Messages

601

General / Re: Frist Time Attract Mode installer needs help!

« on: March 06, 2018, 02:37:57 PM »

You need to go to the "Displays" menu and configure a new display for your emulator, so you can see a more "rich", themed interface. I must say that at first AM is a bit tough, first time I installed it I thought something was wrong

602

General / Re: Stuck on the config menu

« on: March 06, 2018, 02:36:34 PM »

Did you set up your emulator? The first two steps to do when you start using AM are:

- configure your emulator(s) using the Emulators entry, there you can configure MAME or other emulators with executable paths, roms etc. You can also use this part to scrape metadata but for starters you can rely on local data. don't forget to regenerate the roms list...

- configure a display, using the Displays menu entry. Without a display you won't be able to see your  game lists even if you have configured the emulator correctly

603

Scripting / Re: What is flx, fly, flh, flw?

« on: March 06, 2018, 08:22:41 AM »

And how to create a variable with dimensions of an artwork?
fe.layout.width  -->  the monitor width
fe.image?  I would like to create a border around an artwork but each art has its width

fe.layout.width is the canvas dimension, while ScreenWidth and ScreenHeight are constants you can use to get the actual screen resolution.

That said, image.width and image.height are the width and height of an artwork on screen.

604

Scripting / Re: Possible to get a stroke/outline around text?

« on: February 25, 2018, 05:21:41 AM »

I don't think add_clone() and clone() are the same functions. From the Squirrel reference manual I'm reading (https://developer.electricimp.com/squirrel/squirrelcrib), clone() specifically says it can clone an object.

I think that's the elctric imp fork of Squirrel, not the "vanilla" one. There is a "clone" in Squirrel language reference but it works for tables, array or classes. I'm not a programmer but I don't think it will work with text objects. The squirrel reference I'm using is this: http://www.squirrel-lang.org/doc/squirrel3.html

605

Scripting / Re: Possible to get a stroke/outline around text?

« on: February 24, 2018, 01:27:26 AM »

@zpaolo11x: thank you! Masking 5 versions of the list, 4 of them offset by one pixel in each direction, works beautifully.

One small issue I'm having is that, according to the Squirrel docs, I should be able to just make one version of the stroke list and clone it 3 times:

Well from this knowledge base https://github.com/mickelson/attract/blob/master/Layouts.md#add_clone it seems that add_clone can be used only for images, artworks and surfaces.

I watched the video and the effect is super neat, I'llhave to implement it in my theme too

606

Scripting / Re: Possible to get a stroke/outline around text?

« on: February 23, 2018, 05:44:56 AM »

Another trick, although a bit complex, is to add _4_ replicas of your font, each one moved to a corner. Say your font is 150 pixel tall, and you want a 5 pixel border, then add four copies of that font with positions:

5,5
5,-5
-5,5
-5,-5

Works quite well

607

Scripting / Re: Possible to get a stroke/outline around text?

« on: February 23, 2018, 05:12:59 AM »

In a theme I'm working on, the background snapshots sometimes overpower the text in the ROM list. Is there some way to add a stroke or outline or even shadow to the text to help it stand out?

One solution is, as already suggested, to add a shadow, I did this in my Arcadeflow theme.

Another way is to put the text on a surface, for some reason this adds a very tiny border around the text. Since this is probably a bug and since the effect is very very very subtle I don't think it's viable

Third option, and I'm thinking of implementing something like that, is to find a font that has a "bold" sibling, so you can superimpose two fonts and use one for the outline. Of course it's very tricky to find a font that is perfectly matching its bold counterpart, in the end you'll probably have to build your one with some font editing tool

608

Themes / Re: Arcadeflow theme v 1.2 [Release]

« on: February 19, 2018, 12:17:55 AM »

Updated to v 1.2! Download file in the first post...

609

Scripting / Thin border around white text on a surface...

« on: February 16, 2018, 06:59:12 AM »

Scenario: I have a theme with a light background and some white text over it.

If the text is a text object on the front end then no problem, but if I put the text inside a surface, a thin border appears around the text.

Is this a known issue, and is there a way to avoid it?

Code: [Select]

local flw = 1280
local flh = 800

fe.layout.width = flw
fe.layout.height = flh
fe.layout.preserve_aspect_ratio = true

local whitebg = fe.add_text("",0,0,flw,flh)
whitebg.set_bg_rgb (255,255,255)
whitebg.bg_alpha = 255


local textsurf = fe.add_surface (flw,200)
local text1 = textsurf.add_text ("TEST 1",0,0,flw,200)

local text2 = fe.add_text ("TEST 2",0,200,flw,200)

610

Themes / Re: Parallelism Full Pack Theme [Dispaly + Game Menu] [WIP]

« on: February 14, 2018, 06:50:31 AM »

The Carrier implementation (which is the base for my "stripped" theme also) assigns tiles position from the game index number (with some tricks to perform tile reflow). Simplifying a bit game index "i" is placed at a position along x that's multiple of i/rows, and a position along y that's a multiple of i%rows, so a regular grid is populated. If instead of this simple math you pass those indexes (the row and column indexes) through a lookup table you can customize the position and size of each tile in an irregular pattern. I think if you design a  2x5 irregular pattern that fits a box, then you can "repeat" it for tiles greater than 10.

I know my explanation is a bit lacking

611

Themes / Re: Parallelism Full Pack Theme [Dispaly + Game Menu] [WIP]

« on: February 14, 2018, 03:29:27 AM »

You could make it responsive using percentages and breaks between formats.

The theme I posted above is responsive, but I mistakenly hardcoded 1280x800 as a resolution You can edit the code and comment those two lines to check

612

Themes / Re: Ideal of new theme - Parallelism

« on: February 13, 2018, 05:34:19 AM »

I tried to put together a very stripped down version of my theme with a 2 rows flowing grid. The source has a bit of comments but if you have doubts I can explain some parts.

Oh, there's a mistake in the layout.nut: change the lines according to this:

   namez.set_bg_rgb (0,0,0)
   namez.bg_alpha = 120
   namez.charsize = height*1/12.0
   namez.word_wrap = true
   //namez.alpha = 0

otherwise it won't show the game name in text format.

During this I discovered a very strange feature: my grid is composed of surfaces. If the last updated element of the surface is a text box (like in this theme) the scrolling is much faster and smoother. If the last element updated on the surface through a rawset_index_offset is an image the scrolling is slower. I don't know why

613

Themes / Re: Ideal of new theme - Parallelism

« on: February 13, 2018, 12:46:06 AM »

If you use a fixed grid, maybe with square cells, then you have to add a transition callback and modify the texture x,y,width and height of the snap artwork. You can use this trick to "crop" the original image so that only the square center area is used. If you have thumbs with incorrect aspect ratio (pixel perfect thumbs) you can use the same tick to correct the aspect ratio to 3:4 or 4:3.

614

Themes / Re: Ideal of new theme - Parallelism

« on: February 12, 2018, 11:49:24 PM »

Do you know how to let first box display "game system"? like as above ideal mod "MAME" text box? 

This is something I haven't done before, probably the part of the theme that requires a bit of tricking. It would be easier to have the system box at full height, then the two rows of thumbnails.

Also, how to display game name in each box? Agree with one row is easy, but do you know how to make 2 rows?

Adding the name is not difficult, I made it in a test theme that is not published, it's a simple extension of the carrier.nut module where instead of just adding a snap artwork you add also texts or wheel artwork. Two rows like in my theme is quite easy too, although the theme will be a bit less fluid than the standard one line theme. The difficult part would be to implement an "irregular" grid like the one you showed in your mockup, but if it's predetermined I think it can be done too.

It's intriguing and I like the look of the theme, but I don't have time to code right now, otherwise I'd be glad to try it

615

Themes / Re: Ideal of new theme - Parallelism

« on: February 12, 2018, 10:44:28 PM »

The first implementation of my Arcadeflow theme looked a bit like that, if you add a white border around the icons it looks very similar with game titles overlapping the game graphics. The main difference is that the thumbnails are square, I have to think if different sized thumbs are possible. A theme like that with one row will be very easy to do with carrier.nut.