Carbon Theme Suggestions

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).

DrMaxwell

@herb_fargus said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

@smartroad ES only displays one image at a time. a workaround is to mash up two images in on screenshot with gimp so it looks like two, but not a very clean way of doing it

You could use the Universal XML Scraper from Screenzone for the RetroPi to scrape pre-made multi artwork images that pop straight in.

https://github.com/Universal-Rom-Tools/Universal-XML-Scraper/releases

Rookervik

Yes, regardless of what themes are added to Carbon, a change to the es_systems.cfg has to be made. And as mentioned above, it will affect everyone that uses mame. All themes would have the mame sections come up blank if the es_systems.cfg is changed. So this really needs to stay as a per-user change, and not a global change.

Otherwise, all themers will have to edit their themes again. And some themers have left the scene. So some themes would be broken unless someone else went in and changed them.

There really is a lot to think about when asking for a global change that affects everyone using the package.

battlecat

Hi thanks for that update @Rookervik

I do not understand why there was no individual themes for each folder for MAME in the first place but that is okay. It is something simple to live with.

I mean so what if users expect to see different icons when they load up different ROM folders for different supported version of MAME.

Please note I am comming across sarcastically but I do no mean to be sarcastic. I mean that if that is how it is that is how it is there is little point in huffing over it. :)

Great theme and keep up the work!

--BC

Rookervik

@battlecat

The original way of setting up mame seems like it could have been better. But I would not want to change it and invalidate all current themes just to fix it in Carbon. If all the theme-makers came together and updated their themes with the new changes (as simple as adding the themes for the additional mames) then going further with a system change would be fine.

I personally feel all mame games should come up in a single section, and run the appropriate emulator from there. Which is already possible. I believe that's why "Arcade" was created.

So we do have this: get all the current themes updated with mame themes, and then we can talk to the devs about making a system change to the es_systems.cfg.

mattrixk

@Rookervik said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

If all the theme-makers came together and updated their themes with the new changes

Oh sure, make me do more work. I'm already updating with Child-Friendly icons, and working on GridView layouts. I'm not made of free time you know! :P

Rookervik

@mattrixk Hey, I didn't say you had to update the themes. :P Just get all the theme authors on board and update their themes. I'm working on the icons for the other mames for Carbon now.

Yes, it was set up in a blah way originally, but there's too much content people are using to change it and screw up all that content in the process. It will even break my other 3 themes. I'll have to take time to go update them as well. And I still haven't even fixed all the colors in PixelTFT yet.

Rookervik

Also, chatted with the devs and the issue of the multiple mame entries in ES was directly addressed with the addition of the "Arcade" folder. I haven't used it myself, so I can't tell you any more about it. But I do know it's a single location for all mame games to appear and they should be able to be set to launch with their specific emulator.

As far as adding the themes for people to use if they want, that's fine. I can finish up these themes and add them to Carbon. I doubt I will add them to Pixel or Luminous since there's already an arcade section to deal with mame.

DrMaxwell

I have some SVGs that I'm going to be adding on to the Carbon theme on my setup and was wondering if there is a repository I could possibly upload them to in order for more people to have access and maybe save you some time?

Rookervik

@DrMaxwell I don't know of any repositories for people to upload custom work. Perhaps Github? @herb_fargus would have more information on something like that. I have personally used dropbox to store config files and artwork for people to use.

I think it would be neat though. Like some sort of mod section. Some users like one option while most other users like it another way. Maybe we could have a mod section where you could download the files needed to change yours to the way you like. And it would not be something the devs would need to worry about. They have enough work as it is.

Rookervik

Ok, got the logos re-created and in their folders. Just need to test it and send it to herb. They are all modified to be as large as possible on the ES carousel. AdvanceMame, for instance, is a very long logo, so it would actually be quite small in the carousel. So I offset the logo so it would be larger.

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battlecat

@Rookervik
I have chosen not to use the Arcade folder because of three things.

The first is that there were existing folders for each version of MAME that I had ROMS for.
The second is because I did not want to mix and intermingle romsets.
The third is that I have seen on my RPi3 that one MAME romset will have roms that work in one version of MAME but will not work correctly in a newer version of MAME.

I will end up doing the customization manually so that the menu options are "more correct".

Once more thank you for everyone's hard work. I love this project even when all I do is cause consternation.

--BC

battlecat

@Rookervik Okay that is like WOW! Love it. OMG. Much WOW. LOL

Nice work.

--BC

meleu

The guys from the RetroPie project should be on those "People are Awesome" compilations. :D

UDb23

@Rookervik thanks for implementing it. Concerning the logos there's no need to recreate them, all possibile variations of Mame version logos ( specifically tested for Carbon) are already available in svg format in the logo pack I mentioned in my previous post.
overview

Rookervik

@UDb23 Very nice work. I made some of my own so don't worry. Made sure they fit properly, and are visible on both light and dark backgrounds.

Keep in mind that these added themes will only work if you edit your es_systems.cfg. I can probably set up a download for the es_system.cfg and people can just replace it.

KillerQ

@Rookervik said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

@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

Rook,

Thanks so much for our hard work. I'm going to utilize your carbon centered theme in my portrait mode cabinet in order to allow the text to flow better.

I'll have to test after I scrape with screenshots and metadata to see if and how it shows in your theme.

Thanks again!

KillerQ

@Rookervik said in Carbon Theme Suggestions:

@lilbud

Well, RetroPie isn't a job. No one gets paid for working on the project. I do this art because I enjoy it. =^_^=

Are there some cases in which lowering the font size won't take affect? The joystix font won't seem to scale down for me with the carbon centered theme.

Also, I have successfully scaled the image size down, in hopes of buying more real estate and having the text list area increase to allow more games to populate on screen. The top limit of the game list didn't raise when the image shrunk - just a blank buffer exists now where the Larger image edges used to reside. Is that list able to be raised so that more can be listed?

I ask because, when used in portrait mode, the long list of games is nice.

Thanks again for everything.