I would be happy to provide anything I create. I just need some info to start me in the right direction!

options:

theme_name: "Tron - by MholgateM" #not required, just handy
header_height: 140 #the header is the space where the logo goes at the top
header_color: "255,255,255,0" #can be in RGB or RGBa format.
logo_image: "logo.png" #normally piplay logo, but i changed it for tron
background_image: "background2.jpg" #image will scale proportionally, may want to include dimensions in filename of image
background_color: "255,0,255" #this is used if background image not included
generic_menu_item: "generic_menu_item.png" #use this for missing emulator icon
generic_menu_item_selected: "generic_menu_item-selected.png" #item selected
item_color: "255,255,255,128" #background color for emulator icons
disabled_alpha: 128 #if emulator disabled due to no roms
item_height: 55 #main menu emulator icon height
num_items_per_row: 1 #number of items per row main menu
menu_item_padding: 0 #padding
display_navigation_labels: no #print label for next/back arrows

font_file: "default.ttf" #must include a fontfile for theme
default_font_size: 19 #default size
default_font_color: "255,255,255" #default color
default_font_background_color: "0,0,0,0" #background color RGB/RGBA

display_labels: no #print name for each emulator over icon
labels_offset: [100,20] #Starting from top left corner, move label along x,y
label_font_size: 36 #size
label_font_color: "0,255,255" #unselected font color
label_background_color: "0,0,0,0" #unselected background color
label_font_selected_color: "90,255,255" #selected font color
label_background_selected_color: "255,0,255,255" #selected background color

display_rom_count: no #show number of roms for category
rom_count_offset: [540,10] #Starting from top left corner, move label along x,y
rom_count_font_size: 19 #size
rom_count_font_color: "0,255,255" #unselected color
rom_count_background_color: "0,0,0,0" #unselected background color
rom_count_font_selected_color: "90,255,255" #selected font color
rom_count_background_selected_color: "255,255,255,0" #selected background color

rom_list_font_size: 19 #font size to list rom titles
rom_list_font_color: "0,255,255" #color for unselected rom title
rom_list_background_color: "0,0,0,0" #background color for unselected rom title
rom_list_font_selected_color: "90,255,255,255" #color for selected rom title
rom_list_background_selected_color: "255,255,255,0" #background color selected
rom_list_image: "rom_list.png" #print each rom title over this image
rom_list_selected_image: "rom_list-selected.png" #selected version of image
rom_list_offset: [20, 0, 30, 0] #rom title position/crop [x-position, y-position, pixels to crop from right, pixels to crop from bottom]
missing_boxart_image: "missing_boxart.png" #image to display if no boxart found

@mholgatem - That's some nice work. It looks clean and well documented. Are you part of the dev team. You do a lot of nice work on this project! :)

Wow! This is great, and the exact info I was looking for.
Stupid question maybe, but if I just replace my pimame_menu folder with yours, should I expect it to run correctly?

I saw the pictures of your build. It was VERY impressive! I am sure you both get hours of fun out of it!

Thanks

@SSilver2k2 - Thanks Shea!

@jhnwhite - yes, it should. But make a backup of yours first, just in case ;)

I second that thought! I bought a Pi just for PiPlay.

Copying the above folder worked fine. Now to start tweaking! :) Thanks again guys!

Open config.yaml. Under theme, change default to tron

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. are you talking about showing just the emulators that you have roms for?

oh, that's because you got my .cache files as well. you need to go to pimame-menu/.cache/ and delete all of the files in that folder. That's a list of all of my games.

to do that, you need to set 'num_items_per_row: 3', and 'padding: 0', then just adjust 'item_height:' until they are big enough to touch. piplay will scale them up and auto space them.

You could probably create an icon for a fake emulator that doesn't have a command

2 other things:
1) What if I wanted to have a different looking rom list for different emulators? Would that require creating a rom list config for each emulator, and then having the config.yaml call that rom list config when that emulator is selected? Totally guessing here, I know nothing about programming!

2) In my main menu I just have a selection for Gameboy. I would like to include the Gameboy Advance games that I own as well, but I don't feel the need to create a separate icon for it. Would it be possible to list the GBA roms alongside the GB ones? If it did, what would I need to do to get it to use the correct emulator for the different games?

1) right now, that's not possible. everything will be the same style rom list.
2) also not possible, but we may be able to work that in.

Mark thanks for all your help! This theme is coming along nicely. I'll post it as soon as it's done.

As in, if I just downloaded the box art as a .jpg or something, how would I have PiPlay show that? Is the scraper placing those images somewhere that I can access?

Eventually I plan to create a way to correlate images of your choosing to roms, but for now, this is all we have. If you wanted to manually correlate them, you could place your images into the folder, then edit the appropriate cache file, they are just in .json format.

you need to install Levenshtein.

Update the package index:
# sudo apt-get update
Install python-levenshtein deb package:
# sudo apt-get install python-levenshtein

Spoke too soon. A few problems, although it did find many images.
1) Under NES and SNES I have a rom listed called "gitkeep"
2) The GB roms did not get images, even thought scraper says it scanned and found some. The gitkeep is conspicuously absent here.
3) The NES and SNES games no longer work. Can't remember if this came up after I ran the scraper or before. Gameboy roms are the only ones I can access. I get an error "file not found" even though the file is in the correct folder, and the config file still points there. I'll have to dig into this one a bit more later on, when I get home.

try taking a look at your cache files and make sure that they list the correct locations for your roms. Also, make sure you run the scraper AFTER any changes have been made to your config file, otherwise the cache file will not point to the right directory.

Figured out my second question. Nes roms still not working.

Zipped or unzipped? I had them working at one point. Before I started this theming business lol.

Well it wasn't the fixed issue with NES. For whatever reason, I redownloaded all the ROMs I had, and unzipped them into the NES folder. Then reran the scraper, and VOILA! Who knows...

Anyways, still wondering about the above 2 questions.

you can add padding to the rom list by using a .png format image for rom_list_image & rom_list_selected_image. just make it the size that you want each rom title to take up, and give it a transparent background. right now, there are no options for sizing the boxart or moving it. I may add that in a bit later, but first i'm concentrating on getting the scraper to be a bit more accurate.

Hi I want to thank all for the PIMame/PiPlay software project it is turning out awesome. I'm new to RPi, Raspbian, PIMAME/PIPLAY, etc. I know enough Linux to be dangerous but not enough to consider myself more than a novice. I am running Raspbian, with PiMAME 0.7.10 and as the over achiever that I am installed your PIMAME-Menu-Master.zip file. I got it working with some path editing (for whatever reason my PIMAME install is in a PIMAME_Files folder instead of a PIMAME folder), I am trying to figure out how to replace the advmenu with yours at boot up and unfortunately everything I've tried results in very interesting albeit very cryptic python errors. Could you break out the Pimame-Menu for dummies explanation of how to get this working? Thank you.

Well that makes sense. Let me give that a try and yes I was in the Corps back in the early 90's. Semper Fi.

Thank you. I reimaged my SD with 0.8.3 and all is well.