XCade - Custom Theme

mattrixk

@masteryoer That's the great thing about making your own theme, is you can make it look how you want it to look.

If you're having troubles with VirtualBox, have you tried using a Windows build of ES to work on your theme? Then you could just print-screen to get screenshots.

masteryoer

@mattrixk

I made some of the proposed changes, but I still cannot get the logo to appear on the front-page.

I used:

<image name="xcade" extra="true">
  <path>./art/xcade-logo.png</path>
  <pos>0.025 0.0775</pos>
  <maxSize>0.55 0.1</maxSize>
  <origin>0 0.5</origin>
</image>

on my xcade.xml file, and in my snes/theme.xml file I have this:

<view name="system">
   <image name="logo">
   <path>./snes.svg</path>
</view>
<view name="basic, detailed">
  <image name="logo">
    <path>./../art/xcade-logo.png</path>
    <pos>0.025 0.0775</pos>
    <maxSize>0.55 0.1</maxSize>
    <origin>0 0.5</origin>
  </image>

This is the code I am using that causes the 'snes' theme to not work. (The main system view background turns white when I select snes, and when I go into snes no theme is applied.

I also noticed there's a delay between systems in which the background disappears and its just all black. Is there a way the image background I have selected always show up?

Edit: I made my original theme in the windows build, but it didn't carry over to the retropie 4.1 version cleanly. I also can't take screenshots using that, either. I use an app for work called lightshot, and I can't capture a full-screen window with it.

mattrixk

@masteryoer The first thing I see is, in the second block you are missing the closing </image> tag in the System View. This could be what's making the theme white-screen.

Are you trying to use the xcade logo instead of the snes logo on the Basic and Details pages? If you manage to do this, then you won't have the System Name text in the top right, as it only displays that text if there is nothing in the <image name="logo"> element.

You should have the xcade logo as a separate element on the Basic and Details pages.

I just remembered you have it up on github. I'll have a look and get back to you (I'm at work, so it may be a little while).

Edited because I hit submit too early

masteryoer

@mattrixk

Yes, that fixed the snes/theme.xml file from not loading up, however the logo still doesn't appear on the systems page like it should.

Yes, on the main front-page (system) page, I only want the xcade logo to appear in the top left, like the screenshot shows for the detailed game view.

On the individual system pages (snes for example), I want it to look exactly like it does now.

The ONLY place I want the system logo to show up (snes, nes, etc), is in the carousel on the main page. The rest of the theme should use the xcade logo like in the screenshot.

Edit: Because I submitted too early, too.

masteryoer

@mattrixk

I appreciate it. I pushed up the last batch of changes I made for the night, so no rush getting to looking at it. I'll continue work on it tomorrow.

I moved all systems that currently haven't had any changes made to them into a 'not-done-yet' sub directory, so you can easily find what i've done.

mattrixk

@masteryoer Okay, so you just need to move your <image name="xcade" extra="true"> down below the <image name="header" extra="true">. The XML renders the "extra" elements from the top down, so it's currently rendering your Xcade logo first, then rendering the fullscreen background over it, then the header over that. You don't need to make any changes to your theme.xmls, just your xcade.xml.

(I didn't realise you were just using basic text to create the System Names in the top-right, so they are fine as they are).

Hopefully that sorts most of your problems out. I'll have a look at the black boxes over the gamelist when I get a chance, but I think it may be part of the background image you are using.

masteryoer

Yeah, I am not sure about the black boxes. they look like sensor bars and sometimes they come in at a solid black, sometimes they are almost transparent. It only seemed to do it on my virtualbox install though, so I am not sure if it's an actual issue or not (If I reloaded the theme, they would go away).

They aren't in the background image.

masteryoer

That fixed it. I appreciate the help!

Here's a sample of the UI changes I am making:

alt text

mattrixk

@masteryoer I'm using a windows build and I saw the boxes too (I downloaded your theme from git and installed it). It might be an artifact from one of the other systems that hasn't been styled yet.

Cool UI. Did you have to dig into the guts and recompile ES to do that? (Imagine if we could style the UI from the theme, how cool would that be?)

masteryoer

@mattrixk Yes, I had to dig into the source. Somebody was working on getting the UI pulled out and able to be themed. There is actually some code already in the source to do that, but Aloshi compiled the resources into the source, so I am not sure how to tell the system to use a path, and not the compiled source.

(There's a check to see if the resources are compiled into the system to use them, and if not look in (path:) for them). I am not completely familiar with the source code though to be able to modify it enough to enable that functionality.

You can actually find the source for it here:

https://github.com/Ex0r/EmulationStation/tree/UI_modes_xcade If you want to check it out.

mattrixk

@masteryoer yeeeeaahhhhh... I'm not much of a surgeon. I think I'll stick with cosmetics for now.