Themes - custom collection standardized naming

dmmarti

Hey everyone,

In anticipation of the upcoming “custom collection” feature, I’ve started seeing themes being updated with new collections (my Showcase theme included).

I’ve been looking at what others are naming these new collections … and for the most part, we all tend to name them the same.

However, I’ve already seen some differences in a few.

So, before we (as a collective) begin making a bunch of new themes for all of the new collections, I was wondering if there’s any thought as to having a standardized naming convention for them.

The “base” systems are all pretty well established … but these new collections are not.

Just wanted to get everyones thoughts on this. If we can all agree and adopt a naming standard for these, going forward, when users switch between the various themes, they won’t have any gaps because of naming differences.

EDIT -- START OF MASTER LIST OF THEME FOLDER NAMES

Standardized Names
——————————

The list below is an attempt at keeping track of a naming convention for theme makers for the new custom collection feature within Emulation Station. Names have been compiled from various theme authors into a single list.

Guide lines for name:

lower case words
no spaces in the name
shortened names (but easily identifiable)

atari
batman
btmups
capcom
castlevania
cps1
cps2
cps3
dataeast
disney
donkeykong
doubledragon
fighting
finalfantasy
frogger
ghostsghouls
hudson
irem
kof
kirby
konami
lightgun
mario
midway
megaman
metalslug
metroid
mortalkombat
namco
nintendo
pacman
pinball
pokemon
racing
sega
shmups
simpsons
snk
sonic
spaceinvaders
spiderman
sports
spyro
squaresoft
starwars
streetfighter
sunsoft
taito
tmnt
trackball
williams
wonderboy
zelda

As more and more collections are added .... I'm hoping to keep this list up-to-date.

If anyone see's a new collection name that isn't in the list, please post it below and I'll update this main list.

——————————
~~Here’s what I’ve got so far from everyone’s different themes/posts. Those with multiple names are one’s I’ve found where there are already differences between the themes.~~

~~Anyway .... I was just wondering about adopting a standardized naming convention for these collections and ones going forward.~~

TMNTturtlguy

@dmmarti I love this idea! I vote we go with lower case words, shorter names like just sonic instead of sonucthehedgehog and except for widely known abbreviations like tmnt we use words so the average user can figure them out. I see smb in the list and I read in another post that was short for super Mario bros. The average user won't figure that out, I didn't. So instead let's jus use mario as that covers all versions of mario.

What do you think?

dmmarti

@tmntturtlguy Makes perfect sense to me.....I agree with all your suggestions.

Keep the names short but yet descriptive enough to quickly know what the collection is for.

HurricaneFan

@TMNTturtlguy Totally love this idea and agree with your suggestions.

alphatoanant

This is great @dmmarti thank you for pulling it together. I'll start making some of the changes noted around mario and sonic names to my theme tonight. Also thinking of moving from tloz to zelda if that works. Sound good?

Agreed on keeping everything lowercase and short as well.

stephan311280

I hope to see also cps 1,2,3 in the themes plz

dmmarti

@stephan311280 --ah, good catch!

I know several folks split those out as well.

So we'll add the following to the list.

cps1
cps2
cps3

Thanks!

mattrixk

@dmmarti What are "dataeast" and "irem"?

EctoOne

@mattrixk I only know irem as the devs from R-Type, so my guess they are both developers like Capcom.

dmmarti

@mattrixk --Data East are just another common breakout for the Mame/FBA games.

Data East made a lot of arcade games back in the day but their most famous ones are probably RoboCop and BurgerTime.

Coming from a Hyperspin background before discovering RetroPie, a lot of folks had already did the work to split them out. Over the years there's been a few more breakouts (like Technos, etc), but these are the main original manufacturer breakouts that existed.

atari
capcom
dataeast
irem
konami
midway
namco
nintendo
sega
snk
taito
williams

I'm sure there's some folks that now use RetroPie that'll probably want to break them out too. It was popular to do it in Hyperspin. Using the Hyperspin XML database files, you can quickly identify the games that belong to each of them and assign them to their proper collection.

dmmarti

Started the "master list" of collection folder names in the first post.

Added a few new subfolder collection names to the list as well that I've found in various posts.

thanks

HurricaneFan

How about a few more:

disney
kirby
metroid
spyro

lostless

Sorry to derail a tad, But what I'm getting here is that each custom system needs a theme folder to use? I was thinking it would be truly custom, where there is a custom collection theme folder and each custom system would be a folder inside there. If we are limited to what theme we use, that's not custom at all and severely limited.

TMNTturtlguy

@dmmarti do you think we can remove smb from your list. I think we decided on mario as the official name for that subfolder.

TMNTturtlguy

@lostless it can be custom, but these are for the select custom from theme option. So theme makers can create logos and backgrounds, you can select that folder and the theme will be created for you. If all theme makers use the same names, you can easily switch from theme to theme.

TMNTturtlguy

@hurricanefan I also have a folder for kids it is take off of what @Zigurana has in his kids mode build of ES. I have all the games my kids like in there so they don't need to search for them.

HurricaneFan

@tmntturtlguy Thats a great idea!

lostless

@tmntturtlguy I guess I should test it, but how would a theme created for you look? In my PlayStation theme, it won't generate the paint splatters in the carousel. It will show just white text. Am I following this correct?

HurricaneFan

@lostless The collection theme folder and logo are built and saved to github for a specific type of category, like Mario. When a person builds a custom collection tied to the theme folder, it shows up in their EmulationStation list as a system. If different themes use the same folder names for these types of collections, then people don't have to create their own.

dmmarti

@lostless --see if this makes sense.

Here's a quick video I did about the process @TMNTturtlguy is talking about (adding a collection from the "select custom from theme" option).

You can always add a custom collection by typing in it's name...and if the theme doesn't have a corresponding theme subfolder named the same, the new collection will be shown under the main menu "Custom Collection" theme.