Chicuelo Theme

DarishZone

@DarishZone
Thanks! But there are a lot of images I use from other design partners, so I could never charge for others work. They are listed and credited on the readme. The quality for a designer must be a non-negociable

Could not agree more!

EctoOne

Hey @chicuelo I was considering to rewrite the whole theme to make it more modular. There was a recent change which enabled variables in <include> tags, using that I could create a simple config file which allows to change certain parts. E.g. to use metadata/game description instead of the logo/system description.
Also with that change it is possible to get rid of all the system sub folders (although I still don't know how that would affect custom collections).

Would you be interessed in that? Because I currently don't use my Pi anymore and would just do it for fun, but if you're not interessted I wouldn't even begin.

HurricaneFan

@EctoOne I think that sounds pretty fun.

chicuelo

@EctoOne
Yes, it seems to be interesting. I have no time to work on the project but if you are interested on making it better and respecting the visuals go ahead. All the art is available on the repo.

DarishZone

@chicuelo I apologize but I think there was a misunderstanding in my words, I meant to say that theme could be challenging for the system because of the high quality images used (it really depends on each setting), I would never be allowed to say to sell it! However I am obviously agree what you said!

EctoOne

@chicuelo Yeah, I won't mess with the graphics/layout. I was just thinking to simply create a version that can use various extra xml files to overwrite settings. Basically a better version of the code I posted before to change certain elements.
That would be pretty easy to do, because I could keep the original theme.xml and just had to create the extra ones.
But last night I had some more ideas I want to try, so I will probably rip the whole code apart and see what I can do.
I will look into it on the weekend.

chicuelo

@DarishZone Hahahah I understand. I run it on a pi 3b and a pi3 b+ and it runs smooth and flawless. I remove the sliding effect due a personal preference

waldnercharles

Great theme @chicuelo!

I've been having a lot of fun modding it. I made a version in HTML/CSS so that I could tweak settings and layer images easily (I'm not great with photoshop or gimp.)

I tried to combine this theme with the CRT theme. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when a system is selected, but was thinking maybe I could just get rid of the character and show a video on the right instead of the screenshot.

Edit: Here's a link to my fork for anyone interested. https://github.com/waldnercharles/es-theme-Chicuelo (It may not look like the screenshot anymore... I like to change things.)

chicuelo

@waldnercharles Very nice! I like the approach on using a crt there!

bphoover

Sorry if this is against the forum rules, but will this theme work on Recalbox? I unzipped the files to the appropriate folder, but I'm not seeing the large images next to the consoles. Everything else seems to work properly.

EctoOne

@bphoover I looked at Recalbox a while back, and I believe it uses a different form for variables. But then you shouldn't have any images since all of them are embedded using the same method (at least that was the case when I provided the initial code for the theme).
Since I was going to rewrite the code on the weekend, maybe I will find the time to install Recalbox again and do some testing myself.

mitu

@bphoover It's not agains the forum rules, but the ES version used by Recalbox is a different fork than the one used by RetroPie, missing certain features (like variables in themes) used by RetroPie themes. Themes might not be compatible between the 2 systems.

EctoOne

I just made a version that offers simple theme settings (everything else I had in mind would have been overkill for this theme).
I added the following options to the main theme.xml:

<!-- Theme Settings -->

	<!-- System Element -->
	<controller>default</controller>
	<!-- Values:
			default: Shows the System controller image
			hide: Hides the System controller image
	-->

	<!-- Gamelist Element: Left Side -->
	<left>default</left>
	<!-- Values:
			default: Shows the System logo
			marquee: Shows the Game logo (only on video view, defaults to System logo on detailed view)
			metadata: Shows Genre, Releasedate, Developer, Players and Rating
	-->

	<!-- Gamelist Element: Right Side -->
	<right>default</right>
	<!-- Values:
			default: Shows the System description
			game: Shows the Game description
	-->

The branch can be found here, I would appreciate if someone could test it before I submit a PR.

Notes:

The latest dev build of EmulationStation is probably required because I use the improved datetime element to display only the year as release date when metadata is enabled (If needed this can be disabled by deleting one line).
This probably won't fix the issues with Recalbox because I didn't change anything in the original code (besides the initial asset path).

rajbhalsod

Hello again. So after much experimentation and adding a number of systems with corresponding artwork, system logos, etc I moved onto making the system menu much smoother by following the advice i earlier received - changing the vram limit etc. I also compressed images to their maximum limit to increase performance but nothing seems to have worked as the sheer volume of art work being used is over whelming the pi!

As this is my go to theme and the one that I simply love in terms of its look, I've been looking at ways to strike a balance between art work and system logos. I therefore have one quick question - when a system logo is not displayed, emulationstation uses a default font. Where can I find this font and how can I hide it from appearing on the system list (as in the default font does not display the system name as defined in the .xml file?) I hope that makes sense! Thanking you all in advance again!

EctoOne

@rajbhalsod I'm not quite sure if I understand correctly but it might be that I forgot to include the code for the system logo text. In fact I just learned about that a while ago. I already had it on my mind though so I will look into it.
I could provide the code snippet later if it is really missing but I'm not home yet.

rajbhalsod

@EctoOne Thank you for the quick response. Sorry if my message didnt make sense, I'm finding it difficult to explain! So essentially, I guess if a system logo, say for example snes, is not in the assets folder, emulationstation displays the name using its own font and uses the name entered in the system.xml file. I would like to hide that from the system carousel menu until I find a way of increasing the menu speed, etc.

Thank you for replying!

EctoOne

@rajbhalsod Ah ok, but that's not possible. The only way to remove an system is by deleting the entry from the es_systems.cfg.
Have you tried deleting images for systems that you don't use? I'm not sure but I believe EmulationStation loads all images including the alternative/region versions. I mean the theme supports around 100 systems (including custom collections) so you probably can remove some images from the _assets/characters/ and _assets/logos/folders.

PlayingKarrde

Haven't had a chance to use it yet but this looks really great! I'll try and put it through it's paces and provide some better feedback but from the screenshots I'm really liking how clean the design is. Amazing job.

rajbhalsod

@EctoOne I did remove a lot of artwork but still hasn’t helped with the menu system. Can the default font be changed?

EctoOne

@rajbhalsod There should be a resource folder somewhere (at least it exists on the windows build) that has font files, if you can find it somehow it might work if you replace the files with a different font with the same name. Since I currently don't have a running Retropie system I can't tell you the location but you can try to search for opensans_hebrew_condensed_light.ttf