Carbon Theme Suggestions

han

Hi!
Just want to thank Rookervik and others for all the great work in putting these themes together. They really enhance my emulation experience. Their clarity and consistency really work well when people not familiar with ES or Retropie are using it at an event or party.

With that I would like to make one small comment.
I sometimes switch between pixel and carbon with a custom es-systems.cfg and noticed that one uses tg-16 while the other uses tg16. I created a symlink as a workaround. I just wanted to point that out as a possible issue for others.

mattrixk

@edmaul69 is that a theme you are making? It looks really cool. How far along are you? Are you making custom headers like that for each system, or just some main ones? I'd love to see what you've done for the Detailed View.

edmaul69

@mattrixk it is a theme i am making. Yes they all are being cutom made. Im about 20 themes in. I have about 40 logos done for the main page. I have hand done the logos in a pixel version that looks good. This theme is going to take a while because i am doing them 1 pixel at a time (paint fill and copy and paste wherever possible). I have not started the detailed stuff as i dont use it. I am making the screens look like the games so its going to be tricky if i decide to add it. Honestly i dont know if there would be enough ram after im done with basic to have detailed. Will post some pics later.

mattrixk

@edmaul69 Sounds awesome. I can't wait to see it.

joaovlg

I'm not sure if is a carbon theme issue, but I'm using folders to sort my psx roms, cause some roms come in various pieces, like track 1,2,3... Others contain .ape files, well, would be nice see the scratched game covers without needing open the sub-folder. It's about a file manager organized.

herb_fargus

@joaovlg game art is not supported for folders in emulationstation

DrMaxwell

@herb_fargus this could easily be done in Photoshop using a batch process. I wonder how crammed it would look though.

Pyjamarama

How can I alter Carbon theme so it does not resize the small mamedb images that the sselph scraper downloads for MAME (the lr_mame2003)? They look ugly

Thank you

Rookervik

@Pyjamarama

Can you show a picture of what you are talking about? Are tiny images getting enlarged and in that way, ugly? If that's the case, you can edit the theme for mame to make the images smaller.

Pyjamarama

@Rookervik that's exactly the situation.

I cannot locate the section of the xml that represents the size of the image.

Any help appreciated

battlecat

@Rookervik I have been having a lively and sometiems strange dicussion about including various logos to represent the different versions of MAME that Retropie includes.

Is there any possibility to get UDb23's MAME logos included in Carbon?

Thank you,
BC

meleu

I can read minds. And I've read in @battlecat 's mind that what he's suggesting is to create new <theme> entries to be used with the existing directory structure.*

When he says "various logos to represent the different versions of MAME", he means "various logos to represent different directories that RetroPie uses for MAME ROMs".

As an example, here are some cool logos that @UDb23 made and that fits well in Carbon:

for mame-libretro:
lr-mame

for mame-mame4all:

for mame-advmame:
advancemame

*Actually I know what he wants because we discussed it exhaustively on other thread. :-)

Rookervik

It's possible for anything to be added to Carbon, but as far as making something default, we need to have a large number of people asking for it.

I haven't messed much with mame. I got one of the mame systems to work and said to myself, "that's good enough. The pi isn't strong enough to play some of the arcade games I want to see."

If each mame system has it's own entry, and uses the generic "mame" theme, then yeah we could make different mame themes inside Carbon to represent the different mame emulators. It's crazy-easy to do something like that. Basically, just add a theme folder, change the images, and point to that theme in the es_systems.cfg. As far as making it default, that has to be discussed with the RetroPie devs.

UDb23

@Rookervik I agree it is very easy (and btw thanks for creating Carbon)
and I do provide step by step setup instructions together with the svg custom logo pack.
Nevertheless some people would like to have separate Mame logos to be implemented as default instead of having to manually configure.

Rookervik

@UDb23 Yeah, and that's fine. I'll have to talk with Herb and see how RetroPie is wired with the mame stuff. In my mind, each mame should have it's own theme since they are all separate rom folders. So I'm not sure how all that works. If he thinks it's a good idea, I can make up the themes then we can submit them to Jools.

It would impact everyone, though. And that's the main issue. We would definitely start getting complaints that some peoples' mame are separated instead of all in the same folder. Personally, I prefer them all in a single folder and just launch whichever mame is needed.

The best course of action is to create the themes and include them in Carbon, but not route them in the main distribution of RetroPie. So users would have to edit their es_systems.cfg if they want the Mame separated.

meleu

@Rookervik Actually @battlecat didn't describe very well his request. Look at my post right below the request and you'll get it. ;-)

[edit] He means themes for the EXISTING DIRECTORY STRUCTURE. Like one logo for roms/mame-mame4all and a different logo for roms/mame-libretro and a different logo for roms/mame-advmame.

Rookervik

@meleu Yeah, that's what I said. LOL. That can be included in Carbon. Just as PC Engine CD is included, but not setup for use from RetroPie install. You have to point to it manually.

meleu

@Rookervik I thought you misunderstood the request because of this part of your response:

It would impact everyone, though. And that's the main issue. We would definitely start getting complaints that some peoples' mame are separated instead of all in the same folder.

If we have different mame logos for the currently existing directory structure the only impact is: different logos for different currently existent mame roms folders.

Currently, if you put roms from your .37b5 romset in mame-mame4all (it's not the libretro mame) and also put roms from your .78 romset in mame-libretro (eg: to use with lr-mame2003) you'll see two MAME entries in emulationstation. And these entries have the very same logo.

Rookervik

Oh man, it has 2 mames in ES? I've never tried. That's kind of hard to use. Ok, I will make some themes and work on getting them in Carbon. As long as it doesn't require changes to the core of RetroPie then I can push the changes myself. Or ask for a push. Or whatever it's called.

If it requires changing some core component installed with RetroPie (like changing the es_system.cfg), then I have to talk with Jools and he will have to decide if he wants to do it, when, and how. :D

meleu

@Rookervik

it has 2 mames in ES?

Actually it has 3 (mame-mame4all, mame-libretro, and mame-advmame). But they only are displayed in ES when their roms folders has something. :)

But I've just realized that it do impact the current settings. :/

Because the es_systems.cfg will bind the individual mame directories to their respective theme. In other words, mame-mame4all will use (for example) <theme>mame4all</theme>; mame-libretro will use <theme>mame4lr</theme>; mame-advmame will use <theme>mameadv</theme>.

It would affect all the existing available themes in RetroPie-Setup. Because they don't have the expected themes (mame4all, mameadv, mamelr), they have only one theme for mame named mame.

@battlecat as you can see, it's simple to make the changes on your own side, but it would affect many aspects of the current settings to make it the RetroPie default.

You have to go back to those two options:

use the roms/arcade folder and select the mame version for every rom using the runcommand menu.
edit your own copy of the es_systems.cfg (just like @Udb23 says here).