Chicuelo Theme

movisman

I quickly put together a theme.xml for GC and submitted a PR for it.

Cheers!

stephensmattlee

@keigan really digging your custom loading screens, go hand in hand so well with chicuelos theme :)

I don't suppose you could add the FDS, SegaCD and 32X to your collection? Unfortunately I don't have photoshop nor am I very good at photo/picture editing.

Thanks

cosmo0

@movisman Great stuff you did with the video mode :)
I just quickly edited the theme so it wasn't "broken" anymore (the video was displaying on top of the image), I wasn't aware you could display the image before the video. That's just plain awesome :)

movisman

@cosmo0

Hey there! Thanks a lot, appreciate it!
I cannot take credit for coming up with the idea of moving md_image out of video though - I got some of that information from the thread for the also excellent Pixel theme, although for some reason it's not been implemented into the main theme yet.

But it works well, plus the re-position and size changes I made for those elements seems to look good too. It's only small stuff but just polishes the theme up a bit more.

I have a few more positional tweaks in mind for the system logo and description in gamelist view, just to tighten things up a tiny bit further. But I need to look into that.

I'd like to get my hands on Illustrator and try to finish off the rest of the system logos! Although it has been many years since i've used it so not sure i'd be able to create anything as good.

Cheers

cosmo0

@movisman no need for Illustrator, Inkscape is enough.
You can find vectorized logos of most systems (just search "[system] logo svg") and you just have to put everything in white before saving it in svg.
If you have to re-make the logo, then yes, you will want Illustrator, as Inkscape is a bit cumbersome to use.

movisman

@cosmo0

Yeah I haven't had chance to look at some free alternatives just yet.

I have previously found some svg's for some of the missing systems - I gathered all you need to do is put a white mask over everything, but are there any other standard steps to follow in Illustrator or whatever regarding aliasing/scaling etc to be consistent with the other logos?

Cheers

cosmo0

@movisman
Here is what I found that works, when converting a SVG logo from the internet using Inkscape:

Resize the document (file -> document properties) to be between about 400100 to 500200, or something like that, then resize the logo to fit in this space. Larger logos will probably not be displayed correctly.

What is white in the logo will be grey in the theme. Select everything (ctrl+A), then change the color of paths and fills to black, for instance (in Inkscape, just click on the colors on the bottom of the screen). If the logo is not readable anymore, then you have some work to do: you will have to break down the logo to remove stuff until it's readable, and frankly I haven't found out how to do it with Inkscape. Then, once the logo is readable in black, select everything again and change all colors to white.

movisman

@cosmo0

Hey,

Thanks for this! I have been playing with Inkscape for 30 minutes or so and before I saw this I figured out how to change everything to white - also regarding not seeing anything once complete, it looks like if you go to 'file > document properties' and tick 'checkerboard background' it shows the transparency enabling you to see things easier at all times.

Also, it might be useful to note that you can put a margin on all sides in the same menu, eg. 10px - you can expand 'resize page to content', set your margins and click the button.

This might be useful to do across all logos - that way the positioning in ES will be totally consistent.

It is a bit of a fiddly app but I will be able to contribute a few missing logos using it! Only thing I need to figure out now is copying elements from one SVG to another and understanding about editing the vectors in an efficient manner.

Cheers!

cosmo0

@chicuelo
Hi! Thanks for the feedback :) I'll try to help you some more, then. I did a bit of reasearch to find the most iconic characters for each missing system. I'm listing things I found on these platforms, as I never used any of them (except the NDS and NGC). Maybe someone who did will have better ideas.

Apple II: recognizable characters include Sir Graham (King's Quest); Roger Wilco (Space Quest); and the tentacles from Maniac Mansion.

Atari 800: I would pick Pitfall Harry (from Pitfall II). You can find atwork here, or here.

Atari 5200: probably Ms Pac-Man, Frogger or Dig Dug.

Atari 7800: Joust seem like a good candidate, especially considering this awesome official artwork.

Atari Jaguar: the most iconic game for the Jaguar is probably Alien vs Predator.

Colecovision: it mostly had arcade ports, not much that really stands out to me. I'll note Tarzan, and Burger Time.

G&W: "Mr Game & Watch" is easy to find, especially since its inclusion in Super Smash Bros. For background, the game "Fire" is probably the most iconic.

Neogeo Pocket & Pocket Color: "Chibi" versions of Capcom (Street Fighter) or SNK (King of Fighters) fighters will probably be representative.

Sega Saturn: the most iconic game is clearly Nights Into Dreams, by far.

Vectrex: there is exactly one game with a character: Spike, which is considered the Vectrex mascot. Good luck finding images of a vector character, though! :D

Virtual Boy: a black & red Wario should do the trick.

Wonderswan: One Piece and Mr Driller are two of the most popular game for the system.

ZX Spectrum: Dizzy (Fantastic Dizzy) should be the most recognizable character.

Nintendo DS: I love this system. So many great characters to pick from: Link (Zelda Phantom Hourglass), the guys from Elite Beat Agents, Soma (Castlevania DoS), Pokémons from Pearl/Diamond or Black/White, Professor Layton, Phoenix Wright, Neku Sakuraba (The World Ends With You)... I would probably pick one of the last three.

Amstrad CPC: the prince from Prince of Persia.

MSX: Solid Snake (from Metal Gear), obviously.

PC Engine CD / Turbographx CD: Richter Belmont (Castlevania Dracula X: Chi No Rondo)

Nintendo Gamecube: I would choose between Viewtiful Joe, a Pikmin, Link (Zelda Wind Waker or Twilight Princess), Samus Aran (Metroid Prime), or Luigi (Luigi's Mansion).

I hope it helps :)

chicuelo

@cosmo0
Great material! I really Digg some of your choices, prince of Persia is one of my favorites and I was waiting to use it on a system.
I have update some systems like virtual boy, Famicom, 3do, C64, ScummVm and psp. I am not running any of those systems on my Pi so I can't appreciate them so I hope other people can enjoy for themselves :)
Lets see if I have some time on a near future to complete at least the half of that ones that are must have on a pc retropie

movisman

@chicuelo

Hi again!

I have done a little more work with tightening up the position and scale of the logos on the main system select screen. Again small changes but improvement none the less.

I have also resized all system logos you have made to date in terms of removing all bounding space around them. This means that all the images appear more consistent and central in ES.

In addition, I have also created a correct logo for Atari 2600, and changed the 5200 and 7800 so all three are the same size, so there is no scaling when you flip between the systems.

Also made a couple of minor adjustments to a couple of other logos.

Finally, I created a new Gamecube logo, a MAME one, an FBA one, and I also adjusted the Sinclair one to be more 'Spectrum' like.

I think it all looks good. How would you like to review these changes?

After checking, if you are happy to implement these into the official theme, I can try to complete a few more.

Thanks

movisman

@chicuelo

You can see all my above changes on this preview vid which flips through some of the systems:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=16VCwVGY72NDVOl6zTotAZKe_V0j3XCUc

Hope this helps get an idea of my changes.

Cheers

movisman

I also just created logos for:

Amstrad CPC
Atari ST
Intellivision
Megadrive (non-US Logo)

Thanks

chicuelo

@movisman
Thats great!
the only one that I look strange is the FBA logo, I think we could make something like this but reducing the size of the F
alt text

The rest are ok!

chicuelo

@chicuelo
I forget to say, some of the logos have a horizontal or vertical space because the aspect ratio make them Look enormous when they were placed on the screen, so I manually compensed the size, but if you set a max width or height it will fit fine

Keigan

@stephensmattlee said in Chicuelo Theme:

@keigan really digging your custom loading screens, go hand in hand so well with chicuelos theme :)

I don't suppose you could add the FDS, SegaCD and 32X to your collection? Unfortunately I don't have photoshop nor am I very good at photo/picture editing.

Thanks

I added them to the Google Drive link. Let me know if they work for you!

movisman

@chicuelo

I completely agree about the FBA logo - funnily enough I already started looking at this late last night because I thought it looked a bit odd and I wasn't happy with it either. It is the official logo but I think it needs to be more descriptive. So actually I have the above image already open on the machine - I just didn't get chance to look at it further. Unfortunately it seems to be a PNG though rather than SVG, but can still reduce the size of the F and apply a white overlay to replace the colour.

Regarding the logo sizes, I reduced the max height in theme.xml for the carousel image, and this seems to stop them appearing huge (the video i sent is with my revised theme.xml). So hopefully this is ok?

stephensmattlee

@keigan thats awesome, many thanks. I had a go at doing some colour versions and did Sega cd, 32x, fds and n64 as well. would it be okay to send them to you to see if you approve or would like to rework any of them? thanks again

Keigan

@stephensmattlee

Sure thing, or if you know the background colour you want for each one let me know I can toss them together

movisman

@chicuelo

This is what I had already started putting together, I just finished it off now. What do you think? Smaller logo and bigger text. This is an exported PNG filled over with grey for demo purposes so you can actually see it. Will give it a try later inside ES after applying a white fill on the SVG and then can see how it looks.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ng5GyhVXrGSBPDVxyylvgsjMtzs-3nvr

Cheers!