Io - New Theme

[mattrixk]

I made a new theme for EmulationStation and RetroPie, called Io.

You can download it from GitHub.

'Io' Theme System View

'Io' Theme Basic View

'Io' Theme Detailed View

More images available on Imgur.

I'll be updating the theme to work with the new GridView Mod, and the Child-Friendly versions of ES when I get a bit more time with them. It's on my to-do list.

EDIT

Io now has multiple sizes to suit different screen sizes. The default Large size is for TVs and computer monitors, the Medium size removes most metadata to give more space to the image, and the small size is made for handhelds so it has larger fonts and no metadata except the image and the gamelist.

'Io' Theme Detailed View - Medium

'Io' Theme Basic View - Small

'Io' Theme Detailed View - Small

[herb_fargus]

@mattrixk I like the font on the detailed view. reminds me of the infocom text adventure games

[mattrixk]

@herb_fargus It's Inconsolata from Google Fonts. I like the idea of using monospace fonts for this as they can be slightly fancy, but still very readable.

It was a tossup between Inconsolata and Ubuntu.

[tien_huu_1408]

@mattrixk Could I use 3D box art instead for this theme? Thanks a lot for your sharing.

[mattrixk]

@tien_huu_1408: A theme doesn't have any say in what metadata image is used for a game. If a game has had it's metadata scraped, then a theme will just use that image.

If you have already set up custom images/artwork for your games (such as screenshots, title screens, and 3D box art), then a theme will use those images.

I made the Image area square so that square, landscape and portrait shaped images will all fit fine and look okay.

[meleu]

@mattrixk I think it will look good on my raspi1. Thanks for sharing it!

[mattrixk]

@meleu: No worries. I'm actually planning on making a cut-down Detailed View that just shows the image and the gamelist with larger font size, so it will look okay on smaller screens (PiBoys and the like).

Now that I think about it, I may make it so there are 3 different sizes, the large default size with all the metadata, a medium size with just gamelist and image side by side, and then a small size with the image taking up most of the top of the screen and a gamelist that only shows 3 titles at a time at the bottom of the screen. Then the user can change which size they use by uncommenting out the right code... I can make this work, it won't be hard.

[robertybob]

I like what you've done with the metadata!! Hope this gets added to the main theme repo :)

[mattrixk]

@robertybob Thanks mate. I tried to do something different to what I had seen elsewhere, and I like the idea of having the large image, so it all just came from that.

Hope this gets added to the main theme repo

I don't have any control of that, but if @herb_fargus or possibly @RetroPieNerd deem it worthy, then I would be a very happy chappy.

[meleu]

@mattrixk said in Io - New Theme:

I don't have any control of that

anyone with a github account can make Pull Requests. ;-)

[mattrixk]

@meleu I'd rather not mess with that side of things. I think I'll stick with making themes. My profession is front-end web dev, so working with xml is fine, but I think anything more is way over my head.

[meleu]

@mattrixk No worries. We apreciate your work here. Thanks!

[PokeEngineer]

@mattrixk

Sorry I could not do this earlier, I was busy... I got your theme in the repo!

I don't have any control of that, but if @herb_fargus or possibly @RetroPieNerd deem it worthy, then I would be a very happy chappy.

I am just a friendly nerd trying to help out in the RetroPie community!

[cyperghost]

The right theme for my 4,3" CarPoPiCam
The low contrast of the CRT Display sux with the standard Carbon theme.
This is a good choice :)

[mattrixk]

@RetroPieNerd: Cheers mate. That's what I like about this community; we all have different skills and all pitch in where we can.

@cyperghost: I'm happy it suits your needs. I'm currently working to give the Detailed View a different layout for different size screens. It should be done in the next week or so, depending on my workload.

[meleu]

@mattrixk
I installed IO theme today and when I changed from Carbon to IO the emulationstation crashed. I got the bash prompt but it doesn't accpet any input from the keyboard. I log into the pi via SSH, kill the bash process that is running in tty1 terminal, and then emulationstation starts again with the Carbon theme. I switch to your other themes (metapixel, spare) and everything runs fine. The problem happens only with IO.

Some info for debugging:

Pi Model: 2 B
RetroPie Version Used: 4.0.2
EmulationStation Version Used: I've just update from binary using RetroPie-Setup
Built From: Pre made 3.8 SD Image on RetroPie website
USB Devices connected: wireless keyboard, wifi dongle, bluetooth dongle
Controller used: 8Bitdo SNES30 joystick
Error messages received:

emulationstation: /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/tmp/build/emulationstation/es-core/src/resources/Font.cpp:198: Font::Font(int, const string&): Assertion `mSize > 0' failed.

How to replicate the problem: install IO theme from RetroPie-Setup and then in emulationstation change to IO theme

[mattrixk]

Hmm, thanks for the heads up @meleu. I make my themes using a portable windows version of ES, rather than RetroPie on a RPi, so I never got that error. I'll have a look into it. Judging from the error message, it could be that RetroPie doesn't like the google font I've used, but honestly, I don't really know what any of that means. Maybe someone who knows more about RetroPie like @herb_fargus or more about themes in general like @Rookervik would have a better idea.

I just realised it could be something to do with font sizing. In the Io theme I wanted to hide a couple pieces of metadata, so instead of using <pos>1 1</pos> or something, I used <fontSize>0</fontSize>. It worked fine for me so I didn't think much of it. I didn't do this in Spare or MetaPixel.

[cyperghost]

@mattrixk
Yes that is it. It works for me on all systems now.

• Open io.xml and search for <fontSize>0</fontSize>
• Replace all occurrences with <pos>1 1</pos>

afair there are 2 matches of the fontsize string. Thank you!

[mattrixk]

@cyperghost: Great, thanks for testing that out. I'll hopefully get a fix up for that soon.

That's something I'll need to remember for the future.

[mattrixk]

I've made an update to the Io theme.

1. I fixed the fontSize bug pointed out by @meleu.
2. The theme now has 3 different sizes for different size screens:

• Large size for desktops and computer monitors (this is the default view).
• Medium size sacrifices most metadata for a larger image.
• Small size is for handhelds and shows nothing but the image and gamelist. It also has larger font size for better legibility on a smaller screen.

'Io' Theme Detailed View - Medium

'Io' Theme Basic View - Small

'Io' Theme Detailed View - Small

I don't have any way to test this on a handheld or 4/3 screen, so if anyone comes across any problems, let me know and I'll see about fixing them.

@RetroPieNerd: Do I need to do anything to update this in RetroPie, or does it just pull straight from the GitHub repo, so anyway grabbing it gets the current version?