Brand new here with a few questions

[rrcade]

Hi all, This FE looks great so far...really polished. I have a few question though, I notice there are only a limited number of themes for individual games, do you really plan on making a fancy animated theme for each and every game in mame? If there is no theme available for a game will I still be able to have some kind of generic screen that could at least show a marquee, control panel, cabinet picture, or Circo's emu movies? Also on the game wheel, where do those game name graphics come from? Could a Marquee or something take the place of "No image available" until a nice graphic is submitted? It has always bugged me with other FEs when you get a phrase like that it makes the thing look "unfinished" I think it would be better if it just had a graphic of the System name instead.
Could someone point me to a thread that kind of explains where this FE is at and what the future plans are?

I'm really excited about this one it's beautiful.
Thanks

[BadBoyBill]

We plan on adding as many games as possible, however long that may take.

If no theme is available you can have a generic screen for sure that shows normal artwork. Its called default images.

Yes you can have any picture you want take the place of "No Image Available". Even if you want a graphic of the system.

See the first sticky post in the main forum for a link to the torrent where you can get a full install of HS with lots of themes already installed.

[krjamk]

How do you set up to have a generic theme for those games with no theme? I am getting a black screen and it says no background image for all games but those with themes. Is there a specific setting to have a generic screen displayed or to change to a generic image in the wheel? Is there a post or a tutorial to help with changing some of these generic settings.

Loving things so far just also looking for a more finished look for those without themes....

thanks

[BadBoyBill]

Welcome krjamk,

So you see themes for games with an xml file. If you want artwork to show up on non theme games (games with no xml in the themes folder) then all you have to do is put an image into an artwork folder and name it default.png. The same goes for the background image, in the backgrounds folder you can but a file named default.png and that will be the background image that shows up on games without a theme.

Also if you want to animate your default artworks then the ini file for that system defines those settings since those games do not have an xml. So basically default.png's and your ini settings for each artwork define how a game acts that doesnt have a theme file(xml).

Hope that helps, and you can get some default system themes in our download section that some people put together already.

[krjamk]

thanks BadBoyBill!!! that helps a lot.

[billpa]

you can also use snaps marquees whatever you want for temporary solutions. For example...you might have the whole marquee set for MAME. You would need to resize them all so that they are 400 px wide (pretty easy if you have PS...maybe even GIMP...not sure if GIMP has automated actions). Make sure they are saved as png files with the proper naming (I believe they should already be named according to the rom). Then move all of them into the wheel folder in MAME/Media/Images....but dont replace the ones HS already has (better quality). Now you have a wheel image for every game. Create a default background, default video overlay and some simple animation and you have something that you can work with while themes are being created.