Arcadeflow theme v 17.5 [Release] Updated 17 December 2024

[spelunkyguy]

Wow, thanks for the fast reply! I do indeed have game snaps too, but these only work partially too: 4:3 stuff looks fine but wider ratios like GBA/PSP don't look right in either square *or* horizontal-vertical since they're landscape rather than portrait. I'm not sure how motivated you are to make AF more compatible for console emulation, but it'd be so cool if you could add some functionality to work with more varied artwork/aspect ratios

[zpaolo11x]

I do indeed have game snaps too, but these only work partially too: 4:3 stuff looks fine but wider ratios like GBA/PSP don't look right in either square *or* horizontal-vertical since they're landscape rather than portrait.

I see, this happens because Arcadeflow expects snaps to be of arcade games, that's why it corrects the aspect ratio to show them in 4:3 or 3:4 (eg: CPS1 games have a pixel resolution that's not 4:3, but CRTs used in arcade are always 4:3, therefore the correction) .When a game is cropped to be square, it is again the 4:3 or 3:4 adjusted version that is cropped.

For console games intended to be viewed on TV screens it should be fine (as long as it can get the correct orientation, but his is an easy fix for me), while handhelds like GBA or PSP, that have a different aspect ratio, it will be stretched badly even in square mode. Moreover as I said the vertical or horizontal orientation of the game is not taken from the snap size, but from the game data (in the past I used the snap size but for some reason it was trickier so I went back to orientation data)

I'm not sure how motivated you are to make AF more compatible for console emulation, but it'd be so cool if you could add some functionality to work with more varied artwork/aspect ratios

One issue is with the game data: I have no idea how to get all the game data for console games (I'm not that much into console emulation), but this can probably be fixed with a bit of study
Different aspect ratios... that's more tricky: the shadows effect under the snapshots are not "realtime": they are pre-rendered shadows in 4:3, 3:4 or square aspect ratios. So ther are two scenarios here:

 1 - If you want to use box art instead of snapshots for the thumbs I'll need to make the shadows dynamic. And see how it copes with the game titles, and check how it interact with video thumbnails kick in. Of course a simplified version of the thumbnails grid with just game box art, no title artwork (unnecessary since there's the box art) and no overlay videos could be a solution.
 2 - if you want to use screenshots as thumbs I'll just need to code something to disable the horizontal/vertical detection and the aspect ratio correction. Maybe there's a way to detect if a game list is Arcade or not...

I can't promise anything right now, but I'll think about it

[Enkak]

PS: Where can I find the square snaps that you used in your screenshots for display menu example?

I downloaded them from internet, looking for something like "Capcom wallpaper" etc. I can share them with you if you want. Also consider you don't need square snaps, the layout will crop them for you

Thank you for the hint. Ah great the crop detail, will try to play a little with it and some artwork then, thanks again

PS: I would be interested in the layout working with consoles games too. For the detection of type of game and infos maybe you can make it work also with xml lists? I use them generally for that purpose as import_extras.

[zpaolo11x]

Regarding console games, I have crafted a hack that should work if you use snapshots for the thumbnails: this hack considers games horizontal if no "Orientation" data is found. It should work fine with console games made for TV (4:3). You can check it from this attachment.

As far as xml lists are concerned, and console in general, any hint you can give me as how to setup a nice console environment is good. I was able to configure SNES9X with a couple of ROMs, but how about snaps and box art? Where do you get them from? Scraping?

[Enkak]

Regarding console games, I have crafted a hack that should work if you use snapshots for the thumbnails: this hack considers games horizontal if no "Orientation" data is found. It should work fine with console games made for TV (4:3). You can check it from this attachment.

As far as xml lists are concerned, and console in general, any hint you can give me as how to setup a nice console environment is good. I was able to configure SNES9X with a couple of ROMs, but how about snaps and box art? Where do you get them from? Scraping?

Thx for the layout hack test, will see later how it works.

Regarding snaps and box art for consoles/emulators, normally I get them from EmuMovies (you can get almost everything from there in free version) or just searching in google for x game screenshot or boxart. I can get them for you also if you need.

Not sure if this helps, the part of my config related to media in AM is currently like this (I'm using a central folder with relative paths):

Code: [Select]

import_extras        meta\Super Nintendo Entertainment System (custom).xml
artwork    boxart          ..\..\collections\Super Nintendo Entertainment System\boxart
artwork    cart            ..\..\collections\Super Nintendo Entertainment System\cart
artwork    cover            ..\..\collections\Super Nintendo Entertainment System\cover
artwork    flyer           ..\..\collections\Super Nintendo Entertainment System\boxart
artwork    marquee      ..\..\collections\Super Nintendo Entertainment System\logo
artwork    snap            ..\..\collections\Super Nintendo Entertainment System\video;..\..\collections\Super Nintendo Entertainment System\snap
artwork    video            ..\..\collections\Super Nintendo Entertainment System\video
artwork    wheel           ..\..\collections\Super Nintendo Entertainment System\logo

The only problem AM is having at the moment with hyperlist xml lists (mine says custom because I'm adding manually some info missing) is scrapping the players number even with that information being in the lists. It's something related to source code thought to work with MAME format list at the beginning I think.

[Enkak]

The snapshots hack is working very good as you can see in the print, thx again. You can also notice that the theme is already picking info automatically from the xml list, good sign and that seems to be working already except the eventual logos that are missing but that is normal since the theme was made to work with mame originally and logos taken from that list.

With consoles probably could be a good idea for the layout to be able to pick the image in "manufacturer_images" or text from the xml lists since there's too many manufacturers and would be almost impossible to do images for all.

Also other idea/suggestion for the future if at all possible. Since consoles don't have an history.dat file, maybe the info in the history panel for those systems could be taken from Attract-Mode\scraper\insert system here\overview ?

Cheers.

[zpaolo11x]

The snapshots hack is working very good as you can see in the print, thx again.

Good to know! The screenshot looks very nice indeed!

With consoles probably could be a good idea for the layout to be able to pick the image in "manufacturer_images" or text from the xml lists since there's too many manufacturers and would be almost impossible to do images for all.

Is "manufacturer_images" another artwork source? I think this can be done, but aesthetically you'll have a mix of white stylized logos and colorful logos. Maybe going with plain text would be a good alternative.

Also other idea/suggestion for the future if at all possible. Since consoles don't have an history.dat file, maybe the info in the history panel for those systems could be taken from Attract-Mode\scraper\insert system here\overview ?

I'll see if I can do it. I started getting artworks for a test environment, which is the pre-requisite to start experimenting with console stuff. Glad that the theme is reacting in a nice way with the current hack, there are still some icons missing (buttons, controllers and players) and of course it will not work for handheld consoles with non-4:3 aspect ratios, but it's a start

[Enkak]

Is "manufacturer_images" another artwork source? I think this can be done, but aesthetically you'll have a mix of white stylized logos and colorful logos. Maybe going with plain text would be a good alternative.

Ah I meant the "manufacturer_images" folder in your theme where the layout normally picks the logos (like it's doing with Aero the Acrobat in the print) if there's the same name in the romlist. I like your logos monochromatic solution, but with consoles in the mix it can be too many manufacturers to make art/logos, so the plain text taken from a hyperlist/hyperbase xml list could be an alternative if there's no logos in the folder.
Similar to what we can do with media art paths maybe? That you can put 3 or more sources and the layout pick the source that has the media?

Also other idea/suggestion for the future if at all possible. Since consoles don't have an history.dat file, maybe the info in the history panel for those systems could be taken from Attract-Mode\scraper\insert system here\overview ?

I'll see if I can do it. I started getting artworks for a test environment, which is the pre-requisite to start experimenting with console stuff. Glad that the theme is reacting in a nice way with the current hack, there are still some icons missing (buttons, controllers and players) and of course it will not work for handheld consoles with non-4:3 aspect ratios, but it's a start

Yeah, and a good start

[zpaolo11x]

Similar to what we can do with media art paths maybe? That you can put 3 or more sources and the layout pick the source that has the media?

I can't do that for manufacturers because they don't come as artworks in my theme: the usual way to do manufacturer artoworks is a folder where for each game you have a gamename.png image of the manufacturer of that game. Lots of duplicated images. In my theme there's a parser fucnction that gets the manufacturer name from the romlist data and loads the proper image.

I've patched together a version that should show the name in plain text when no logo is present, would you like to test it?

[Enkak]

Working and font choice merges good with the ones that have logos.

Probably some manufacturer names will need some tweaks to font size. Thinking about the isolated "t" here and other cases, but working really good already, thx again  

[spelunkyguy]

Gave the new layout a shot, was a little unsure if the hack was applied to the horizontal-vertical layout or the square one,  but after testing both things are definitely improved!

Without wanting to spam the thread with too many pics, it looks like the h-v layout is working best:




It does look like a fair bit of the NES boxarts are being cropped, likely due to their portrait orientation vs the SNES's landscape boxart?

[zpaolo11x]

Gave the new layout a shot, was a little unsure if the hack was applied to the horizontal-vertical layout or the square one,  but after testing both things are definitely improved!

[...]

It does look like a fair bit of the NES boxarts are being cropped, likely due to their portrait orientation vs the SNES's landscape boxart?

The hack is for both for the horizontal-vertical layout and the square layout, but it is intended for screenshots used as thumbnail artwork. Box arts will still be stretched or cropped incorrectly I fear, fixing that will require some more tricks or even a redesign of the carrier (I'm not saying I won't do it LOL)

[dark1973]

Hello.
I'm sorry for my bad English, I'm Italian.
I'm a fan of your theme. I would like to give you a suggestion. could you add an image with the arcade machine controls? like these...

If you want I can design the image with photoshop and send it to you

[zpaolo11x]

I'm a fan of your theme. I would like to give you a suggestion. could you add an image with the arcade machine controls? like these...

I'm Italian too I'll answer in english though because maybe the answer will be useful to other people.

Actually you can add that image yourself: if you create an image with transparent background, as big as your screen, with the icons for arcade controls (like the screenshots you attached to that post), you can go in the layout options and insert the path to the image in the "Custom BG Image" field, this will overlay your image on the layout.

Let me know if it works for you

[zpaolo11x]

The snapshots hack is working very good as you can see in the print, thx again. You can also notice that the theme is already picking info automatically from the xml list

In my snes9x setup, how do I tell AM that it has to read the xml list file? And how do I generate it?