You can switch the theme from EmiulationStation menus, if that's what you want - closing/backing out from the menu will apply the newly chosen theme to EmulationStation automatically.

@Renetrox I understand. There was a theme I was wanting ported, but it may be a bit too complex. It's a wii lookalike theme, with the same grid capabilities as the original. Mouse probably won't work on a grid system select theme for the cursor, but I would love to have it as close to the original as possible. But yet again, that's probably a little out of my scope to even get remotely working. Great work altogether on these!

I solved the issue. Apparently the order of the XML tags inside "system" is relevant. Looks like I was simply creating a new text behind the background... After moving it to below the background image tag, it finally showed up.
Here's the final code (after the background image tag)

<text name="by" extra="true"> <pos>0.85 0.969</pos> <color>ffffff80</color> <fontPath>./art/font.ttf</fontPath> <fontSize>0.02</fontSize> <text>hello world</text> </text>

Text tag reference on ES md documentation

@wtstreetglow1

pc? and you need have an existing theme system tab so we can see what it looks like ie work involved

@StrangeJaguar copy the theme folder to ~/.emulationstation/themes.

@intergala The best way I found of doing this was to open the "Themes" folder in the MAIN .emulationstation folder (Best done on a PC really). This will give access to all the subfolders that are themes available on my PC it looks like this

themesfold.jpg

Next open the Themes folder that closely matches what you are looking for eg Simple theme, and you will get a list of systems available, at the end will be a XML file called theme. Right click on this and Open with a program such as Notepad. You should get something akin to this;

basicsetup.jpg

This is the main program for controlling what you see on the screen. But EACH system has it's OWN theme, and this progam links to those systems. Which means you have to have a "theme" file in each system you want to show.

My theme I am working on for MAME, looks like this in code.

egmame.jpg

and like this in emulationstation

frankie.jpg

The best thing to do is just mess about a bit and see what happens. Hope it helps, oh and also the documents on the site on creating your own theme are brilliant!

@roslof Thanks for testing/confirming the fix.

I must admit, it is not really a backward compatibility but restoring a functionality I accidentally scrapped with the last optimization roughly three weeks ago (before this fix). TIL it was designed by Aloshi this way. However it does not document the behaviour when h is greater than lineSpacing. I am currently updating the themes page of the RetroPie Docs to put more emphasis on this text+size thing.

For the wrap of Manager to the next line: IIRC you moved from 16:9 to 4:3 of epic noir didn't you (if not branch wise than at least display wise)? In any case: You may give the longdescription in the toplevel theme.xml of epic noir a little more x-space (<size> value is in percentage of total screenwidth) to keep the Manager on the same line (Ctrl-t and Ctrl-r are your friends). So no need for wordsmithing.

PS: It was the maintainer @pjft who did the merge, thanks.

@sleve_mcdichael >>Text translated from Portuguese (Brazil) into English by Google translator<<

Hello!

I created a Github account and already tried to push the forked repository. It worked out? Need to click somewhere to save the edit?

'flpowergamesretro es-theme-flpowergamesretro_v1.0'

6728c5d0-4155-4452-83db-267dfe5dab88-image.png

@alan-miller3 said in need help understanding screen size/orientation etc.:

@dankcushions

ok, physically my display's visible area is 15 x 12 inches. That's a 5:4 ratio.
So I changed my screen resolution to 1280x1024@60Hz (also a 5:4 ratio) and rebooted.

if that’s the native resolution of the screen then fine

vide_rotation=3 is still set in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

After starting a game and hitting tab, the video options offer 3:4 or 7:9 or cocktail.

tab should get you to the MAME menu (not retroarch(. you probably don’t want to to be changing options there.

Disabling any of the options (backdrops, overlays, bezels, marquees, etc.) doesn't seem to do anything.

because bezel project adds retroarch bezels, not MAME ones. how did you install it? presumably the same script permits the disabling/removal of the bezels.

or did you use a pre-configured image?

new2.jpg

If I revert the video_rotation (back to 0) in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg
I still get the same 11 x 11 screen with "Arcade" bezels but without rotation so players 1 and 2 are both looking at the screen from the side.

Is it the fact that the original game was intended to be on a square screen?

no, it a a 4:3 crt screen rotated on its side (so effectively 3:4)

b1b9c82c-b29a-4800-9a43-098f4b48d49e-image.jpeg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/hg4AAOSwMBZiVBKN/s-l500.jpg

@sleve_mcdichael

awesome. After doing some additional reading, I think i kinda get it.

I have the basic grid working in a few themes that seem like they'll do what I want.

I'm now trying to figure out if I can minimize the space between the art, increasing the viewable size of the image, and will possibly add the "marquee" back onto the image. The last part looks pretty easy, really.

Do you know of any particularly good grid themes? tronky and material seem to be the best "out of the box" options. I like the look of carbon, but I wish it had an area for game details.

really appreciate everyone's help here.

@alphatoanant Thank you!

It looks I’m on Batocera 39 indeed. Isn’t it easier to update to 40? Or do you recommend knulli for another reason?

Update: ah, I read that 40 will be the last version so it makes sense to switch to Knulli. Thanks for the tip.

@mitu OH sorry it's the default Gnome

@rasp_renegade said in Good themes for vertical arcade cabinet:

I think I saw these but there is nothing to download just a bunch of links with flat files . ??? How do I download them and how would I add to ES?

@rasp_renegade looks like these aren't in the theme installer, so you'll have to clone them manually off the GitHub. Plug in a keyboard and press F4 to exit EmulationStation, or remote in from your favorite SSH client (I use the Termius app on my phone, or just type ssh pi@retropie.local in the search bar on my Win10 PC to use its built-in client. Connect as user "pi" to server "retropie.local", and the password is "raspberry" if you haven't changed it yet. You'll be presented with a security certificate the first time you connect to/from a particular pair, go ahead and accept this so you may continue.)

Either way, you should now be at a command prompt now that looks like:

pi@retropie:~ $

Use the following commands to create and navigate to the themes directory and clone the GitHub repository there, using the first one as an example:

mkdir -p ~/.emulationstation/themes cd ~/.emulationstation/themes git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/losernator/es-theme-ssimple-ve ssimple-ve

Adding the second "ssimple-ve" at the end clones it into that directory instead of one called after the repo with "es-theme-" in front. You can call it something else, if you want. Whatever you write after the repo URL will be the directory it's cloned into and that will be the name that's used in EmulationStation.

After it downloads, just type exit to either leave the terminal and return to ES, or to terminate the SSH session (or you can just close the app/window). You should now be able to select the theme ssimple-ve in ES's options menu (I can't remember, you might need to restart it first, if you were remoted in.)

Unfortunately the theme doesn't work with the EmulationStation version distributed by RetroPie.

@sleve_mcdichael thanks. I mean maybe it's overkill but if I made a page detailing what systems are included in which themes have would there be much interest in that? Could just run an excel vba macro or something to read the folders.

Although it gets confusing as with the open nature of the themes I've found a version of showcase that retro arena used, they added in a few extra images to the theme to include Atomisware and Naomi. So I just added those images into the stock RetroPie version of showcase.

@segasonic THX BIG ! :)