rpie-art: easy way to install art on your RetroPie

meleu

Hello friends.

The rpie-art is now able to install the cool nes-mini theme launching images from @ruckage .

Update your rpie-art and you'll see a new repository named https://github.com/meleu/rpie-launching-images

I hope you enjoy.

MrJordaaany

@meleu Hey Meleu, had a chance to use rpie-art over the weekend and it works great! Been having a blast installing and testing overlays for arcade games. The script works great. Will update and try out when home for the new launching images.

AndersHP

Is it possible to see the art before installing? I cannot really find it on the repo.

meleu

@andershp said in rpie-art: easy way to install art on your RetroPie:

Is it possible to see the art before installing?

No. I'll try to implement this when I have a chance.

But regarding the theme based launching images, they fit better when using the respective theme. ;-)

Lord-Raziel

@meleu said in rpie-art: easy way to install art on your RetroPie:

UPDATE

Now you can install the script on RetroPie Menu and then navigate through menus using a joystick. Just run the script with --install argument:
./rpie-art.sh --install
If emulationstation is running, you'll need to restart it.

While in the menus like the one below, press B button to check the items you want to install, and press A to "Continue".

Hi Meleu, I detected an error in the rpie-art script when trying to launching it from the Retropie Menu, you receive 4 errors like : "ls: cannot access /root/Retropie/roms ... No such file or directory" preventing the launch of the script, since the RetropieMenu is been launched by the Root user the following line in the script must be modified:

readonly RP_DIR "$HOME/RetroPie"

To
readonly RP_DIR "/home/pi/Retropie"

That will fix the error while executing the script as Root and you will be able to launch the script from the RetropieMenu.

Thanks for the script!

meleu

@lord-raziel thanks for the report.

Could you confirm your RetroPie-Setup version?

You can see the version on the top left dialog box of retropie_setup.sh, like 4.0 in the image below:
rpsetup

Lord-Raziel

@meleu said in rpie-art: easy way to install art on your RetroPie:

@lord-raziel thanks for the report.

Could you confirm your RetroPie-Setup version?

@meleu, my RetroPie-Setup version is 4.2.3

meleu

@lord-raziel please, can you update your RetroPie-Setup and try again with my original script?

The problem you reported were "fixed" in version 4.2.8. I should mention it in the OP. Will do it if you confirm that it's working fine for you.

Lord-Raziel

@meleu as per your request I have upgraded to 4.2.10 and using your unmodified script now works, so you can include in the instructions to upgrade the Retropie Setup to the latest version ;)

meleu

@lord-raziel Thanks bro! :)

ohmycommodore

@meleu

(here you go. repeat-posted from the Retrorama thread.)

I played around with this a bit over the last hour, grabbing some selected images for BOTH Retrorama and Comic Book. I of course grabbed images that matched my installed systems (ie. I may have a C64 image for each theme, etc). Two questions:

(1) I end up with a mix of launch images across my systems. For example, I might get a Retrorama launch image for one system, and a Comic Book image for another system... and yes this is regardless of which of the two themes I have set in retropie. Is the correct way to work with this to only download and have "active" launch images to match one theme at a time?

(2) Related to this, I can't seem to delete images and tidy this up. I see options to "delete local repository files" as well as "uninstall art", but in my first couple of attempts neither avenue seems to remove the installed images (even after a reboot). Am I missing something here in terms of the process to delete / tidy up / manage images?

Running retropie 4.2 with just-updated retropie setup script 4.2.12. Latest theme updates today as well. Hardware is a Pi3 B with a good power supply. Keyboard and PS4 controller attached via USB.

meleu

@ohmycommodore

Is the correct way to work with this to only download and have "active" launch images to match one theme at a time?

No. The script doesn't care about your active/installed themes. Even if you have only the default theme on your system, you can install the launching images available in rpie-art.

Note: the only (intentional) limitation is that rpie-art does NOT show the launching images for a system you don't have installed. Example: if you don't have an emulator for N64, the rpie-art won't show the available N64 launching images in that dialog check box. It was made this way intentionally.

I see options to "delete local repository files" as well as "uninstall art", but in my first couple of attempts neither avenue seems to remove the installed images (even after a reboot). Am I missing something here in terms of the process to delete / tidy up / manage images?

I coded that part thinking in launching images in a per game basis and forgot the system launching images. Will look into it soon.

Thanks for your report! ;-)

Cheers!

ohmycommodore

Thanks, yes, system launch images are the interesting thing for me. The main screen of a game will come up soon enough, along with whatever art or style goes with it. System launch images aren't up for long either... but I think it's a nice upgrade over the text default.

Let me know here if you make any changes and how I can try them out. For now, I'll leave what I had installed alone.

meleu

@ohmycommodore

could you update the rpie-art and try it again? I think it's done!

ohmycommodore

@meleu

I can definitely progress now with the "uninstall art" dialogs, and have success deleting images one by one.

I didn't get any new behaviour in "delete local repository files" though.

As well, note that I still had Retrorama images taking precedence over Comic Book images, while I was using Comic Book theme. If I remember correctly, I think I installed these all in one go when I first tried pie-art.

If these files are all called "launching.png" is that somehow still getting in the way? And is Retrorama taking precedence because "r" images were downloaded later than "c" for Comic Book?

meleu

@ohmycommodore

I can definitely progress now with the "uninstall art" dialogs, and have success deleting images one by one.

good.

I didn't get any new behaviour in "delete local repository files" though.

The rpie-art stores the art repository files at ~/RetroPie/art-repositories/. If you want to save space in your SD card/hard drive, you may want to delete these files. And if you delete them, the installed art won't change. Got it?

Retrorama images taking precedence over Comic Book images.
(...) And is Retrorama taking precedence because "r" images were downloaded later than "c" for Comic Book?

I think yes. You can only have one launching image for a system.

ohmycommodore

@meleu

ok i think i get the difference between the repositories and the actual art.

so for the launching images, you do in fact need to manually delete / download images if you want to switch themes...?

i suppose one way around that would be if, in the future, system launching images were included as part of the themes themselves, as a default of sorts instead of the basic text that pops up during a launch.

meleu

@ohmycommodore said in rpie-art: easy way to install art on your RetroPie:

so for the launching images, you do in fact need to manually delete / download images if you want to switch themes...?

Yep. Maybe using the "uninstall art" option can be less painfull for those who have fear of command line. :)

i suppose one way around that would be if, in the future, system launching images were included as part of the themes themselves, as a default of sorts instead of the basic text that pops up during a launch.

I aggree it would be awesome, but I'm afraid it won't happen...

An EmulationStation theme is an EmulationStation thing. A launching image is a runcommand thing. The RetroPie developers have a strong conviction that RetroPie (which runcommand is part of) must be frontend agnostic, which means that EmulationStation must not deal with configs that has nothing to do with the frontend itself (the only accepted exception is the input config).

That being said, I think that moving launching image files automatically when the user changes the ES theme set in the UI Settings is something that won't happen.

@BuZz am I right saying that?

BuZz

@meleu yep. Pretty much :-)

beastmode

@meleu I'm unable to press a button to configure launch options for individual games after using the rpie-art tool to set 16:9 basic launching images by @tmntturtlguy

How do I go about solving this?

RetroPie-Setup Script Version: 4.2.12 (all packages updated)