Will you make a ps2 theme in the future ?

Is it that hard to upload this theme somewhere??

I usually download free and HD quality wallpapers here:https://colorwallpaper.net/
Top wallpaper: https://colorwallpaper.net/top-download/

@tidyhunger: There is a guide on the wiki for that - Creating Your Own EmulationStation Theme.

It's fun, but it can take some time to learn.

@mattrixk I clicked the button and deleted it. Pretty sure it's just my version but I hope you can fork-give me if something went wrong.

Thanks everyone. These are some very good choices.

@drumminhands if you want you can remove the options junk on the bottom to add a couple more games if you want. The bottom does not require a picture file (.jpg, .png, .svg) that makes the color bar.

NBBA. It's nice, but fails on any more than about 10 systems. Nice wallpapers eat up the Pi's RAM fast. Smooth fade-in to box art is achieved by pressing Start to get the the ES menu, going to UI settings, then selecting "slide" instead of "fade." Works on all themes.

@Rookervik: That is completely understandable and you have my apologies. I look forward to seeing it in its completed state when you are ready to release it to the world.

Hi Floob,

I've installed your attract mode image and am really enjoying it. Everything is working awesome, except for Kodi. And I'm really stuck with this. Would really appreciate some help.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/7971/linux-connected-to-internet-but-kodi-isn-t

@najkks: EmulationStation has 3 main views: System, Basic and Detailed.

System view is the first view with the white carousel that displays the game system logos. Basic view is the simple GameList view that you get before you scrape any roms. Detailed view is the one that displays all of a games metadata (image, description, playcount, genre, developer, last played, number of players, publisher) that you get once you have scraped your roms.

When a person makes a theme they can specify a different background image for each system (eg: NES can have a picture of Mario, Genesis can have a picture of Sonic), and each View can have a different background image (eg: NES System view can have a picture of Mario jumping, NES Basic view can have a picture of Mario throwing a fireball and NES Detailed view can have a picture of invincible Mario).

However, what you can't have is a different background picture for each game in the GameList (eg: NES Mario Bros. with a picture of Mario, NES Battletoads with a picture of Zitz).

You also have to take into account how much RAM all these images are using. The original Simple theme used large background images for each system like this:
EmulationStation

While using this theme, a person could only have about 10 different systems before it was too much for the Pi and the whole thing would whitescreen.

So, while you can have a different image for each system, and a different image for each view, you need to do a lot of testing to make sure your theme isn't too much for the Pi to handle.

That is why most themes just use a simple repeating pattern (like Carbon) or a simple image with a colour overlay (like Pixel).

Now, having said all of that, if you personally only use a handful of systems (eg: NES, SNES, Genesis, MAME and PSX) then there shouldn't be any problem using a different image for each system. If you want to know how to do this for yourself, there is a How-To in the wiki that you can use to either make your own theme, or just modify an existing one.

Thanks, @paradadf That looks quite good (and it saves a lot of work). If I understood it correctly, the Universal XML Scraper would generate a unique file mixing both images.

That would be a nice solution and I guess that's the one I'll use (although I'm still interested in seeing if it's possible to have two separate images, mainly because you can have them in separate views of the theme).

It's also installable via the theme installer through the setup script.

Really liking this!

@mattrixk I made a new set. This set gots now 1:3 aspect ratio which will fit better. I hope they are fine.
@pjft I created new texts - Thank you for your newest branch of ES

Complete new set of VR-Symbols with text Aspect ratio is 1:3 (=512:1536 pixels) Set 1: auto-allgames

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Set 2: auto-favorites

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Set 3: auto-lastplayed

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Set 4.1: custom-collection

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Set 4.2: custom-collection

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@zarrath I can't really give you a point by point description, but there is a guide on the RetroPie wiki that teaches you how to make themes. I should point you in the right direction at least.

https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/Creating-Your-Own-EmulationStation-Theme

One simple thing I can tell you, if you just want to hide some text to stop it showing up, you can use <fontSize>0</fontSize>. This effectively tells ES to make that element have a font size of 0, so nothing can be seen. You use it like this:

<text name="md_description"> <fontSize>0</fontSize> </text>

This would stop the description from showing on the screen. If you wanted to move the existing elements, or change their size, you would need to play with <size> and <pos>.

Also keep in mind that you may have to make changes to each theme.xml within the system folders as well as changing carbon.xml, but that would depend on what you want to change.

@xddarko It's here - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Creating-Your-Own-EmulationStation-Theme/.