Carbon Light
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Well, at least you are here to ask for it before the theme is finalized and added to the distribution :P I do plan to make the screenshot smaller in this one. Right now the gamelist is still 100% CarbonV2. I didn't change any of the placement.
Ooh, and speaking of RetroPie menu... that one needs to have all the meta data removed, completely. Just leave the description. /nods nods/
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Really looks good :)
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Looks really nice, I think you found a good solución for the game selección screen, lets see if you make me change my pixel theme for this one ;)
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SO! Does anyone feel like testing out this theme and giving some feedback?
Notes: I chose teal as the theme color for me. You can change it to any color you want with a search-and-replace. I can help with that, later.
In particular, check the logos to make sure they don't go past lines, and check the retropie menu. Remind me to make the metadata not All-Caps. I had that suggestion in another thread and it's a great idea.
Decided to call it Luminous since it's so very not Carbon. LOL
Edits:
- I might remove the side vignette so people using "Slide" behavior won't have to see the dark edges as the system screen scrolls. Check, removing it is so much nicer. :D
- Added support for pipplware
Download: https://db.tt/e25LuiPH
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I literally escaped my job to test your amazing new theme :D It works nicely and it's really gorgeous. It's my new default theme from now on and even if the metadata/desc section is still too small to my liking :p On the other hand, I found the boxart to be at the perfect size and perfect location in fact... I'd move the 2-3 lines of metadata somewhere else (below the game list?) to have enough text for the desc and for having enough time to read as the text scrolling is rather fast. I didn't have any issue with RP menu.
Oh one issue though, it seems this theme is less smoother in the transition compared to Carbon. I mean on the carousel when you could pick a system the transition between two is not smooth, it's almost stuttering. The same goes when you select a game with long name, you wait a bit for the text to scroll and when it does it's stuttering as well. I didn't check for my CPU resource but when I switched back to Carbon no more smoothness issue.
perhaps unrelated but while installing this new theme I've updated RP as well then in ES I hit the controller config setup item, register all my buttons and now A and B are switched order :( (before I selected stuff with and cancel with B, now I select with B and cancel with A....).
Thanks a lot for the great job and an absolutely fantastic theme!!
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This theme has a lot more graphical elements than Carbon does. So I can definitely believe it will stutter more when sliding between systems. If the stutter is very annoying, you can tell ES to use "fade" behavior instead of "slide."
Would you like me to shrink the box art a little and make more room for description? I can also reduce the font size of the description to make even more room.
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I didn't mention but I'm already using FADE, not SLIDE :( SLIDE is not usable as the stutter is too high. The more room for desc the better :) Any chance to get Publisher item back as well?
in case it helps, I'm using a Pi 2 overclocked using rasp-config. Latest RP and system packages.
Reminder: to make the metadata not All-Caps please :) I second that.
again much appreciate the time and effort. Simply awesome.
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@nemo93
That's strange. I do not get a stutter on my Pi. Using 128mb ram split even. It's a little slower than Carbon, but Carbon only has about 4 on-screen graphics. This light theme has 10. So it's a lot more graphics to scroll around. Even so, it's not too slow even on Slide for me.I've already changed the meta data to be Not-All-Caps. :D
Unless I shrink the box art a good bit, I can't fit any more meta data. Under "Players" is a section for Kid Friendly Icons. Those don't show up unless you are using Kid Friendly ES. Just as meta data only shows up if you scrape that meta data.
I'll probably have to toy around with it some. Moving Meta-data is a real chore. Each meta-data is positioned differently and can be really difficult to line up. You have to make a change, save, and load the theme and see where it ends up. I wish they all lined up by "Middle" or "Top" but they don't. :-(
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no worries. I'm a Debbie Downer remember? :) I'll give another try if you tell me it works smoothly on your side. Perhaps something is messed up on my Pi I didn't know.
Stuttering or not, I love this theme!!!
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This is what I'm having to deal with for the extra description room:
Putting it under the gamelist, or the meta data under the gamelist really breaks the separation of elements. This design would also keep me from using the theme myself since 2/3 of the right of the screen would be empty on my screen, and many others as well.
Personally, I'd prefer to delete all meta data and just keep screenshot. That's all I need to make a decision on whether I want to play a game or not.
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(>.>) Me no like
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Changed from Carbon to this one :)
Smooth - Thank you :) -
I understand why you no like it... It doesn't look good definitely. Let me suggest two last things, then I swear I'll stop bothering you with my metadata/desc!!
- possibilty to reduce the gamelist width and to increase "right panel" width so that boxart could remain the same size as it is now + means more room for metadata
- if touching gamelist is a no-go any chance to increase width a bit more of the metadata? I found out there are some space that could be used for the text.
is there a way to change the scroll speed btw?
Oh and I've increased the gpu_mem to 384 (256 before) and same outcome... there is stuttering when fading between systems on the carousel and when long name scrolls (sliding is even worse). I've enabled the frame per second and under Carbon I got a solid 60fps constant whereas Luminous gives me 45fps on my pi2. I have 13 systems currently if that makes any difference.
as always many thanks for the time and for the themes!
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I actually like this better than the original carbon theme!
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Reducing gamelist width will get complaints from most people as game names typically reach the edge of this gamelist as it is. Some end up scrolling. I think even you had something to say about scrolling game names lol. Scrolling speed is not something you can set from a theme.
Width of meta data can be increased some. I left space on the sides so the theme didn't look too compact.
It does sound, to me, that box art is not important to you, so we could make the box art very small and give you the entire right side for meta data. I'll have to see if I can make you a custom XML that is all about meta data. Or help you make your own custom xml. It's not too hard once you understand the percent system of the screen.
And with the changes I have been making, I kinda doubt I will use this theme... and I made it. I'll probably just stick with Pixel since it doesn't show meta data. Yeah, knowing the year and information on games would be nice, I am just too lazy to wait 20 hours for all my games to download the data. Then spend weeks fixing the incorrect information. Screenshots are good enough to showcase my games.
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hey @Rookervik don't worry and don't waste time for me only. I will for sure survive with my metadata stuff :) I'm enjoying already Luminous and I'll stick with it whatever changes you'll do to it :))) thanks a lot and now as promised I won't add any more comments!
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About the speed of the theme... I doubt additional VRAM will increase the speed. The Pi already has enough VRAM to load all the elements. So extra VRAM won't speed anything up. It's just a lot of small elements on the screen.
Kind of funny that ES is built in a way that we can't use a large wallpaper, but you can put a lot of pieces together to make a large wallpaper... but that kills the system because it is so many graphics layered on each other. XD
I suppose I could flatten the wallpaper and just save it as a single 1280x720 wallpaper. Even a 128MB RAM split can load 1 or 2 of those wallpapers. Then there would only be 2 elements on the screen... the wallpaper, and the system logo. Could make things faster. Worth trying out I guess. :-)
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I saw the look of this one, and I had to try it.
As an aside, it really threw me off, because it didn't have its own directory in the ZIP, and I had to clean it all up, make its own "luminous" directory, and then unpack inside of that.
On to the real issue why I'm here: I'm looking for a theme that will be good on a small LCD (320x240). I want something very nice and clean, and Luminous seems to be just that. The problem I run into with all the themes so far is readability. I seem to like Zoid the best at the moment, but Luminous is very promising.
For the small LCD, the top priority is readability. Some themes use a crazy font or crazy colors. Dark text on a light background seems the best. Big box art without all the metadata is better (as the metadata is just taking up screen real-estate). Larger fonts would be even better, but I don't know if that's easy to implement or not.
Is there a good way to accommodate these issues into Luminous, or is there an easy way for me to hack/mod a theme to have the same look/feel but with high-contrast text with a better (maybe larger) font?
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@Flavor There really aren't any themes that work real well on very small screens. I've been asked to make a small theme, but I haven't made it very far on it yet.
The main things you need is larger font size. Which can be achieved in the main xml file pretty easily.
Pixel works ok on small screens so long as you don't scrape data. That way you are presented with the "basic" game list with only system logo and game list...
Otherwise, I suppose I should go ahead and work on the small screen theme. Do you have any suggestions when working on that one?
My idea for my Sega Nomad Raspberry Pi Zero was to have a massive screenshot, a couple lines of game name, and just the system title at the top. Like this:
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@Rookervik Thanks for the quick reply. Maybe this idea of an small LCD-specific theme should be its own topic, as I don't want to hijack this one.
The Pixel theme is a good one for just about everything besides text. I don't prefer the dark background with light text, and the highlighted (currently selected) text is tough (on pretty much all themes, really).
I like your idea of the big screenshot (or box art) with just a little text. I do also like to see a list of game names, so I know what's available. I wonder if there's a good way to combine these.
Currently, the themes that show metadata (rating, release date, publisher, etc) don't seem to show the game name. They just highlight the game name (in the list of games) in a negative color scheme.
What if you had the list in one pane and the screenshot/boxart with a LARGE version of the game name (maybe multiple lines) in the other pane. This would be like your Streets of Rage II mockup, but that would just be one pane with the list next to it.
I do get your point about the Pixel theme without the scraped data. That makes it more readable. However, I do really like the boxart, because it gives a larger representation of the game where a player doesn't need to rely on the theme text font/color.
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