Carbon Theme Suggestions

Rookervik

Hehe, wah-wah. :-P As soon as Herbfargus is back we will get original Carbon back up for downloads. He finished up college and is in the process of moving for work. I'll see if I can package it as a zip for anyone savvy enough to install it that way.

Download: Legacy Carbon Theme

lilbud

@Rookervik Congrats to him finishing college

MetalManTN

@Rookervik Thank you very much for the zip. And my apologies for sounding ungrateful, or as if I was crying over the changes. I highly prefer the old theme on my 65" TV, however I think the changes to carbon actually look better on smaller screens. I built a mini arcade with a 9" display and the new Carbon looks great on there, so I believe I will actually use both themes across all of my devices. That said, the 65" display is more important to me than the others and I really like old Carbon there. Thanks again!

GreenHawk84

I love the cover art available when scraping. I think a screenshot or if possible a sample video/demo of the game in action like HyperSpin does.

Currently one annoyance, the last game of any list is cut off about half way. That's it, Carbon is pretty good!

Rookervik

@GreenHawk84 GAH that's really important. I thought that was cleaned up. I will check it and see if I can fix it. Depends on your screen resolution and aspect ratio. But most people use 16:9 so I want all the games to be visible on that one. Thank you for mentioning this.

Update: Mm, they are all displaying correctly on my screen. Can you tell me what screen resolution you are using? Particularly the aspect ratio?

GreenHawk84

@Rookervik, I have NES, SNES, and Genesis scraped. Those display the text names of games perfect. Arcade and Neo Geo are not scraped and the very last title is cut in half. 16:9 monitor, 1920x1080.

Rookervik

@GreenHawk84 Hmm, increased the size of the gamelist by 0.01% and it is showing all of the last title in both 720p and 1080p.

I designed the theme in 720p and it worked there. 1080p it cut off the bottom. So now it's showing, but it will still depend on your resolution and aspect ratio.There are no tags to theme the gamelist and make sure all the text is showing. (-_-)

I'll wait a bit before I upload this fix. Make sure there's nothing else to change and then post it.

Rookervik

Ok, updated Carbon with the "basic" gamelist fix. You should be able to see all of the gamelist now.

Note: this will still depend on your screen resolution and aspect ratio. It works on 16:9 so for sure. Sadly, this is an ES theming problem.

Carbon v2.0.2: Download

sc0tt88

Quick question... My games show on the right, artwork on the left. I am setting up a pi for my friend exactly like mine. His is the opposite way around. We're both using 3.8.1. Both using carbon... Is it an automatic download or something and has this new pi downloaded the updated carbon?

Rookervik

@sc0tt88 That I don't know. I think the theme is available to download at the moment. But won't be default until RetroPie 4.0. -I think-

dLux

the metadata labels (released, genre, developer, players) and values are overlapping, dunno if it's due to resolution (1280x1024) or aspect ratio (4:3)..

metadata

Rookervik

@dLux Yeah that's a 4:3 ratio issue. I'll see if I can push them out a little further so they don't overlap, but still look good in widescreen.

BuZz

There is a lot of space around the boxes on my system (and in the pic above) - is that intentional to reduce gpu memory usage or to do with the aspect ratio, or just a preference ?

Rookervik

@BuZz The boxes were really small on mine, too. No clue what I did to make them tiny. I fixed it. Working on lining up the meta data. Meta Data is a complete nightmare. And everyone just HAS to have it. LOL The name of the metadata lines up to the top of the text box. The actual meta data block lines up in the CENTER of the text box. Complete disaster for themers. Takes longer to line up meta data than it does to draw all the theme art and program their positions. -_-

BuZz

Sounds painful!

Please send me an archive when you are ready and I will update the repository - thanks very much!

Rookervik

I can get things down to this. There is no way for me to perfectly line up the metadata name and the metadata information. Like "Players: 2" and "Developer: Atari" I'm down to positioning the elements by 0.0001% and they still don't line up. So they will have to do as they are.

Made more room for description. Made the boxes bigger (no CLUE why they were small). Changed the meta data to not be all caps. That saved room. (Guess working on 3 themes at the same time is a bad idea)

Hopefully this will work out for both widescreen and standard users. Percent system in ES has it's good points, and bad.

undefined

This was sure easier when @herb_fargus was at my beck and call for testing. LOL

Download: Carbon v2.0.3

BuZz

Looks good - repository is updated - thanks! :)

caver01

@Rookervik Thanks for the extra attention to 4:3. It would be a shame for all of us focused on arcade cabinets to have the best theme "broken" on typical arcade hardware. It seems like 4:3 should be the minimum for compatibility as it's often the least common denominator that captures the widest audience and emulators.

Rookervik

@caver01 I do apologize for forgetting to test 4:3. Back when Herb and I made this we were very careful to make sure 4:3 worked. I rushed a little to get this out. My intention was a nice visual upgrade for people. What I caused was a mess. LOL.

caver01

@Rookervik On the contrary! I think your updates are great, especially taking inputs from everyone. That's never easy as there will always be some disagreement, but it's not a mess. You make certain choices.