Arcadeflow theme v 17.4 [Release] Updated 05 September 2024

[Damon-HP]

more and more beautiful and complete. Bravo!

[zpaolo11x]

Arcadeflow 9.5 is out!

Not many new features (you can now define your own display categories, just add #CATEGORYNAME to your display name and it should create a category entry), but mostly bug fixes, aesthetic improvements in the menus, and now you can chose options using left and right instead of entering the submenu.

Enjoy!

[Enkak]

Many thanks for new release updates! Time to check them out.

[blinkybill]

hands down the best frontend theme ever. thank you for all the updates over the years.

[zpaolo11x]

when I add the NEC TurboGrafx 16 to the list. took it to the "OTHER" section and not taking in the NEC console section section.
and also there anyway to get rid this annoying Command promp ? because when I scan my roms keep popping up

The Turbografx-16 is a known bug of AF 9.5, should be fixed in 9.6, in the meantime you can try placing the attached file in Arcadeflow folder to see if it fixes the issue.
I'm trying to avoid the command window popup, the only workaround at the moment is disabling auto-update feature.

[zpaolo11x]

thank you so mush for replying to me I will do that now and give you an update

Regarding the command window popup, does it stick there, or it disappears after finishing execution? Because I've found a sort of workaround where the window "flashes" in the sense that it quickly opens and closes. No way at the moment to make it completely invisible.

[zpaolo11x]

also how come you did not post your discord link on the front page ?
also everything is working great on windows 10 pc version

Good to know that everything works. I forgot to add the discord link on the front page, I'll edit it. Also I'm a bit late with update 2.6, don't know if I'll be able to release it today.

also will there a future plans for the Retropie version ?

Arcadeflow has always had issues with the Pi, only recently with the Pi4 there are some progress, but not having a Pi myself it's very difficult to develop and test for that too. On the other hand, if you mean a version of Arcadeflow as a theme for EmulationStation, there's no plan for that, I just played a bit with ES on my RG351P and I don't like the theming at all, I think it will be very difficult to port AF to that.

[zpaolo11x]

Arcadeflow 9.6 is out!

Many bug fixes, some improvements under the hood... not much more, this is mostly a release to fix all the bugs of 9.5 and replace some fade routines with more robust ones.

Have fun, and merry Christmas

[katarak]

Hey zpaolo11x,

I haven't been on here for almost a year, and just saw your progress and WOW, Bravo.
AF remains my favourite theme and I don't think I'll ever try another one.

I'm writing a tool to convert Emulation Station Gamelist XML into the ones from Attract Mode, plus the overview files at the same time.
I'm running into some issues with the Genres/Categories.

I get the metadata when I scrape ScreenScraper.fr using Skraper UI, but what they put in that field can be very convoluted, and sometimes have multiple caterogies. such as: Role playing games-Action-Action / Adventure
I was going to build a conversion table for my tool, but I wanted to know where can I get the data that Arcade Flow uses to show the icons?

I looked through layout.nut and found some stuff around Line 3840, I even made a few changes and that didn't seem to affect anything. I was able to change Role Playing to RPG just by changeing the name if of the icons seen is AF/category_images and AF/category_images_10 (Not sure why 2 folders for those icons though)

Where is the best place to find the correct naming for the genres of the games?

Also, if you're looking for a feature request.... Plug in Manuals

I hope you had a good Xmas and have been staying safe. Happy New Year.

[zpaolo11x]

I haven't been on here for almost a year, and just saw your progress and WOW, Bravo.
AF remains my favourite theme and I don't think I'll ever try another one.

I'm writing a tool to convert Emulation Station Gamelist XML into the ones from Attract Mode, plus the overview files at the same time.

Hey nice to know you still enjoy Arcadeflow, your comments are greatly appreciated. I'm doing "something" with XML lists too, I use skraper and it gets a lot of data, my project is to implement a parser and allow Arcadeflow to get data directly from XML lists. You'll still have to generate the usual romlist from your roms, but the XML file will be managed by Arcadeflow. This will allow to add ratings etc, and also import the game descriptions without having to convert them. I'm still experimenting and I hope it will be fast enough! (actually I'm facing some delays because I somehow screwed my Windows external disk for my mac that now doesn't mount anymore, but it works on a PC so... I don't know )

I'm running into some issues with the Genres/Categories.

I see, well I don't know exactly how Skraper stacks multiple categories, Arcadeflow category icons are made for MAME format, that is "Main Category/Sub Category". While the filtering system of Arcadeflow supports coma separated multiple categories, the images does not. The code is not in the layout.nut itself, but it's a function in the external file nut_picfunctions.nut, still in ARcadeflow home folder.
To make a long story short, the function strips the category name of all special characters and makes it lowercase, so for example "Action" category will point to "action.png", "Shooter/Flying-Vertical" to "shooterflyingvertical.png"

If you need further advice, please let me know! Oh and just now I was able to mount my Windows disk so... on with the XML integration

[edekoning]

What a great theme, I like it a lot!

As I only have 27 games on my arcade cabinet, I made some tweaks to get an even cleaner look:
- removed the scrollbar at the bottom
- removed all the rom details from the top
- removed the letter object that shows when selecting a game with a different first letter
- scaled the tiles, to make use of the new empty space

Other than the above, the only real option I am missing is the ability to use wheel images in box art mode. Note that this is possible with the default Grid layout of Attract Mode.

[zpaolo11x]

Other than the above, the only real option I am missing is the ability to use wheel images in box art mode. Note that this is possible with the default Grid layout of Attract Mode.

Very nice "clean" version! You did a lot of editing and you did it right, which is great, considering the intricacy of the code
By the way the option you want is already in Arcadeflow: go to the Options menu, Thumbnail section and enable "Game title over box art", this will show the wheel art on top of box art.

[edekoning]

Hehe, yeah the code is quite complex, and I did not want to spend too much time on trying to understand it all  . So all the changes I did were mainly setting the visibility of various things to false, and preventing the down key to select the timeline. And finally changing the header and footer spacers, to give the thumbnails more space. So not that much work really

I think you misunderstood me. What I am looking for, is being able to just display wheel images, as shown in image I took in the standard Grid layout. So wheel image centered in the thumbnail area, with a nice dropshadow, and retaining the option to morph into a snap video.

[zpaolo11x]

I think you misunderstood me. What I am looking for, is being able to just display wheel images, as shown in image I took in the standard Grid layout.

Oh now I get it, well... at the moment this is not possible: wheel artwork with its own drop shadow is overlayed and doesn't morph into snaps, you could hide snaps completely but then wheel won't be centered correctly. The thing most similar to what you intend is using "Titles" as source for thumbnail artwork. Of course you can try using wheel source for thumbnails but you'll get a white or grey backdrop behind it because thumbs drop shadows are fake, not calculated in realtime

[zpaolo11x]

I get the metadata when I scrape ScreenScraper.fr using Skraper UI, but what they put in that field can be very convoluted, and sometimes have multiple caterogies. such as: Role playing games-Action-Action / Adventure

Back on topic: my XML converter for Arcadeflow is ready, and I'm clashing with the absurd genre tag produced by Skraper. Notable example: "Action / Adventure-Action-Puzzle-Game" is this "Action/Adventure", fine, but then why Action is separated by a "-" and "Puzzle-Game" has the same "-" in the category name?!? XML scraped from EmulationStation directly are much cleaner with only one genre per game, or at least separated by a ",". There's the genreID tag that should fix the issue but I have no idea how it works and no one seems to have a clear explanation.
At the moment my plan is to parse the genre field looking for "cascaded" categories ("/" separated) and use that if it's present, otherwise I'll try splitting multiple categories by "," or "-" fixing "Puzzle-Game" which hopefully is the only one with this absurd naming!