Understanding why a 'theme' doesn't show in a particular system

[chubsta]

As always, forgive me if i have missed something obvious.

I have been playing around with different themes and romsets and have downloaded a 'rom pack' complete with movies etc for the C64 from the depths of the web. My emulationstation runs fine but on this particular romset when i go to the games list, although all the info shows up, including a video-preview which was unexpected, the 'theme' is not implemented and it is just a grey screen with all the data.

I am very surprised with this as all that has changed is that the rom folder has been populated with games and a games list.xml, all other rom sets work fine and show the original theme.

The game list.xml has the following structure for each rom:

<game id="1" source="ScreenScraper">
	<path>./$100,000 Pyramid, The (USA).D64</path>
	<name>$100,000 Pyramid, The (USA)</name>
	<desc>$100,000 Pyramid, The (USA)</desc>
	<image>./boxart/$100,000 Pyramid, The (USA).png</image>
	<marquee>./wheel/$100,000 Pyramid, The (USA).png</marquee>
	<video>./snap/$100,000 Pyramid, The (USA).mp4</video>
	<thumbnail/>
	<rating>1</rating>
	<releasedate>00000000T000000</releasedate>
	<developer>-</developer>
	<publisher>-</publisher>
	<genre>-</genre>
	<players>0</players>
</game>

So, what don't i understand about how themes work that means that (I presume) the gameslist.xml is causing it to not work or is something else at play here?

[herb_fargus]

@chubsta you didn't even specify the theme you are using.

[chubsta]

I wasn't sure if that was really important as i kind of figured that in order to work they would have to conform to set standards, so really the differences would be purely cosmetic. I guess i will do a bit more reading up on it all before i pursue this further - cheers for the reply.

[herb_fargus]

@chubsta well it depends. Some themes support video view, some do not. So that will affect how your gamelists are displayed.

[ruckage]

@chubsta said in Understanding why a 'theme' doesn't show in a particular system:

I wasn't sure if that was really important as i kind of figured that in order to work they would have to conform to set standards, so really the differences would be purely cosmetic. I guess i will do a bit more reading up on it all before i pursue this further - cheers for the reply.

Hello,

The gamelist.xml should have nothing to do with it. The theme you are using is important info as it's likely that the particular theme you are using simply doesn't have support for that system (there is themeing information per system and if a system isn't included you will get the results you described).

Try a different theme such as Carbon or Pixel as I think these both support practically everything.