Switch theme?

[Francommit]

Hey Fonic,

Been adding more and more emulators to my Emulation Station script. Was wondering if you'd be able to find/add a Nintendo Switch theme?

I'll probably hold off on adding Yuzu until you've done so - thanks!

[fonic]

Sorry, but I don't think so. Just checked the current state of the original themes (i.e. recalbox-multi and recalbox-next), there's nothing for the Switch there that I could integrate.

Actually, I don't think there will be any further updates on my part - with this commit, they introduced changes to lots of .svg files, making them incompatible with the Windows build of EmulationStation. Thus, beyond this commit, assets can no longer be integrated into my theme. In other words, my theme is frozen in time on 05/13/20, the date of the previous commit, when their assets were still compatible.

If you're interested in keeping this alive, I'd suggest getting in touch with jrassa to ask him if he could try to identify and include patches to make the Windows build compatible with newer themes. It would be a lot easier if you could just use the recalbox-next theme as-is with the Windows build in the future, but without patches that's not gonna work.

[Francommit]

Realistically - how hard would it be to create the artwork assets for the Nintendo Switch? I'd be happy to give it go?

[fonic]

Not hard at all. Have a look at the 64dd asset folder (Nintendo 64 Disk Drive) of the theme, that's a good example.

You'll need to produce or find SVG files for (listed in file order):

• the console itself
• the console + game media side by side
• the console's controller
• the console's controls
• the console's game media
• a small icon used to rate games, in both 'active' and 'inactive' (i.e. greyed out) state
• the console's logo

Important: The SVG files may not contain clip paths. That's what the Windows build of EmulationStation can't handle, resulting in garbage being displayed.

Additionally, you'll need to produce some text describing the console (e.g. year of release, units sold, technical specs audio/video) similar to the other consoles. That should be easy, Wikipedia is your friend here.

The rest, i.e. performing the actual integration, is no big deal. I can do that.

[fonic]

I investigated the theming issue some more. I think I now know what's going on here.

Development of EmulationStation ceased in 2015 (only some minor changes have been applied after that). It was then forked by RetroPie and Recalbox (and presumably other similar projects). The Recalbox team completely overhauled the theming engine in 2018. Jrassa's Windows build is forked from RetroPie's sources. Thus, I does not feature the theming engine Recalbox introduced.

I think I'll ask jrassa if he would be willing to take a look at Recalbox' fork, maybe he can create a Windows build from their codebase as well.

[Francommit]

The struggle is real - I have no idea what I'm really doing. If you have any idea I'd appreciate the help - tweaking on a fork here @fonic

https://github.com/Francommit/recalbox-backport

I can't get the Switch to hover right where I want it to - pretty painful!

[fonic]

Well, not bad. It's a start. Development of any kind is painful in my experience ;) I'll have a look at it.

[fonic]

Sorry, haven't had time yet, but I'll look at it later today.

[Francommit]

No worries, there's a Vita emulator for PC as well so I've started adding some assets for that too.

On Tue, 19 Jan 2021, 7:56 pm fonic, notifications@github.com wrote:

Sorry, haven't had time yet, but I'll look at it later today.

— You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/fonic/recalbox-backport/issues/2#issuecomment-762698653, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACX7YNPTGH2DD26YVZIE3PTS2VCNNANCNFSM4WCNCE5A .

[fonic]

Ok, here's what's wrong: You messed with the theme a little too much, e.g. you edited theme.xml and removed the consolegame entry. Don't do that, EmulationStation does not like this.

Do it like this (KISS):

• copy the entire directory of an existing console as a template (e.g. 64dd)
• only change stuff in the XML files that actually needs to be changed, i.e. info text and band colors
• replace existing SVG files with you own assets
• don't rename and/or delete any of the existing SVG files; instead, if you don't want to use e.g. game.svg, replace it with an empty but valid SVG file: <svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="0" height="0"></svg>
• run EmulationStation with argument --debug; this will show a console window reporting errors that occurred when parsing the theme

I did the above and it works just fine using your assets (also fixed the info texts while at it). Here's the result:

Archive: switch.zip

Screenshot:

[Francommit]

Give the VITA theme a look over, left the switch theme the same as you left it - cheers.

https://github.com/fonic/recalbox-backport/pull/3