Carbon Theme Suggestions

Rookervik

Hey there. I do most of the updates to the Carbon theme and was wanting to spruce the theme up for RetroPie 4.0+. No graphic updates have been asked for by the developers, but I'd like to give it a visual punch and try submitting it to the developers to see what they think.

My questions would be:

Do you use Carbon, or do you download another theme?
If you use Carbon, what do you like about it?
If you don't use Carbon, what about it do you dislike or what do you wish was changed?

I've been editing the theme so you can change the overall color to any HTML color code. I've also made a few mock-ups of possible design changes. But since it's the main theme, I'd like input from as many people as possible.

Perhaps with some suggestions and ideas I could spruce up the theme to everyone's liking. Keep in mind, in the end, the theme has to be submitted and approved.

Here are a couple of mock-ups I've made. Small changes to the System Select. And some boxes for the Game Select. And the color themes can change to your taste.

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caver01

@Rookervik I don't know if it's possible, but I'd like to be able to adjust the sound when scrolling through games titles. Volume of this sound is very high when rapid scrolling relative to game volume. Maybe that's an ES setting. It might help to know what is possible with theme enhancements vs. what is locked down as a part of the front end. Custom control over colors is a great idea! Maybe font size choices (or rather, configurable) for the games list?

Rookervik

The flipper sound effect will be removed. I originally really enjoyed it, but after the last 6 months or so it has become quite an annoyance. So don't worry about the flipper. It's gone. :D You can use any sound you want, but the volume can only be changed in the WAV file itself. There is no theme code to change volume, sadly. (Keep in mind that ES has a volume control, but it affects the entire system, not just ES)

A lot of settings are very easy to change in the XML. Which is what these themes are written in. A color change will require the user to open the carbon.xml and do a search-and-replace for the color. A font change would require the user to go to the <gamelist> tag and choose the font size they want.

But I am trying to simplify the theme so it's easier for a user to change these things.

lilbud

Question: Are the screenshots higher quality than the box art? Because the box art looks like shit at any size other than default. And with my theme, the size I have it at looks bad on my TV and worse on the living room TV.

Rookervik

@lilbud Screenshots are all taken at the consoles' resolution. So Genesis games are 320x224. They scale nicely with the point-filtering that ES uses. Box art will scale a little gnarlier because of the point filtering. Box art needs to use Linear filtering. But yes, screenshots look better, scaled, than box art.

lilbud

Can screenshots be scraped using sselphs scraper?

Rookervik

@lilbud I don't know. I think they can if you use the command line version of sselph. I never got it to work so I spent months downloading, curating, and creating my own screenshots. It was a pain, but looks great.

celly

I love the Carbon theme and it plays great with all my systems. My only gripes are the controller for TurboGrafx-16 on the system select menu and the Wonderswan Color logo. The TG-16 controller only shows the PCEngine one and the WSColor logo is super tiny. Other than those issues, I love it.

Rookervik

@celly Now THOSE are some issues that need fixing. LOL. I'll check them both out and see if I can fix them. I wasn't aware the controller for PCE was different than TG16. And a super tiny logo on the system select screen means I saved a logo wrong. Thank you for letting me know :D

pimpmaul69

I have a request, me and several people on atariage use advmess for channel f. I made a carbon theme folder for us for the channel f. However i dont know crap about vector graphics to make a controller for it. Is it possible for you to make a fairchild channel f theme?

celly

@Rookervik Sorry, I should have have chose a better word than "issue" as it isn't anything that prevents me from using the Carbon theme.

Rookervik

@pimpmaul69 Yeppers. Adding it to my list of things to do.

Rookervik

@celly Ooh, sorry if my reply sounded sarcastic... I meant that your issues were serious... not feature requests. I really really need to fix those issues you noticed. Thank you for bringing it up, I hadn't noticed.

Zigurana

Personally I think you did a great job with the original Carbon theme, so why fix it when it's not broken?
I dont like the new boxes. Maybe it just takes some getting used to. Something else than the carbon-texture would be nice. Maybe a light (Diamond) theme?

Are you going to take advantage of the new and improved svg rendering? It now even does strokes!

Pony request: leave some room for the kid-mode specific icons ;-)

Rookervik

@Zigurana The new carbon tile is in there. I really really like it. You're not too fond of it? Also, I made room for kid friendly icons... in the box hahaha. I don't think Buzz likes the boxes either. I like them a lot. I wonder if there's a way to separate the gamelist and the meta data, visually, without using boxes? Also, re-drawing all of the controllers will take about 40 non-stop hours of vector. I don't know if I'm up for that. Haha.

dankcushions

i like it! something about it seem less dark than the previous. however i'm afraid for me me it loses out to the pixel theme, although that's also one of yours, so :)

(also that game description is amazing)

Rookervik

@celly I'm going to need your help fixing the issues you mentioned.

From the research I've done, the PC Engine and TG-16 both had the same shape controller. They differed in color and stickers, but the shape was the same? (I never had one, nor have I even seen one in real life) Could you help me better understand the graphic you are talking about with TG-16?

The Wonderswan Color logo... I used the official logo. That does make the text really small (So it fits in the bar) Would you like it better if I removed the red swirl icon and just had it say "Wonderswan Color?" That would make the text way bigger. The red swirl takes up most of the vertical space allowed for the logo.

BuZz

I love some aspects of the design - eg the subtle glow, improved background. I also think you are right to have the games list on the left. As you have mentioned, I'm not massively keen on the boxes - I don't think it needs them - but this is of course subjective.

Huge thanks for all your contributions to the project :-)

herb_fargus

@Rookervik personally I like the boxes but then again when you open up design questions to the community you will never come to a conclusion ;)

I personally liked the other view that looked like nbba

Zigurana

@Rookervik said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

@Zigurana The new carbon tile is in there. I really really like it. You're not too fond of it? Also, I made room for kid friendly icons... in the box hahaha. I don't think Buzz likes the boxes either. I like them a lot. I wonder if there's a way to separate the gamelist and the meta data, visually, without using boxes? Also, re-drawing all of the controllers will take about 40 non-stop hours of vector. I don't know if I'm up for that. Haha.

Nah, I dont think the file size reduction is significant enough to warrant a rework of all the existing logo's.
To box or not to box, ah well, you are the creative powerhouse here, so I leave it up to your good taste.
I hadnt spotted the new texture yet, as I do most of my forum on my mobile.

Still think that we could use a light theme to go with the current dark one.

In any case, thanks for all your efforts!