Pixel Theme

mattrixk

@Rookervik Heh yeah. The whole thing was pretty daunting until I read your other post^ about using EmulationStation on Windows. I wasn't even aware ES was made for platforms other than the RPi.

^I think it was over on the old forum at petrockblog.

Vega

I want to say gorgeous theme im currently using this, I downloaded it from emulation station. Im curious as a total noob, how do i access the turbo cd and sega cd folders? Im not seeing them in my rom directory? or is there something im missing? I noticed you said choose the tgcd theme but i dont see that option unless im missing it.

thanks for any help you can give.

Rookervik

@Vega SegaCD already has a rom folder. Put your games in there and it should show up. I don't think I made a MegaCD logo. Just SegaCD.

Turbo Grafx CD has a theme, but no link to it as RetroPie doesn't want to add that right now. You can edit your es_systems.cfg and duplicate the pcengine section and rename everyting to TurboGraphicsCD. Tell it to use the "tgcd" theme.

Duplicate this section:

<system>
    <name>pcengine</name>
    <fullname>TurboGrafx 16 (PC Engine)</fullname>
    <path>~\.emulationstation\roms\pcengine</path>
    <extension>.pce .zip .cue .PCE .ZIP .CUE</extension>
    <command>%HOME%\.emulationstation\systems\retroarch\retroarch.exe -L %HOME%\.emulationstation\systems\retroarch\cores\mednafen_pce_fast_libretro.dll "%ROM_RAW%"</command>
    <platform>pcengine</platform>
    <theme>pcengine</theme>
</system>

And change it to this:

<system>
    <name>tgcd</name>
    <fullname>TurboGrafx 16 CD</fullname>
    <path>~\.emulationstation\roms\tgcd</path>
    <extension>.cue .CUE</extension>
    <command>%HOME%\.emulationstation\systems\retroarch\retroarch.exe -L %HOME%\.emulationstation\systems\retroarch\cores\mednafen_pce_fast_libretro.dll "%ROM_RAW%"</command>
    <platform>pcenginecd</platform>
    <theme>tgcd</theme>
</system>

Note: If your TGCD games are in a different format than CUE, add that format above in the <extension> section.

That will add a Turbo Graphics CD section. After you create a folder called "tgcd" in the rom directory and place your cd images there, it should appear after restarting emulationstation.

edmaul69

@mattrixk adding emulationstation kids makes it really easy. Set it in kiosk then all you have to do is press start, a, a

mattrixk

@Rookervik
I finished my take on your Pixel theme.

I called it MetaPixel and I made a post about it here.

I think I did the attribution correctly, but if you would like me to change it, let me know.

Rookervik

Eh, too much work... 70+ of these? No thanks. Haha

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herb_fargus

@Rookervik would be super impressive though

mattrixk

@Rookervik Looks awesome though.

edmaul69

@Rookervik looks pretty cool though. Only problem i think you would have comes with older consoles. Some can be a little hard to have useable graphics to make a theme out of. I am going to run into the same issue with the theme im making.

dankcushions

@Rookervik said in Pixel Theme:

Eh, too much work... 70+ of these? No thanks. Haha

omg, you tease! that is so ace :)

Rookervik

Got tired of the ugly Ports graphics. So I boosted the green, and changed the logo a little. I like it better.
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mattrixk

@Rookervik Is there any particular reason you chose the Linux penguin as your image for Ports? When I made MetaPixel I changed it to your default Computer image, I guess because I just see Ports as "computer games" so the Computer image fit.

Also, your colour choices are much better than mine. Do you have any sort of system for choosing colours? I started trying to make companies follow a colour scheme (all Sega consoles are red, all Nintendo are blue etc), but it was time consuming so I didn't really follow through with it.

Unrelated note: Have you ever been able to get the Gamelist to show in lowercase? It's frustrating being stuck in uppercase.

Rookervik

@mattrixk Ports was the hardest logo to try to think up. I sketched a dozen different things. I asked a bunch of people what would make a good ports logo. I didn't want to re-use art from other sections. I finally just said, "fine, it's linux, I'll just draw the linux penguin."

For colors, I just matched a color in the system's logo. If the logo was just black and white, I tried to look at the console to see some colors to use. If none of that worked, I just looked at all the colors and picked one that hadn't been used too much, yet.

As for upper case gamelists, I don't think you can change it. I have the <forceUppercase> set to zero and it doesn't change the gamelist. So that's something we'd have to as the ES coders to fix.

Rookervik

Also kinda tired of tetris. Messing with new ideas.

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Rookervik

undefined Give it a little transparency like SNES could do :D

mattrixk

@Rookervik That looks really, really nice. You are very good at backgrounds especially.

How would you do the borders and transparent background? Would you just do a big png and use <size> to stretch it to the size you want? You'd risk messing with the border width doing it that way...

I've been meaning to try using <ninepatch> for borders, then a small 16x16 white png stretched as the background (and then use <color>00000033</color> to change colour and opacity), but I haven't had the chance to see if it works yet. Have you given ninepatch a go?

Rookervik

9 patch was never implemented. Luckily ES uses point filtering to stretch images so it will still look sharp no matter how much it's stretched. And yes, just stretch it to full screen. If I wanted, I could cut them into sections and make them stretch based on screen width, but that's a hassle. And you run the risk of things not lining up exactly.

mattrixk

@Rookervik No ninepatch? Shame. The things I could have done... Oh well.

I just matched a color in the system's logo

Duh. I never even thought of that. I'm not really happy with any of the colours I used in MetaPixel, but colours have never been a strong suit for me.

What program do you use for all your images? I really like your backgrounds (but you may have been able to tell that).

Rookervik

@mattrixk I use irfanview, photoshop, paint tool sai, illustrator and graphics gale. The pixel backgrounds are done just in Photoshop. The consoles are done in graphics gale and colored in photoshop.

mattrixk

@Rookervik Cool. I think I heard of Graphics Gale when I was researching pixel art programs a while ago. I ended up settling on Pyxel Edit, which I really like.