Carbon Theme Suggestions

BuZz

There is a lot of space around the boxes on my system (and in the pic above) - is that intentional to reduce gpu memory usage or to do with the aspect ratio, or just a preference ?

Rookervik

@BuZz The boxes were really small on mine, too. No clue what I did to make them tiny. I fixed it. Working on lining up the meta data. Meta Data is a complete nightmare. And everyone just HAS to have it. LOL The name of the metadata lines up to the top of the text box. The actual meta data block lines up in the CENTER of the text box. Complete disaster for themers. Takes longer to line up meta data than it does to draw all the theme art and program their positions. -_-

BuZz

Sounds painful!

Please send me an archive when you are ready and I will update the repository - thanks very much!

Rookervik

I can get things down to this. There is no way for me to perfectly line up the metadata name and the metadata information. Like "Players: 2" and "Developer: Atari" I'm down to positioning the elements by 0.0001% and they still don't line up. So they will have to do as they are.

Made more room for description. Made the boxes bigger (no CLUE why they were small). Changed the meta data to not be all caps. That saved room. (Guess working on 3 themes at the same time is a bad idea)

Hopefully this will work out for both widescreen and standard users. Percent system in ES has it's good points, and bad.

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This was sure easier when @herb_fargus was at my beck and call for testing. LOL

Download: Carbon v2.0.3

BuZz

Looks good - repository is updated - thanks! :)

caver01

@Rookervik Thanks for the extra attention to 4:3. It would be a shame for all of us focused on arcade cabinets to have the best theme "broken" on typical arcade hardware. It seems like 4:3 should be the minimum for compatibility as it's often the least common denominator that captures the widest audience and emulators.

Rookervik

@caver01 I do apologize for forgetting to test 4:3. Back when Herb and I made this we were very careful to make sure 4:3 worked. I rushed a little to get this out. My intention was a nice visual upgrade for people. What I caused was a mess. LOL.

caver01

@Rookervik On the contrary! I think your updates are great, especially taking inputs from everyone. That's never easy as there will always be some disagreement, but it's not a mess. You make certain choices.

qrayg

@Rookervik Just an FYI here's a vector TG16 controller I made with Sketch. If you'd like me to convert this to simple line art SVG for use with RP just let me know.

qrayg

@Rookervik said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

Do you use Carbon, or do you download another theme?

I remove all themes and use a modified version of the simple theme that I created. I prefer the subtle light colored theme and the Open Sans regular weight font.

If you use Carbon, what do you like about it?

I really like Carbon's vector controller art over Simple's bitmap blurred screenshots for each system.

If you don't use Carbon, what about it do you dislike or what do you wish was changed?

I dislike carbon because of the font weight + size, and also the red text on the dark patterned background. That combination is difficult to read for certain color blind users such as myself. I prefer a UI that is simple and clean with very little busy-ness. I do have to say that the RetroPie menu with the 3D icons is really out of place and looks like Windows 95 to me. As a UX/UI designer for the past 20 years, it hurts me to look at those icons. Carbon uses flat line art for all systems and then on the RP menu it's a completely different style... it's jarring to me. I'd be happy to offer design assistance if you are ever thinking about re-working the UI. I've worked on archive.vg UI (the 1st version... the good one) and OpenEmu UI (I created the website frontend, animations, and also made preference controller artwork for the TG16, NGPC, and I'm working on a Dreamcast controller as well).

Rookervik

RetroPie Menu uses stock icons that every theme must use. There is no easy way to change the RetroPie icons in a theme installer. So using Carbon-specific icons would have made other themes' RetroPie Menus look rather out-of-place to be honest. Users can put their own icons in the place if they are comfortable with the linux command line. The icons on the RetroPie menu can be compared with the game box art. They are in the same location, and they do not follow any sort of coloring or design scheme.

Now if you're suggesting mono type icons, that can be discussed with the developers. The icons will need to be multi-colored because each theme uses different colored backgrounds. So a white or black icon, alone, will not show on all themes.

Please note that the Carbon theme can now have the color changed quite easily. Please read the documentation in the theme folder to learn more. Developers preferred the red look, so that is the color it comes default in. Font size information is also available in the documentation. Font size and face were chosen based on the developers wishes.

Thank you for your suggestions!

Please think of releasing your theme for the community to use. More choices is always better.

Rookervik

@qrayg As far as I know, I already completed the TG-16 controller and it's included in Carbon. Your picture is very nice though. Good job.

Rookervik

I was thinking about re-doing all of the controllers in detailed SVG but it takes a while to create them. I did vector the PSP console... but weighing in at 1.5MB... just for vector... I thought it probably wasn't a good idea. Vector art can be pretty realistic though. :D

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mattrixk

I'm calling your bluff @Rookervik, that's just a photo of a real PSP.

Jokes aside, that's pretty darn impressive. Ironically, an actual photo of the console would probably have a much smaller file size.

Rookervik

@mattrixk Hehe, yeah it looks really close to a photo. :D

Turns out, using a PNG or JPG for a controller would actually be easier on VRAM. No matter how large you stretch a picture, it uses the same VRAM in ES. But since an SVG can be scaled indefinitely, ES creates a canvas for the SVG at the size you specify... taking the amount of VRAM it would require for a PNG of that size. >_< Otherwise we could make NBBA work just with vector :D Alas, you see the pixels from a stretched PNG. @herb_fargus would break. LOL

Used the mesh tool a lot to get the shadows and gradients. Background I threw in from photoshop.

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lilbud

Good thing I still have my PSP, Don't want my pi to explode while trying to emulate it

mattrixk

@Rookervik

No matter how large you stretch a picture, it uses the same VRAM in ES

Does that mean that if you have a small image and stretch it to fill the screen, that uses the same VRAM as if you had just displayed it at it's initial size?

eg: your Pixel theme MegaDrive console.php is 120x69, so stretching it to take up half the screen won't use any more VRAM?

Rookervik

@lilbud Pi actually does a really surprising job emulating the PSP. Overclock the Pi2 a little and with some of the games, you can get smooth 1080p playback. I know Hotshots Tennis I was able to play smooth except for some crowd cheers being choppy.

Rookervik

@mattrixk

Correct. Once an image is loaded into VRAM, that's all it will take. The images in the background on Pixel are what, 480x270? They get stretched to full screen.

You can find the same thing on the Simple theme. The wallpapers are 720p. If you reduce them in size, by a power of 2, you can actually avoid the white screen of no-ramminess. But you see the pixels since the image is stretched. In Pixel's case, that's perfect. :D

mattrixk

@Rookervik That's great news. Speaking of your Pixel theme, I've been plugging away at it, and I have something to show:

I'm contemplating making the top images smaller so you can see the background around them, or maybe moving the console image to the top-middle and making the description go full width.

As you can see I'm using all of your graphics, except for the borders. I tried creating my own backgrounds, but they just don't look as good as yours.

The Detailed view is still very much WIP:

The basic placement of everything is where it should be, now it's just tweaking metadata placement, making room for Kid-Friendly icons and recreating your background with the larger squares.

Also for some reason I'm completely unable to get the gamelist to be lowercase, even though I have forceUppercase set to 0.

Once it's all done and ready for use I'll be making a post for it so others can download it.