Carbon Theme Suggestions

Rookervik · 27 Jul 2016, 19:56

I was thinking about re-doing all of the controllers in detailed SVG but it takes a while to create them. I did vector the PSP console... but weighing in at 1.5MB... just for vector... I thought it probably wasn't a good idea. Vector art can be pretty realistic though. :D

mattrixk · 27 Jul 2016, 22:39

I'm calling your bluff @Rookervik, that's just a photo of a real PSP.

Jokes aside, that's pretty darn impressive. Ironically, an actual photo of the console would probably have a much smaller file size.

Rookervik · 28 Jul 2016, 00:10

@mattrixk Hehe, yeah it looks really close to a photo. :D

Turns out, using a PNG or JPG for a controller would actually be easier on VRAM. No matter how large you stretch a picture, it uses the same VRAM in ES. But since an SVG can be scaled indefinitely, ES creates a canvas for the SVG at the size you specify... taking the amount of VRAM it would require for a PNG of that size. >_< Otherwise we could make NBBA work just with vector :D Alas, you see the pixels from a stretched PNG. @herb_fargus would break. LOL

Used the mesh tool a lot to get the shadows and gradients. Background I threw in from photoshop.

lilbud · 28 Jul 2016, 00:13

Good thing I still have my PSP, Don't want my pi to explode while trying to emulate it

mattrixk · 28 Jul 2016, 00:15

@Rookervik

No matter how large you stretch a picture, it uses the same VRAM in ES

Does that mean that if you have a small image and stretch it to fill the screen, that uses the same VRAM as if you had just displayed it at it's initial size?

eg: your Pixel theme MegaDrive console.php is 120x69, so stretching it to take up half the screen won't use any more VRAM?

Rookervik · 28 Jul 2016, 00:15

@lilbud Pi actually does a really surprising job emulating the PSP. Overclock the Pi2 a little and with some of the games, you can get smooth 1080p playback. I know Hotshots Tennis I was able to play smooth except for some crowd cheers being choppy.

Rookervik · 28 Jul 2016, 00:17

@mattrixk

Correct. Once an image is loaded into VRAM, that's all it will take. The images in the background on Pixel are what, 480x270? They get stretched to full screen.

You can find the same thing on the Simple theme. The wallpapers are 720p. If you reduce them in size, by a power of 2, you can actually avoid the white screen of no-ramminess. But you see the pixels since the image is stretched. In Pixel's case, that's perfect. :D

mattrixk · 28 Jul 2016, 05:53

@Rookervik That's great news. Speaking of your Pixel theme, I've been plugging away at it, and I have something to show:

I'm contemplating making the top images smaller so you can see the background around them, or maybe moving the console image to the top-middle and making the description go full width.

As you can see I'm using all of your graphics, except for the borders. I tried creating my own backgrounds, but they just don't look as good as yours.

The Detailed view is still very much WIP:

The basic placement of everything is where it should be, now it's just tweaking metadata placement, making room for Kid-Friendly icons and recreating your background with the larger squares.

Also for some reason I'm completely unable to get the gamelist to be lowercase, even though I have forceUppercase set to 0.

Once it's all done and ready for use I'll be making a post for it so others can download it.

qrayg · 28 Jul 2016, 12:08

@Rookervik

Awesome. I love creating realistic vector art. Here's a PS Vita I made for the OpenEmu community... 100% vector:

qrayg · 28 Jul 2016, 12:16

@Rookervik said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

Please think of releasing your theme for the community to use. More choices is always better.

This will probably not happen. I renamed all of the themes to scope them, pcengine is now nec-turbografx and I added a nec-tuboduo for CD based games since they should not be merged... every system has been scoped and logically named along with my rom folders so everything is consistent and appeases my OCD. So even if I did release it, it would not be usable unless people edited their es_systems.cfg to point to the scoped theme/rom folder names. I also do not want themes for PC, Apple, Amiga, etc. so I removed them. I just want home console emulation so my theme just supports what I need.

Rookervik · 28 Jul 2016, 14:47

@mattrixk That's looking pretty slick! I hope the extra graphics on the system select don't end up going over the 128MB vram barrier. Still looks very neat!

You you might need to check several places for capitalization. ES loads the pixel.xml and each theme.xml from the system folders. The theme.xml will take priority so if the theme.xml has uppercase in the gamelist, it will overwrite the pixel.xml.

PS. Love those box art/screenshot combos!

Rookervik · 28 Jul 2016, 14:51

@qrayg That, sir, is very pretty! Sounds like you have your hands full in the other communities. :D

I've also been thinking about the icons for the retropie menu. I'll probably try a set of "modern" icons and submit them to the devs. See if they like em. Just have to find a way to get them seen on both light and dark backgrounds, and not conflict with other themes' designs too much.

qrayg · 28 Jul 2016, 19:45

@Rookervik Here's an example of simple clean icons (can be exported to vector too) that work on both light and dark backgrounds.

I just whipped this up in a matter of seconds. If we really spent some time on it we could make some high quality flat-ish icons that would work nice for any color scheme. This example uses transparency so it blends in with whatever color scheme is active.

Rookervik · 28 Jul 2016, 20:09

Yeah those look nice. Transparency works fine in ES. Don't necessarily need the shadows. Seem like badges. Yeah I can make a series of those. Or something similar. They'll end up looking similar in scope to what Pipplware already has.

Rookervik · 28 Jul 2016, 22:02

"I just whipped this up in a matter of [dozens of minutes]." Like, 4 dozen minutes. LOL. So many ways to go. Dunno to go with outline, no outline, dark accents, light accents. They all look about the same. I've never been a fan of the mac-style icons. But they do seem quite popular these days. "Less is more." Even Windows 8/10 has gone the modern route.

mattrixk · 29 Jul 2016, 03:33

@Rookervik said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

That's looking pretty slick! I hope the extra graphics on the system select don't end up going over the 128MB vram barrier. Still looks very neat!

Thanks @Rookervik. I don't really know how the VRAM works, but so far the whole theme weighs in at 175KB (including all images), but I've only done MegaDrive and SNES so far. I won't be doing all the available systems, just the ones that I use, but it shouldn't be too hard for others to add their own.

PS. Love those box art/screenshot combos!

I got them from @ruckage on the old PetRockBlog forum here. They are fantastic but It's unfortunate he only has them for SNES, MegaDrive, arcade and PC Engine. I've been meaning to try reaching out to him to see if he has any others.

I've done a bit more on the theme. It's just about ready for me to start putting in the other systems. Now I just need a good name.

Aliendon · 29 Jul 2016, 05:40

@mattrixk
Good work, i really like, Pixel Theme is my all time favorite theme but ithis one your making is really sweet.

mattrixk · 29 Jul 2016, 05:45

Thanks @Aliendon.

Once it's ready I'll be giving it its own post, and people can download it. Lots of testing to do first though. It may take a while as I don't have much free time.

qrayg · 29 Jul 2016, 20:44

@Rookervik said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

I've never been a fan of the mac-style icons. But they do seem quite popular these days. "Less is more." Even Windows 8/10 has gone the modern route.

These look nice. My suggestion was just a simple example, I was really thinking that the icons go down more of a Material road.

lilbud · 29 Jul 2016, 20:48

@qrayg I have a set of those. I use them for my theme.