FAQ
Crystal should not use much in the way of resources but if you are experiencing slowdowns you can increase the video ram.
In Emuelec go to system settings > developer > and increase the amount of video ram for the system
Yes, Simply drop videos in mp4 format into /roms/video and they will be picked up by the theme as long as they use the correct filenames so psx.mp3, nes.mp4, etc etc
You can also specify a video as default.mp4 which will play if system view is not present. This is saved in /themes/Crystal/assets/
There is a collection here >> https://short.dimspace.xyz/crystalvideo << that covers the most popular systems
All layouts in Crystal are based on using the integrated Screenscraper and the default settings. They are:
Image Source: Screenshot
Box Source: Box 2D
Logo Source: Wheel
While it is fine to swap box 2d to 3d, change the logo source etc, if you set the image to be box, logo source to be screenshot, then you can expect the theme to not look as intended.
To create a dynamic collection:
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Go into settings > Game collection settings and select "Create new Dynamic collection"
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Name the collection in line with one of the theme names (in brackets) above
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Then, in the filters, in "find games" put the search phrase for instance "mario" to include all games that have mario in the title.
Additionally you can specify platforms, genre's and other filters.
I have a set of premade xcc collection files here> https://github.com/dm2912/Crystal-Collections simply copy/extract those files to .config/emulationstation/collections and they will all appear in your "custom collections". They are installed by default in Emuelec 4.0
If you wish a system added that is not there, raise a git issue and I will add it (as long as artwork etc is easy enough).
If you want to add your own systems the following resources are used
/systems/xxxxxx.xml - The main xml file for the system/collection
/assets/wallpaper/xxxxxx.jpg - the wallpaper file in jpg format
/assets/logos/color_logo/xxxxxx.svg &
/assets/logos/white_logo/xxxxxx.svg - the system/collection logo in svg format (templates of the text style and collection logo's are in the logo folders. They are sized at 500x200px, the font used is "Act of Rejection")
/assets/logos/console/xxxxxx.png - the console image or avatar for collection in png format
/assets/panels/4-3/xxxxxx.jpg &
/assets/panels/16-9/xxxxxx.jpg - the two panel icons, one for 16:9 and one for 3:1 they should be sized at 640x360 (16-9) and 640x480 (4-3)
You can auto create panels in linux using an included bash script. In each panel folder you will find a file zzmerge.sh
Place wallpaper in jpg format at either 640x360 or 640x480 along with the logo in svg format in the same folder as the script (both files should have the same name), then run zzmerge.sh (linux), it will prompt you for the system name - so for instance if you had wallpaper mytheme.jpg and logo mytheme.svg then enter 'mytheme' - and it will automatically combine the logo and wall into a single panel image
/assets/sounds/default - any background music for the system/collection
Language files are all located in /lang and there is an odf with the text strings listed. Each language file has the fonts defined at the start of the file so that non-western fonts can be applied systemwide. Any font files should be dropped in /fonts