Input needed: ES theming improvements

mattrixk

@Zigurana Considering this was originally an ES theming improvement thread, I'm curious: is it possible to make the UI themeable? Or is that just not likely to happen?

masteryoer

@mattrixk

This was a work in progress. I'd be interested in working with somebody else on the project though to make it easier for theme designers to match UI to theme.

I was able to do it by rebuilding the source with the new assets, but the system already has some functionality in place for using external resources already.

If you want to work with me on it, since I need to do it with my xcade anyways, I'd be interested in sharing it with everyone.

mattrixk

@masteryoer It's cool that it's already part-way there, but I've no knowledge of the guts of ES. I can make themes okay, but I don't even know where to start with the actual programming.

masteryoer

@mattrixk

Well I just meant possibly helping lay out the theme structure to support the new additions. That way theme designers can build the UI along with their theme.

mattrixk

@masteryoer I would be curious to see what the innards look like, to know what would be the best way to name/use the UI theming elements. I wonder if anyone has written an "Idiot's Guide to Playing With the Guts of ES".

masteryoer

@mattrixk

They aren't very clean. It's basically just one element for the window frame, a separate svg for the button and help icons, and a splash screen.

Syhles

Is it possible to get an alignment feature added for the carousel? It's more for the vertical mode.

mattrixk

@Syhles An alignment feature would be great. At the moment everything is center aligned, but you could put the carousel against the top of the screen and top-align the logos so the larger active one sits a bit lower than the rest. Or left-align a vertical carousel so the active one sits out to the right more. I mentioned this feature at one point during testing, but I don't know how viable it is.

Syhles

@mattrixk
I have zero experience coding but, I feel like it should be doable. It's seems that the <text> <size> function works the same as the carousels <size> function as it makes an invisible box for said object to sit in, but this is just my guess, this may be completely wrong.

pjft

@mattrixk I downloaded your theme but seems to have the carousel bits commented out, do you confirm?

I'm trying to get hold of a sample theme that uses the carousel features, just to make sure I'm not breaking anything during development. Doesn't need to be complete - Indent should be fine.

Thanks in advance - to you or to anyone who has something I can use!

Syhles

@pjft
Here's a left aligned vertical carousel.

<carousel name = "systemcarousel">
	<type>vertical</type>
	<pos>0.027 0.05</pos>
	<size>0.33 0.835</size>
	<color>00000000</color>
	<logoScale>1.5</logoScale>
	<logoSize>0.20 0.15</logoSize>
	<maxLogoCount>5</maxLogoCount>
</carousel>

pjft

@Syhles Thanks. I take it I just add this to the system view?

Syhles

@pjft
Yeah, just put it under System, it does work for certain as I'm using it for the Modern theme.

pjft

@Syhles thanks for the pointer. Unfortunately I must be doing something wrong in my end. I tried to add it to the carbon theme, in the theme.xml file but had little success, which left me confused. Tried to troubleshoot it but led me nowhere.

Would it be to much of an inconvenience if I could ask you to zip your theme folder and share it with me via any kind of file sharing service? No urgency whatsoever.

Thank you in advance.

Syhles

@pjft
Where was the theme.xml located, in the carbon folder or in a game system folder like snes?

pjft

@Syhles in the root folder. Maybe it's being overridden later and I didn't notice. That's a possibility.

jdrassa

@pjft I think you need to add it to carbon.xml. I don't think the theme.xml file in the root folder is actual used.

mattrixk

@pjft The Indent theme is still a major work in progress and I haven't touched the xml in a while (I'm working on the graphics at the moment).

The BaseVid theme from the ES Toolkit is the one you want to look at.

mattrixk

@pjft: @jdrassa is correct. The theme.xml in root is not used. You need to make the change to carbon.xml.

pjft

@mattrixk @jdrassa

Thanks both. I figured out the problem - which can be useful for future reference (particularly for @jdrassa ).

The carousel is only correctly initialized if the first theme you have roms for has a corresponding theme folder. If not, it'll use the default.

As I have an arcade folder, that's where it was trying to get carousel info from, which was incorrect.

I suspect you may benefit from adding some more checks in the code on SystemView's::getViewElements .

All is good then - thanks all!