packaging Tool).

@herb_fargus said in EmulationStation Toolkit - Theme Making Helper - Update:

(Though as an aside I'm sure it's possible to compile it under Manjaro with a few tweaks ;) )

herb_fargus

@xaGe yes the setup script perhaps but the individual components like ES and Retroarch should still be able to compile manually. Can't vouch for the quality of these docs but supposedly someone got it running on arch Linux which from what I understand is what manjaro is based on

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroPie-Arch-Linux-Flavor/

A challenge if you're feeling ambitious and want to validate/update the docs ;)

fnkngrv

@mattrixk I am looking at the links that you suggested which include this one and am having difficulty understanding the way that basevid is set up. For example lines 84-107 in the basvid.xml file are in a green font. What does that mean? It is a section tagged as "Custom Vertical System View".

Also to be sure that I am understanding if you have tagged sections like say "image name="background" at the top for the system view and then also at the bottom for the detailed view then if you make changes to the data in that section for the system then you also need to change it for the detailed view otherwise it will break the theme causing odd behavior when viewed?

mattrixk

Hey @fnkngrv. How much knowledge do you have of any kind of basic coding, like HTML, CSS or MXL? If you know HTML it makes things easier for me to explain because you'll be more likely to know what some words mean when I say them. If it sounds like I'm being condescending, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be, but without knowing your level of coding knowledge, I'll have to dumb things down a bit just in case you don't know anything about it.

Lines 84-107 in the basvid.xml file are "commented out". That means that the system doesn't read them, and the don't interfere with anything else.

These are used for lots of things, like making notes about a section of code, or for keeping a copy of working code while testing new code.

The Carousel Mod lets you have a Horizontal carousel so you cycle the logos left and right (like the default carousel), or you can have a Vertical carousel that lets you cycle the logos up and down.

The BaseVid theme has code for both of these carousels, but you can't have them both active at once because they will conflict with each other and can break your theme, so the Vertical carousel is commented out. To view the Vertical carousel you need to comment out the Horizontal carousel code by putting  after the code. You then need to remove those comments from around the Vertical carousel code.

In regards to the Views, EmulationStation uses different Views to display different data. The first View you see when you start ES is the System View. This is the one with the carousel of system. Then you have the Basic View which displays a list of games that don't have any metadata. There is also the Detailed View that displays the list of games that do have metadata (images, descriptions, genre, etc). Last is Video View which is virtually identical to Detailed View, except it can display videos. You can disregard Grid View for now, as I haven't heard anything about it's development for a while.

Line 16 of basevid.xml has <view name="system, basic, detailed, grid, video">, which means that any code within this <view> will effect all of the Views mentioned.

I can't remember if I already told you this, but all this information is in the Creating your own theme tutorial in the RetroPie Docs.

fnkngrv

Yeah, I don't know a thing about HTML or any of this crap. I find it very frustrating tbh. Put me into Cisco IOS and Redhat and I can work with that like a champ. I had been building a theme in an older version of the toolkit so now am starting over with the new features and can't seem to get anything to work they way that I want it to. I have walked through that tutorial however with these new changes it appears that document is not completely serviceable anymore?

mattrixk

@fnkngrv I've been meaning to update the tutorial, but as it took me a couple of months to initially write the thing, I just haven't found the time to add in all the new info.

On that note though, the tutorial is far from out of date. Yes, it's missing how to add Video Support and Custom Carousels, but you don't need them to make a theme. They are just fancy extras that you can add if you want to*.

* Granted, there are some things that should be done differently if you wanted to make your theme Video compatible from the start, but they aren't major.

fnkngrv

I am not meaning to throw stones. I have to develop help documents and tutorials for end users on a regular basis. They are definitely time consuming for sure. The tutorial is very thorough, but I am just terrible apparently at put it all together to be able to understand for example how to leverage it against those new features. As you know everyone wants the latest and greatest. I have ideas in my head that I am not being successful at implementing so I can share them with the community.

Jaxel

Does this support Z-Index?

jdrassa

@Jaxel not yet.

@mattrixk I just pushed an updated windows build to github.
https://github.com/jrassa/EmulationStation/releases/tag/2.2.2.220

mattrixk

@fnkngrv Is there anything specific you are getting stuck on? If you follow the tutorial from the beginning, is there a point you get to that just kind of stops you cold? Like a "WTF is this talking about?" moment? Or is it more just over-all hard to follow?

@jdrassa I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but I did realise something: the base Toolkit doesn't actually contain any version of ES, but the Release that @herb_fargus put together does. We'll have to get him to put another release together (because I don't know how).

I also want to test the BaseVid theme with your new release to make sure the z-index stuff doesn't bork anything within the theme (it probably won't but I need to test it anyway). I may need to test the included Carbon theme too.

There's also some other stuff I want to add/change in the Toolkit, like updating the UXS profiles to work with the latest versions of UXS, and I also want to make it so each of the systems has 3 gamelists (one each for Basic, Detailed and Video Views), and slightly reshuffle how the all the media is laid out. All of these things take time, and I'd want to get them done before putting out another release.

I also need to update the tutorial at some point with all the new goodies.

herb_fargus

@mattrixk for the time being it should be simple enough for the user to swap out the ES binary our friend @jdrassa provided. May also need a few dlls if the dependencies changed (like for omx, but VLC should be the default for windows anyhow)

But yes if people are using the toolkit it only makes sense for the docs and other resources to match the latest binary. I don't have a whole lot of free time currently as life is a bit hectic for me right now but hopefully people can make do in the mean time

screech

@mattrixk I used your toolset this weekend ;) and nothing to say, it's great to test theme and to create them (and MIX too ;) Great thanks to you and @herb_fargus for this.

Just one thing can be done (I think) what you do for the 100 fake roms over 5 systems must (I think) be done for "every" system existing in Retropie (and why not Recalbox ^^) ... So create a theme is very easier to test every system 1 by 1 ;)

Not so much time right now (and I have UXS to debug :S ) but I think i will do it at least for recalbox :p

mattrixk

@screech I think time is the main factor for most of us, as we mainly seem to just do this all as a hobby.

Another stumbling block with adding extra systems (other than just how long they take to set up) is the sheer size they take up. 5 systems comes out to about 25MB without the videos, with an extra 43MB added for 4 systems worth of videos. I'm not sure how much Github would let me get away with, but I doubt most people would want to download a GB of stuff just to get the Toolkit.

I suppose I could make a streamlined version that just had 1 or 2 roms per system, with a really small test video instead of actual gameplay videos. Maybe add it as a supplemental Repo like the ES Toolkit Videos repo... Something to think about anyway.

I'm glad you like it. I love using UXS, and have a blast creating Mix and Scrape profiles. I've been playing with the v2 stuff lately, so I have some new profiles to add the Toolkit after some more testing. I'm having some issues though that I'll tell you about on your thread when I get the chance.

screech

I'm aware of the last issue on UXS :( (I'm on it ;) )

The idea maybe to have a "common" media folder ?
Exemple : 1 or 2 Screenshot, 1 or 2 marquee, 1 or 2 Video,....
And each gamelist.xml done with "common path" to these media ;)
For rom, It's only a matter of 0K file 1 or 2 by system ;)

So it will be very "light" and we can "test" every system with fake info ^^
And if we want "real" info and media on these fake rom, we "just" have to Scrape them ;)

FlyingTomahawk

@mattrixk

I wanted to do some updates on my theme and lost track of the latest ES development.
I still use jsdrassa's older release with video support. Now the latest is 2.1.9RP? which contains the swap between views feature that I would like to have on windows too.
I got his latest 32bit release but that throws me some .dll missing error.
Any other, working version out there?

mattrixk

@FlyingTomahawk I'm currently using a Windows build of the Kids Mod by @Zigurana, but I'm having trouble finding it, so this is a link to his Favourites Filter mod that I was using before that.

I haven't had a chance to play with @jdrassa's latest Z-index build yet.

Edit: Found it. I think it's actually older than the Fav Filter, so it may not have the new filter stuff in there. Arrgh, so many mods, I keep losing track of them. I have no idea which one I'm currently using. I have at least 4 that I use for different testing at different times. I need to clean house.

EctoOne

Heya @mattrixk i'm in the progress of setting up gamelists for all suported systems with the method @screech mentioned in another thread (using the same images/video for all entrys to keep the amount of used data small). I will need to take a look on your current files to make sure i'll get everything covered. When i'm done i can upload it if you're interested.

mattrixk

@EctoOne So it would just be a stock gamelist, where each <game> entry just links to a single image? I'm not sure I have it right in my head (and let's be honest here, there isn't much right in there at the best of times).

Can you maybe upload a sample to pastebin or similar so I can see what you mean?

What are you using for rom stand-ins? Are they just renamed.txt files?

EctoOne

@mattrixk
Yes, i'm using blank txt files, 40 for each system. I'm going to use white images for either portrait,landscape or square covers. For some games i will also use some really long names and descriptions (so that is better to adjust a theme to those).
I will follow the es_systems.cfg and start with 3DO and use the gamenames as some sort of guide to what its about. Then i will do some systems with just images and some with videos (well a single video that is). I just finished creating all the fake roms so i don't have anything to show yet.