EmulationStation Toolkit - Theme Making Helper - Update
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@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
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@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
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@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.
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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 ;) -
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? -
@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.
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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.
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@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?
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@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. -
@EctoOne That's pretty cool. Adding extra systems to the Toolkit has been requested, so it's on the to-do list, but my plate is pretty full so I don't know when I would get to it.
I was just planning on adding 1 or 2 roms to each system, with a simple image/video. I was thinking of making it so each system had 3 gamelists (basic, detailed, video) so the user can just switch between them.
You are more than welcome to do what you plan on and I can roll them into the Toolkit when I get a chance. Either you can email me a zip of everything, or do a PR on Github (I don't really know how they work though).
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@mattrixk I just made 40 games just to have a long gamelist as well (i messed up my theme a couple of times because the lack of roms gave me a wrong impression).
And with the latest version you don't need to make multiple gamelists anymore, you can switch between the views if you want. Although i just noticed that the windows version freezes when you switch to videoview without having videos in the gamelist.
Anyways, i finished the 3DO gamelist and will do the rest tomorrow, should be a quick thing to do. Just some copy and paste and replace the suffix in the gamelists.Edit:
Ok, i made it a little easier for myself and just used detailed gamelists for 4 systems. The other ones only contain some fake roms so that they will show up in the systemview.
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3DO supports Videoview
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Amiga has Square Images (DetailedView)
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Atari 2600 has Landscape Images (DetailedView)
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Atari ST has Portrait Images (DetailedView)
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All other gamelists are empty (BasicView)
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These infos are also the names of the Roms in those system (Kind of a Build-in Guide)
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Theres also one very long Gamename in those lists
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And they also have a SubFolder with 1 (Fake)Rom inside
Still need to add all Ports but it's already 6.30 am. Time to catch some Zs
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@mattrixk Question, the point of this is just to make themecreation easier right?
I mean ES doesn't need to be able to actually run the games. If so, i even can save a lot more work by editing the es_system.cfg (which i need to do anyway to let every system appear in ES) to make 4-5 real systems with different gamelist variations and point all other systems to the same folder with just 1 fake rom and an empty gamelist. It even would be possible to only make one complete system and while creating the theme have the user switch between the views via the ES option. -
@EctoOne That's a really interesting idea. I'll have to try that out. If it works it will really cut down on the amount of resources (images, videos) that the Toolkit needs.
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@mattrixk It does work, i have some more systems to add and then i can upload my rom folder with the modified ed_system.cfg. Will do it in a few hours, busy right now.
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@EctoOne said in EmulationStation Toolkit - Theme Making Helper - Update:
have the user switch between the views via the ES option.
That is what I was looking for. Is that option feature available for ES on windows?
That would be really helpful for theme creation.
Instead of creating different gamelists just swap via menu. -
@FlyingTomahawk It is available in the latest build from @jdrassa https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/9094/updated-emulationstation-for-windows
@mattrixk I'm done with the setup. It's only 1,20 MB unzipped.
See if you can download it here(removed). All Media is in the_mediafolder. Maybe you can/should replace them like you want (especially the video IDK where i got that).
Thethemesfolder only contains another folder with all systems. Some sort of a template if i may say so.
Tell me when you got the file, i will remove the link afterwards. -
Yeah, unfortunately that 32bit version doesn't run for me. Throwing out some dll error. Didn't had that issue with his previous z-index version.
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@FlyingTomahawk The select view option should be available in the z-index version as well. Try this version. It is the latest automated build. I wouldn't expect any dll difference between this and the z-index version.
https://ci.appveyor.com/api/buildjobs/01kygo78h8k8leo0/artifacts/EmulationStation-Win32.zip
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Thanks. I'll give it a go after work today and report back asap.
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@EctoOne: Thanks mate, I got the file. That's some nice work. I have some ideas for how to streamline the whole thing, which I'll start exploring once my lunch break starts in a couple of hours.
@jdrassa: What does that build include? Does it have any of the Kids Mod or Favourites that @Zigurana was working on, or the Genre Filter (I can't remember who made that one)?
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