Carbon Theme Suggestions

mattrixk

Open Winscp and log in to your pi
Browse to /home/pi/.emulationstation/themes
The Carbon folder should be in there, and you want to make the change to carbon.xml.
You can either edit the file directly on the Pi, or drag it to your computer, edit it, then drag it back.
It's also a good idea to drag a backup copy of the file to your desktop first, just in case you break something, you can just copy it back to the Pi and overwrite the broken file.

I'm not at my Pi at the moment, but that should be the path you need (I stole it from @Rookervik's instructions on this thread).

monstermadeofman

AHHHH ok I've got it now

mattrixk

@monstermadeofman the "." in .emulationstation means it is a hidden folder. You may have to enable the 'view hidden files' option.

What exactly can you find? Can you find /home/ but not pi? Or /home/pi/ but not .emulationstation?

BuZz

that folder is a symlink on latest RetroPie to /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation so you can just use that folder instead (available over network)

BuZz

There are no themes installed in that location by default - but you can copy themes into a themes folder there, and they will take priority over the distributed themes - which live in /etc/emulationstation/themes

mattrixk

Ahh thanks @BuZz. I knew I was in the right area with my explanation, but I wasn't near my Pi so I couldn't make sure.

smartroad

@Rookervik can ES display both box art and a screenshot?

herb_fargus

@smartroad ES only displays one image at a time. a workaround is to mash up two images in on screenshot with gimp so it looks like two, but not a very clean way of doing it

smartroad

@herb_fargus I thought that might have been the case, shame. Thanks for the reply though :)

mattrixk

@smartroad Theres a guy named ruckage on the old petrockblog forum who was working on a few systems. You can see the post here.

They looked like this:

megadrive
and
snes

Very impressive, but it was only for snes, megadrive, pc engine and arcade. I've downloaded them but haven't really looked through them, so I can't vouch for their quality, but what I have seen looks amazing.

Rookervik

Be forewarned, very large box art slows down gamelist browsing heavily. I've found any box art larger than about 320x240 slows the gamelist down a lot while scrolling through the list. I use some large box art for my Infocom games, but there aren't many of them so the slow browsing doesn't annoy. Love Infocom :D

mattrixk

Thanks @Rookervik, I didn't think about that. If I decide to use them I'll resize them all first. I have a free program called Fast Stone Image Resizer that I use for just that purpose. It's quick and very simple to use.

Rookervik

@mattrixk Irfanview ftw. Has been for like 20 years. LOL

mattrixk

@Rookervik I use Irfanview for viewing images... I didn't know it could resize them too.

Rookervik

@mattrixk Heck yeah. Mass resize, rename, add filter, watermark. Used it at the radio station to resize a huge collection of photos and to add a watermark at the bottom for the event name. Freaking love irfanview.

edmaul69

@Rookervik hey rook, can you tell me how to make the gamelist go to the edge of the screen? it annoys me having the first letter cut off like in addams family in this pic:

undefined

Rookervik

@edmaul69 Keep an eye on your <horizontalMargin>, you don't need it. And it can cut text off. Also set your <size> to 1 or .95 or something and set <pos> to something that will keep the box on-screen. Beyond that, it's up to ES if it is going to scroll properly or cut text off.

I'm pretty sure it's the <horizontalMargin> that's giving you a problem. Make sure it's 0.

edmaul69

@Rookervik thank you. <horizontalMargin> did the trick

han

Hi!
Just want to thank Rookervik and others for all the great work in putting these themes together. They really enhance my emulation experience. Their clarity and consistency really work well when people not familiar with ES or Retropie are using it at an event or party.

With that I would like to make one small comment.
I sometimes switch between pixel and carbon with a custom es-systems.cfg and noticed that one uses tg-16 while the other uses tg16. I created a symlink as a workaround. I just wanted to point that out as a possible issue for others.

mattrixk

@edmaul69 is that a theme you are making? It looks really cool. How far along are you? Are you making custom headers like that for each system, or just some main ones? I'd love to see what you've done for the Detailed View.