Carbon Theme Suggestions

Rookervik · 13 Jul 2016, 16:15

Ok, changes to Carbon are final. Thank you all for your input! You definitely helped me as I couldn't have done it without you! Look forward to the update and enjoy the ability to change the color to your liking. And of course, I'll fix anything that doesn't turn out right.

Thanks again!

nemo93 · 16 Jul 2016, 09:28

I'm a big fan of the Carbon and made it my default since the beginning :) Clean, simple, fast. Perfect. Yet I have to say that I'm little disappointed by the "new" Carbon revision. For one reason: less metadata and a very small description box. Too bad for me as I love to have plenty of details about games and videogame history in general. I've spent a tremendous amount of time to hand-craft my gamelist.xml's, gathering details and to find images/flyers in good quality all with truckload of details and accurate description. Also I love my playcounts, dev/publisher info. So to me, not having these details or at least making hard to read is a showstopper.

As I don't want to be too much party breaker, is there any chance to separate out the "new" Carbon with the previous "old" Carbon version at least?

On the new Carbon, I'd had in fact switched the game list on the left with bottom-right description window. Or even say screenshots/flyers on the left, description top-left and gamelist bottom-right.

Apparently I can't attach any files here but I'd be more than happy to share both my gamelist's and boxarts with anyone. I've got complete gamelists for NES, MasterSytem, Megadrive/Genesis, PC Engine/SuperGrafx, Neo Geo, 32x, N64. Those are full with complete libraries and all games (including Japan/EU/US versions). Then I got partial gamelists for PSx, Amiga and FBA/MAME. Only with my favorite games in there! If you're interested feel free to ping me.

Side note: seems that my boxarts may be too "big" sometimes as it takes 1-2s when selecting games. If there are some guidelines about the proper resolutions/sizes for boxart do let me know please. I'm a bit extreme when it comes to quality so not too big of an issue for me but I can understand it's annoying!

Thanks for listening and @Rookervik for the amazing and splashcreens, I love them too!!!

Rookervik · 16 Jul 2016, 10:08

@nemo93

Where were you a week ago when I was editing things? Hehe, ah well, there will always be Debbie Downers :P

We still have the original Carbon. We can make that available to anyone not digging the new design. But original Carbon does have a few flaws. One major flaw was the placement of box art. The box art is pinned in the top left corner and scales down and to the right, sometimes too far. So your box art is just fine. Original Carbon just needs to have box art edited. This is fixed in the new Carbon. PS, all of your description will show, it scrolls. :D

If you're into editing things yourself, you can change the box art position and make its origin "0.5 0.5" that way it scales from the center. And give it a <maxSize> as well. I might tweak it later on. Depends on how many theme.xmls are required to change. If I have to re-write all 76 of them, baaaah poop.

Rookervik · 16 Jul 2016, 10:12

@nemo93

Oh yeah, any box art bigger than 320x240 takes the Raspberry Pi a second to display. I went through and resized all of my screenshots to 320x240 or lower. I couldn't stand the slow display of big box art. Keeps the gamelist moving zippy! :D

nemo93 · 16 Jul 2016, 12:12

thanks @Rookervik for the replies! You know I'm always late to the parties, my specialty I'm afraid :( It's a long time since I took a look at the forum to be honest and I did so only after I did an update to my Retropie bringing the new Carbon theme...

Previous Carbon does have very few flaws in fact. the one you mentioned is not really an issue as whenever you launch a game RP shows the image fullscreen. The only issue I could see is that if you got a rather long text for developper/publisher the text is all messed up, overlapping sometimes each other. Everything else is pretty much very slick :) Therefore I'm still interested in the original Carbon.

Wrt to the desc scrolls, it is indeed. Yet you have perhaps 4-5 lines max displayed at a time which makes it very tedious to read. Perhaps putting metadata some other place, I don't know above gamelist or below it may free up some extra space for the desc and that may look better. Alternatively, to have a way to switch between boxart and metadata display would be best! i mean by default you simply have gamelist on the left and a "big" boxart on the right side. Then on a press of a button boxart is replaced with metadata.

I will take some time to look at editing stuff myself as again I don't want to be the Debbie downer here :) note: that may be too late!!!

PS: resizing photo by setting 600 as width and 80% jpg quality improved things a lot. There's still a slight latency though but not much.

THANKS

nemo93 · 16 Jul 2016, 12:20

oh one last thing not related I'm afraid but I'm keen to know. I've seen a thread on RP git about separating out PC Engine/TurboGrafx and PC Engine CD (https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/issues/1545). I don't know if it's worth to separate out those two but to have a section for the SuperGrafx would make more sense as it requires a different libretro core to play the very few games developped for that system (only <10 !! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Engine_SuperGrafx#Software_catalog). Is it already the case in RP? Did I miss anything (again!)? THANKS

Rookervik · 16 Jul 2016, 15:50

@nemo93
I did something with Turbo Grafx CD, I just can't remember what. Hahaha! Oh I know, I added TGCD to the Pixel theme. I haven't been asked to do that on Carbon yet. Adding an extra system is pretty easy, we do it a lot. I can update Pixel all I want, but Carbon I usually need to get an OK before I change something. So I'll ask Herb if we need to add TGCD.

As far as fancy theme-changing on the fly, that's sadly impossible in Emulation Station. So however a theme loads, that's how it stays. No flipping details or anything of the sort.

We will make the old Carbon available, but this change is finalized and added to the next release. Most users seem to agree that less meta-data is better. Especially true for users like me. I have screenshots for all of my games, but no meta-data at all. So the original Carbon theme left me with massive amounts of empty space and a lot of empty meta tags.

Not So Hidden PS: Maybe if you're really nice, I can edit the theme to raise the gamelist and put the description all the way across the bottom, so you can read it all. It would be more of a "just for you" thing, as I don't think many people would use it. :D

herb_fargus · 16 Jul 2016, 16:11

@Rookervik we dont need to add tgcd but it doesnt matter if you do. some people have wanted it but we havent included it in the code. but as far as the theme goes you can add whatever you want- there are plenty of sytems in the theme that aren't included in the retropie code yet.

edmaul69 · 16 Jul 2016, 16:14

@nemo93 said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

oh one last thing not related I'm afraid but I'm keen to know. I've seen a thread on RP git about separating out PC Engine/TurboGrafx and PC Engine CD (https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/issues/1545). I don't know if it's worth to separate out those two but to have a section for the SuperGrafx would make more sense as it requires a different libretro core to play the very few games developped for that system (only <10 !! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Engine_SuperGrafx#Software_catalog). Is it already the case in RP? Did I miss anything (again!)? THANKS

I actually made a supergrafx section myself for the carbon theme. Along with nintendo vs system, nintendo playchoice 10 and capcom play system. I love the carbon theme and cant wait for this new one to come out. Looks really cool.

BuZz · 16 Jul 2016, 16:18

it's already out if you update your themes.

Concat · 18 Jul 2016, 01:39

Hmm I must have missed a step... I updated and restarted, but my gamelist still appears on the right side, and the box art is on the left with the metadata.

herb_fargus · 18 Jul 2016, 04:10

Carbon-nometa and carbon-centered have also been updated to 2.0

chavatar · 18 Jul 2016, 07:43

Noticed the changes and thought they were a nice improvement. Appreciate the work and effort :)

Not sure if this is helpful or possible, stupid or irritating:

On the main system carousel there's some noticeable inconsistency in the logo sizes, highlighted and not
Some inconsistency in the system list screens between the alignment of the logo top left and text underneath (e.g. sometimes the text aligns. sometimes indents)
margin to the right of system icon seems a little larger than margin to left of system logo (v. minor)
Margin between header and body (below top red line) smaller than margin between body and footer (think it looks a little 'cramped' at the top)
RetroPie menu: icons kinda disproportionately large. Here the description is more important than the icons I think. There's a case for a different design for this menu, since it's conceptually different (and I do prefer Recalbox's approach in this respect). Suspect not possible. (And ideally the icons should not [what look to] be from a free set, but match carbon's L&F, but that's a crazy ask, I know)
metadata, the right amount for me, it's possible that it's self-explanatory without the labels to save space, (but I think I would keep them) and to have it on 2 not 3 lines (Genre + Players / Developer + Released, makes a little more sense to me). Surely only needs year (not day/month) for Released if possible.

Tiny, "devil detail" stuff, from someone desperate to contribute! Oh and can you make it green? ;D

nemo93 · 18 Jul 2016, 09:10

thanks a lot @Rookervik much appreciated. If I may I suspect people don't care/need metadata as it's a tedious task to update those. I'm sure that if you have those metadata you are willing to see them! I can share my gamelists anytime. I don't want you to waste time on the "just for you" thing, I like democracy hence if a large part of the population/community decided that less metadata is better then ... I accept that!

@herb_fargus may I kindly ask what does it mean if a system is not in the retropie code? If I decide to add supergrafx (not tgcd!) what is going to happen please if it's not in the code? I suspect Supergrafx only got few games were ever released for that system so indeed not sure it would make sense to add it in the code.

THANKS

Rookervik · 18 Jul 2016, 13:40

@chavatar

I can answer a few concerns, while others I'll have to check in to.

I actually went to college for graphic design. And there, they teach you many tricks that most people wouldn't necessarily even notice. One such trick is you never create a design that is truly centered. Adding weight to elements on the top give the appearance of a "centered" visual. To an untrained viewer, a truly centered piece will actually look heavy below. So Carbon even has this design rule in play. I didn't want everything perfectly aligned top and bottom. I wanted a little more space on the bottom than there was at the top. :D

The RetroPie menu is actually full of icons I created in Blender. Not bad eh? I'm flattered you thought they were from a pack. That means I'm getting better at 3d :D And they are intentionally "generic" since they are the icons all themes have to use. Not just Carbon. I do agree that I could tweak the RetroPie section to make the icons smaller. I'll check that out.

As for the other measurements you took, they are probably related to how the SVGs are saved. Some have padding in them, some do not. Same with the controllers. Those I will have to look at, individually.

Also, margins on the left and right will be a little different because the game list screen is seen as 2 halves. On the left, you have the game list, on the right, you have the boxart/screenshot and meta data. These elements do not cross over each other. They are their own section, on their own side of the screen. So those are centered in their half of the screen. Hope that helps you understand the design choices made.

I'll still check the SVGs for errors (guuurrrr there are so many of them....)

As far as green, if you read the Readme it will tell you how to choose green. :P

chavatar · 18 Jul 2016, 14:15

@Rookervik Thanks for the great reply! I get your point, and am indeed aware of this visual 'bias' (I studied too, but long, long, so long ago). Fair enough, and it's difficult to see just by looking - my first visual reaction was there should be a little more space below the header. Didn't take any measurements or anything...just me probably...

Icons - I'm very sorry - glad you took it in good humour - I'd be proud to do as well, and I didn't think (stupidly) of course they'd have to be shared between themes.

"I want green" - a joke for a designer :)

I will leave you to it! Cheers

Rookervik · 18 Jul 2016, 14:17

@chavatar said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

RetroPie menu: icons kinda disproportionately large. Here the description is more important than the icons I think.

metadata, the right amount for me, it's possible that it's self-explanatory without the labels to save space, (but I think I would keep them) and to have it on 2 not 3 lines (Genre + Players / Developer + Released, makes a little more sense to me). Surely only needs year (not day/month) for Released if possible.

I agree that the icons are too large and the description is very much important. I believe I actually screwed up this section when I mass-copied the theme.xmls to the folders. Metadata needs to be removed and allow the description to take over. And make the icons smaller. I agree 100% and will do.

Metadata... you can't change what is displayed in the metadata pulls. If you want only the year, you need to manually edit your gamelist.xml to only contain the year. ES shows you the metadata provided by that gamelist.xml.

You also have some blank area in metadata due to kid-friendly icons. So, like me with no meta data and gobs of wasted space, now some users have a little blank area to make room for kid friendly icons. But since everyone complained about me compartmentalizing the theme, I can't make boxes for the kid friendly icons to let users know there is room for something even tho there is no icon. :P

Rest assured I plan to fix the retropie menu. Thank you for bringing that up.

chavatar · 18 Jul 2016, 14:35

@Rookervik Thanks again. There are a lot of considerations I'm not even aware of (which no doubt are a right pain in the proverbial)

ES isn't optimal (sure that isn't too controversial) but I can see why it's there. Interested to see how things progress on the interface side of things down the line.

sc0tt88 · 19 Jul 2016, 18:19

Things I like about carbon... the dark menus (I hate the bright backgrounds) and overall it looks clean.

Things I dislike are the menu sizing, full game names not showing, and I like the game backgrounds for each system on the "simple" theme. But I can't use that theme because I have some custom logos for carbon, so overall carbon wins. Ideally for me it would be like it is now, sized a little better (if possible?) with the option for the backgrounds. I think the simple theme also uses the bright background colours for each system menu which I don't like

ScOULaris · 19 Jul 2016, 19:25

The main thing that bothers me about Carbon is the fact that all of the metadata text is in all caps. Surely I can't be the only person who thinks this looks ugly.

I use Eudora instead, mainly for this one reason.